What is CinePrompt and why does it exist?
A cinematographer's toolkit collapsed into a text box overnight. CinePrompt is what happened next.
The generate button is a commodity
Every AI video platform sells the same API call in a different wrapper. CinePrompt ships the knowledge layer and lets you bring your own keys.
You forgot to build the room
Fourteen articles on cameras, lights, actors, color, and sound. Not one mentioned the walls. The environment is an entire department with no analog in a text prompt.
The face works. The performance doesn't.
Thirteen articles on cameras, lenses, lights, color, and sound. Zero on the person standing in front of all of it. Directing an AI actor is the hardest prompt you will ever write.
Time is the one dial you cannot turn
Twelve articles about controlling the image. None about controlling when things happen inside it. Time is a filmmaker's sharpest tool and a prompter's locked door.
Stop asking which model is best
Every week another comparison article ranks five AI video models on a single axis. The question itself is the problem.
Frame to Motion is the whole point
The img2vid workflow that treats a reference image as half your prompt. Two generations, each with a focused job, producing a result neither could achieve alone.
Nobody is prompting for sound
Four of five AI video models generate native audio now. Most people are still prompting like sound does not exist.
The prompt stopped being the product
Eight articles about what to type. This one is about everything that happens around it. The text box is shrinking. Not in size. In relative importance.
The anatomy of a prompt that actually works
You know which words to use. This is about what order to put them in, how many to use, and why most prompts are architectural disasters.
How to make five AI clips that don't look like five strangers
Every AI video model can make a beautiful shot. Almost none of them can make two that belong together. Here is how to fight for sequence coherence.
Lighting words that actually shape the frame
"Dramatic lighting" is the new "cinematic." Here is what to type when you want the model to actually move the shadows.
Lens specs that do something vs lens specs that don't
Focal lengths, f-stops, lens names, and why the most technical-sounding part of your prompt is probably doing the least work.
Color words that do something vs color words that don't
Film stock names, color grading terms, and the gap between what you type and what the model sees.
Camera movement keywords that actually work
Dolly, crane, tracking, orbit. Some of these words move the camera. Some of them do nothing. Here is what each model actually hears.
Why "cinematic" is the most useless prompt word
Every AI video model already thinks it is being cinematic. Saying the word does nothing. Here is what to say instead.