Locking the first location: the kitchen | Academy

The location is what makes or breaks the whole ad. A plasticky, fake-looking kitchen can't be prompted away later — so the bar here is the same for every location: bright, clean, high-end commercial.

Generate at a 3/4 angle, not head-on

The kitchen prompt stays simple — modern apartment kitchen, bright daylight, commercial look — but the angle matters more than the wording. A 3/4 angle gives the room depth for Seedance to hold onto when the camera moves later, which wins far more often than a flat, head-on shot.

Two kitchens come out of the batch worth keeping: one warmer, one brighter and crisper.

Two kitchen generations kept from the batch — the left warmer and more atmospheric, the right brighter and crisper.

Test the location and the hero together

With two hero keyframes and two kitchens on the table, the only way to know which combination actually works is to run all four. The same simple prompt goes into every test — hero walks into the kitchen, headphones on, dances a little — plus the location, the character sheet, and the headphones attached. Nothing else changes between the four.

Same prompt, every single time — swap only the hero or the location, never both at once. Changing one variable per test is the only way to see what's actually making the difference.

Side by side, the winner is obvious. In the darker kitchen the faces vanish into shadow on both heroes; the brighter kitchen looks like an actual commercial. And of the two heroes, the curly-haired one owns the frame — better dancer, better presence, better fit for the space. Character A, Kitchen B: winners locked.

Editing the locked kitchen for the scene

Locking a location isn't the end of it — the scene still needs the hero to make coffee and then leave, and the kitchen as generated doesn't support that action. Rather than re-rolling the whole location, the locked kitchen goes to GPT Image 2.0 with a targeted edit: clear the island top, add a gas stove on the left counter, and swap the TV on the right wall for a door — keep everything else the same.

The kitchen after the GPT Image 2.0 edit — island counter mostly cleared, a gas stove added on the left, a door in place of the TV on the right.

That's the first location locked: same room, same style, now built to support the action the scene actually needs.