The field guide to professional AI video.
Four short chapters on making footage that looks directed instead of generated — and on spending money like a producer while you do it. No sign-up needed to read; everything here works in any tool, and best in this one.
Cast the model like a producer.
Every model in the studio has a personality and a price. The single most expensive habit in AI video is running every idea through the most expensive model. Cast per job instead:
| Image model | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Nano Bananacheapest in the roster | Exploration. Blocking compositions, testing ideas, burning through variations for pennies. |
| GPT Image Mini | Fast, cheap drafts with a different eye than the Banana family — good second opinion. |
| Nano Banana 2 | The mid step: stronger prompt adherence when a draft is close but not holding detail. |
| GPT-5 Image | Character and mood. Strong on people, wardrobe and dramatic light. |
| Nano Banana Prothe only true 4K image model here | The finish. Final frames, text in image, and stills you intend to animate. |
| Video model | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Seedance 2.0 Fast480p · 720p — 4–15 s | Motion drafts. Test whether the shot works at all before paying finish rates. |
| Kling 3.0 Standard720p — 3–15 s | Reliable general-purpose motion at a working price. |
| Kling 3.0 Pro720p — 3–15 s | Cleaner physics and camera discipline when Standard almost gets there. |
| HappyHorse 1.1720p · 1080p | A different motion signature — worth an audition on stylized work. |
| Seedance 2.0480p → 4K — 4–15 s, audio | The finish: highest ceiling in the roster, longest durations, sound on tap. |
| Sora 2 Pro4 / 8 / 12 / 16 / 20 s | Long single takes and complex staging, in fixed clip lengths. |
Write light, not adjectives.
Quality words — cinematic, 4K, masterpiece, ultra-realistic — are the things these models learned to fake first. What they can't fake is a lighting plan. Describe the shot the way a director of photography would brief it:
- Name the light. Where the key comes from, what fills the shadows, whether a rim separates subject from background. Warm or cool, hard or soft.
- Pick two imperfections. Flyaway hair, uneven skin sheen, dust in a light shaft, a scuffed prop. Perfect frames read as renders; two deliberate flaws read as photography.
- Give eyes a catchlight on any prominent face, and keep the subject tonally separated from the background — that's most of what "professional" means in a portrait.
- Describe materials, not moods. "Salt-dulled chain mail" beats "epic armor". Models render nouns and physics better than vibes.
- Say what is there, not what isn't. Image models handle negation poorly — phrase everything positively.
epic cinematic 4K masterpiece of a warrior on a cliff, ultra realistic, dramatic lighting, best quality
A weathered warrior stands on a basalt cliff at golden hour. Low sun as the key light rakes across salt-dulled chain mail; cool sky fill softens the shadows; a rim of backlight separates his silhouette from the sea haze. Wind lifts loose strands of hair, and a faint catchlight sits in his eyes.
Same idea, radically different footage.
Stills first. Then motion.
Professional AI video is mostly still-image work. A video render can cost as much as twenty drafts of the frame it starts from — so make every creative decision in the cheap medium first:
- Explore in cheap stills. Run the idea through Nano Banana or GPT Image Mini until the composition, wardrobe and light are right. Each attempt costs cents.
- Finish the keeper. Re-render the winning frame in Nano Banana Pro at final resolution. This is the frame your video inherits everything from.
- Compose for motion before you animate. Layer the frame — foreground, midground, background — leave negative space in the direction things will move, and keep hands and faces away from the frame edges, where video models degrade first.
- Animate a draft, then the finish. Drive the still through Seedance Fast at 480p to prove the motion, then pay finish rates once, not five times.
Fetching live draft-vs-finish quotes…
Quoted live from the studio's own pricing call just now — the draft habit is the affordability model.
Direct the motion. Don't describe a montage.
Video prompts fail differently from image prompts: the model has to spend your seconds. Give it a single take it can actually execute:
- One camera move, named. A slow push-in, a drift left, a rise. Two moves in one clip is how you get neither.
- Describe change over time. What enters, what settles, what the light does between the first frame and the last. A video prompt is a sentence with a beginning and an end, not a list of attributes.
- Keep clips short and cut like an editor. Two intentional 5-second shots beat one 15-second wander — and cost about the same. Sequences are made in the edit, not in one render.
- Add audio when it earns its cost. Sound is priced into the quote on models that support it — flip it on for the finish, not the drafts.
When you'd rather write one plain sentence, the studio's prompt enhancement expands it with this craft — light, motion grammar, composition — before it reaches the model, and stores the expanded prompt with the render so you can read exactly what was sent and learn from it.