Can you make six dead stills move like a director shot them?

Motion Clip Set

Context

A trailer sequence has four approved keyframes locked and waiting. You have one 90-minute session and an image-to-video model. Your job: animate each still with a motion recipe so clear that if someone else ran it, they'd get the same shot. Then cut them into a sequence that lands on the audio.

Mission

Produce an ordered Motion Clip Set—four 4–8 second animated shots, each with (1) the source still, (2) the prompt recipe (light + move + exit state), (3) a log of what-you-asked vs. what-landed, and (4) a trailer beat name. Hand off clips ordered and labelled, ready for the timeline editor.

Finish Line

A labelled, ordered Motion Clip Set — four to six 4–8s shots, each with its source still and the prompt that moved it — dropped into the Week-2 trailer bin.

Deliverables

Motion Clip Set
lesson

Four to six animated 4-8 second shots, each with its source still and the prompt that made it move, ready to cut into your trailer.

Team Roles

Shot Director

Owns the recipes and gates the work
- Write one recipe per still: name the light source (e.g., 'key light from left'), the dominant camera move (pan/dolly/crane/zoom/tilt—pick one), and the exit frame (e.g., 'locked wide on subject'). Every recipe must pass the rules check: one verb, one light source named, one exit state.
- Reject any recipe with two dominant verbs (e.g., 'pan AND zoom') or vague light ('dramatic lighting'). Hand it back to rewrite. No recipe advances unless it passes the rules.
- Lock the ruled recipes and own the precision: if the operator claims the motion landed but your log shows it drifted, flag it. Another director could re-run your recipe and get recognisably the same shot.
Motion Operator

Owns the generations and logs honestly
- For each still, lock it as the first keyframe in Runway or Kling (do not let the model invent a new image). Enter the director's recipe as the prompt. Generate the clip and download the video URL.
- Log asked-vs-landed for each clip: what camera move did you ask for? What camera move did it actually do? Mark the family match (pan→pan = match; pan→zoom = drift; pan→slight-pan-with-drift = match-with-variation). Be honest.
- If a clip drifts from the asked-move family (e.g., asked-dolly but landed-zoom), regenerate immediately before moving on. A drifted clip flagged and re-rolled is a win; a drifted clip shipped is a loss.
Cutter

Owns the sequence and the story
- Order the four clips into a trailer-shaped sequence. For each clip, name the intended trailer beat (e.g., 'reveal', 'build', 'impact', 'resolve'). Write one sentence per clip confirming that the motion supports the beat: e.g., 'Clip 2 (dolly-in, reveal beat)—subject moves forward into frame, we see their face, it lands on the audio accent.'
- Find one moment in the audio track (an accent, a silence, a hit) and trim or reorder at least one clip to land its peak motion on that moment. Make the motion and sound resolve together.
- Read the self-scores aloud, clip by clip: Did the Director's recipe pass rules? Did the Operator's clip match the asked move? Does your cut land on an audio hit? Flag any clip below Merit and note why. Hand off the labelled, ordered set to the timeline editor with these notes attached.

Exemplars

Golden Trailer Awards
Golden Trailer Awards

The industry awards body for movie trailers — the exemplar bar for what a finished, professional-grade trailer looks and sounds like.
Runway AI Film Festival
Runway

The premier festival showcase of finished AI films — the "this is what pro AI filmmaking looks like" gallery. Complements the Golden Trailer Awards craft bar.