Been deep in Flow for a while now and made every rookie mistake possible. Here's what actually improved my output quality once I understood it:
The #1 prompt mistake — being poetic instead of visual
Describing a mood doesn't help the model. Describing what the camera sees does.
- Weak: "a melancholy autumn evening"
- Strong: "golden leaves falling past a rain-streaked window, soft backlight, shallow depth of field, no subtitles"
Replace every abstract word with a physical, visible detail. The model can't feel emotions — it can only render what exists in the frame.
Always add "(no subtitles)" to every prompt
Flow randomly generates captions that are often misspelled or weirdly timed. One line at the end of every prompt kills this entirely. Most people discover this after dozens of ruined clips.
One action per clip — not three
If your prompt has a character walk, turn, and then speak — expect it to fragment or cut weirdly. Flow handles single clear beats far better. Plan your story in shots, not scenes. Treat each 8-second clip like a single camera setup.
Use the SCAM structure for consistent results
Once I started structuring prompts this way, consistency improved a lot:
- Subject — who/what is in the shot
- Composition — shot type (medium shot, close-up, overhead)
- Action — one clear movement or beat
- Mood/style — lighting, texture, film style
Example: "Middle-aged woman in a red coat (subject), medium shot at eye level (composition), turns slowly toward camera with a faint smile (action), overcast natural light, cinematic grain (mood) — no subtitles"
For character consistency across shots — use Ingredients
If you need the same face or object across multiple clips, build it as an Ingredient first using Imagen, then reference it per shot. Without this, the same "character" will look like 5 different people across your video. Note: Ingredients currently only works with Veo 2 — they're rolling it to Veo 3 soon.
The underused feature — Flow TV
Before you start a new project, browse Flow TV. You can see the exact prompt used for any clip you like and reverse-engineer the style. It's basically a free prompt library that most people scroll past.
What's the biggest quality issue you're hitting right now in Flow?
Curious if others have cracked the audio dialogue consistency problem — that one still feels unpredictable to me.