Shot Composition and Framing Planner
Plan framing, subject placement and depth layers for every board panel.
Designs the inside of the frame for each storyboard panel - subject placement, headroom, lead room, foreground and background layers, and the visual hierarchy that tells the viewer where to look.
Ready-to-use prompt
The prompt
Copy it as-is, then swap the bracketed placeholders for your own details before running it.
Role: You are a storyboard artist planning composition for each panel.
Context:
- Shot list or panels: {{shots}}
- Aspect ratio: {{aspect_ratio}}
- Visual style reference: {{style}}
Task: For every panel, specify:
1. Subject placement using thirds (left, centre, right; upper, middle, lower)
2. Headroom and lead room treatment
3. Foreground layer, midground subject, background layer - name each element
4. Depth cues (overlap, scale difference, atmospheric haze, focal falloff)
5. Visual hierarchy: first, second and third thing the eye reads
6. Negative space and where it sits
Rules:
- Composition must respect the stated aspect ratio; call out panels that only work in another ratio.
- Every panel needs at least two depth layers, or state why a flat frame is deliberate.
- Do not describe camera movement or lens choice - framing only.
- Keep the eye-path order consistent with the shot's purpose.
Output: a per-panel composition table, then the panels whose hierarchy is ambiguous.Estimated results
Editor's note
Why this prompt matters
Generated frames often look flat for a specific reason: nothing was decided about the inside of the frame. The subject lands dead centre, there is no foreground, and the eye has nowhere to travel. Composition planning fixes that before generation by naming the layers and the reading order, which also gives you something concrete to check the output against.
Anatomy
Prompt engineering breakdown
Role
Context
Goal
Constraints
Output format
What you'll get
Expected output
A table per panel giving subject placement on thirds, headroom and lead room, named foreground, midground and background elements, depth cues, a three-step eye path and negative space placement - plus panels flagged for ambiguous hierarchy.
Under the hood
Why this prompt works
Requiring named layers rather than adjectives is what makes composition survive the prompt. Models render 'a bottle in the foreground' and ignore 'strong depth'. The explicit eye-path order gives the sequence a reading rhythm and doubles as a pass or fail test on every generated frame.
Model fit
Best AI models for this prompt
Gemini
Strongest when you paste reference frames and want their composition analysed and matched.
ChatGPT
Fast across long panel lists and consistent with thirds terminology.
Claude
Best at explaining why a hierarchy is ambiguous rather than silently fixing it.
When to use
- After the shot list, when designing what each frame looks like.
- When generated frames feel empty, flat or badly centred.
- When adapting the same board to both vertical and horizontal delivery.
When not to use
- For camera movement and transitions - use the camera planner.
- For effects, particles or motion design.
- For deciding which shots exist at all.
Get more from it
Pro tips
- 1
State the delivery aspect ratio before anything else.
- 2
Force at least two named depth layers per panel.
- 3
Alternate framing sizes across neighbouring panels.
- 4
Check generated frames against the eye-path order, not against taste.
Don't ship this
Common mistakes
✗ Centring every subject.
Fix — Require explicit thirds placement per panel.
✗ Abstract depth language with no named objects.
Fix — Demand a named element in each layer.
✗ Reusing 16:9 framing for vertical delivery.
Fix — Re-plan composition per aspect ratio.
People also ask
Frequently asked questions
Q.Does composition planning change between 16:9 and 9:16?
Substantially. Vertical frames lose lateral negative space, so subject placement and depth layering have to be re-planned rather than cropped.
Q.Why name foreground objects explicitly?
Video models render nouns, not qualities. Out-of-focus leaves in the foreground produces depth; the phrase cinematic depth usually does not.
Q.Is this the same as choosing camera angles?
No. Angle, lens and movement are handled by the camera planner. This prompt only decides what sits where inside the frame.