Seedance 2.5: how to storyboard a chase scene

Give your runner one bright colour

A night chase can easily turn into a dark rectangle with movement in it. You feel something is happening, but you cannot tell what.

The Seedance 2.5 example fixes that with one choice: a yellow jacket against a blue-grey harbour. Your eye locks onto the runner instantly, and it stays locked even when the frame fills up with ropes, masts and crates.

Write that into your prompt. Not a person running, but a person in a bright yellow jacket running. One saturated colour, in a scene where nothing else shares it.

The same trick works with a white shirt in a dark alley, a red bag in a green forest, or a lit phone screen in a black corridor. Pick one and stick to it for the whole sequence, or the audience loses the thread between shots.

Give the runner a route the viewer can see

In the example, the dock narrows away into the harbour. That line does more work than any camera move.

It tells you where the runner came from and where they are going. Even with clutter on both sides, you can follow the space, because the path explains it.

So build a route into the scene:

• A dock, a corridor, a staircase, a bridge, a tunnel.
• Something at the far end: distant lights, a door, a boat.
• A clear direction: away from the camera, or across the frame.

An open square with no lines in it is the hardest place to shoot a chase, because nothing tells the viewer whether the runner is making progress. That is also why an establishing shot is worth its seconds. Spend them before the action gets complicated.

Four shots, four different jobs

Three interchangeable shots of someone running are not a sequence, they are the same shot three times. Give every shot a job.

Notice that the close-up is third on the list of priorities, not first. A face shot adds emotion, but it removes the harbour from view exactly when the audience is still learning the space. Establish the route, then get close.

An insert shot needs a reason to interrupt. A hand gripping a rail is a reason. Another angle on the same running is not.

Keep the direction of travel consistent

This is the mistake that makes an otherwise good sequence feel wrong, and most people cannot say why.

If the runner moves left to right in one shot and right to left in the next, the edit tells the viewer they turned around. Sometimes that is what you want. Usually it is an accident because two nice-looking clips were placed together.

Editors have a name for the rule that prevents it: the 180-degree rule. It is worth reading once and then it becomes instinct. The short version: keep the camera on one side of the action.

With generated clips it needs extra attention, because each clip is made separately. Practical habits that help:

• Write the direction into every prompt: running from left to right.
• Keep the light source on the same side across shots.
• Check the runner enters and exits on the sides you expect.
• Mirror a clip in your editor if one comes back reversed. It is a two-second fix.

The broader set of conventions is usually grouped under continuity editing, and almost all of it exists to stop the audience getting lost.

Write the shot list as separate prompts

Do not try to get a whole chase out of one prompt. Write the shots, then generate them one at a time.

Night harbour, wet wooden dock, moored fishing boats on both sides, distant harbour lights. A person in a bright yellow rain jacket runs away from the camera along the dock, left to right. Handheld camera at chest height, cool blue-grey colour, reflections on the wet planks, light rain. No text.

Close-up of a hand in a wet yellow sleeve grabbing a cold metal railing, water running off the rail. Shallow focus, cool blue night light, rain visible in the light. Same harbour setting, camera low and to the right. No text.

Night harbour dock seen from further back. The person in the yellow jacket is now small in the frame, still moving left to right, close to the distant harbour lights. Static camera on a tripod, cool blue-grey colour, wet reflections. No text.

Notice how the direction, the colour and the light stay the same in all three. Those repeated phrases are what makes the clips feel like one scene instead of three unrelated videos.

If you are new to shot lists, the storyboard entry on Wikipedia is a decent, plain introduction to how the industry plans this.

Questions people ask

Where to read more

Outside sources

• 180-degree rule (Wikipedia)The rule that keeps the direction of travel readable.
• Continuity editing (Wikipedia)The wider set of conventions, explained simply.
• Storyboard (Wikipedia)How shot planning works before anything is filmed.

More from DaFreeAi

• How to end a scene so it feels finishedWhat happens after the chase stops.
• Day to night without changing the placeThe opposite problem: hold the subject still, change the light.
• How to storyboard a product demoShot planning where the evidence matters most.
• Seedance 2.5The gallery this harbour scene comes from.