Cinematic prompts: make the camera tell your story

“Cinematic” is not a style word. It is a set of decisions: shot size, angle, one move, one lens, and what that move reveals. Each part of this guide hands your camera a smaller decision, so the shot does a job instead of looking nice.

  1. Direct the camera. Don’t decorate the prompt.

    Write one Director’s sentence: size, angle, one move, one lens, what it reveals.

  2. The prompt operating systems AI filmmakers actually use

    Six stacks and one psychology pre-brief. Pick the paper the job needs.

  3. The camera-move library, rewritten as story jobs

    Pick the job first, then the move that does it. Nine moves, each with a job, a warning, and a physics line.

  4. Continuity is cinematography

    Lock the face, the coat, the room, the lens height, and the light. The move is what you are allowed to change.

  5. How the best people block ambitious shots

    Chain the beats: cause, reaction, new geography. One camera sentence per beat, a motivated change of view, and a written end frame.