Consistent characters in AI video: the same face in shot one and shot twenty

1. 01

   One written look, repeated exactly

   “A man in his 50s, grey beard, round glasses on a chain, brown corduroy jacket.” The same words in every clip. Change one and the camera may change him.

2. 02

   Reference images when it matters

   Up to four images of a character, place or prop. The first clip is filmed from them, so the look starts right.

3. 03

   Continue, don't restart

   Each new 15-second clip is filmed as a continuation of the actual footage before it, so faces and clothes carry forward instead of being re-imagined.

4. 04

   Write down the facts

   Which hand holds the key, where the door is, what colour the car is. Fixed facts go into every clip.

We filmed the same 15-second scene seven different ways and compared them by eye. Plain text kept the scene natural but let a shirt change colour between cuts. Reference images held faces, glasses and coats across cuts. Letting the camera rewrite our instructions broke the references: it put a man in front of the photo's grey wall and changed a prop's colour. We keep rewriting off.

Across hundreds of reviewed shorts, drift grew with length when long shorts were stitched from each clip's last frame. Filming each clip as a continuation of the real footage, and repeating the written looks, is what we use now. These are our own tests, not a lab study, but they're the rules every short here is filmed by.

• Small facial marks like scars or moles. They tend to render as black smudges or wander.
• Two people in a car filmed from both sides. The steering wheel swaps sides.
• Mirrors, which add faces that shouldn't be there.
• More than three people on screen; extras borrow each other's faces.
• A new look word halfway through: “jacket” in one clip, “coat” in the next.

When viewers tap Watch more and someone makes the next part, it's written from every part before it and opens on the last frame of the part before, with the cast inherited. Add reference images to Part 1 for even tighter control. More in the AI series guide.