ai-shortfilm-prompts

ai-shortfilm-prompts

🌐 Browse the prompt library online → prompts.aiolaola.com — view any template/case and copy it with one click, no install. 🎥 Want the prompt rendered into a finished film? → OpenShorts (same author): story → 3-shot AI mini-drama, cost quoted per shot before you spend, $0 on-device draft tier. 🧩 Or skip straight to the prompt builder — pick one of 21 genres, fill a few blanks, get the full multi-shot prompt + negative prompt. No Claude Code needed.

📖 免费配套学习 → 从零学会 AI 编程（182 节）＋ 从零构建 AI 智能体（40 节）（站上共 14 门课、700 节，全部 ¥0——另有 大模型原理 / AI 绘画 / 写小说 / 漫剧 / 量化 / DeepSeek / 深度专注 等） 🌍 Free companion courses in English · 日本語 · Español · 한국어 · 繁體中文 🎬 New — before you use these templates → AI 漫剧实战·一条片子的完整制作日志 — a free 42-lesson course (Chinese) that takes one real AI short film apart: storyboard spec, prompts, rolling and picking takes, editing to a final cut, and the compliance check before publishing — failed attempts included. First 12 lessons need no login.

A Claude Code Skill that turns any idea into a cinematic, model-ready video prompt — for Sora · Kling · Veo · Seedance. 21 genre templates, a 5-stage structure, eval-tested. Distilled from Zombie Scavenger by Mx-Shell — the AI short Hollywood director PJ Ace called "one of the best short films I've seen in years."

中文版 →

⚡ Quick start: one-page cheat sheet · failure→fix gallery

🧩 The no-install prompt builder — 21 genres · full multi-shot output · negative prompt included · runs entirely in your browser

🎬 The tweet that started it all

"This is one of the best short films I've seen in years. Very soon, we'll stop calling it 'AI film' and just call it film."

Film name: Zombie Scavenger by MX-Shell.

— PJ Ace (@PJaccetturo), May 10, 2026

Stats are from PJ Ace's original tweet (@PJaccetturo, May 10, 2026), as of mid-May 2026.

This repository is the complete workflow behind that film, made available because Mx-Shell himself published his prompt collection documents and walked through his entire method on a public Douyin livestream.

⚡ The single-line magic prompt (try it tonight)

Copy this into Sora / Seedance / Kling / Veo. Replace {{...}}:

Anamorphic widescreen cinematic. Simulated IMAX film camera +
Panavision C-series lens (35mm focal, f/4 aperture). Handheld
shot — extremely subtle, breath-like camera float throughout.
{{your scene description}}.
No score. Production audio only.

Why this works: real camera bodies + "breath-like float" anchor the AI to actual film aesthetics — not the vague "cinematic feel" keyword everyone else uses. Full breakdown in methodology.md.

❌ vs ✅ — what the method actually changes

Same idea: a female mech warrior raises an energy shield in a thunderstorm.

❌ The naive prompt (what most people write):

Epic cinematic shot of a beautiful female mech warrior activating a
stunning energy shield in the rain. Highly detailed, 4K, photorealistic,
movie-quality, dramatic lighting.

Vague praise — epic / stunning / 4K / movie-quality — gives the model nothing concrete to anchor to. You get generic game-CG output.

✅ With the 5-stage method (excerpt):

Core theme: gritty hard sci-fi mech | rainy dock | battle-damage aesthetic | energy shield | post-apocalyptic live-action
Atmosphere: simulated IMAX film camera + Panavision C-series (35mm, f/4). Low-saturation teal base, film grain.
Camera: handheld — extremely subtle, breath-like float throughout.
9–12s: hexagonal energy cells light up unevenly, some flicker as if faulty; rain bends around a 2m dome.
Ending: no dialogue, no light burst — just rain vaporizing on the shield, a lightning flash across the dock.

Real camera/lens names + physical reactions + battle damage + an empty ending = visceral realism. Full sample with the 10-item self-check: examples/02-skill-output-sample.md.

The story

May 2026. A 29-year-old vocational-school graduate from rural Yunnan, China — handle Mx-Shell — used 10 days and ~20,000 RMB of cloud credits to make a 3-minute AI short called Zombie Scavenger: an atomic-punk robot wanders into a beachfront villa after a zombie apocalypse, meets a confused ostrich, and starts dancing 1980s-style breakdance moves while kicking a zombie's head across the floor.

On the cost: the widely-quoted "3,000 RMB" figure came from Mx-Shell himself, but on livestream he later revised it to "tens of thousands / 20k+." The real spend was likely well above 3,000 — still far below a comparable live-action shoot.

Hollywood director PJ Ace (@PJaccetturo) retweeted the film, calling it "one of the best short films I've seen in years" and started a search for the author.

A few weeks later Mx-Shell went on a Douyin livestream and gave away his entire workflow — the prompts, the camera language, the failure modes, the reroll counts.

This repo is the result of digesting 130,000 characters of his materials into a structured, reusable system.

What's in here