taste

Taste

Most AI video advice stops at how to render frames. This skill is the layer above that: what the frames should look like, in what order, cut to what rhythm, so the result reads as one intentional thing instead of a pile of generations.

It encodes a specific taste — the angelcore / cloud-trance / hyperpop family (Bladee "Silver Surfer"-era ethereal trance crossed with heavy angelcore) — distilled from a corpus of saved Reels and a tour through a ~70-entry visual-genre library. It is opinionated on purpose. Taste is a point of view, not a menu.

The companion file references/genre-taxonomy.md holds the full named-genre catalog. This file is the actionable layer: mood, grammar, pipeline, and a beat-mapped shot plan.

When to Activate

• Building a music video, lyric video, fancam, or visualizer.
• Making a short-form edit / reel where the feel matters more than the information.
• Driving AI b-roll generation (fal.ai, Veo, Kling, etc.) and the prompts need a coherent direction instead of one-off vibes.
• Assembling a moodboard or choosing a visual genre before any rendering.
• The user says "taste", "make it feel like X", "give it a direction", "angelcore", "cloud trance", "hyperpop edit", "Bladee", "dreamcore", or names a saved reference.
• The current edit works but reads as flat, generic, AI-slop, or stylistically incoherent.

This skill sits on top of video-editing (the mechanics) and remotion-video-creation (the renderer). Use those for how. Use this for what and why.

Core Thesis

1. Taste is the last layer, and it must be decided first. video-editing correctly says taste is the final human pass. The trap: if you only decide taste at the end, every generation and cut upstream was a guess. Pick the direction before the first prompt, then let it constrain everything.
2. Coherence beats novelty. One look executed across 30 shots beats 30 looks. A named genre (below) is a constraint that buys coherence for free.
3. Cut to the song, not to the footage. In a music video the timeline is the waveform. Every hard cut lands on a beat or a transient. Frame math is in the pipeline section.
4. Generate selectively, edit ruthlessly. AI makes b-roll that does not exist; it does not make taste. You still throw away 80%.

The Aesthetic Vocabulary (distilled)

The reference corpus tours a large library of named visual genres. The full list lives in references/genre-taxonomy.md. The useful move is not memorizing 70 names — it is seeing that a genre name is a complete prompt-and-grade preset. When you pick one, you inherit its palette, texture, lighting, and subject matter as a unit.

The genres cluster into families. Pick a primary family and at most one accent:

For the current project, the primary is Ethereal / divine with a Hyperpop / Y2K-cyber accent — i.e. holy light and crystalline bloom, punctuated by chrome and neon. That pairing is the angelcore × cloud-trance brief.

The Mood System — angelcore × cloud-trance

Distilled directly from the strongest reference reels. This is the concrete grade.

Palette

• Base: near-black void (#05060a) and bone white (#f4f1ea). Most frames are one or the other.
• Divine accent: molten gold / ember orange (#ffb24d → #ff7a18) — the one warm light in the dark.
• Crystalline accent: iridescent violet→cyan→magenta bokeh (#8a6bff, #4fc3ff, #ff6ad5) — the hyperpop bloom, used in bright frames.
• Danger accent (sparingly): a single glowing red (#ff2a2a) on monochrome — for one or two shock cuts only.
• Hyperpop subject: candy pink hair / chrome / glossy white against blue sky.

Rule: one accent per shot. Gold lives in dark frames; iridescence lives in light frames; never both in one shot.

Light & texture

• Darkness pierced by a single warm source (ember bloom, divine shaft). High contrast, deep blacks.
• Crystalline / glitter bokeh, lens flares, bloom, light leaks — heavenly, not dirty.
• Film grain + subtle chromatic aberration on the dark frames; clean gloss on the bright frames.
• Macro detail on negative space: a hero object centered on black (key, eye, gear, petal, water).
• Subjects: winged figures, clouds, halos, angels, crystalline structures, candy-cyber portraits.

Motion

• Slow, floating, weightless camera (drift, slow push, slow orbit) — cloud trance.
• Bursts of speed only at the drop. Otherwise everything breathes.
• Particles rising (embers, dust, glitter) — upward motion = ascension.

The Editing Grammar (distilled)

From the reference edits, the techniques that recur and define the style:

1. Beat-locked hard cuts. No dissolves in the verse/drop. Cut on the kick. The eye should feel the BPM.
2. Hero-on-black macro inserts. A single sharp object centered in black negative space, held for 1–2 beats, then cut. Rhythmic montage of these = the cloud-trance signature.
3. Bloom / explosion reveal. A white or ember bloom that blows out the frame on a transient, then resolves into the next shot. The "divine flash" transition.
4. Color-pop on monochrome. Run a passage in B&W, then a single colored element (red eye, gold flame, pink hair) punches through on the downbeat.
5. Speed-ramp into the drop. Ramp footage from slow to fast across the last bar before the drop, hard-cut to tempo on the one.
6. Caption keyword highlight (for talking-head / lyric sections only). All-caps, one or two words highlighted in the accent color, synced to the vocal. Use for lyric video, not for the pure visualizer.
7. Reaction PiP (for explainer/edit-commentary only). Picture-in-picture talking head over b-roll. Out of scope for the music video itself; documented because the corpus uses it heavily.

Do-nots: crossfade transitions in tempo sections; more than one accent color per shot; a shot held past its musical phrase; readable on-screen UI chrome (crop it out); mixed aspect ratios in one timeline.

The Pipeline — mixing the ECC video skills

This skill is the conductor. Each ECC skill is an instrument. Do not skip layers.

0. TASTE (this skill)        decide genre + mood + grammar BEFORE anything renders
1. STRUCTURE (video-editing) map the song: timestamps for intro/verse/drop/bridge/outro
2. GENERATE (fal-ai-media)   make b-roll per genre prompt-presets; throw away 80%
3. CUT (video-editing/FFmpeg) beat-cut + reframe to 9:16; assemble selects on the grid
4. COMPOSE (remotion-video-creation) overlays, blooms, lyric text, beat-synced sequencing
5. MOTION (motion-* skills)  easing curves, light-leak/particle motion, transition timing
6. AUDIO (fal-ai-media)      transition risers/impacts to sell the cuts (track itself is in Ableton)
7. POLISH                    grade to the palette above, final pacing pass, export
8. DISTRIBUTE (content-engine) platform-native versions + caption/cover

Beat Math (lock cuts to the song)

The current track is 138 BPM, B minor. Constants:

• seconds_per_beat = 60 / 138 = 0.43478s
• frames_per_beat = fps × 0.43478 → 24fps: 10.43, 30fps: 13.04, 60fps: 26.09
• 1 bar (4 beats) = 1.7391s → 30fps: 52.17 frames
• 8-bar phrase = 13.913s → the loop length from the track

In Remotion, snap every from={} to a beat:

const FPS = 30;
const BPM = 138;
const beat = (n: number) => Math.round(n * (60 / BPM) * FPS); // beat(n) → frame
// cut on beats 0,4,8,... :  <Sequence from={beat(0)} durationInFrames={beat(4)}> ...

Beat-Mapped Shot Plan (this music video)

The song arrangement (from the project's own notes) is Intro → Verse → Drop → Bridge → Drop → Outro (~2:05). Map taste to each section:

fal.ai Prompt Presets (per mood)

Use with fal-ai-media. Each preset is the genre rendered to the project palette. Append 9:16, vertical, cinematic, film grain, volumetric light, no text, no watermark to all.

• Divine void: "a single molten-gold ember bloom rising in an infinite near-black void, deep shadow, one warm light source, weightless dust particles, holy, high contrast"
• Macro hero: "extreme macro of an antique brass key / a human eye / interlocking gears, centered on pure black negative space, razor-sharp detail, single rim light"
• Crystalline bloom: "iridescent violet-cyan-magenta crystalline bokeh, glittering light refraction, dreamy lens flares, heavenly glow, soft focus, hyperpop angelcore"
• Candy-cyber portrait: "candy-pink-haired figure, glossy chrome accents, bright blue sky, Y2K hyperpop, clean gloss, saturated, kawaii-cyber"
• Winged ascension: "a winged figure ascending into clouds, halo of light, bone-white and gold, volumetric god-rays, ethereal, religious iconography, soft"
• Cold outro: "pale crystalline ice structure slowly dissolving, glacial folk, cold blue and bone white, minimal, calm, fading to black"

Generate 6–10 per preset, keep 2–3. For motion, animate stills with an image-to-video model or generate short clips directly; keep camera moves slow per the Motion rules.

FFmpeg Recipes (cut + reframe)

# Reframe any landscape/raw clip to 9:16 (center crop)
ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf "crop=ih*9/16:ih,scale=1080:1920" v.mp4

# Beat-cut a clip to exactly N beats at 138 BPM (e.g. 2 beats = 0.8696s)
ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -t 0.8696 -c copy beat2.mp4

# Concatenate beat-selects into the verse montage
for f in selects/*.mp4; do echo "file '$f'"; done > concat.txt
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i concat.txt -c copy verse.mp4

# Strip UI chrome / status bar from a screen-recorded reference (crop top+bottom)
ffmpeg -i reel.mp4 -vf "crop=iw:ih-300:0:150" clean.mp4

Remotion Composition Skeleton (beat-synced)

import { AbsoluteFill, Sequence, Video, Img, useCurrentFrame, interpolate } from "remotion";

const FPS = 30, BPM = 138;
const beat = (n: number) => Math.round(n * (60 / BPM) * FPS);

const Bloom: React.FC = () => {
  const f = useCurrentFrame();
  const o = interpolate(f, [0, 3, 12], [0, 1, 0], { extrapolateRight: "clamp" }); // divine flash on a transient
  return <AbsoluteFill style={{ background: "radial-gradient(#fff,#ffb24d)", opacity: o, mixBlendMode: "screen" }} />;
};

export const AngelcoreMV: React.FC = () => (
  <AbsoluteFill style={{ background: "#05060a" }}>
    {/* Verse: macro hero-on-black, hard cut every 2 beats */}
    <Sequence from={beat(0)} durationInFrames={beat(2)}><Video src="/selects/key.mp4" /></Sequence>
    <Sequence from={beat(2)} durationInFrames={beat(2)}><Video src="/selects/eye.mp4" /></Sequence>
    <Sequence from={beat(4)} durationInFrames={beat(2)}><Video src="/selects/gear.mp4" /></Sequence>
    {/* Drop: crystalline bloom + flash on the one */}
    <Sequence from={beat(8)} durationInFrames={beat(16)}><Video src="/selects/crystalline.mp4" /></Sequence>
    <Sequence from={beat(8)} durationInFrames={beat(1)}><Bloom /></Sequence>
  </AbsoluteFill>
);

Render: npx remotion render src/index.ts AngelcoreMV out.mp4. See remotion-video-creation for project setup, audio track binding, and render flags.

Key Principles

1. Decide the genre before the first generation. Pick one primary family + one accent.
2. One accent color per shot. Gold in the dark, iridescence in the light, red once.
3. Every hard cut lands on a beat. Use the beat math; no transitions in tempo sections.
4. Hero-on-black macro is the signature move. Master it; it carries the verses.
5. Generate 10, keep 2. Coherence comes from rejection, not from prompting harder.
6. Crop the chrome. No status bars, captions, or UI in the final frame.
7. Taste is decided first and judged last. Set the direction, then defend it on every cut.

Related Skills

• video-editing — the mechanical pipeline (FFmpeg, reframe, EDL, polish) this sits on top of
• remotion-video-creation — programmable beat-synced composition and rendering
• fal-ai-media — generate the b-roll, transition SFX, and risers
• motion-foundations, motion-patterns, motion-advanced, motion-ui — easing and motion timing
• videodb — server-side smart reframe and indexing for large footage
• content-engine — platform-native distribution, covers, captions
• frontend-design-direction — the same "decide a direction first" discipline, for UI