Dream Authors

16 notes

How to ask for a picture.

“Cinematic 8k masterpiece” gets you stock. “Wool coat, sodium lamp, wet cobbles” gets you a picture. That’s most of it.

Try one Looks

01

Lead with the subject

The first five words should name what we are looking at. “A wet wool coat in sodium light” beats “cinematic, 8k, masterpiece.”

02

One scene per still

If you need a storyboard, make several images. One prompt cannot hold a comic page or a contact sheet.

03

Name the light

Window, noon, sodium, rim, candles. Light is mood. “Dramatic lighting” is a shrug.

04

Pick a lens

85mm intimacy, 24mm presence, macro as landscape. “Photorealistic” is not a camera.

05

Say what is there

Describe the wet street. Do not write a paragraph of “no text, no extra fingers” unless you must. Positive first.

06

Invented people

Describe a fictional person. Do not ask for a living celebrity’s face. If you have a photo, use edit, not a name.

07

Don’t ask for fine text

Logos, paragraphs, UI, charts — the model will lie. Keep lettering out, or accept it as texture.

08

Video is one shot

Present tense, one motion, one camera move. “Then they run, then they fly” will smear. Prefer 6 seconds.

09

Make the still first

For a clip, generate the first frame as an image, then animate that. Don’t ask the video to invent the picture and the motion at once.

10

Weather is free motion

Rain, steam, fog, wind in cloth. Cheap, readable movement. Better than a complicated action.

11

Put a scale cue

A figure the size of a postage stamp, a hand, a cup. Vastness needs a ruler.

12

Name materials

Wool, wet stone, smoked glass, linen. Adjectives like “nice” do no work.

13

Pin the hour

Blue hour is not golden hour. Noon is allowed. “Cinematic lighting” is not a time.

14

Hold at the end

In a clip: arrive, move one thing, hold. The hold is what makes it a shot instead of a smear.

15

Same person, same still

To keep a face, edit from the last still. A new generation is a new stranger.

16

Cut the prompt in half

If it reads like a shopping list of styles, delete all but one look and the subject.

Lines you can steal

Opens the studio with this as the prompt.

A wool coat and a wet street, sodium lamp, 35mm Smoked-glass bottle, black stone, one champagne rim Brutalist house over still water, purple dusk Hands in flour, wood table, tungsten Empty cinema, projector beam, dust Motorcycle on a salt flat, blue hour, tiny in frame Silk in a concrete room, hard daylight Ink blooming in water against gold leaf Fog among pines, no sun yet A lantern in dark woods, invented wanderer Wet neon alley, motorcycle, steam North-window citrus and linen, like a painting Macro of aperture blades, gold light Overhead director’s table, coffee, light meter Portrait looking away, golden hour, wind Long corridor of practicals, anamorphic Cookbook tart, crumbs, linen, overhead Lived-in sci-fi cockpit, scuffed, practicals Tide around a rock, slow, grey-green Hotel blinds, one figure, noir color