I Stopped Rewriting Product Video Prompts From Scratch

sarah wilson — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 06:13:48 +0000

Yesterday I was putting together a short landing page video for a side project.

Nothing complicated—just an 8-second product clip.

I opened my notes to write another prompt and realized I had already written almost the same thing dozens of times.

The product was different.

The wording changed a little.

But most of the prompt stayed exactly the same.

So instead of starting over again, I copied the version I used last week and only changed the parts that actually mattered.

This is the version I ended up using yesterday.

Subject:
Portable coffee grinder

Action:
Slow 360° rotation on a wooden table

Camera:
Gentle push-in, close-up near the end

Lighting:
Soft morning light from the left

Background:
Minimal workspace

Style:
Simple product commercial

Avoid:
Fast camera movement
Floating objects
Text overlays

I used to rewrite every field because it felt more "creative."

Now I almost never do that.

Most of my changes happen in just two places:

the subject
the action

Everything else usually stays untouched unless I'm testing something specific.

One thing I started doing recently is keeping the prompts that didn't work.

A few weeks ago I would have deleted them.

Now they sit in a folder called rejected.

It's surprisingly useful to look back and remember why something failed.

Sometimes the camera moved too much.

Sometimes the background became too busy.

Sometimes I simply added too many instructions.

Seeing those old prompts again saves me from making the same mistake twice.

Lately I've also been running the exact same prompt through different video models without changing anything.

I don't really care which model "wins."

I'm more interested in how each one interprets identical instructions.

One of the models I tested this week was Seedance 2.5. I left the prompt exactly as it was so I had another point of comparison instead of another rewritten version.

The folder is still messy.

Some prompts have strange names.

Some experiments don't go anywhere.

But copying an old prompt and improving it a little has been much more useful than trying to invent a completely new one every time.

If you keep old prompts around instead of deleting them, I'd be curious to know how you organize them. I'm always looking for better ways to keep this folder under control.

PromptZone - Leading AI Community for Prompt Engineering and AI Enthusiasts: sarah wilson

I Stopped Rewriting Product Video Prompts From Scratch