A Frame Inside the Frame
Put a frame inside your frame. One storyboard, one prompt, Midjourney.
The prompt
Copy it, run it, change whatever you want. No signup.
photorealistic cinematic film still, a quiet family drama, the camera standing outside a farmhouse at night in the rain, looking in through a lit kitchen window. The wet clapboard wall of the house fills most of the frame, and the window is a bright rectangle in the middle, about a third of the frame wide, that frames the family inside. The dark edge of the roof and a dripping gutter run across the top of the frame; wet grass and a puddle catch the window's warm glow along the bottom. Inside, a family of three sits at a dinner table under a hanging lamp: the mother on the left side of the table, the father on the right side, and their young daughter at the far end facing us, each with a clear, sharp face. One empty chair faces us at the near end of the table. Rain streaks run down the outside of the glass in front of them; the room inside is dry. Outside is cold deep blue, the wet boards and the falling rain catching faint light; inside is warm amber lamplight. The lit window is the brightest thing in the frame, and the empty chair sits at its center. Shot on an 85mm lens at f/4, deep focus, Kodak Vision3 500T color, deep but detailed shadows, fine film grain, cinematography in the style of Bradford Young. The image fills the entire frame edge to edge, no borders or bars. --ar 16:9 --raw --stylize 150 --v 8.2 --relax --no painting, illustration, sketch, drawing, letterbox, black bars, borders, matte, split screen, diptych, collage, grid, text
The board
A board shows where things go: where the camera is, what frames the people, what sits in front of them and what is missing.
Midjourney never saw this drawing. Every choice on it was written into the prompt as words.
Why it works
Each choice on the board became one phrase in the prompt.
Shoot through a window. The window frames the family inside. It sits in the middle of a big dark wall, like a picture hung in a dark room.
Keep the camera outside. looking in through a lit kitchen window puts us out in the rain. We stand in the dark and look in, like a stranger.
Put something in front of them. Rain streaks run down the outside of the glass puts a wet layer between us and them. The rain on the glass keeps us apart from them.
Leave one chair empty. One empty chair sits at our end of the table. An empty chair tells us someone is gone.
Before you run it
Fill the top and bottom of the frame. Our first run left them almost black, and all four renders came back with movie bars. A roof edge across the top and a glowing puddle along the bottom fixed it.
Make the window big enough for faces. A small window makes the people tiny, and tiny faces come out smeared. This prompt asks for a window about a third of the frame wide and an 85mm lens.
Give each person a seat. Without seats, the girl ended up squeezed against her dad. Say who sits on the left, who sits on the right and who sits at the far end.
Check the chair. We asked for the empty chair to face us. In every render we saw its back. It still reads as empty.