A creative-direction (taste) layer for music videos and short-form edits in the angelcore / cloud-trance / hyperpop visual family. Distills a named-genre aesthetic vocabulary, a mood + color + light system, and a beat-synced editing grammar, then chains ECC's video skills (video-editing, fal-ai-medi

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 : Family Genres in it Reads as Ethereal / divine spiritualism, glacial folk, beacons, zen core, fairy tale weightless, holy, glowing, soft Hyperpop / Y2K cyber cyberdelia, acid house, acid nora, neo aggressano, new liquid glossy, chrome, neon, kawaii cyber Dark / occult dark academia, smoke nostalgia, communist core, abstract tech high contrast, ominous, grain Retro / print retro surfers, art deco, adventure pulp, classic advertising, magazine collage, bumper stickers flat, graphic, halftone, nostalgic Organic / textural microbiology core, weaving patterns, fruitage retro, cozy blanket, pacific punk wave tactile, macro, woven, wet Systemic / data numbers, mazes, code web, heatmap, pixel, 8 bit gridded, generative, schematic 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. Step ECC skill to load What it does here Structure & cut video editing FFmpeg cut/concat/reframe, EDL, scene/silence detection Generate b roll fal ai media image/video models per genre preset Compose & overlay remotion video creation beat synced <Sequence s, text, blooms, masks Motion timing motion foundations , motion patterns , motion advanced easing, springs, light/particle motion Server side video videodb smart reframe, indexing if footage is large Distribution content engine per platform cuts, covers, captions Voice/lyric VO video editing (ElevenLabs section) only if a spoken layer is needed 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: 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: Section Genre/mood lean Grammar Shot ideas Intro Ethereal/divine, near black slow push, no cuts ember bloom in the void; a single shaft of gold; dust rising Verse Dark + macro hero on black hard cuts every 2 beats key, eye, gear, water drop, petal — rhythmic macro montage Drop Hyperpop bloom + crystalline speed ramp in, cut on the one, fast candy pink figure, chrome, iridescent bokeh, winged ascension Bridge Spiritualism, weightless one long held shot, color pop clouds + halo; single red accent punches once Drop 2 as Drop, intensify add divine flash blooms on transients wings open, glitter burst, light leaks maxed Outro Glacial folk, cold calm slow fade to black crystalline structure dissolving; ember dies out 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) Remotion Composition Skeleton (beat synced) 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 — 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