cinematography-and-art-direction
Cinematography and art direction
On a real shoot the director decides what a shot is about; the director of photography decides how it is lit and seen, the production designer what surrounds the product, the stylist how the product itself looks, and the casting director who appears and how. The storyboard artist works from this skill and storyboard-design at the same time: every image_prompt, video_prompt and style carries these decisions in words.
Lens language - in picture words, never numbers
The image model paints "50mm", "f/1.4" or "5600K" into the frame as text. Say what the lens does:
| Intent | Write |
|---|---|
| Intimate macro | "macro probe-lens view skimming the surface", "extreme close-up where the label fills the frame" |
| Product hero | "slightly low three-quarter angle, the product filling the middle third, background softly falling away" |
| Compression and calm | "telephoto compression with a softly stacked background" |
| Place and scale | "wide establishing view with the product small in the frame" |
| Depth | "very shallow depth of field with creamy round bokeh", "soft out-of-focus foreground layer" |
Light
One light logic for the whole film, from the treatment: the same time of day, the same key direction, the same colour temperature in every shot - a warm shot cut against a cold one reads as two films. Every light has a motivation (a window, a lamp, the sun low behind, a studio strip). Name the key, the edge and the fill in plain words: "warm low key light from the left, a hard edge light from behind carving the silhouette, deep soft shadows on the right".