Video Director

video-director

Turn a scene idea into the 11-block cinematic prompt the hollywood-director persona ships. Output is provider-agnostic prose; provider-specific tuning is handed off to motion-choreographer.

When to use

• A scene idea, beat, or script line needs to become a cinematic prompt ready to feed an image+video pipeline.
• A draft prompt reads as "AI video" — flat, centered, generic golden-hour — and needs directorial choices on the page.
• Live-action / photoreal scenes. For animation acting beats, route to pixar-storyteller.

Do NOT use when:

• The deliverable is a still graphic or poster → canvas-design.
• The work is provider-specific token tuning → motion-choreographer after this skill has produced the blocks.
• A character identity must be re-used across scenes → run character-consistency first to lock identity tokens, then call this skill.

Procedure

Step 0: Inspect

1. Confirm the input is a live-action / photoreal beat (not animation).
2. If a character.json exists under agents/reference/ai-video/<project>/characters/, read the identity tokens — they are reused verbatim.
3. Read the scene's intent in one sentence — what is the camera witnessing, and why now?

Step 1: Draft the 11 blocks

Emit each block on its own labeled line. Blocks are mandatory and in this order:

1. SCENE — location, time-of-day, weather, era.
2. CHARACTER — verbatim identity tokens from character.json when present; otherwise silhouette + wardrobe + signature prop.
3. ACTION — verbs and beats. Anticipation → action → reaction named separately. No "doing things" prose.
4. CAMERA — position, height, distance, move (lock-off, dolly, handheld, push, pull). Off-axis when on-axis is the AI default.
5. LENS — focal length in mm (24 / 35 / 50 / 85 / 200) and aperture intent (deep / shallow). "Cinematic" alone fails.
6. LIGHTING — key, fill, back, practical sources named. "Golden hour" requires an angle (low-east 15°, etc.).
7. ENVIRONMENT MOTION — what the world does (wind, water, crowd, traffic) and on which beat.
8. SECONDARY MOTION — hair, cloth, dust, breath. Names the reactive layer that sells the primary action.
9. MOOD — one emotional read; no compound moods.
10. DURATION — seconds. Integer or one decimal.
11. NEGATIVE CONSTRAINTS — clichés to reject, in load-bearing order (top survives truncation). Always names: centered framing, symmetric composition, generic "cinematic", soap-opera contrast.

Step 2: Self-review

1. Lens length present? "Cinematic" without mm → fail.
2. Lighting direction present? "Golden hour" without angle → fail.
3. ACTION names beats, not adjectives?
4. NEGATIVE block has at least 4 entries, load-bearing on top?
5. CHARACTER block reuses identity tokens verbatim when a lock exists?

Any "no" → revise that block before handing off.

Step 3: Validate

1. Output is plain text, one labeled block per line, ready for scripts/ai-video/lib/parse-blueprint.sh (Phase 3 Step 5).
2. No provider tokens (no --aspect, no --model). That is motion-choreographer's job.

Output format

1. scenes/<id>/prompt.txt — 11 labeled blocks, one per line, ready for the blueprint parser.
2. scenes/<id>/review.md — one-paragraph rationale per non-obvious directorial choice (lens, light angle, camera move).

Gotcha

• The model defaults to centered, on-axis, symmetric — name an off-axis or rule-of-thirds camera or it will silently center.
• "Golden hour" alone reads as a sunset GIF; require a sun angle.
• ACTION written as a paragraph of adjectives ("dynamically", "powerfully") fails — adapters need verbs with beat counts.
• When character.json exists, paraphrasing identity tokens breaks Character Lock — copy them verbatim.
• Negative constraints in the truncated tail get dropped — load- bearing ones go first.

Do NOT

• Do NOT emit provider-specific tokens (aspect ratio, model id, duration flags) — that is motion-choreographer's scope.
• Do NOT collapse anticipation / action / reaction into one verb.
• Do NOT use "cinematic" without lens + lighting + camera move.
• Do NOT invent character details when a character.json exists.

Policies

Paths, enforcement model, and the full set: the media policy preamble.

The 11-block cinematic prompt is live-action shape — real-person and brand-impersonation risks are the highest in the cluster. Before emitting:

• likeness — when the prompt names or visually identifies a real person on camera.
• public-figures — when the subject is a recognised public figure.
• brand-impersonation — when the prompt copies a journalism / broadcaster / regulated-industry visual identity.
• style — when LIGHT / LENS choices are anchored to a named living cinematographer's signature.
• disclosure — every distributed live-action AI clip carries the non-removable AI-generation disclosure.

Refuse-and-surface at the directorial layer; live-action realism amplifies every policy gap downstream.