Revolutionize Your Content Game: A Beginner’s Guide to AI Video Prompting
- Jenny Kay Pollock
- Feb 11
- 4 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
The Power of Generative AI Video
Generative AI video is revolutionizing content creation, allowing anyone with an internet connection to produce high-quality videos from simple prompts or images.
Businesses and creators can now produce engaging videos at scale for various platforms, from social media to e-learning, driving a surge in visual content across the board.
As AI video generators advance, new features like AI-driven scriptwriting, voiceover generation, and automatic content repurposing are emerging. The WOMENxAI community compiled this intro to generative video AI prompting guide to help you upskill and harness this powerful set of AI tools.
How is Video Prompting Different than Text and Image Prompting
If you're familiar with text or even image prompting you'll likely video prompting ti be different.
Videos have a more dynamic nature. Unlike static text or images, video requires consideration of motion, transitions, and narrative flow over time. This complexity demands more detailed and structured prompts that can guide the AI in creating coherent sequences of moving images.
So before you burn up all your video creation credits check out our video promoting tips and WxAI Recommended Resources below.
Top Video Prompting Tips
Prompting Frameworks: Typical prompting frameworks can be applied to video. It’s important to keep in mind multiple of our WOMEN x AI community members report having better results with shorter prompts when promoting for video output. Below we did into the 5 W's framework.
Use Action Verbs: Action verbs are powerful tools for guiding AI models to generate dynamic and engaging scenes. Words like "running," "zooming," "tilting," "spinning," or "gliding" can help convey movement and energy, making the output more vivid and lifelike. For example, instead of saying "a car on the road," you could say "a car zooming down a winding road at high speed." This not only adds excitement but also gives the model a clearer sense of motion and activity.
Specify Camera Angle: Try different camera angles like high angle, low angle, bird's eye view, worm's eye view. A low-angle shot of a character can make them appear powerful or heroic, while a high-angle shot might make them seem vulnerable or small. Experimenting with different angles adds variety and depth to your visuals.
Include the Visual Style and Mood: The visual style and mood determine how your scene feels and looks overall. You can choose styles like realistic (for lifelike imagery), cinematic (for dramatic lighting and storytelling), cartoonish (for playful or exaggerated visuals), abstract (for surreal or experimental designs), or minimalist (for clean and simple compositions).
Pairing these styles with mood descriptors such as "bright and cheerful," "dark and mysterious," or "calm and serene" helps refine the output further.
Prompt Scene by Scene: For complex videos trying breaking down your prompt by different scenes.
Understand the Limitations: In general, generative video AI models have something they can do pretty well and some things that they struggle with. For example, having realistic physics is hard for the models to do at this stage. Hands remain difficult for many models as does having someone take a bite out of food. AI is changing so fast with time these will become easier.
The 5 W’s Framework (Who, What, When, Where, Why)
Is a classic journalistic structure that can be applied to video generation prompts. By answering the 5W questions, you’ll ensure that all critical components of your video are covered.
Who: Who are the key characters in the video? Are they human, animal, or something else? What do they look like?
What: What happens in the video? What is the main action or event that takes place? Are there any key objects, locations, or concepts you want to highlight?
When: Is there a specific time or timeline for the video? Is the video modern, historical, or set in the future? Does it take place at a specific time of day?
Where: Where is the video set? What is the environment or location? Is it indoors, outdoors, a fantasy world, or a realistic location?
Why: Why is this video being created? What message do you want to convey? This also helps define the tone and purpose of the video (e.g., is it educational, promotional, fun, dramatic?).
Example Prompt using the 5 W’s Framework: Create a 5-second video of two corgis playing. One is a tricolor corgi and the other is fawn and white colored. The dogs are having fun. The video should be lighthearted aimed at entertaining the audience. The video should take place in the morning on a sunny day in a field of flowers. We used the same prompt on both Sora an Runway to see what they created and how they performed.
Sora Output
Runway Output
Note Runway allows you to upload a reference image or video. So I uploaded this real photo of Mr. Tater the Corgi:
Top Generative AI Video Creation Tools
Fliki, Turn a blog into videos
WxAI Recommended Resources
Interdisciplinary Artist Minne Atairu share her creative process when working with Sora
AI in Video Generation by N Liberty
this is a great introduction to AI video generation! Really appreciate the AI video prompting tips and frameworks. There's a lot to describe if you want something specific, but it's worth the effort when you get amazing results!