text-to-video-promptinglisted

# Text-to-Video Prompting Image prompting describes a frame. Video prompting describes a frame **plus what changes over time**, and the second part is where almost all failures live. A prompt that reads like an image prompt gets you either a near-static clip or motion the model invented. ## The four things a video prompt must state Most prompts state one or two and let the model guess the rest. Guessed motion is the drifting, morphing output people complain about. | Element | State it as | Example | |---|---|---| | **Subject** | What is in frame, concretely | "A ceramic mug, steam rising" | | **Subject motion** | What the subject does over the clip | "steam thickens, then drifts left" | | **Camera** | The move, or explicitly none | "camera locked, no movement" | | **Look** | Lighting, lens, grade, mood | "soft morning window light, shallow depth of field" | Naming the camera is the highest-leverage addition. Without it the model picks a move, and the move it picks is usually a slow drift that makes the clip feel unintentional. ## Camera vocabulary that works ``` camera locked, no movement — the most useful and least used slow push in / slow pull out — dolly toward or away pan left / pan right — rotate horizontally tilt up / tilt down — rotate vertically orbit around subject — arc, keeps subject centred tracking shot, follows subject — camera moves with the subject handheld, subtle shake —