Prompt style

What we ran

Five scenes, ten ways of writing each, fifty takes. Same model, same board.

The scenes: a woman leaping onto a departing ferry; a wok fire killed with a lid and a wet towel; a magician's dove escaping into the house; a stranger giving away his umbrella at a bus stop; a night market losing power and finding it again.

The ten styles, read off the prompts themselves:

1. 01Plain paragraph. The control. "A woman sprints down the pier steps toward the last ferry as it pulls away."
2. 02Timestamped beats. "[00:00-00:04] A woman sprints down wet pier steps toward the last ferry, already moving."
3. 03Numbered shot list. "Shot 1 — wide: the last ferry pulls away from a night pier; a woman sprints down the steps."
4. 04Screenplay. "EXT. FERRY PIER — NIGHT. ... DECKHAND (shouting): Jump! She jumps."
5. 05Cinematography spec. "Handheld 35mm sprint-follow ... whip to a low-angle wide for the leap; 120fps on the catch."
6. 06Comma keywords. "night pier, last ferry, sprinting woman, widening gap, leap across water, deckhand catch."
7. 07Prose, no camera words. "She is late. The last ferry is already moving. She runs anyway."
8. 08Technique only, story stripped. "Handheld follow, 24mm, low height... Subject: a runner, a gap, a jump, a catch."
9. 09SFX and dialogue markup. "The gap widens [SFX: churning water]. DECKHAND (shouting): \"Jump!\""
10. 10Labelled fields. "SUBJECT: ... SETTING: ... ACTION: ... CAMERA: ... AUDIO: ... MOOD: ..."

Prompts ran 139 to 313 characters. Nothing here is long.

What happened

Mostly, nothing. That is the finding.

On the magician scene, nine of ten styles put the dove on his head at the end. Proscenium wide, spotlight leaving the stage, dove over the house, landing, bow. Keywords got it. Screenplay got it. Plain paragraph got it. Labelled fields got it. The prompt was written ten different ways and the model returned the same film ten times.

The two styles that broke are the two that stopped naming things.

Technique only collapsed hardest. Take 048 asked for "one wide master throughout; light does the editing... Subject: a place losing and refinding its light." FLUX.3 rendered an empty apartment living room. No market, no crowd, no stalls — just a sofa and a lamp coming back on. Take 028 wrote "a stage, an escape, a chase of light, a return" and got a man in a grey sweater standing in a spotlight. No tailcoat. No dove. Across five scenes it landed the payoff twice.

1One wide master throughout; light does the editing — practicals out in a frame, phone screens in ones and twos, then a single warm source blooming. Subject: a place losing and refinding its light.

Cinematography spec failed the same way, less often. Take 045 — "Wide master on the power cut — practicals die in one frame... end on the gas lamp's warm pool" — never uses the word market, and the model put the blackout in an indoor hall full of seated diners. Every beat is correct. The location is wrong. Take 025 spent its words on lenses and the dove landed on the magician's hand instead of his head.

But the same style produced take 015, which is the most precisely obeyed shot on the board: locked through the pass, a snap insert on the lid and towel, back to the master on the bell. It cut three times, exactly where it was told. Cinematography language works — it just can't be the only language.

The two consistent winners were the numbered shot list and the labelled fields. Both landed all five payoffs. Neither is stylish; both are structurally impossible to write without naming the subject. Take 013 executed its four-shot list in order — close on the flame, insert on the lid, chef's face, back out — and cut six times, more than any other take here. Take 040 was told "bus as a wipe" and the bus wipes frame.

1Shot 1 — wide: a packed kitchen line at service, a wok erupts in flame.2Shot 2 — insert: lid and wet towel slam down in sequence.3Shot 3 — close: the chef's face, one breath.4Shot 4 — wide: service resumes, expo bell.

Three things that showed up regardless of style:

Cuts come from the scene, not the format. The magician scene has zero cuts in all ten renderings, including the three that explicitly asked for four shots. The kitchen scene cuts 26 times across ten takes with the same range of prompts. If the action naturally implies coverage, FLUX.3 cuts. Asking does not reliably buy it.

Lighting comes from lighting words. The two ferry prompts that said sodium came back orange and nocturnal. The two that mentioned no time of day came back blue and calm — one is nearly daylight, with gulls. The plain paragraph said "black water" and got dusk. Nothing about the format changed the light; the nouns did.

The timestamp dialect pins duration. All five [mm:ss] takes returned 15s, matching their last timestamp. All five SFX-markup takes returned 10s. Every other style bounced between 10s and 15s, and one landed at 20s.

1Locked 50mm through the pass; the flare blows highlights for two frames; snap-zoom insert on the lid-and-towel kill; hold the chef's single breath in close-up; return to the wide as the bell hits.

Notable takes

030 | Labelled fields, magician | The cleanest payoff on the board: tight single, spotlight, dove settling on his head. 013 | Shot list, wok fire | The only take that executed a four-shot list in order, with real cuts at the right moments. 050 | Labelled fields, market | A blacked-out market lit by a sea of phone screens. Scale nothing else reached. 001 | Plain paragraph, ferry | 186 characters, no camera language, and the deckhand still hauls her aboard by the arm. 015 | Cinematography spec, wok fire | Through the pass, snap insert on the lid, back to the master. Obeyed to the letter. 048 | Technique only, market | Asked for "a place losing its light" and got an empty apartment. The failure that explains the family.

1SUBJECT: an escaped dove and the magician it embarrasses.2SETTING: an old proscenium theater, full house.3ACTION: misfire → spotlight chase → return → landing on his head → bow.4CAMERA: house master, spotlight-led sweep, tight single.5AUDIO: gasps, wingbeats, vamping orchestra, applause.6MOOD: comic grace.

What this means if you're prompting FLUX.3

Write the plain paragraph. It won or tied nearly everywhere, and it is the fastest to write.

Then check one thing: does the prompt still contain the nouns? Who, where, what happens. If your camera language has crowded out night market or magician, the model will invent a subject and it will invent badly. That is the only failure mode this experiment found, and it accounts for every bad take in fifty.

Add technique on top of the nouns, never instead of them. Take 015 proves lens and cut language lands hard when the scene is still described. Take 045 proves the same words alone put you in the wrong room.

Reach for the labelled-field template — SUBJECT / SETTING / ACTION / CAMERA / AUDIO / MOOD — when you want a checklist that makes forgetting the subject impossible. Reach for the numbered shot list when you genuinely want coverage, and accept that you may not get it; the model cuts when the action wants cutting.

Skip the timestamps unless you want the duration they imply. That is the one thing they reliably control.

Do not write in keywords out of habit. It scored well here, but only because these keyword prompts were dense with nouns. Strip the nouns and it fails like the rest.

1SUBJECT: a night market surviving a blackout.2SETTING: crowded open-air market, city night.3ACTION: power cut → hush → phone lights bloom → gas lamp relit → cheer.4CAMERA: one wide master, light as the edit.5AUDIO: full → silence → single sounds → flood.6MOOD: communal, warm.

1A woman sprints down the pier steps toward the last ferry as it pulls away. The gap of black water widens. She throws her bag, leaps, and the deckhand catches her arm as the horn sounds.