A Guide to AI Camera Movement: How to Add Dynamic and Creative Camera Moves and Shot Angles to Your AI Videos

The best—and perhaps worst—thing about AI is that it seems so easy. We’ve all seen examples of what AI can do to generate images and videos. Yet, we don’t always get to see the amount of work that goes into the prompting (and sometimes editing) of these AI-generated examples.

If you’re someone who’s started to explore how AI can be used for video production, then you’ve probably already learned that it isn’t usually as easy as typing in a short, one-sentence prompt and getting back a perfect video composition.

Yet, just because it’s not that simple today doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future. And, more helpful for today, it’s also not too difficult to change, edit, and even add camera moves and directions to your AI videos if you use the right tools.

So, let’s look at some ways in which you can use the AI camera movement controls and director’s mode in Runway’s popular AI video model to bring your AI compositions to life for your video projects.

Getting started with Runway

Now, before we go into the camera control features offered by Runway, let’s look at how to simply get started with Runway’s latest video model, Gen-3 Alpha. If you've used other AI text-to-video or text-to-image or models in the past, like Midjourney or DALL-E, you’ll probably be familiar with how this works.

But for those needing a quick refresher, here are the steps to follow to get started with Runway Gen-3 Alpha.

Head to Text/Image to Video tool and select Gen-3 Alpha from the model dropdown
Add a text prompt
Select 5s or 10s video to generate
720p generations take about 60s for a 5s video, or 90s for a 10s video
The more detailed you can make the text prompt, the more Gen-3 Alpha will shine
- Include things like subject, scene, lighting, camera, movements and more
In addition to visual details, Gen-3 Alpha can be prompted for subject action, camera action, speed, transition, and more
Gen-3 Alpha works with a wide variety of prompt structures, from super simple to more complex
If you’re looking for inspiration, separate the prompt into a visual description and a camera description
- Example: Visual: A pillow fort in a cozy living room. The pillow fort is made from an assortment of quilts, fabrics, and pillows Camera motion: A handheld camera smoothly zooms into the entrance of the pillow fort, revealing an ancient castle in the interior
You can check Runway’s Help Center or Discord if you have more questions.

How to access camera controls for AI video

While Runway isn’t the only AI video model currently available to content creators,it’s the one that has perhaps the most robust AI camera movement controls. So, with that in mind, let’s look further into how to use one of the most helpful tools.

Using Gen-3 Alpha Turbo’s camera controls, creators can plan out all types of camera movements and effects. Here’s how you can get started and up to speed with these generative AI camera controls:

Head to Generative Video, then Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, and upload an image
Camera Control allows you to plan specific AI video movements for your scene:left/right, up/down, in/out, pan left/right, tilt up/down, and rotate clockwise/counter-clockwise.
The camera speed is determined by how close your subject is to the camera
- Use smaller values when your subject is closer and larger values when your subject is far away
Camera Control will generally work better if you provide a text prompt to help guide your generation (for example, where you want the camera to move, what you want your subject to be doing, add more to the scene)
Try using presets for inspiration, found underneath the prompt box

Advanced camera controls with Runway Gen-3 Alpha Turbo

Furthermore, once you're familiar with camera controls in Runway, you’ll see an impressive number of sophisticated controls that you can tailor and maneuver around for your AI compositions.

In particular, it’s worth highlighting Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, a more credit-efficient model in the Gen-3 Alpha family that can generate faster at a lower cost. With Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, users can still use camera controls to specify camera movement direction and intensity when using an input image.

You can check out a full guide to using camera controls in Runway Gen-3 Alpha Turbo here.

A Guide to AI Camera Movement: How to Add Dynamic and Creative Camera Moves and Shot Angles to Your AI Videos

Getting started with Runway

How to access camera controls for AI video

Advanced camera controls with Runway Gen-3 Alpha Turbo

More AI video creation resources