Nature documentary: long lens, slow motion, no narration
A filled 7-part prompt for a wildlife shot that looks filmed from a hide: 600mm compression, heat haze, one animal doing one slow thing, slow motion at a stated rate, and the anatomy traps.
SUBJECT: {one animal, species named, with two visible details: wet fur, a notch in one ear} ACTION: {one slow action, e.g. 'lifts its head from the water and looks left' / 'shakes the rain off once'} SETTING: open savannah grassland at dawn, long dry grass in the foreground, acacia silhouettes far behind, light mist on the ground CAMERA: extreme long lens from a hide, slightly low angle, static on a tripod with one tiny slow pan to keep the animal framed; the animal small-to-medium in frame with grass in the foreground out of focus LENS & LIGHT: 600mm telephoto look, heavy background compression, very shallow depth of field, faint heat haze; low warm sun from the side, long shadows, backlit dust and breath STYLE: natural history documentary film, true-to-life colour, muted and natural, no HDR look, light grain, slow motion at half speed (shot at 50 frames per second, played at 25) so the motion is smooth and heavy; no narration, no on-screen graphics SOUND: wind in grass, distant birds, no narration, no music DURATION: 8 seconds, 16:9. No on-screen text, no logos, no people, no vehicles.
Paste into the video model as one paragraph; remove the labels once you are happy with the content.
Tips
- What it breaks: animal anatomy under movement (legs multiply when an animal runs), herds (the count changes mid-shot), and speed: 'slow motion' without a rate gives you a clip played slowly, with the stutter that implies. State the capture and playback rates.
- One animal, one slow action, no running. A walk, a head turn, a shake. The running shot is the one that still needs a real camera.
- Aspect: 16:9. The long-lens compression is what reads as documentary, and a vertical crop throws away the foreground and background layers that show it.
- Try first: Veo or Sora for animal motion; a suggestion to start with, not a claim about which is best.
| works with | Veo: Google text-to-video / image-to-video prompts. · Sora: OpenAI video generation prompts. · Kling: Kling text/image-to-video prompts. · Runway: Runway Gen prompts and camera controls. |
| cost | Free. The video or image model you paste it into has its own pricing. |
| status | Unverified: written from the technique, not yet run end to end by us. |
| license | CC BY 4.0 for the text here; skills are MIT. |
| updated | 2026-11-01 |
| for agents | nature-documentary-long-lens-prompt.md |
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