How to prompt Veo 3

Cinematic establishing shot on 35mm film. Slow dolly-in toward a timber mountain cabin at dawn, mist rolling through the pine forest behind it, warm light glowing in one window, frost on the deck railing catching the first sun. The camera pushes in steadily as a thin line of chimney smoke drifts up. Audio: soft wind through pines, distant birdsong, a low ambient drone that swells slightly as the cabin fills the frame.

Style first, one camera move, one micro-event (the chimney smoke) to give the shot life. The swelling drone cue times the music to the dolly — Veo syncs audio to described motion remarkably well.

UGC-style handheld phone footage, selfie framing with slight sway. A woman in her late 20s with curly hair and a grey hoodie sits in her car, daylight through the windshield, and holds a small amber supplement jar up next to her face. She says with genuine surprise: "I did not expect this to actually work — week two and I can feel the difference." She taps the lid twice on the last word. Audio: quiet car interior, faint traffic outside.

Declaring "UGC-style handheld" up front sets grain, framing and imperfection in one move. Attributed quoted dialogue is lip-synced natively; the lid tap gives the line a visual button so the clip does not end on dead air.

Cinematic product commercial. Static tripod shot, macro lens. A matte white smartwatch rotates slowly on a brushed-steel turntable against a graphite gradient background, a single softbox key light from the upper left carving the case edge, a thin rim light tracing the crown. Halfway through, the screen wakes and casts a faint glow on the strap. Audio: minimal electronic music with a soft synth hit exactly when the screen lights up.

The screen-wake beat gives the sound design an anchor — Veo lands the synth hit on the visual event. "Static tripod shot" is how you lock the camera; there is no camera-lock setting.

Cinematic drama, warm practical lighting. Medium two-shot at eye level in a small bookshop after closing, dust motes in lamplight. An older man in a cardigan hands a wrapped book across the counter to a young woman in a rain jacket. He says quietly: "She wanted you to have this one." The woman looks down, then back up, and answers: "Then I will read it twice." Audio: rain against the shop window, the paper wrapping crinkling, no music.

Name each speaker by description and give each a short line — Veo attributes the lip-sync to the right face. "No music" is a valid audio cue: silence under rain does the emotional work here.

Animate this frame: the model holds her pose while a light breeze moves her hair and the silk scarf, the neon sign behind her flickers twice, shallow depth of field holds as the camera drifts a few centimeters to the right. Audio: distant city hum, a faint neon buzz.

In image-to-video your uploaded frame carries composition, wardrobe and light — the prompt directs only motion and sound. Generate the still with an image model in Media Forge first and you control the exact opening frame of the ad.

Nature documentary style, telephoto lens with compressed background. A red fox steps carefully across fresh snow at the edge of a birch forest, ears rotating as it listens, breath visible in the cold air. It pauses, tilts its head, then pounces nose-first into the snow. Overcast soft light, muted whites and greys. Audio: sound of gentle wind, snow crunching under paws, a muffled whump on the pounce — no music, documentary ambience only.

Veo's physics carries this shot: visible breath, snow compression, the pounce arc. Foley described per action ("crunch", "whump") lands in sync — write sound effects as events, not as a mood.

UGC-style vertical video, punchy and fast. Extreme close-up of a chef's knife halving a dragon fruit in one clean stroke on a wooden board, juice beading on the blade — then a whip-pan up to the grinning chef who says: "You have been cutting these wrong your whole life." Hard overhead kitchen light. Audio: the crisp slice, a whip-pan whoosh, then his line over faint kitchen clatter.

The first two seconds are the hook — lead with the most arresting action, not context. The whip-pan is both the transition and the audio cue; Veo stages all of it inside one generation.

Moody cinematic footage, anamorphic lens. Slow lateral tracking shot along a rain-soaked Hong Kong street at night, neon signs in pink and cyan reflecting in puddles, a lone street vendor steaming dumplings under a tarp, passersby with umbrellas blurring past in the foreground. Palette anchored in teal, magenta and sodium orange. Audio: rain on tarpaulin, sizzling steam, muffled Cantonese chatter, a slow synthwave pad underneath.

Naming three palette anchors steers the grade harder than "beautiful neon night". Foreground blur from passersby is a composition instruction Veo executes — it sells the tracking shot depth.

Cinematic sports footage, low-angle handheld tracking. A runner in a soaked red windbreaker sprints through an empty parking garage during a storm, footfalls splashing in shallow puddles, jacket rippling, water spraying off each stride. She cuts hard around a concrete pillar and the camera swings to follow. Cold blue ambient light with flickering fluorescents. Audio: pounding footfalls with wet slaps, heavy breathing, thunder rolling outside, no music.

Materials plus forces ("soaked windbreaker", "splashing", "rippling") is what triggers convincing physics instead of floaty motion. The hard cut around the pillar gives the handheld camera a motivated move.

Premium food commercial, macro lens, shallow focus. A cast-iron pan fills the frame as butter slides across it, foaming and browning; a hand lays in a scallop that sears instantly, steam and tiny oil droplets rising in backlight. Warm tungsten key light from the right. The camera creeps forward a few centimeters over the whole shot. Audio: loud close-mic sizzle, the soft clink of the scallop meeting iron, a low warm jazz bass in the background.

One continuous micro-action beats three edits at this scale. Close-mic sizzle described explicitly becomes the star of the soundtrack — food ads on Veo are half sound design.

Cinematic travel footage, drone-style aerial. The camera glides over a turquoise coastline at golden hour, waves breaking in slow white arcs against cliffs, a tiny sailboat leaving a wake near the frame edge. Warm low sun, long shadows on the water. Audio: wind, distant gulls, soft acoustic guitar.

Run drafts like this on Veo 3.1 Fast at 720p to test framing and palette cheaply, then rerun the exact same prompt on Veo 3.1 at 1080p for the final. The prompt transfers unchanged between the two.