Director Chair
All groups
Edit effects

Ken Burns on a still

A photo gains depth and time.

Use when
Photo galleries, case montages, archive material.

Shown with: Slow zoom in. Clip by AI Camera Movements, shown with permission.

Prompt instructions

Give me an edit brief: where it goes on the timeline, the exact settings, and what to check before export, for a short video about [your product], for [your audience]. The technique is ken Burns on a still: a photo gains depth and time. How it works: a slow push and pan across the still photo, which resolves from blurred and dim to sharp as it appears. It is right for: photo galleries, case montages, archive material. In our teardown of 30 showreel templates the repeated signatures were a slow Ken Burns on every photo and a blur-in on photo reveals. Be concrete: numbers, seconds and settings, no theory. Ask me one question first if something you need is missing.

The same prompt works in Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini.

Say it like this

A slow push and pan across the still photo, which resolves from blurred and dim to sharp as it appears.

Watch out

Related

Sources

Own words from Director Chair field notes on motion graphics Checked 2026-11-13.

For agents: this card as markdown, as JSON.