# Stills

> How a prompt for Aivy is put together, which image model to use for what, and how to pick from four variants.


Every frame of a film starts as a still. A good still has her face right, the wardrobe right and a world worth five seconds of motion. This page covers the prompt, the model and the pick.

## The anatomy of a prompt

Write the parts in this order. The [studio](/studio/) does it for you.

1. **Framing.** "Close-up portrait", "Medium shot, waist up", "Full-length shot, head to toe", "Wide shot".
2. **Who.** With a reference image: "the woman from image 1". Then the identity text: full for close and medium, short for full length and wider.
3. **Guard line** on wide shots: she has no tattoos; her arms and hands are bare of any ink.
4. **Wardrobe.** One sentence from the look, or your own. Describe the garment. Brand and designer names drag the model toward ad photography.
5. **Scene and action.** What she is doing. Give her hands a job: writing, tying, holding a card. A woman standing and staring reads as stock.
6. **Style.** One of the five style lines from the canon, or your own: film stock, light, lens, grain.
7. **Closing.** "No text, no letters, no logos." Type goes on later, in the edit.

A real one, from the karaoke world test (`av-16-helpful.stage`):

> Medium shot of the woman from image 1, the same person with the same face: a beautiful 25-year-old grown-up woman with a slender adult face and defined cheekbones, freckles across her nose and cheeks, pale icy-blue eyes, straight warm golden blonde hair, not red, light grown-up make-up and small gold stud earrings. She wears a long-sleeved hot-pink satin shirt dress with an oversized pointed collar. She sings into a corded microphone on a tiny karaoke stage, eyes closed on a long note, the glow of a lyric screen lighting her face from below. 35mm film still in a small karaoke bar at 2 a.m., magenta and ultramarine neon, light haze, warm practical lamps, high contrast, fine grain. No text, no letters, no logos.

## Which model

We tested two on the same casting prompt, on an earlier draft of the character, in October 2026, through Kling's interface:

| Model | Cost per 2k still | What we saw |
|---|---|---|
| Kling 3.0 (image) | 2 credits | Strong faces and real character; holds a face from a reference image |
| Nano Banana Pro | 20 credits | Clean and pretty, more generic; drifted the hair colour |

Every image on this site is Kling 3.0, and every one after the casting has her reference portrait as image 1. Midjourney works as well if you prefer its look; use the identity text and its image-prompt feature.

## Ratios

- 3:4 for close and medium portraits.
- 2:3 for full length.
- 16:9 for anything that will become a video shot.

## Picking

Render two to four variants per shot and choose with the [check](/wiki/consistency/#the-check) first, taste second. Then ask one question: would this still hold up as a post on its own? If it wouldn't, don't animate it.

Keep the rejects and write down why. A reject with a reason teaches you more than a pick. You can browse ours in the [gallery](/gallery/) with the filter set to rejects.