Veo Prompt Guide

A Veo prompt is a text description that you provide to Google's Veo AI video generation model to create a video from scratch. The prompt serves as a complete set of creative instructions that tells Veo what scene to generate, including specific details about subjects, actions, camera movement, lighting conditions, and artistic style. Think of a Veo prompt as a detailed creative brief — the more specific and descriptive your text description, the more accurately Veo translates your mental vision into actual video output. A well-crafted Veo prompt typically includes clear information about the main subject and its appearance, what is happening or moving in the scene, the environment or setting, specific camera angle and movement instructions, lighting conditions and time of day, and the overall mood or emotional atmosphere you want to convey. Learning to write effective, detailed Veo prompts is the single most important skill for consistently getting professional-quality results from AI video generation.

The ideal Veo prompt length is typically two to four well-crafted sentences, or roughly thirty to eighty words of descriptive content. This range provides enough specific detail for the Veo model to clearly understand and execute your creative intent without overwhelming it with conflicting, redundant, or excessively granular information. A Veo prompt that is too short — consisting of just a few generic words like 'a sunset' or 'a person running' — gives the model far too much creative freedom and latitude, leading to unpredictable, generic, or unsatisfying results. Conversely, an extremely long Veo prompt packed with dozens of detailed instructions, style references, and compositional demands can confuse the model and produce incoherent or muddled output. This Veo prompt guide recommends starting with a medium-length prompt that covers the essential elements of subject, action, camera, lighting, and mood, and then adjusting based on the results you receive. If the output feels too generic, add more descriptive detail. If it seems chaotic or unfocused, simplify and clarify your Veo prompt.

Veo understands an impressively wide range of professional cinematic camera terminology, making camera direction one of the most powerful, versatile, and impactful tools in your Veo prompt arsenal. Effective and well-understood camera terms for your Veo prompt include: tracking shot, dolly in, dolly out, dolly push, pan left, pan right, tilt up, tilt down, crane shot, jib shot, aerial drone shot, handheld camera, steadicam, static locked-off shot, zoom in, zoom out, orbit shot, rotating shot, low angle looking up, high angle looking down, bird's eye view, worm's eye view, over-the-shoulder shot, point-of-view shot, close-up, extreme close-up, medium shot, medium wide shot, wide shot, ultra-wide shot, and establishing shot. Including specific camera movement terminology in your Veo prompt dramatically improves the cinematic quality and professional feel of the generated output. This Veo prompt guide recommends choosing one primary camera movement per prompt for the clearest, most coherent, and most controllable results.

Lighting is one of the most impactful and transformative elements you can specify in a Veo prompt, fundamentally shaping the mood, tone, and visual quality of your generated video. Use descriptive and specific lighting terms in your Veo prompt such as golden hour warmth, blue hour twilight, harsh midday sun, soft diffused light through clouds, dramatic side lighting with sharp shadows, rim lighting from behind, backlit silhouette, professional studio lighting, natural window light with gentle shadows, neon glow in darkness, warm candlelight flicker, cool moonlight, volumetric light rays cutting through haze, and chiaroscuro high-contrast lighting. You can also reference specific time of day in your Veo prompt — dawn, early morning, noon, afternoon, golden hour sunset, twilight, dusk, or deep night — which naturally implies certain lighting conditions, color temperatures, and shadow qualities. Combining a specific lighting description with an atmospheric mood term like 'moody,' 'ethereal,' or 'warm and inviting' in your Veo prompt gives Veo exceptionally strong creative direction for producing visually compelling and emotionally resonant video output.

Yes, Veo responds excellently and with impressive accuracy to artistic style references included in prompts. You can include a wide variety of style terms and aesthetic descriptors in your Veo prompt such as cinematic, photorealistic, documentary, film noir, anime, watercolor painting, oil painting, pencil sketch, charcoal drawing, pixel art, vintage film stock, retro 1980s VHS, minimalist, maximalist, surrealist, impressionist, expressionist, cyberpunk, steampunk, fantasy illustration, gothic, pastel tones, high contrast black and white, desaturated muted colors, hyper-saturated pop art, and many more artistic treatments. You can also reference specific filmmaking styles and director aesthetics in your Veo prompt, such as Wes Anderson's symmetrical compositions and pastel color palettes, Christopher Nolan's grand scale and IMAX cinematography, or intimate documentary realism with natural imperfections. This Veo prompt guide recommends choosing one clear and consistent style direction per prompt rather than attempting to mix multiple conflicting styles together, which typically produces confused, incoherent, or visually muddy output that satisfies neither style intention.

The best aspect ratio to select depends entirely on your intended distribution platform, viewing context, and the specific use case for your generated video. For YouTube videos, website hero sections, and general widescreen content designed for desktop or television viewing, use 16:9 horizontal format with your Veo prompt — this is the standard cinematic widescreen ratio. For TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat, and other vertical-first mobile platforms, select 9:16 vertical format to fill the full mobile screen. For Instagram feed posts, Facebook posts, and versatile social media content that needs to work across multiple platforms, the 1:1 square format provides a balanced and universally compatible option. When writing your Veo prompt, actively consider how the aspect ratio affects your composition — a vertical Veo prompt should describe subjects and action that work compellingly within a tall, narrow frame with vertically oriented elements, while horizontal prompts can include more expansive environmental context, lateral movement, and panoramic scene descriptions. This Veo prompt guide recommends matching your camera movement descriptions and compositional focus to your chosen aspect ratio.

If your Veo prompt produces unexpected or unsatisfying results, the most effective approach is to use an iterative, systematic refinement process rather than starting completely over. First, carefully analyze the generated output and identify exactly what specific aspect differs from your creative vision — is it the subject's appearance, the quality of movement, the lighting treatment, the camera angle, or the overall artistic style? Then modify only that specific element in your Veo prompt while keeping all other parts unchanged. This targeted, surgical approach is significantly more effective and efficient than rewriting the entire Veo prompt from scratch, because it helps you isolate exactly which words and phrases control which aspects of the output. Common refinement fixes include being more specific about subject physical appearance and clothing details, adding explicit and precise camera movement terms, clarifying the lighting conditions with more descriptive vocabulary, or specifying the artistic style more precisely with additional reference terms. This Veo prompt guide strongly recommends making only one change at a time between generation attempts so you can clearly identify exactly which Veo prompt adjustments have the most meaningful impact.

Both sentence-form and keyword-style approaches can produce good results with Veo, but this Veo prompt guide recommends using a strategic hybrid approach that leverages the strengths of each format for optimal output quality. Use natural, flowing, descriptive sentences for the main scene description and narrative elements, as Veo's underlying language model understands contextual relationships, spatial arrangements, and subject interactions significantly better when they are expressed in proper sentence form with clear grammar and structure. For technical, stylistic, and aesthetic elements, concise keyword-style terms work very effectively and efficiently — terms like 'cinematic,' 'shallow depth of field,' 'golden hour,' 'slow-motion,' or 'documentary style' are clearly understood by Veo without requiring full sentence context. A typical highly effective Veo prompt might read: 'A lone astronaut in a weathered space suit standing on the edge of a vast crater on the surface of Mars, gazing up at Earth visible as a small blue dot in the dark sky. Dramatic backlit rim lighting, cinematic wide shot, science fiction atmosphere, volumetric dust particles, anamorphic lens flare.' This hybrid structure combines rich descriptive narrative with precise stylistic keywords for optimal results.

Absolutely — describing motion and action with precision is essential for creating effective and visually compelling Veo prompts. Veo understands and can render a remarkably wide range of movement descriptions including walking, running, sprinting, jumping, leaping, flying, soaring, floating, hovering, spinning, rotating, twirling, falling, tumbling, rising, ascending, swaying, undulating, flowing, streaming, pouring, exploding, bursting, dissolving, fading, growing, blooming, shrinking, transforming, morphing, and many more dynamic actions. Be very specific about the speed, quality, and character of movement in your Veo prompt: 'elegant slow-motion water droplets splashing upward from a surface,' 'fast-paced aerial chase swooping through a narrow canyon,' or 'gentle rhythmic swaying of golden wheat stalks in a summer breeze.' This Veo prompt guide emphasizes that motion descriptions should harmonize with and complement your camera movement instructions — a dynamic tracking shot following a sprinting subject creates fundamentally different cinematic energy than a static wide shot observing the same action from a distance. Thoughtfully coordinating subject motion, camera motion, and speed in your Veo prompt creates truly cinematic and professional results.

For realistic, photographic content, your Veo prompt should strongly emphasize natural, true-to-life visual elements with terms like 'photorealistic,' 'natural lighting,' 'realistic textures and materials,' 'documentary style,' 'true-to-life colors,' 'authentic environment,' and 'real-world physics.' Include specific real-world details like recognizable material types, natural environmental phenomena, realistic human proportions and movement, and authentic settings that ground the video in observable reality. For stylized artistic content, your Veo prompt should explicitly and prominently state the desired aesthetic treatment using clear style terms: 'anime-inspired with cel shading,' 'watercolor painting aesthetic with visible brush strokes,' 'graphic novel style with bold outlines,' 'retro VHS effect with scan lines,' 'dreamlike surreal atmosphere with impossible geometry,' or 'impressionist treatment with soft color blending.' This Veo prompt guide notes that Veo generally defaults toward photorealism when no style is specified, so intentionally stylized Veo prompts should strongly and repeatedly emphasize the desired artistic direction. Combining a realistic subject description with a stylized rendering instruction — such as 'a bustling cityscape at night rendered in the bold, colorful style of an impressionist painting' — creates particularly compelling results.

Product-focused Veo prompts require special and deliberate attention to professional presentation, controlled lighting, and clean visual composition. This Veo prompt guide recommends the following proven techniques for creating effective product showcase videos: use clean, uncluttered backgrounds by explicitly specifying 'minimalist white studio background,' 'seamless gradient backdrop,' or 'dark matte surface with subtle reflection.' Describe smooth, controlled, and deliberate camera movements such as 'slow 360-degree orbit revealing all angles,' 'gentle dolly push-in from medium to close-up,' or 'smooth vertical tilt from base to top.' Place strong emphasis on professional lighting quality with terms like 'soft diffused studio lighting with gentle surface reflections,' 'dramatic product lighting with crisp rim highlights and defined shadows,' or 'three-point lighting setup with clean key light.' Specify surface material details and textures explicitly in your Veo prompt: 'brushed aluminum metal finish,' 'glossy transparent glass surface with refractions,' 'soft matte textured packaging,' or 'polished chrome with mirror reflections.' Keep the entire Veo prompt focused exclusively on the product and its presentation — deliberately avoid busy backgrounds, competing visual elements, or distracting secondary subjects.

While each individual Veo prompt generates a single short video clip of several seconds, you can absolutely create compelling story-driven and narrative content by strategically planning and executing a series of connected Veo prompts that form a cohesive sequence. This Veo prompt guide recommends beginning by storyboarding your complete narrative arc first, breaking it down into individual scenes, shots, and moments. Then write a separate, focused Veo prompt for each distinct scene or camera angle in your story. The critical technique for narrative coherence is maintaining strong visual consistency across all of your Veo prompts by using identical character descriptions, consistent color palettes, matching artistic style references, and uniform lighting approaches in every single prompt throughout the sequence. For example, if your protagonist wears a distinctive blue leather jacket and has short dark hair in the first Veo prompt, you must include those exact same descriptive details in every subsequent prompt where that character appears. Generate each clip individually on our platform, then combine, trim, and arrange them sequentially in a standard video editing application. This multi-prompt storyboard approach using our Veo prompt guide techniques lets you create compelling visual narratives.

Word order in a Veo prompt has a moderate but consistently noticeable impact on generated results, making it a worthwhile consideration in your prompt construction. Generally, Veo gives more interpretive weight to elements mentioned earlier in the prompt text, treating first-described elements as the primary compositional focus. This Veo prompt guide recommends placing the most important visual element first — usually the main subject and its primary action. Follow with environmental and compositional details that establish context, then camera specifications, lighting conditions, and finally stylistic modifiers. For example, the Veo prompt 'A majestic bald eagle soaring over snow-capped mountain peaks at sunset, aerial tracking shot, golden rim lighting, cinematic nature documentary style' clearly prioritizes the eagle subject over technical details. However, if lighting is the most critical element for your project, lead with it: 'Dramatic golden hour rim lighting illuminating a silhouetted figure standing alone on a windswept hilltop.' Let your creative priorities guide your Veo prompt structure and word ordering for the best possible results from each generation.

Each social media platform has distinctly different optimal settings, viewing contexts, and audience expectations that should directly inform your Veo prompt approach and creative strategy. For TikTok and Instagram Reels, this Veo prompt guide recommends selecting the 9:16 vertical format and crafting Veo prompts with immediately attention-grabbing action, bold visual impact, and dynamic movement that captures viewer interest within the very first frame — write Veo prompts featuring bold contrasting colors, energetic camera movement, and high-energy subjects that stop the scroll. For YouTube, use the standard 16:9 horizontal format and include more expansive environmental context, wider compositional elements, and more cinematic production values in your Veo prompt to take advantage of the larger screen viewing experience. For Instagram feed posts, the 1:1 square format works best — center your primary subject clearly in the Veo prompt composition and ensure the visual story reads well in a compact square frame. For LinkedIn and other professional business content platforms, write Veo prompts that emphasize clean, polished, sophisticated aesthetics with stable and controlled camera movements, professional color grades, and corporate-appropriate subject matter. Always adjust your Veo prompt energy level, visual complexity, and stylistic tone to match each platform's unique culture and audience expectations.

Achieving visual consistency across multiple Veo prompt generations requires a deliberate, systematic, and well-organized approach to your prompt writing workflow. This Veo prompt guide recommends creating a comprehensive style template — a standardized set of descriptive phrases, style references, lighting descriptions, and aesthetic modifiers that you include identically in every Veo prompt for a given project or content series. For example, if you are producing a cohesive series of nature documentary videos, establish a consistent Veo prompt template like: '[Scene-specific description here], cinematic aerial drone shot, golden hour natural lighting, documentary nature film style, warm earth-tone color grade, shallow depth of field.' Use this exact template structure for every single clip in the series, only changing the scene-specific descriptive details while keeping all stylistic, lighting, camera, and mood elements identical. Keep a carefully maintained written record of the exact Veo prompt wording that produced results you particularly liked, and reuse those proven stylistic phrases verbatim in future prompts. Consistency in output also comes from using the same Veo model version, the same resolution settings, and the same aspect ratio across your entire project to maintain maximum visual uniformity and production coherence throughout your final edited piece.