How to use Seedance 2.5: a prompt guide for ad shots

A common prompt formula for Seedance has six slots, in this order, and only the first two are required: who and what happens, then the place, the look, the camera and the sound. A sentence or two per slot beats a paragraph of adjectives.

• Lead with the subject and one visible event: a thing that happens, not a mood.
• Say the camera in plain words: wide, medium, close-up; push, pull, pan, track, follow, orbit, tilt, handheld.
• Don’t stack style words (“cinematic, epic, 8K, masterpiece”): they compete, and the picture goes to mush.
• Don’t write what you don’t want. “No extra people” is read as a mention of people; say what is there instead.

A reference is a picture (or a voice, or a clip) the shot must use. On make.ad each one is a cast member with a handle: @Milo, @Living_room. The studio turns the handles into Seedance’s own numbered tags in the order you picked them, with a legend saying what each one is.

• Call a character by handle every time they are on screen, and hand a shot only the cast it shows. Fewer, clearer references win.
• Say what to take from a reference and what not to: “the exact outfit and design in @Milo’s reference, not the background”.
• Use a full-body sheet in the final outfit. The model copies what it sees, so a costume change is a new reference, not a line of prompt.
• Don’t name a place you don’t want drawn: “she comes in from @Street” draws the street. Say “from the rain outside” in words.

An eight-second shot is two beats; a thirty-second shot is six or seven. Give each beat a time range, one main event and a visible end state. Timestamps set the pace; in our renders the action usually lands within about half a second of where you asked.

• One thing per beat. Two actions at once is where limbs and props go wrong.
• Write the end state of every beat; the next shot starts from it.
• Change place inside a shot only with a move the model can see: a door, a corner, a follow.

A spoken line is its own line, with the speaker’s handle after the words: Dialogue: “There you are.” @Milo. On make.ad that handle carries the character’s voice recording, so only a character with a voice speaks. A clip says about two words a second: an eight-second shot holds one short exchange, not a paragraph.

Sound effects go in angle brackets and music in round ones, the way the studio writes them: <a tracker chirps twice> (a light ukulele bed). One or two specific sounds land; a long list is dropped. Say the language when it is not English.

The model has no memory from one shot to the next. Repeat the outfit, the light, the time of day and the side of frame in every shot; “same outfit as before” means nothing to a model that never saw before. Keep screen direction across a cut, and match on something: an action, a look, a sound.

In make.ad’s movies, a shot that continues the one before is handed its last frame as its opening picture, so a continuing shot must be the same place at the same moment.

• A franchise look-alike. The model judges the finished picture, so a renamed character with a famous design is still refused. Make the design your own.
• Letters. On-screen text, logos and signage are the model’s weakest hand: hand the product in as a picture and add words in the edit.
• A clip reference with a fixed shape. Seedance can read a clip as a video to extend and then keeps its ratio.
• An exact first frame from words alone. If a shot has to open on something exact, give it an opening picture.

• Open on the strongest moment: a face, a problem, a movement. Never an establishing shot.
• Frame tall: faces close, one subject at a time, nothing that matters at the edges.
• One idea per shot, a visible change in each, and the product on screen before the end, as a picture reference.
• With your own script, count the words: two a second. Sixty words fill thirty seconds.
• Don’t save the payoff for the last shot alone; on a phone, it is the shot most people never see.

• Generate: one clip from a prompt or a picture, at any length and size the model takes.
• Assets: a shot from your cast (characters, places, props, styles and voices) by handle.
• Ad movies: a vertical ad told in Seedance shots, storyboarded for you, with the first and last frame of every shot shown before any clip is paid for. See the drama scene workflow.
• Clone an ad: a reference video’s beats remade with your brand. See cloning a video for your brand.