A good AI video prompt describes a subject doing one clear action, shot a specific way, lit a specific way, in a specific style. Get those five layers right and models like Sora 2, Veo 3.1, and Seedance produce clips that look intentional instead of generic. This guide gives you a reusable formula, before/after examples, and honest per-model tips.

The AI video prompt formula

Every strong text-to-video prompt stacks the same five layers:

Subject + Action + Camera + Lighting + Style (+ optional lens / film look)

  • Subject — who or what is on screen. Be concrete: “a lone astronaut,” not “a person.”
  • Action — the single thing happening. One clear action per clip.
  • Camera — shot type and movement: wide, close-up, aerial, tracking, dolly, slow pan, push-in.
  • Lighting — golden hour, soft window light, neon glow, overcast, harsh noon.
  • Mood / Style — cinematic, documentary, dreamy, gritty, 35mm film look, anime.

Add a lens or film-look note if you want a specific texture (“shot on 35mm, shallow depth of field”). For video specifically, always name the motion — what moves in the frame — because a still-looking clip is the most common failure mode.

Before and after: the same idea, prompted well

Watch how much the five-layer formula changes the output.

BEFORE (vague):
cool space scene

AFTER (specific):
A lone astronaut walking across red desert dunes at golden hour,
slow tracking shot following from behind, long shadows, warm
low-angle sunlight, cinematic, shallow depth of field
BEFORE (vague):
a cafe

AFTER (specific):
Interior of a cozy cafe on a rainy afternoon, steam rising from a
coffee cup on a wooden table, soft window light, slow push-in,
warm color grade, shallow focus, documentary style
BEFORE (does too much):
a chef cooks, plates the dish, then serves it to a customer

AFTER (one action, one clip):
Close-up of a chef's hands searing a steak in a cast-iron pan,
oil sizzling, flame flaring, moody kitchen lighting, macro lens,
slow motion

The third example matters most: the “before” packs three actions into one clip. Models handle one action cleanly, so split multi-step ideas into separate clips (each up to 15 seconds) and stitch them together.

Model-specific tips (honest, brief)

The formula is model-agnostic, but each model in ViralMint has a personality worth playing to. All models cap at 15 seconds per clip; longer sequences are stitched with FFmpeg.

  • Sora 2 Pro — the flagship. Best for longer, physics-heavy motion and synced audio. Reward it with detailed scene descriptions and specific motion. It handles complex camera moves and multi-beat action within a single clip better than the budget tiers. Grab starting points from the free Sora 2 prompt library.
  • Veo 3.1 (and Veo 3.1 Fast / Lite) — strong on cinematic camera language and photorealism. Lean into shot vocabulary: “dolly in,” “aerial establishing shot,” “rack focus.” The Veo 3 prompt library has cinematic examples to adapt.
  • Seedance — great value in the standard tier. Rewards clean, single-action prompts; don’t over-stuff. See the Seedance prompt library for the shape it likes.
  • Wan 2.6 / 2.7 and Hailuo 2.3 — budget tiers. Keep prompts simple and literal, one subject, one action, one camera move. They’re perfect for b-roll and background motion where you don’t need flagship complexity.

Pricing is pay-per-clip by tier, roughly $0.40 for budget up to ~$3.10 for flagship clips, so prototype your prompt on a budget model, then re-run the winner on Sora 2 or Veo 3.1.

Prompting image-to-video

Image-to-video is different: the still already supplies your subject, so the prompt’s job is to describe the motion you want added. Skip re-describing what’s in the frame and focus on:

Slow push-in on the subject, hair and fabric moving gently in the
wind, subtle rack focus from foreground to background, drifting
clouds behind, calm and cinematic

Generate the still first (ViralMint uses Nano Banana / Gemini 2.5 Flash Image at $0.06 per image — see the Nano Banana prompt library), then animate it. This two-step route gives you far more control over the subject than pure text-to-video.

Common mistakes to avoid

  • Being vague. “Epic scene” tells the model nothing. Concrete beats cool every time.
  • Naming real people or brands. Models refuse or garble named celebrities, logos, and trademarks. Describe the type instead (“a middle-aged detective in a trench coat”).
  • Asking for on-screen text. Baked-in captions come out warped. Add captions afterward in editing, not in the prompt.
  • Cramming multiple actions. One action per clip. Split and stitch for sequences.
  • Forgetting the motion. For video, always say what moves — otherwise you get a near-static shot.
  • Ignoring negative prompts. Where a model supports them, list what you don’t want (“no text, no watermark, no distortion”) to clean up outputs.

Put it together in ViralMint

ViralMint is a free, open-source desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux). You write a prompt, pick a model tier, generate up to a 15-second clip, and stitch clips into a finished short — then download the mp4 and post it yourself. AI features run on a free account with pay-as-you-go prepaid credit and a small free daily allowance to experiment with. Every model above is available in one place, and the general AI video prompt library collects ready-to-copy examples across all of them.

Start with the five-layer formula, prototype on a budget tier, and copy from the prompt libraries when you’re stuck. Download ViralMint free and write your first prompt.