Verified against Runway Gen-4.5 · 2026-08-14
Turn a rough campaign idea into a Gen-4.5-ready shot list and technical production brief
A structured pre-production prompt that takes a loose creative idea and produces a Runway Gen-4.5-ready shot-by-shot brief, complete with technical settings and explicit rules for what to avoid, so a small team can go straight from idea to generation without a separate planning meeting.
The prompt
Ready to copy — highlighted parts are example details you can swap.
You are producing a pre-production brief for a short branded video that will be generated shot-by-shot in Runway Gen-4.5, not written for a live-action shoot. Inputs: Campaign idea: a 20-second spot showing a running shoe going from a cluttered closet to a sunrise trail run Target length: 20 seconds Platform: Instagram Reels Must-include elements: the shoe's signature red laces must be visible in at least two shots Produce the brief in this exact structure: 1. Shot list table — one row per shot, columns: shot number, description, duration (seconds), camera treatment, and a one-line note on how this shot connects visually to the one before it. 2. Technical settings block — recommended aspect ratio for Instagram Reels, whether each shot should be static or has camera movement, and any shots that require a reference image versus a text-only prompt. 3. Consistency notes — call out every element (character, product, location, color palette) that must stay identical across more than one shot, and flag which shots share that element. 4. Rules for what NOT to generate — an explicit list of things to exclude from every shot (for example: no on-screen logos rendered by the model, no dialogue/lip-sync, no camera moves faster than a slow push, no shot longer than the platform's native limit). 5. Open questions — anything in the campaign idea that's underspecified and needs a decision from the creative lead before generation starts, rather than guessed at. Do not write the actual Runway generation prompts themselves in this brief — this is the planning document that a separate prompt gets written from, one shot at a time.
Customize
Optional — swap in your own details for the highlighted parts above.
Why this works
The most common way small teams waste Runway generation credits is jumping straight into prompt-writing on an under-planned idea, discovering mid-sequence that the closet-to-trail idea needs the shoe to look identical in shot 1 and shot 6 with no reference image ever specified, and re-generating from scratch. Structuring this as a planning document rather than a generation prompt is deliberate — it forces the consistency notes and technical settings to exist on paper before a single Gen-4.5 call is made, so reference images and locked-language clauses (the kind used in a per-shot continuity brief) get identified up front instead of discovered by trial and error. The explicit 'rules for what NOT to generate' section exists because Gen-4.5's default behavior on ambiguous briefs tends toward adding motion, dialogue, or on-screen text the team didn't ask for; naming exclusions here means every downstream shot prompt inherits the same guardrails instead of each shot's author re-inventing them. The 'open questions' section is the other load-bearing piece: it stops the brief from silently guessing at underspecified details (exact platform aspect ratio, whether the product needs a reference image) and instead surfaces them as decisions for a human, which is cheaper to resolve on paper than after three generations have already gone out with three different guesses baked in.
What you get back
1. Shot list: Shot 1 (0-4s) — cluttered closet, shoe half-buried under other pairs, static frame, establishes contrast with later shots... 2. Technical settings: 9:16 for Reels, shots 1-2 static, shots 3-5 slow push-in, product reference image required for shots featuring the shoe close-up... 3. Consistency notes: red laces and shoe silhouette must match across shots 1, 3 and 6... 4. Do not generate: no logo overlays, no dialogue, no shot exceeding 5 seconds... 5. Open questions: is the sunrise trail a real location reference or fully generated?
Verified against
Runway Gen-4.5 Gen-4.5 · 2026-08-14
Changelog
- 2026-08-14 — Initial publish, verified against Runway Gen-4.5.
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