Staging presets

Every preset in the Staging slot of Create video, with what it adds to the shot. Staging is how the scene is set up for the camera: the light, the composition and the air.

Using staging presets

In Create video, click Staging in the row of buttons above the prompt, select one or more presets and click Add. Each preset appears as a chip in the prompt; click its × to take it off. You can also type @ and a preset's name in the prompt to place it at that point in the sentence. A preset adds a written direction to your prompt, so it works with any video model that takes a prompt, and it has no weight to set.

Combining presets

• Pick one lighting preset as the key idea and let the others support it. Golden Hour with Rim Light agrees; Golden Hour with Moonlight Gel asks for two times of day.
• Atmosphere shows best against light. Fog, Dust Motes or Volumetric Light next to Backlight gives visible beams and depth.
• Composition presets hold best when the camera is still or moving slowly. A fast move rearranges the frame and the composition with it.
• When you animate a first frame, its lighting and layout are already set. Use staging presets to push what is there (more haze, a stronger rim) rather than to relight it from scratch.

Lighting

Where the light comes from, how hard it is and what colour it carries. Lighting sets the mood faster than anything else in the frame.

Hard Light

A small apparent source: crisp shadow edges, bright speculars, texture raked into relief.

Soft Light

A large apparent source: gradual shadow edges and a gentle wrap around the form.

High-Key Lighting

Low contrast and bright exposure, shadows filled almost out: open, unthreatening, clean.

Low-Key Lighting

High contrast and selective illumination, with most of the frame given over to shadow.

Chiaroscuro

Strong light against strong dark, used to model volume and to take a moral position.

Key Light

The principal source: the one that decides the subject's exposure and where the shadows fall.

Fill Light

A softer source opening up what the key leaves dark, setting how deep the shadows go.

Backlight

Light from behind the subject toward the lens, separating them from the background and glowing the edges.

Rim Light

A narrow bright edge tracing the subject's outline, lifting them off the background.

Hair Light

A small source above and behind, lighting only the top of the head and shoulders.

Kicker

A hard side-back accent grazing a cheek, jaw or shoulder.

Eye Light

A small frontal source whose only job is the catchlight in the eyes.

Side Lighting

The key at roughly 90 degrees, so one side is modelled and the other falls away.

Cross Lighting

Two keys from opposing sides, so each subject or each side of a face gets its own source.

Top Light

Light straight down: forehead, nose and cheekbones catch it, the eyes fall into shadow.

Underlighting

Light from below the face, so the shadows climb upward and the features read wrong.

Three-Point Lighting

The standard setup: a key, a fill and a back light doing their three separate jobs.

Rembrandt Lighting

A key high and off to one side, leaving a small lit triangle on the shadowed cheek.

Butterfly Lighting

The key high and dead in front, dropping a small symmetrical shadow under the nose.

Loop Lighting

A small nose shadow looping toward the corner of the mouth without touching the cheek shadow.

Split Lighting

The key square to the side, dividing the face into one lit half and one dark half.

Broad Lighting

Keying the side of the face turned toward camera, so the near cheek is the bright one.

Short Lighting

Keying the side turned away, so the near cheek falls into shadow and the face narrows.

Cameo Lighting

A lit figure isolated against a background left almost entirely dark.

Silhouette

The subject dark against a bright field, reduced to outline and posture.

Spotlight

A focused, hard-edged pool of light with darkness immediately outside it.

Practical Lighting

A lamp that exists in the scene doing the actual lighting, visible in frame.

Motivated Lighting

Units placed so the light appears to come from something the story already established.

Available Light

Whatever was already there, unaugmented: the location's own illumination.

Naturalistic Ambient

Soft, directionally plausible room light wrapping the subject without announcing itself.

Bounce Light

Light thrown off a wall, ceiling or card before it reaches the subject: soft and indirect.

Window Light

Shaped to read as daylight entering through a window, with the frame's own geometry in it.

Golden Hour

Low warm sun just after sunrise or before sunset: long shadows, honey light, rapid change.

Blue Hour

Cool ambient twilight with no direct sun, before sunrise or after sunset.

Candlelight

A small warm flame as the source: close falloff, flicker, and a very short reach.

Neon Practicals

Sign tubes used as real keys: saturated colour thrown onto skin and wet surfaces.

Moonlight Gel

A cool cyan or steel-green key standing in for the moon, night as a colour decision.

Ultraviolet

Black-light cinema: a UV lamp as the author, whites screaming, colours that exist only under it.

Molten Light

Heat as the key from below: black crust, orange fissures, air that shimmers above it.

Gobo Lighting

A pattern put into the beam (blinds, branches, a grille), so the source acquires a shape.

Dappled Light

Broken patches of brightness and shade thrown by foliage or water, usually moving.

Volumetric Light

Beams made visible by the particles they pass through: light with a body.

Epiphany Light

A change in illumination that makes a face suddenly the brightest thing in the frame.

Glam

Beauty lighting: soft, flattering and frontal, with a glow that forgives everything.

Composition

Where things sit in the frame and how the eye travels across it: balance, depth, lines and empty space.

Rule of Thirds

The frame divided into nine cells, with the subject parked on a line or an intersection rather than the middle.

Centered Composition

The dominant subject on the central vertical axis, with everything else organised around it.

Dead Centre

The figure planted on the optical axis and held there: deliberate, frontal, slightly confrontational.

Symmetry

Masses balanced around an axis so the two halves answer each other.

Asymmetry

The dominant mass offset and answered by something of a different kind rather than a matching shape.

Golden Ratio

Proportional relationships near phi organising the frame, a spiral rather than a grid.

Diagonal Composition

Stairs, rails, rain or a body on the bias, drawing the frame with slants instead of uprights.

Triangular Composition

Three points locking the frame into a stable shape that the eye keeps circling.

Leading Lines

Edges, roads, corridors or shadows that walk the eye to where the shot wants it.

Vanishing Point

The place where parallels appear to meet, used as the frame's destination.

One-Point Perspective

The camera squared to a plane so everything recedes to one central point.

Frame within Frame

A second rectangle inside the screen (a doorway, a mirror, an arch) enclosing the subject.

Windows

Panes as the real subject: stacked apertures, separate lives held in separate rectangles.

Screen in Screen

A monitor, phone or projection nested inside the shot, its image competing with the room's.

Split Screen

Two or more image fields sharing one frame, so separate places occupy the same moment.

Layered Depth

Action staged at two or more distances so the frame has to be read front to back.

Foreground Interest

A salient near object placed between lens and subject, so you watch from behind something.

Dirty Frame

Out-of-focus shoulders, glass or foliage allowed to sit in the edges, so the shot feels observed.

Clean Frame

Edges kept clear of everything accidental, so the subject is genuinely alone in the rectangle.

Negative Space

A large empty area left beside the subject, so the emptiness does the talking.

Void

The set erased: darkness or a blank field eating the world until only the subject remains.

Figure-Ground

The subject separated from the field by tone, colour or focus so it reads instantly.

Tonal Contrast

Lightest mass set against darkest, so the frame is organised by tone before anything else.

Visual Weight

Attention distributed by size, contrast and colour, so the eye lands where it was sent.

Repetition and Pattern

Shapes, colours or positions repeated until the rhythm itself is the subject, and a break in it is an event.

Headroom

The gap between the crown of the head and the top edge, sized deliberately rather than by accident.

Lead Room

Space left in front of a moving subject, so they have somewhere to be going.

Look Space

The air in front of a gaze: the field a look owns, usually because something is waiting in it.

Short Siding

The face pressed toward the edge it looks at, crushing the look space and boxing the subject in.

Reflections

Glass, water or mirror putting observer and observed into one plane.

Tableau

A staged, frontal ensemble held still enough that the arrangement itself carries the meaning.

Architecture as Subject

The set treated as the subject: structure, repetition and surface filling the frame instead of a person.

Voyeur

The camera concealed, so the audience is trespassing: a view through slats, foliage or a gap.

Atmosphere

What hangs in the air between the camera and the subject: fog, dust, rain, smoke, water. Atmosphere gives depth to a flat background and catches light.

Dust Motes

Individual specks suspended in a shaft of light, slow enough that the room reads as still and long undisturbed.

Dust and Sand

Wind-driven mineral grit that flattens the sun to a pale disc and reduces figures to silhouettes.

Fog

Dense water droplets that collapse depth, swell every lamp into a globe, and hold figures back until they are close.

Atmospheric Haze

Scattering over distance, so each further plane sits paler and cooler and the depth of the scene becomes readable.

Mist

A thin water veil that softens the air without hiding it: the next plane still reads through.

Ocean

The sea as the other presence in the frame: swell, a hard horizon, salt light, and a subject it does not accommodate.

Rain

Falling water that draws the air as streaks and turns every surface below into a second, broken image.

Smoke

Combustion particles with a source and a direction, dense enough to give the light in a room a visible volume.

Snow

Ice falling and settling: flakes lit from behind, sound implied as absence, and tracks left as a record.

Sparks and Embers

Incandescent particles thrown by fire, welding or grinding: brief orange arcs that light themselves.

Steam

Water vapour where heat meets colder air: a white veil that rises, thins and gives the frame a temperature.

Toxic Air

Air as a hazard: sick greens and yellows, backlit fumes, an atmosphere the subject has to breathe.

Underwater

The camera submerged, so caustics, buoyancy and the missing horizon rewrite every edge in the frame.

Wet-Down

Pavement and cars sprayed before the take, so every practical light is doubled in reflection without any rain falling.

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