Rule of Three
How to make a scene escalate in three shots. Three stills, three prompts, Midjourney.
The prompts
Copy them, run them, change whatever you want. No signup.
photorealistic cinematic film still, contemporary comedy. A man in his thirties in a white T-shirt, grey sweatpants and socks stands in the middle of a small apartment kitchen at night, holding a coffee mug, staring down at the water. A small puddle spreads from under the sink. Overhead fluorescent light, white cabinets, a dish rack on the counter, a window over the sink with the city dark outside. Camera at standing eye level in the kitchen doorway, the whole kitchen in frame, shot on a 28mm lens at f/5.6, naturalist available light, restrained contrast, Kodak Vision3 250D color, fine film grain. The image fills the entire frame edge to edge, no borders or bars. --ar 9:16 --raw --stylize 100 --v 8.2 --relax --no painting, illustration, letterbox, black bars, borders, matte, split screen, diptych, triptych, collage, grid, text
photorealistic cinematic film still, contemporary comedy. A man in his thirties in a white T-shirt, grey sweatpants and socks stands in the middle of a small apartment kitchen at night, holding a coffee mug, staring down at the water. Water an inch deep covers the whole floor, a dish towel floating past his feet. Overhead fluorescent light, white cabinets, a dish rack on the counter, a window over the sink with the city dark outside. Camera at standing eye level in the kitchen doorway, the whole kitchen in frame, shot on a 28mm lens at f/5.6, naturalist available light, restrained contrast, Kodak Vision3 250D color, fine film grain. The image fills the entire frame edge to edge, no borders or bars. --ar 9:16 --raw --stylize 100 --v 8.2 --relax --no painting, illustration, letterbox, black bars, borders, matte, split screen, diptych, triptych, collage, grid, text
photorealistic cinematic film still, contemporary comedy. A man in his thirties in a white T-shirt, grey sweatpants and socks stands in the middle of a small apartment kitchen at night, holding a coffee mug, staring down at the water. Water up to his knees fills the room, a chair and a laundry basket floating around him. Overhead fluorescent light, white cabinets, a dish rack on the counter, a window over the sink with the city dark outside. Camera at standing eye level in the kitchen doorway, the whole kitchen in frame, shot on a 28mm lens at f/5.6, naturalist available light, restrained contrast, Kodak Vision3 250D color, fine film grain. The image fills the entire frame edge to edge, no borders or bars. --ar 9:16 --raw --stylize 100 --v 8.2 --relax --no painting, illustration, letterbox, black bars, borders, matte, split screen, diptych, triptych, collage, grid, text
Why it works
Three beats are enough to show a problem growing. These three prompts are the same except for one sentence, the one that says how much water is on the floor.
Start small. The first prompt says A small puddle spreads from under the sink. A puddle is a problem he could still fix with a towel.
Make it worse. The second says Water an inch deep covers the whole floor. Now a towel cannot fix it, because the towel is floating.
Make it bigger than both. The third says Water up to his knees fills the room. The last beat has to be the biggest, so the scene keeps building.
Change only what grows. The man, the kitchen, the mug and the camera stay the same in all three. Because nothing else moves, the only thing you notice is the water.
Before you run it
Use the same settings. All three were made with --raw --stylize 100 --v 8.2.
Keep his pose the same. Each prompt has him standing still with the mug, staring down. If a render changes his pose, run it again, or the beats stop reading as one scene.
To make it yours, pick one thing that can grow. A stack of dishes, a line of people at a door, smoke under a door. Change only that sentence, three times.