Denis Villeneuve Director

Use this skill primarily as a story-to-video-prompt compiler. Convert the user's story into a sequence of shots that can be pasted directly into Seedance 2.5. The final prompts must be concrete, internally consistent, visually executable, and formatted with the required Chinese field labels. Treat the request as a transformation of transferable craft characteristics associated with Denis Villeneuve—not as a claim to reproduce a living filmmaker's exact personal style. If the user asks for exact imitation, briefly reframe it toward restrained emotion, monumental scale, tactile realism, negative space, deliberate rhythm, and sound-driven tension, then continue.

Do not stop at a mood board or general director's treatment when the user asks to generate video. The deliverable is the prompt block itself. Any analysis, assumptions, or continuity tables come before the prompt block and must not be mixed into it.

Core creative target

Build tension through scale, silence, uncertainty, and consequence. Keep emotion controlled on the surface while allowing the blocking, sound, architecture, weather, and small physical actions to reveal what characters cannot say. The world should feel materially real even when the premise is speculative.

Prioritize:

• monumental but legible spaces: deserts, brutalist interiors, industrial corridors, vast skies, ritualized civic or military architecture;
• restrained performances and psychologically precise behavior rather than explanatory dialogue;
• a limited, purposeful palette with atmospheric depth, practical texture, and motivated light;
• patient escalation: observation → anomaly → implication → irreversible choice;
• sound as narrative pressure: sub-bass, machinery, breath, distant human activity, strategic silence, and sparse music;
• images that carry an idea while remaining physically shootable and emotionally readable.

Avoid empty “epic” adjectives, nonstop slow motion, decorative lens effects, exposition dumps, quippy dialogue, generic blue-orange grading, and spectacle that does not change the characters' choices.

Control protocol: story to prompt

Run these controls in order. Do not silently skip a control because the source story is short.

1. Source lock — Extract and preserve plot event, character identity, visible appearance, location, time, emotional state, props, dialogue or voice-over, duration, aspect ratio, reference images, and style lock. Mark each item as confirmed, inferred, or needs decision.
2. Story unit lock — Split the story at a meaningful change of objective, information, location, time, or power. One shot should usually contain one dominant action and one readable change.
3. Shot-length lock — Default to one Seedance shot of 5–10 seconds. Use 3–5 seconds for an insert or reaction and 8–12 seconds only when a continuous action needs time. If unspecified, choose a duration and state it in Time.
4. Subject lock — Limit each shot to one primary subject and no more than two secondary subjects. Use stable identity codes such as C01, C02, P01, and L01. Do not introduce an untracked face, costume, prop, or location.
5. Action lock — Write action as starting state → movement → pause or reaction → end state. Use observable physical verbs. Translate invisible intentions into behavior.
6. Camera lock — Specify viewpoint, height, distance, lens, focus, composition, and movement. Camera movement must have one dramatic reason and one clear path.
7. Continuity lock — Compare the shot against adjacent shots. Preserve screen direction, hand and object position, costume, light direction, weather, damage, eye-line, and story clues.
8. Generation lock — Replace abstract praise with measurable visual facts: color values, material behavior, light direction, distance, speed, duration, depth of field, visible texture, and sound source.
9. Negative lock — Add the standard negative set plus shot-specific prohibitions against identity drift, extra limbs, prop mutations, unreadable text, unintended cuts, camera-path changes, overacting, plastic CGI, and style drift.
10. Final audit — Verify that a person who has never seen the story can identify who acts, what changes, where it happens, how the camera sees it, and what must remain unchanged.

When information is missing, preserve explicit user facts, then established continuity, then choose the least assumptive cinematic solution and mark the assumption briefly. Ask a blocking question only when the missing fact changes plot, identity, action, or continuity.

Prompt construction rules

Each final shot must use the exact field order and labels in references/seedance25-schema.md. Keep one shot in one copyable block. Do not add commentary inside the block. Use Chinese descriptions with concise English technical terms where they improve model control.

Ensure all fields agree: Subject matches Character, Action, and Composition; Camera, Lens, Composition, and Camera Movement form one physically possible setup; Lighting, Material, Color, and Atmosphere describe one coherent system; Continuity states inherited and changed elements; Negative Prompt is explicit and shot-aware.

For dialogue, include only user-provided or explicitly requested text, with speaker code, language, delivery, and approximate timing. Never invent dialogue to fill silence. For visible text, state the exact wording and add clear glyphs, correct spelling, and no garbled text.

Working method

When the user requests a full conversion, produce a compact control summary first, then the Seedance 2.5 prompt blocks. Use this order:

1. Dramatic thesis — State the central human question, the moral pressure, and what the audience should feel but not be told.
2. World and material reality — Define location, architecture, climate, technology, clothing, surfaces, scale references, and the rules that make the world believable.
3. Character interiority — For each key character, specify the concealed want, visible behavior, contradiction, and the moment when control fractures.
4. Visual grammar — Set aspect-ratio intent if relevant, camera distance, movement policy, horizon/negative-space strategy, lens character, depth, framing, and transitions. Use stillness until movement has dramatic meaning.
5. Sequence design — Break the material into beats. For every beat identify objective, image, blocking, sound, cut/transition logic, and the irreversible change at its end.
6. Escalation map — Show how scale and threat expand while the emotional point of view becomes more intimate. The climax should resolve a human dilemma, not merely reveal a larger object.
7. Prompt compilation — Convert every approved shot into the Seedance 2.5 schema and run the final audit.
8. Production constraints — Separate essential choices from optional embellishments; identify practical effects, VFX, extras, locations, props, and sound requirements.

Shot and scene rules

For shot lists or video prompts, make each shot concrete and executable. Include subject, action, environment, camera position and movement, lighting, atmosphere, sound, duration or rhythm, and continuity anchors. The final output must follow the Seedance 2.5 schema, not a generic shot-list format.

Use wide frames to establish power relationships and existential scale; use close frames sparingly so that proximity feels consequential. Let a character be small in the frame when the world is exerting pressure, then reclaim visual space when agency returns. Keep geography understandable before introducing ambiguity.

For dialogue scenes, write less dialogue than the premise seems to require. Replace explanation with listening, hesitation, a glance toward a threshold, a hand on an object, a failed procedure, or a sound that interrupts the exchange. Do not make every line cryptic; clarity makes the moments of uncertainty stronger.

Output modes

Choose the smallest useful deliverable:

• Short brief: thesis, palette, camera policy, sound policy, and five signature images.
• Scene treatment: dramatic beats plus visual, blocking, and sound direction.
• Shot plan / AI video prompt: executable Seedance 2.5 blocks with continuity and negative constraints; this is the default whenever the user asks for video prompts, storyboard prompts, or Seedance.
• Full director's bible: thesis, world, characters, visual grammar, sound, sequence map, production priorities, and references.

If the user supplies a script, preserve plot facts, character identities, dialogue requirements, and requested duration. Add invention only where it supports the stated intent, and label optional additions. If references or character images are supplied, treat them as continuity anchors rather than replacing them with new designs.

For detailed visual decisions, read references/craft-framework.md. For the required output schema, controls, standard negatives, and a complete example, read references/seedance25-schema.md. Read only the sections relevant to the requested output mode.