Home / News / Mastering Prompts For Veo 3

Mastering Prompts For Veo 3

Insights|Published on June 6, 2025

We’ve been working closely with our Creator Community to understand the best ways to prompt for Veo 3. After consolidating their feedback and conducting our own extensive testing, we’ve created this toolkit to help guide you as you explore the power of Veo 3.

Planning Your Prompt

The key to crafting a strong prompt in Veo 3 is understanding what truly matters in a video. To ensure you include all the essential details, we recommend starting by breaking your prompt down into clear categories:

• Scene description: Overall description of the scene you want to create — what’s happening, who’s involved, and the general atmosphere.
  
• Visual style: Defines the overall look and feel of the video — for example, cinematic, realistic, animated, stylized, or surreal.
  
• Camera movement: Describes how the camera should move during the scene — for instance, slow pan, static shot, tracking shot, or aerial zoom. Avoid using slang terms (eg ‘robo-arm’ or ‘lens crack’). Be clear and descriptive.
  
• Main subject: The primary person, character, or object that should be the focus of the video. Clearly describe who is doing what in the scene.
  
• Background setting: The specific location or environment where the scene takes place — such as a city street at night, a forest during sunrise, or a futuristic lab., traditional village, etc.
  
• Lighting/mood: Describes the type of lighting and the emotional tone you want — for example, soft natural light with a warm tone, or harsh lighting for a dramatic or tense mood.
  
• Audio cue (optional): Any specific sound or music that should be heard during the scene — such as a song starting when the character dances, or ambient sounds like rain, footsteps, or birdsong.
  
• Color palette: The dominant colors or tones used in the video — such as bold and bright, pastel, muted earth tones, or monochrome. This influences the emotional and visual impact.
  
• Dialog / Background Noise (optional): If characters are speaking, specify exactly what they should say and when. You can also include environmental sounds like crowds, wind, or traffic.
  
• Subtitles and Language : Clearly state whether you want subtitles included or not (e.g., “Do not include subtitles” or “Include subtitles in English”). Note that mentioning a language can influence cultural context (clothing, signs, architecture) even if no spoken language is rendered. To imply language or culture, you can write things like: dialogue in Spanish, with English subtitles, on-screen text in Japanese, Arabic calligraphy visible on walls, Korean street signs in the background, etc.

Additional Planning Notes

• Using ” or ” or ( ) or [ ] for the dialogue may generate subtitles – avoid these if you don’t want them.
• Use natural language
• Use long prompts. The more information and direction you can give, the better your output.
• Use a solid prompting structure, like the one outlined above.

Writing Your Prompt

Once you’ve outlined the key information you want to include using the above structure (or something similar), you need to write your prompt. You can write this prompt yourself, or use a tool like Chat GPT to transform your dot point plan into a fully fledged prompt.

Check out the examples below to see how your prompt should look before hitting ‘Generate’!

Example

Prompt Plan:

• Scene description: A glamorous woman with an afro hairstyle and gold jewellery shares a pool at night with a calm alligator, surrounded by dimly lit classical decor and blue ceramic vases.
• Visual style: Cinematic
• Camera movement: Slow zoom-in on the woman’s face from water level
• Main subject: Elegant woman in the pool next to an alligator, making intense eye contact with the camera
• Background setting: Luxurious outdoor pool area with classical statues and large ceramic vases
• Lighting/mood: Moody and soft, with candlelight reflections and subtle fill light on the face
• Audio cue: Slow ambient electronic music with occasional water ripple sounds
• Color palette: Deep slate gray, ocean blue, and warm gold tones
• Dialog: “I’m not afraid of anything… except Sundays without drama.
• Subtitles: Off

Complete Prompt:

A cinematic scene set at night: a glamorous woman with an afro hairstyle and gold jewellery shares a luxurious outdoor pool with a calm alligator. The pool area is surrounded by classical statues and large blue ceramic vases, all dimly lit. The camera starts at water level and slowly zooms in on the woman’s face as she makes intense eye contact with the camera. The lighting is moody and soft, with candlelight reflections on the water and a subtle fill light on her face. The audio features slow ambient electronic music, with occasional water ripple sounds. The color palette includes deep slate gray, ocean blue, and warm gold tones. The woman says, “I’m not afraid of anything… except Sundays without drama.” No subtitles.

Video Result:

Special thanks for tips and creative credit to: @TechHalla, @MayorkingAI and @maxescu from our Leonardo Creator Program.

Nguồn: https://leonardo.ai/news/mastering-prompts-for-veo-3/