Veo 3 Prompts: How to Write AI Video Prompts That Actually Work

The costly mistake 90% of teams make with Veo 3 ad prompts, and how to master the new language of AI filmmaking.

The average Veo 3 video generation costs 150 credits. On Google's $250/month AI Ultra plan, that gives you about 83 shots before you have to re-up your 12,500 credit allocation. At over $3 per clip, "winging it" with prompts is no longer a viable strategy. While amateurs are still writing descriptive sentences like they do for Midjourney, professional teams are realizing a fundamental truth: you don't describe a scene to Veo 3. You direct it.

The leap from AI image generation to AI video generation isn't incremental; it's a paradigm shift from being an art director to being a film director, cinematographer, and gaffer all at once. The language has changed from adjectives and nouns to lenses, camera motion, and lighting setups. Mastering this new syntax is the single greatest competitive advantage in AI-driven advertising today.

This isn't just about making prettier videos. It's about reducing iteration cycles, cutting generation costs, and producing content that is not just "AI-generated" but strategically on-brand and effective.

The Great Unbundling of the Prompt: From Sentence to Shot List

The old way of prompting—a single, descriptive sentence—is dead for high-stakes commercial work. The new methodology, essential for controlling costs and quality in Google Flow, treats the prompt not as a sentence, but as a structured shot list. The most effective prompts are being unbundled into their core cinematic components.

A comprehensive 8-part framework is emerging as the industry standard, breaking down prompts into distinct elements like subject, action, environment, composition, camera_motion, lighting, style, and negative_prompt. This isn't just for organization; it forces a level of specificity that Veo 3's engine thrives on.

Consider the difference:

• Old Prompt: "A cinematic video of a woman drinking coffee in a modern kitchen."

• New Prompt (structured): A young woman with dark hair in a white linen shirt (subject) sips from a ceramic mug (action) in a sun-drenched, minimalist kitchen with marble countertops and stainless steel appliances (environment). Medium close-up shot, rule of thirds composition (composition). Gentle, slow dolly push-in (camera_motion). Soft, morning light streaming through a large window, creating a warm, inviting glow (lighting). Photorealistic, shot on ARRI Alexa with a 50mm prime lens, shallow depth of field (style).

This structured approach moves you from hoping for a good result to engineering one. As detailed in tutorials for creating business video ads with Veo 3, this level of control is non-negotiable for maintaining brand consistency and narrative coherence across a campaign.

The Contrarian Take: Your Best Veo 3 Prompter is ChatGPT

The immediate rush is to train creatives to become expert "Veo 3 prompt engineers." This is a mistake. The most leveraged teams aren't just writing better prompts; they are building systems to generate them.

The emerging meta-skill is using advanced LLMs like GPT-4 or Gemini to act as a creative director that translates high-level concepts into camera-ready Veo 3 prompts. This is a trend bubbling up in practitioner communities, with some creators using ChatGPT specifically to write Veo 3 prompts.

Why does this work? Because LLMs can hold the entire 8-part framework in their context window, reason about cinematic language, and instantly generate dozens of variations.

• Everyone believes: The value is in the human creative who can write a perfect, artisanal prompt.

• The data shows: The real value is in the human creative who can write a perfect meta-prompt that enables an LLM to generate 100 on-brand, structured Veo 3 prompts in seconds.

• Which means: Your competitive advantage isn't your team's ability to remember the difference between a 35mm and an 85mm lens, but their ability to build a "Creative Director" GPT that knows your brand's visual bible and can output production-ready JSON on demand. The rise of dedicated Veo 3 prompt generators is the commercialization of this exact insight.

Actionable Prompts from the Field

The best way to understand the shift to directive prompting is to see it in action. Here are examples being shared by early adopters, showcasing how precise commands yield superior results.

This first example, for a luxury watch ad, demonstrates extreme specificity in lighting and materials to create a premium feel.

{
"subject": "A chrome and gold luxury watch, 'Aeterna' brand, with a dark blue face and glowing phosphorescent hands.",
"action": "The watch is slowly rotating, catching the light. The second hand sweeps smoothly.",
"environment": "On a black velvet pedestal against a dark, out-of-focus background with subtle bokeh.",
"composition": "Extreme close-up (ECU) macro shot, focusing on the watch face. The brand name is perfectly legible.",
"camera_motion": "Very slow, controlled arc shot moving from left to right, revealing the watch's profile.",
"lighting": "Dramatic 'three-point lighting' setup. A strong key light from the top-left creating sharp highlights on the chrome, a soft fill light from the right to show detail in the shadows, and a subtle rim light from behind to separate the watch from the background.",
"style": "Hyper-realistic, 8K resolution, high dynamic range (HDR), cinematic, shot on a RED V-Raptor with a 100mm macro lens. No motion blur.",
"negative_prompt": "Scratches, dust, smudges, plastic-looking materials, jittery motion."
}

• Why it works: Instead of "good lighting," it specifies a professional "three-point lighting" setup. It names a specific high-end camera (RED V-Raptor) and lens (100mm macro), telling Veo 3 to emulate that specific aesthetic and level of detail. The negative prompt is crucial for commercial work, eliminating common AI generation flaws.

This next prompt, for a skincare product, focuses on creating a specific mood and texture.

{
"shot": {
"subject": "A single drop of clear, viscous serum falls from a glass dropper.",
"action": "The drop lands on a woman's cheekbone, creating a slow-motion ripple effect on the skin's surface.",
"composition": "Extreme close-up, the frame is filled with the skin texture and the dropper.",
"camera_motion": "Static shot, but with a high frame rate for ultra slow-motion playback (240fps).",
"lighting": "Soft, diffused studio lighting, mimicking a beauty commercial. Clean, high-key look with no harsh shadows.",
"style": "Clean, minimalist, clinical aesthetic. Photorealistic, shallow depth of field, focus on the serum drop.",
"audio": "A subtle, clean 'plink' sound as the drop lands, followed by a faint, ethereal hum."
}
}

• Why it works: This prompt brilliantly combines visual and audio cues. Specifying "240fps" is a directive that tells Veo 3 how to achieve the slow-motion effect, rather than just asking for it. The request for "clinical aesthetic" and "high-key look" provides a clear stylistic direction essential for the beauty and wellness industry. It also leverages Veo's native audio generation for a more immersive result.

Today's AI Prompt: The Veo 3 Ad Concept Director

Use this prompt with GPT-4 or Claude 3 Opus to transform your marketing briefs into structured, multi-shot Veo 3 concepts. It acts as a creative co-pilot, handling the technical details so you can focus on the story.

You are an award-winning Creative Director and AI Video Specialist, tasked with creating a 3-shot video ad concept for a [PRODUCT/BRAND] using Google's Veo 3. Your expertise lies in translating a marketing objective into precise, camera-ready prompts that maximize visual impact and brand consistency.

The product is: [BRIEFLY DESCRIBE YOUR PRODUCT - e.g., "A new plant-based protein shake called 'Thrive' in a minimalist green and white bottle."]
The target audience is: [DESCRIBE YOUR AUDIENCE - e.g., "Health-conscious millennials, aged 25-35, who value natural ingredients and an active lifestyle."]
The core message is: [STATE THE KEY MESSAGE - e.g., "Effortless nutrition for a busy life."]
The desired mood is: [DESCRIBE THE MOOD - e.g., "Uplifting, energetic, clean, natural, and aspirational."]

Your task is to generate a 3-shot sequence. For each shot, you must provide a complete, structured JSON prompt ready for Veo 3. The JSON object must contain these exact keys: "subject", "action", "environment", "composition", "camera_motion", "lighting", "style", and "audio_cues".

Follow these rules:
1.  **Shot 1: The Hook.** An intriguing, visually stunning shot that grabs attention. Often a macro shot or an unexpected perspective.
2.  **Shot 2: The Context.** Show the product in an aspirational use-case scenario that resonates with the target audience.
3.  **Shot 3: The Payoff.** A clear shot of the product, often with a human element, reinforcing the brand and core message.
4.  **Cinematic Consistency:** Ensure all three shots feel like they belong to the same campaign by using a consistent 'style' (e.g., same lens type, color grade).
5.  **Technical Specificity:** Use precise cinematic language. Refer to specific camera types (e.g., ARRI Alexa, RED Komodo), lens focal lengths (e.g., 35mm, 85mm), and lighting setups (e.g., 'golden hour backlighting', 'softbox key light').

Generate the 3 JSON prompts now.

How to use this prompt:

• Ad Campaign Ideation: Quickly generate multiple high-quality concepts to present to stakeholders before committing to expensive generation credits.

• Creative Brief Enhancement: Use it to translate a traditional text-based brief into a technical, AI-ready format for your creative team.

• A/B Testing: Generate two concepts with different moods (e.g., "energetic" vs. "calm") to test which visual language performs better.

Pro tip: After the initial output, ask the LLM to "Now, create a variation of this 3-shot sequence but change the style to 'gritty, urban, documentary-style' and adjust the camera motion to be 'handheld and energetic'." This allows for rapid stylistic exploration.

Your Strategic Advantage: What This Means for You

If you're a Brand Manager:

• Stop approving scripts. Start approving prompt storyboards. Mandate that any AI video proposal includes the full, structured prompts for each shot.

• Commission a "Brand Visual Lexicon" for AI. Codify your brand's approved camera lenses, lighting styles, color palettes, and character archetypes into a document your team can use to build consistent prompts.

The 3 Moves to Make Now:

1. Audit Your Credits: Analyze your team's Veo 3 usage. How many credits does it take on average to get a usable shot? This is your new core creative KPI.

2. Build a Prompt Library: Create a shared repository of successful, structured prompts for your brand. Don't start from scratch every time. Categorize them by use case (e.g., 'Product Hero Shot', 'Lifestyle Testimonial').

3. Invest in Meta-Prompting: Dedicate one person on your team to become an expert in using LLMs to generate Veo 3 prompts. Their output will be 10x that of someone writing prompts manually.

Questions to Ask Your Team:

• Are we still just describing scenes, or are we directing them with specific camera and lighting commands?

• What is our cost-per-usable-shot in Veo 3, and how can we reduce it by 50% through better prompting?

• Instead of hiring another video editor, should we invest in creating a "Creative Director" GPT that can generate on-brand video concepts 24/7?

The Thought That Counts

If a single, perfectly structured prompt can replace the work of a director, cinematographer, gaffer, and location scout, what does that make the person who writes the prompt? And more importantly, what new job titles will we need when the most valuable creative asset isn't a camera, but a library of JSON files?

Experiment with prompt chaining. Generate a still image of your ideal character in Midjourney or Ideogram. Use that image as an input for Veo 3, along with a structured prompt describing the action and camera movement. This gives you state-of-the-art character consistency, solving one of AI video's biggest challenges.