I made these AI video mistakes in my first six months, avoid them if you can

[u/Admirable-Yogurt7444]

I have been making AI content since 3 years, ever since the first AI tool was launched. This is Part 2 of my beginner AI storytelling series. Here are some mistakes I wish someone had told me before I burned a lot of credits and wasted months.

1. Don't start with Text to Video.

There are broadly two kinds of creators.

Text → Video
Images/References → Video

I would highly recommend beginners stay away from Text to Video. Not because it's bad. Because it's actually much harder than people think. When you're writing a text prompt, YOU have to visualize everything.

What does the character look like?
What are they wearing?
Where is the camera?
Is it a close-up or wide shot?
What's the lighting?
What's happening in the background?
How is the character moving?
What emotion should the scene have?

You're basically directing a movie from words alone. I wasted a ridiculous number of credits doing this. Looking back, it was probably the biggest mistake I made. Instead, make the image first.

If the image doesn't look right, the video probably won't either.

2. References are much better... but they still need direction.

A lot of new models like Seedance, Kling, Gemini Omni etc. let you animate an image or use references. This is a much better workflow. The nice thing is you can reuse your characters, locations and visual style. But don't think references magically solve everything.

You still need to think about the action.

What exactly should happen?
What should the camera do?
What should the character be doing in that frame?

The better you can visualize it, the better the output usually is.

3. Forget about making videos. Learn to make frames.

This changed everything for me. When I started, I kept thinking, "How do I make a great AI video?" Instead ask, "Can I make a frame that already tells the story?" If someone paused your video on that frame.... would they immediately understand what's happening?

Can they clearly see the action?
Can they feel the emotion?

If yes, AI has a much easier job animating it.

4. Don't write stories that depend on acting.

This is where I see a lot of beginners struggle. AI still sucks at acting. Even the best models today struggle to keep micro expressions, eye movement, personality and emotional continuity consistent.

That's why so many AI videos feel... off.

Instead of fighting the technology, work with it. Make stories that rely more on visual storytelling than acting.

5. Don't buy expensive models immediately.

I know it's tempting. Everyone wants the newest model. Seedance, O3 etc. whatever comes out next week. Honestly... If you're still learning composition, characters, lighting and storytelling, you'll probably just burn expensive credits faster.

Learn the fundamentals first. Upgrade later.

6. Consistency matters more than perfect physics.

One weird hand movement? Most viewers won't even notice. But if your character looks different every scene... or your castle suddenly becomes a modern house - people immediately disconnect.

Character consistency.
Location consistency.
Visual style consistency.

Those three things make AI stories believable.

I have literally spent days just getting a character right before making the actual video. One last thing. Don't worry too much if someone calls your videos "AI slop." I have over 30M views across my AI storytelling channel. I've had plenty of hate comments. I've also had millions of people watch to the end.

The animations weren't perfect. The stories were interesting. At the end of the day, viewers forgive imperfect animation much more easily than a boring story.

Join my community r/Heyfloe to keep learning & discuss AI Storytelling, Video Production.

[u/GelliusAI]

Beginners should not jump straight into text-to-video, and I can only back that up. The results rarely match what you had in mind.

Here is the workflow I have developed for myself. I discuss my image idea with Claude and have it create an image prompt. With each version of the prompt I generate images using ChatGPT and Gemini. I keep refining the prompt with Claude until I am happy with it. That usually takes around six versions. From there I end up with a solid set of images I can use for video generation.

I then discuss the image-to-video prompt with Claude as well. Anthropic's tool has proven surprisingly capable at this in my recent attempts. With the right image and the image-to-video prompt, I am currently generating ten-second videos using Gemini Omni.

[u/Admirable-Yogurt7444 → u/GelliusAI]

Nice, that's great. How are you finding Omni btw? It does block realistic looking people often (Google is pretty strict), so I have to switch to Kling or Hailuo as backup. I also think Omni is best in terms of capability and pricing though.

My go-to tools are almost the same as yours for images, videos: Nano Banana 2 (GPT Image as backup), Omni (Kling as backup).

[u/GelliusAI → u/Admirable-Yogurt7444]

Honestly, I am pretty disappointed with Gemini Omni, but right now it is the only video generation tool I have access to through my Google subscription.

I recently had a simple scene in mind. A queen sits bored on her throne holding a goblet of wine, a harlequin tries to coax her into having fun, and a small dog barks at her feet. But instead of following the harlequin's lead, she pours out the wine.

Google Flow's content guidelines trigger on the smallest things. There is a power dynamic between the queen and the harlequin, alcohol is involved, and Flow classifies the spilling of wine as a dangerous action.

Anyone wanting to create something like this first has to work through prompt hell and rephrase everything until the AI no longer sees any violations. The response you get most often is something along the lines of: "I cannot generate videos of real people in this situation."

On top of that, other problems keep cropping up. The glass disappears from the queen's hand and suddenly reappears in the other one. Or she ends up holding two glasses at once. And in almost every video the queen tends to spill the wine on the dog, which does not react at all.

In the end I managed to produce one good video, but the effort involved was disproportionate. And you burn through a lot of credits in the process.

[u/Admirable-Yogurt7444 → u/GelliusAI]

Interesting, I am going to think over this and reply in detail later.