The boppi prompting guide: directing Hailuo 2.3 scene by scene

boppi's Director AI writes a full shot list from your track, a style preset and (optionally) a reference image. For most releases that first pass is the video. But when you want to take the wheel on a specific scene, the way you phrase the prompt makes a real difference to what Hailuo 2.3 returns. This guide collects what has worked across thousands of generations.

Anatomy of a good scene prompt

Hailuo responds best to prompts that read like a shot description in a screenplay rather than a list of adjectives. A reliable structure is subject, action, setting, light, then camera.

A woman in a silver jacket walks slowly toward camera down a rain-soaked alley,
neon signs reflecting in puddles, cool cyan key light with magenta rim light,
slow push in, shallow depth of field.

• One subject, one action. Two people doing different things is where coherence breaks first.
• Describe the light, not the mood. “Warm tungsten from a single window” beats “cozy vibe”.
• Name the camera move in film terms: push in, pull out, truck left, tilt up, tracking shot. boppi's camera selector appends these for you.
• Leave out words like “4K”, “masterpiece” or “trending”. The style preset already carries the quality terms that actually matter to this model.

Matching camera moves to the music

The beat grid decides where cuts land; the camera move decides how the shot feels between cuts. A few pairings that consistently work:

• Intro and verses: static shots or slow push-ins. Let the viewer settle.
• Pre-chorus: a pull-out or pedestal-up that opens the frame just before the drop.
• Chorus: tracking shots and trucks. Lateral motion reads as energy without needing fast cuts.
• Bridge: something deliberately different — a macro, a tilt down, or the one handheld shake in the whole video.
• Outro: mirror the intro's move in reverse.

Use ten-second scenes where the camera needs to travel (drone, tracking); six-second scenes everywhere else. Ten seconds of a static shot is rarely worth the extra credits.

Continuity with reference images

Upload a clear, front-lit photo of your subject as the project's character reference and boppi passes it to every scene. Three habits make it work better:

1. Describe the reference in words too. “The woman from the reference, silver jacket, short dark hair” anchors the model even when the pose changes.
2. Keep wardrobe constant across the project unless the song's structure motivates a change (a costume switch on the final chorus is a classic).
3. Avoid prompts that hide the face for long stretches — silhouettes, heavy backlight — early in the video. Establish the person first, then get stylised.

Using style presets as a base, not a cage

Each of the twelve presets appends a tuned suffix to your prompt (Cinematic adds anamorphic lens and film grain; Neon City adds rain-soaked streets and reflections). You can read the exact suffix in the style picker. When a scene needs to break the preset — a clean daylight shot in an otherwise Noir video — add the contradicting terms at the start of your prompt; earlier tokens win ties.

When to regenerate, when to rewrite

If the composition is right but the motion is off, regenerate with the same prompt — the model's variance will often fix it. If the composition itself is wrong (wrong subject count, wrong framing), rewrite: repeating the same prompt gives you the same problem with different lighting. Each attempt costs one scene and is shown on the button, so a rewrite-then-regenerate pass on a stubborn shot is usually cheaper than accepting a weak one.

A short checklist

• Subject, action, setting, light, camera — in that order.
• One idea per scene.
• Static or slow moves on verses, lateral moves on the chorus.
• Reference image plus a verbal description of the subject.
• Draft on Fast at 768P; upgrade the shots the viewer will remember.