How I'm Prompting Claude AI to Maximize Engagement for Short-Form Videos
Teaching AI Comedy: My Video Script Prompt and Data Feedback Loop
As a creative producer/editor with over a decade of experience and an interest in new media workflows, I am consistently in search of novel approaches to create captivating video content. Over the past year, I've been experimenting with generative AI to accelerate my creative process for developing high-preforming videos.
In this post, I'll explain the prompt structure I've devised to leverage Anthropic’s Claude AI for writing comedy scripts optimized for short-form videos. The key is crafting a prompt that provides enough direction without overly constraining the AI. I picked Claude because of it’s large 75,000 word context window. That allows Claude to remember a long thread which makes it easier to feed video performance data back into Claude to help improve the next script.
My Prompt Structure:
First, I established some "absolute rules" that the AI assistant must follow, such as keeping the videos under 1 minute and making them PG and appealing to a wide audience.
I provided a list of the top 100 most popular nouns to focus each episode on. This gives the AI some constraints while still allowing creativity in how it approaches each noun.
I offered tips and suggestions for writing comedy and structuring short-form videos. The AI can use this as a framework while still exercising autonomy in crafting humor and narrative. I had Bing AI research and summarize comedy techniques for use in the prompt. For the short-form video guidelines, I used my personal experience and research notes to write a list of key tips on how to structure short form videos.
I explained to Claude how I will produce the videos and then provide the real video performance data to help it improve subsequent video scripts. I instructed it to learn from the watch time metrics with the goal of increasing the watch time. As I started producing the videos, I gave Claude view count data and asked it to also optimize for views.
Here’s my full prompt:
Until I write "end absolute" these are rules that always need to be followed: Lets make a fictional comedy news series with Ai generated images - make each episode of the series about popular and recognizable nouns
Featuring a presenter/host that comments on the images
Let's play a game - Let's create scripts for this series, one episode at a time, and the goal will be to get the episode watch time percentage per episode as close to 100% as possible. First, you will create the script. I will make the video and then share the time percentage. Use that data to make a better script for the next episode that gets closer to the 100% watch time percentage.
Each episode should be less than 1 minute. Also known as "short form".
The comedy should be PG and appeal to wide audiences.
end absolute
The top 100 most popular and recognizable nouns. focus on one at a time per episode:
**[Here I listed the 100 most popular and recognizable nouns that I generated in a separate thread]**
Here are some tips on how to write comedy. These are loose tips that do not have to be absolute rules, yet are good to keep in mind when writing:
Understand Your Nouns: Each episode focuses on popular and recognizable nouns. These could be anything from celebrities, events, places, or even objects. The key is to understand these nouns thoroughly. Research their history, their significance, and their impact on society.
Create a Strong Host Character: Your presenter/host is the face of your show. Develop a strong, humorous character for your host - someone who can deliver jokes, engage with the audience, and comment on the images in a funny and entertaining way.
Use Observational Humor: This form of humor is about finding the funny in everyday situations. For your series, this could mean pointing out the absurdities or peculiarities of your chosen noun.
Incorporate Satire and Parody: These are powerful tools for comedy writing. Use satire to critique or mock the flaws or trends associated with your noun. Parody can be used to imitate the style or persona of your noun in a humorous way.
Wordplay and Puns: Play around with language related to your noun. Create puns or jokes that revolve around the name or characteristics of your noun.
Absurdity and Surprise: Introduce unexpected twists related to your noun. This could be an absurd fact, a surprising event, or a ridiculous scenario involving your noun.
Timing and Delivery: This is crucial for comedy. Practice the timing of your jokes and comedic commentary to maximize their impact.
Visual Humor: Since your series involves images, think about how you can use these visually to enhance your comedy. This could involve funny graphics, exaggerated photoshops of your noun, or humorous visual representations of events or situations related to your noun.
Here are some tips on how to structure short form videos. These are loose tips that do not have to be absolute rules, yet are good to keep in mind when writing:
Attention grabbing, thumb-stopping intro - topics everyone can relate to - universally fascinating, or interesting to a large group of people - news story’s - story’s about well-know companies or celebrities - amazing science - pop-culture stories
Video Dynamics - visually interesting - new “visual refresh” every 3 secs
Drive comments- select topics people can react to with opinions - add call to actions
Authentic, casual production Feels “real” - not an ad - look like not trying - don’t make production complex
It’s not about the person it’s about the story - quick and funny or interesting - shareable with parents and friends-
Visual anchors - “look at this thing” - repeat them to create continuity of story- then create contextual bridges to link them “explain it”So far, I have published 3 episodes using this AI-assisted process for generating optimized comedy scripts. I’m using Midjourney and Runway for visuals in addition to Google’s MusicML. You can watch them in the “Shorts” section of my YouTube channel. I’m also posting them on TikTok and Instagram, however, the series has started to gain some momentum on YouTube Shorts. The key now will be maintaining consistency and leveraging the AI's continually improving capabilities. Here’s some of the initial data from the first few episodes:
As I feed more performance data back into the AI and refine the prompts, I will be interested to see if the scripts become even more engaging and humorous. My goal is to produce entertaining content on a consistent basis in order to build a long-term audience. I'm excited to see where this AI-human collaboration takes my production workflows next.
As a creative professional with 10+ years of experience in media workflows, I have gained insight into the many details involved in creating feature films, advertisements, YouTube videos, and other forms of digital media. This is my space for sharing creative workflow ideas and developments. Thank you for joining me in the Creative Workflow Lab.
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