Claude Code Promo Video Prompt

You'll need: @ChatGPT to generate the images and @ElevenLabs for the voiceover and music @Remotion for the animation itself ------------------------------------------------------ You're directing a 30-second animated promo for the company behind this website: [PASTE YOUR WEBSITE URL] You're the director, the art department, the animator, the sound designer and the QA team, and you have real tools to call. I'm giving you the website, the look, the tools and the quality bar. Everything else, from the story to the beats to the jokes, is yours to design. I trust your taste more than a beat sheet I could write. Your capabilities are far beyond what you assume, so work like it: plan carefully, push the craft, and use the tools and the time this deserves. Spend generously where it improves the film and economically everywhere else. Final output: out/promo.mp4, 1920×1080, 30fps, exactly 30.0 seconds, with a narrator, music and sound design. At the end, you'll also save your process as a reusable skill. Optional (leave as is for the defaults): - Format: [16:9 1920×1080] - Length: [30] seconds - Voice: [narrator telling the story] (or character lines, or wordless), language [same as the website] - Budget: ElevenLabs max [10,000] credits, max [20] generated images --- ## 1. The brand (read it from the website) Fetch the website and its main pages, and write `brand.json`: - Company name and what they do, in one line, in their own words. - Where the work happens: the real place this business operates (a salon, a bakery, an office, a workshop, a clinic, a van…). - Who the customer is, and their daily pain that this business solves. - Logo: download the real logo from the site (header image, SVG, favicon or social image) and save it to `public/brand/`. Never redraw or invent a logo. - Brand colour: the main accent colour from the site's CSS, as hex. - Tone of voice: how the site talks (formal, playful, premium, friendly). - Call to action: the site's main CTA and domain. - Language: the site's language, used for the narration and on-screen text. Wherever you're unsure, say so and show your best guess. I'll correct `brand.json` at the first gate. **The premise:** the customer is stuck with that daily pain. Then this company arrives, and things change in a way the audience can see. How you tell it is up to you: the setting, staging, gags, rhythm, camera, character beats, what the turning point looks like, and how the change plays out. Every business gets its own story, so don't fall back on a generic one. **Fixed points:** - 30.0 seconds, 16:9 (unless set above). - The film must read with the sound off. - The setting is the real place where this business works, with props true to the trade. - The ending is honest: show what the company actually does according to its website, nothing more. - It ends on a card with the real logo, a line from the site and the call to action, integrated into the world. --- ## 2. Style reference Check the reference for the style: ⚠️[ATTACHED]. It grew out of Jake Moran's "Animated agent session story": https://t.co/xNLrVnAEb6, made with this skill: https://t.co/Oqd28jwBpv. Read the skill, including its references on motion and the room. The look is locked. Every film made with this prompt shares it: - A cozy 2D cartoon short. Flat painted fills with gentle gradients for light, a fine paper-grain texture over everything, and thick, slightly brushy warm dark-brown outlines (#3A2A22), never black. Lines boil subtly on threes. Soft vignette, and blurred foreground objects framing the wide shots. - Light and mood: deep navy-indigo for shadows, night skies and walls (#2D3263), one warm amber practical light as the key light (#F2B84B) with a soft glow and bloom, purple-tinted shadows (#4A3F6B), and small warm accents like fairy lights or glowing windows. Evening or after-hours suits it best; daytime is fine if the story needs it, keeping the same warm/cool contrast. - Palette: navy, amber, warm wood (#B8743E), cream paper (#F1E6D2) and sage green (#7FA88B) as the base. The brand colour is reserved for whatever represents the company in the story and for the call to action, so the brand colour visibly means "this is us". - Characters: simple rounded block characters with big oval eyes, heavy brush eyebrows that do most of the acting, small mouths, flat rounded tab arms with round hands, and stubby legs. Each has a body colour that contrasts with the navy and the brand colour, one costume detail that says who they are, and one signature prop. If the company gets a mascot, it's small, cute and quick, with one exaggerated signature feature that fits the brand name or what they do. - Physical props that carry the story (papers, notes, tickets, stamps, signs), so the change is shown, not stated. - A score that's cued to every action. Don't copy my film's story, setting or characters. Use the look and push it further: richer staging, better acting, more cinematic camera, and a stronger hook. --- ## 3. Facts (lock these before any creative work) From the website, write `facts.json`: every claim you might use, each with the exact supporting sentence from the page. Only claims in `facts.json` may appear on screen or in the voiceover. This is a story first, so use one or two facts at most, woven into the world rather than presented as slides. For example, a timeline shown on a calendar, or a result shown rather than stated. No made-up numbers, no competitor names, no single-client results presented as guarantees, and nothing from placeholder or "coming soon" sections. --- ## 4. Audience and hook The audience is the company's customers, as described in `brand.json`. Before writing the treatment: - Research: spend a little time on how this audience talks about the pain, and what frustrates them most day to day. Find one or two details they'd recognise instantly. Use them only if they fit the story naturally. Never use real people or other brands' logos. - The hook: the first second has to work as a still frame on a busy feed. Someone scrolling should instantly see the customer's pain and want to see what happens. - Text on screen: this is motion design that tells a story, not a lyric video. Use text sparingly and only where it adds something: a beat the picture can't carry alone, the fact, and the end card. Integrate it into the world (painted, stamped, written in marker) rather than overlaying it. --- ## 5. Tools The keys are in `.env`. Pick the best tool for each job, and tell me which you chose and why. | Tool | Key | Use it for | |---|---|---| | Web search and fetch | — | The website, the logo, audience research | | ChatGPT images via Codex CLI (https://t.co/x9LInz5Jx6) | `codex login` with your ChatGPT plan, or `OPENAI_API_KEY` | Style frames, character sheets and key poses | | ElevenLabs (https://t.co/D2ELxJvWZC) | `ELEVENLABS_API_KEY` | Voices, sound effects, and music (Eleven Music) | | Remotion (https://t.co/lGE7O4w0hs) | — | The film itself | | ffmpeg + Python | — | Audio analysis, frame extraction, checks | | Subagents | — | Parallel research and independent review | Track every ElevenLabs credit and every image you generate, and never exceed my budget. --- ## 6. Order of work ### Step 1: Brand, facts and treatment Write `brand.json`, `facts.json` and `treatment.md`: - Your take on the story in one paragraph. - The setting, and why it's true to this business. - The beat sheet with timings. - What happens in each shot: camera, acting, the gag. - Where the music hits. - What the narrator or each character says, in the site's language and tone. - Which fact appears and how. - Why this version is the strongest way to tell it. Write two or three distinct treatments, then pick one and explain why. ### Step 2: Style bible Write `style/bible.md` from the locked look: - Palette, with hex values and a reason for each. - Outline rules: weight, and the "boiling" redraw jitter. - Fills, gradients and paper grain. - Lighting: the key light, the glow, the shadows. - Type, plus how text lives in the world. - Character design rules for every character: size ratio, shapes, how each one moves, and their expression set. ### Step 3: Key art (images as the base, no video generation) The generated images are your key frames and design references. You are the in-betweener. Generate: 1. Style frames: 3 options of the opening moment, all in the locked look (vary only framing and set details). Pick one. 2. Character sheets: every character, each with front, three-quarter and side views and their full expression set. Use the chosen style frame as a reference so everything shares one world. 3. Key poses: one image per key pose in your treatment (roughly 6–10), each built from the character sheets and the style frame, matching the camera and composition of the shot. Put everything on one contact sheet. Stop and wait for my approval before building anything. The images are references. The final film is drawn in code to match them, and generated images never appear on screen (except the real logo on the end card). Trace the shapes, poses, proportions and composition from the key art into SVG, and animate between them. ### Step 4: Audio first The film's timing comes from the audio. 1. Voices: audition at least 2 ElevenLabs voices per role (narrator or character), matched to the brand's tone and audience. Generate each line separately, with 2 takes, and keep the best delivery. Request timestamps so key words can land on the matching action. 2. Music: generate a track that fits your treatment, about 2 seconds longer than the film, with its structure matching your beats: for example, a drop when the company arrives. If the generated track won't land on your beats, retime the beats to the real music, or trim and offset it with ffmpeg, rather than forcing it. 3. Sound effects: a sound for every physical action, including the sounds of this trade. Measure each file's onset so transients land on the frame. 4. Timing map: detect the music's beat onsets and write `timing.json`. It holds every beat time, the drop frame, each voice line's start and end frames, and every key action snapped to the nearest beat. All animation timing reads from `timing.json`, with nothing hardcoded. 5. Play me the audio-only mix before building the picture. ### Step 5: Build in Remotion - Components: one per character, prop and set piece, built on palette tokens. Story beats live as data in `story.json`. - Drawing: painted fills with soft light and shade gradients, brushy warm-brown outlines, glow and bloom on the light sources, a static paper-grain overlay, and a subtle line boil. - Motion craft: anticipation before every big action, follow-through after, squash and stretch, springs for landings, arcs for every moving object, and no linear easing. - Acting: the characters have to perform. Give them readable poses, holds where the audience needs to read a face, and timing that's funny. - Mouths: if characters speak, mouth shapes are driven by the voice track's loudness, and they must be still when the character is silent. - Camera: push-ins, a whip or a shake where it helps. Motivate every camera move. - Details: held props and text never mirror when a character turns. - Mix: music, voices and sound effects on separate layers. Duck the music under the voice. --- ## 7. Verification loops (do not skip any) 1. Key-pose match: at every key pose, render the frame and compare it side by side with its key art. Write what differs and fix it. 2. Sound-off read: render a silent cut. A fresh subagent that has seen nothing else reviews a contact sheet at 2 frames per second and retells the story. If it can't, the staging failed. Fix it and repeat. 3. Sync check: list every catch, landing, stamp and voice line with its actual frame vs its `timing.json` target. Everything must be within 1 frame. 4. Fact check: every word on screen and in the voiceover, matched to `facts.json`. Cut anything unmatched. 5. Technical: duration exactly as set, stereo audio, peaks below −1 dBFS, no unintended dead air. 6. Director's review: - Watch the whole film at least twice as frames. - Write a brutal critique as the most demanding motion designer you know: what feels assembled, what's slow, what doesn't land. - Fix the top 3 issues, then review again. - Only then hand it over, with a 10-frame contact sheet. --- ## 8. Package it as a skill Save the full pipeline as .claude/skills/promo-film/SKILL.md, so that next time "Make a promo film for [URL]" is enough. The skill should include: - Reading the brand from the website - The fact lock - The treatment process - The locked look and the style bible as a reference file - The key-art process - Voice auditions - Music and sound effects - The timing map - The reusable Remotion components - Every verification loop --- ## Approval gates 1. `brand.json`, `facts.json` and the chosen treatment 2. Style bible, character sheets and key poses → wait for my approval 3. Audio-only mix and `timing.json` 4. Final film, contact sheet and critique 5. Skill Keep a task list throughout. At each gate, show me the work, not a description of it.