Pick a visual metaphor

Give it the facts and the idea the viewer should understand or feel, the brand's creative direction, and the script or draft beats. You get a visual concept and a shot table: each image makes a point the narration alone would leave abstract. Write it yourself; no model call. The ad's words are llm-write-an-ad-script's.

Choose the concept before its visual treatment. The same transformation could be shown with photography, simple shapes, paper or clay; the brand and the brief guide that later choice. A concept may be combined with the product's real screens or footage where the viewer needs evidence of how it works.

Inputs

• The supported facts and points selected for this video, from source/facts.md (or the story's source). A visual metaphor illustrates a claim; it does not prove one.
• The audience, the purpose and the intended impression, plus refs/brand.md (guide-capture-a-brand). Distinguish the brand's established direction from a proposed interpretation.
• Draft beats, length and any real product evidence the picture must show.
• Available brand assets and their rules, including a mascot if the concept uses it.

Develop the concept

Start with the relationship to make visible: disorder becoming order, effort becoming ease, one part fitting a system, a small change having a large effect. Consider mechanisms that suit it:

• Transformation: a tangle resolves into a clear path, showing simplification.
• Contrast: two ways through the same task reveal the difference in effort.
• Pattern or system: separate elements coordinate, showing how parts work together.
• Scale or material behaviour: weight, balance, flexibility or texture makes an abstract benefit tangible, without inventing a measurable product claim.
• A character story: a mascot, a person or the product acts out the experience. Use a recurring hero when its actions carry the idea; a character is optional.

These are starting points to develop, not claims of measured outcomes. Pick the mechanism that explains this promise in this brand's tone. A pun on the name can suggest a world, but a weak pun should not determine the film.

Patterns from delivered jobs

Keep those examples' useful craft without requiring their hero, setting or tone on another job.

Run it

Write the concept in two sentences: what changes on screen, and how that expresses the supported promise. State why it fits the audience and brand; mark any proposed interpretation. Describe the recurring visual element if there is one (a character, object, motif or relationship). Make a table with the shot, the point it carries, the picture and what changes, using the actual brief.

Offer a different mechanism when the first feels generic or requires explanation. Review the concept and shot table with the script, before making its assets; use the workflow's existing gate.

Prompt

For generated shots, turn each row into a scene using nano-banana-prompt-format. Choose the visual treatment from the brand direction, then keep that treatment consistent. Explain the action, camera and spatial relationships; an image model cannot infer them from the abstract benefit alone.

• An image should read before its caption explains it. For a sequence-dependent transformation, make the before and after legible together.
• Keep factual labels, numbers and identifiers in composited graphics. A product's existing pack label is a fidelity constraint, not decorative generated lettering.
• No real faces or logos in generated metaphor stills. In the toy-world, codebase and news-metaphor recipes above, show people as silhouettes from behind and companies as unbranded objects. Composite exact names, marks and numbers over the pictures. A shot whose purpose is to depict an actual person or place uses guide-depict-real-people-and-places; product-character shots use the product's packshot for label fidelity. Keep those shots separate from the metaphor stills.
• Describe sizes through the scene's geometry or body parts: a robot requested as teacup-sized became a literal teacup; knee-high worked.

What you get

A concept rationale and shot table for the workflow's script/concept review. The workflow then chooses the treatment and production route; this leaf does not require a hero, a particular art style or generated imagery in every shot.

Tips and traps

• A familiar metaphor with no relation to this brand makes interchangeable work. Tie it to the specific promise and audience; choose another if it needs a long defence.
• Devices in toy worlds grew manufacturers' logos. Keep devices out of the metaphor, or pick a take without a logo.
• A rejected still may have an unreadable idea. Revisit that shot's concept before re-rolling all the images.
• Ropes or rails crossing a character's path caused awkward motion unless the action needed them; simplify the staging.

Check it

• Can a viewer describe the idea from the image or transformation without reading its rationale?
• Does every selected point have a picture or a deliberate place in the graphics?
• Does the proposed tone fit the brand evidence and the brief?
• For generated metaphor stills: no real face, logo or lettering in any row or still.
• Could an illustrative scene be mistaken for real product evidence or a new claim? Make the distinction clear.
• Sheet the generated stills (python-contact-sheet, images) and check them against the approved concept and treatment.