How to Create Cinematic Prompts in Midjourney - The Ultimate Formula

in this video I'm going to talk about how to use mid-journey to create amazing cinematic images I've got a really great prompt formula for you and I'm going to share that with you today plus we're going to go through the logic of it so that you can tweak it and do whatever you want with it okay let's get started if you've been following the channel I've mentioned a few times I am not a huge fan of prompt splattering or prompt Gore as I like to call it I think more often than not mid-journey is pretty much ignoring two-thirds of those giant long prompts so I think your time is better spent really honing in on your prompt and getting the most out of it when I do see those longer prompts I tend to think that they're pretty much like copy pasted from somebody that shared their prompt somebody else added to it shared that prompt and on and on it goes sort of turns into whisper down the lane but by the end of it you end up with this 5000 character prompt that often contradicts itself if you yourself are into writing super long prompts then you know more power to you I just think that you tend to end up with better results and more control oddly enough with shorter prompts so with that let's take a look at the prompt formula I've got for you and break it all down okay so here's the formula obviously it starts off with Slash imagine um cinematic still film by scene subject action set and then a link and then a shot and then dash dash for whatever your modifiers are going to be let's break this all down cinematic steel can be replaced with film still movie still movie footage I haven't really seen a big difference in terms of changing those but I think it acts as a major trigger for mid-journey to recognize that we're serious about doing something photorealistic and with a cinematic style it really sets the stage for the prompt to follow so make sure that that is up front the second section film by is a pretty big modification trigger as well this is where we can name reference directors or filmmakers which is going to provide mid-journey with a lot of details on what the overall Vibe is that we're looking for so I think a lot of times when you're using those longer prompts and you're trying to direct things visually if you have a reference director with a strong visual style you don't need all of that other stuff I think that that is telling mid-journey a lot of additional information that you wouldn't have to put into the back end of The Prompt things like style mood I mean even costume design to a large degree that all gets Incorporated in if you pick a director that sort of has is a strong visual Niche or Style just as a quick example here is how much referencing a director can impact a prompt for this I'm just going to use a very basic prompt it's going to be cinematic still film by a leading actress no Direction there medium shot 35 millimeter and with an aspect ratio of 2-1 and I'm going to swap out film by for some various directors just to see how much everything changes let's go check it out so our first filmmaker is Wes Anderson uh it's a very Wes Anderson shot leading actress Bullseye composition all the color is very chromatic and the costuming is very kitschy retro following that up with the exact same prompt except swapping out Wes Anderson for David Fincher gives us this Fincher has a very grounded realistic muted tone composition changes becomes kind of more intense lighting definitely changes becomes more realistic muted cold you know the Fincher thing our same prop with Tim Burton Mr Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands himself this is actually sort of an interesting one as well because you have that era of Tim Burton but you also have an era of like big fish which I think this image is referencing more so that's something we'll talk about in a minute but I think that sometimes you need to swap out a director reference for a film reference if you're looking for a specific era of that director next up one of my favorite filmmakers Guillermo del Toro these images immediately look like they're screen grabs from you know Pan's Labyrinth but again I didn't change anything in the prompt except for the name of the filmmaker so obviously film by is a pretty clutch player I've been going through and cataloging all the filmmakers mid-journey seems to know um I've got that in a style guide linked below it's free you know just go ahead and click on it the next area of the prompt is the scene subject and action area uh this is where we're going to describe what our character looks like um maybe have a description of what they're doing you can put details about the set and the set design in there and this is the place to put any props that your character might be holding such as holding an umbrella holding a sword that sort of thing after we have that established we move on to what I call the link section that's the instruction that serves as sort of a bridge between our director's chair and our cinematographers chair if you think about that whole first part of the prompt it was very much more based in story kind of the performance side of the images um the link is the bridge that gets us over to the technical side of it the link is where we can describe whether the shot is in the day or at night time what the Locale is uh if it's inside or outside for those of you who have read screenplays or have written screenplays I think of this part as the scene header slug you know they like interior kitchen night or like exterior school day that's kind of what this section is in filmic terms I think you can think of the link section as a location manager or you know your first ad once we have all of that established then we move over to our shot composition so this is the area where you're going to want to focus on your shot composition here are some standard call out shots that seem to work pretty well in mid-journey the wide angle shot which pulls the camera back from our subject the ultra wide angle shot which pulls our camera very far back from the subject satellite view which pulls the camera into the stratosphere eye level shot which is the camera even with the head of the figure the low angle shot which is you know on the ground and looking up kind of like a puppy dog looking up at a person the full body shot head to toe but depending on your aspect ratio sometimes you get this and sometimes you don't we also have the close-up the over the shoulder and The Chew shot the two shot can get a little finicky at times though depending other things you can put in this section would be lens lengths um 35 millimeter 10 millimeter 50 millimeter um I would be a little careful if you don't know your lens length terminology though only because uh that's a good way of creating contradictory information if you're saying something like an ultra wide shot with a 200 millimeter lens which would not be the lens for that job I'm sure there are plenty of YouTube tutorials on lens lengths out there I don't know if there's any four mid Journey if you guys want me to I'm more than happy to make one just let me know in the comments below for those of you who like to provide f-stops in your prompts this is also a good place to do so a quick rundown for those of you who who don't know their f-stops it's really simple the lower the f-stop the blurier the background the higher the f-stop the sharper it is here's an example of a lollipop at F 2.8 which means the background is very soft and blurry however an image at F22 is going to have a very sharp background all the way to the Horizon minor cinematography trivia as well uh on film cameras is actually called the t-stop I did try putting key stops into mid-journey it kind of just ignored me so um I guess it doesn't know t-stops and lastly in the dash dash section that's where we get to aspect ratio um I think to get a really good like cinematic look you should go with ar21 since V4 mid-journey has had 16 9 which I think most people think like oh it's widescreen because that's what my TV is but if you want to get like a really cinematic widescreen look try out 2-1 so aspect ratios are a whole thing and basically an entire video unto themselves but basically that big widescreen look historically has either been 185 or 235 which is why on your 169 TV when you pop in say Jurassic Park it still is letterboxed unless you're using that zoom in feature that some Modern TVs have don't which don't do that don't do it's bad it's bad don't do it mid Journey doesn't have 185 or 235 but it does have two one and weirdly enough that's an aspect ratio that's starting to get used a lot more these days uh Jurassic world used it for example and Netflix uses it a ton stranger things is actually shot with 2-1 so if you're looking for that big widescreen look 2-1 it's the way to go so now that we've got the prompt formula let's take the whole thing and take a look at some images The Prompt here is Cinematic still filmed by a epic Samurai battle day close up 35 millimeter 1960 Kodachrome it definitely looks cinematic um the fact that I call that a close-up I think gave us that shallow depth of field the blurry background so there was no need to put shallow depth of fields or call out an f-stop on this one in terms of actually nailing the directorial style of Akira Kurosawa I don't think it quite nailed it but let's try rolling a few more times and see what we can get on a re-roll I got something kind of closer to what I was looking for but it definitely has the look of later era Akira Kurosawa a sort of like 85 Ron which is a great movie if you haven't seen it so funny enough I kind of veered off a little bit while I was rolling these uh to mess around with the idea of blending filmmakers with genres that they hadn't worked in just for fun and decided to modify the prompt to cinematic still filmed by Akira Kurosawa Samurai holding lightsaber in battle on a spaceship fighting robots wide angle Style by sci-fi 35 millimeter 8K that Style by Prime is the thing that really just warps your image into a whole crazy place so anyhow Akira kurosao in space um the second I hit enter and as it started generating I started laughing to myself because that's basically Star Wars and indeed the images that I came out with were I mean Star Wars so I guess if you're looking for a Star Wars prompt without saying Star Wars Akira Kurosawa in space just to show you how much latitude you have in terms of like the film stocks that you pick in the back end as well I gave mid Journey The Prompt cinematic still a film by John Ford John Ford being the legendary film director who directed films like Stagecoach Rio Grande and The Men Who Shot Liberty Valance actually if you watched meet the friedmans uh Spielberg's new movie um John Ford plays a pretty large part in that anyhow 1960 Kodachrome that was kind of the look that I was going for and I would say mid Journey delivered on that it definitely has that sort of washed out sort of 60s kind of Western feel to it and just as an alternate I decided to give more or less the same prompt I actually did change the filmmaker from John Ford to Sam Raimi uh I was just thinking the quick and the dead which is a great movie if you haven't seen that but change the back end prompt to codec more of a modern film stock and this is the image that we got I'm sure some of you have run into this before but if you're someone that likes to call out focal lens lengths or uh lenses you may end up with characters holding cameras in this case The Prompt was cinematic still filmed by James Cameron Space Marines shooting at a lovecraftian monster in a spaceship horror lighting wide angle 20 millimeter uh with an aspect ratio of 2-1 and yeah I just kept getting um characters that had cameras pointed at monsters I actually use this technique and utilize mid-journey entirely for a short film that is on this channel about John Carpenter making an alien film before Ridley Scott made an alien film you can check that out below it's actually I'm really proud of that one I think it's really cool the other interesting thing about calling out filmmakers in prompts is that a lot of times the characters that will appear in those prompts tend to be actors kind of like loosely associated within the genre in this case I used a prompt cinematic still filmed by the Coen Brothers uh businessman sitting at a table and in this case we ended up with two actors um like this image looks a lot like Adrian Brody and in this image the actor looks a lot like Adam Driver big Journey tends to obscure famous faces and I think that if I had asked for Adam Driver there's no way that I would have got him but at a random Coen Brothers role I did get him that same prompt got me this image which is like the saddest image in the world it's like a business guy at a dinner table and I think that to me the the story is that that's a picture of his father just looking at him disapprovingly because he's just alone in his home it's very Cohen Brothers so that's the basic pop formula but there's a lot more to go too so if you enjoyed this um please consider hitting the like And subscribe button so you don't miss the next part and since you're clearly a mid Journey user you might enjoy this next video I mean I do get it there's only so much of me that any one person can Marathon but you know maybe just one more all right we'll see you

Channel: Theoretically Media

Views: 34,179

Keywords: Midjourney, midjourney prompts, midjourney prompts tutorial, midjourney prompts for realism, midjourney v4, cinematic midjourney prompts, midjourney cinematic, midjourney tutorial, AI Art, AI Art Tutorial, prompt crafting, midjourney tips, Cinematic Midjourney, How To Midjourney, Midjourney Tutorial, midjourney filmmaking, midjourney codes, how to use midjourney, midjourney guide, Akira Kurosawa, David Fincher, Tim Burton, quentin tarantino

Id: doeMSB96JOA

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023