Stop Generating Flat, Lifeless Backgrounds — ChatGPT Prompts for Agency Art Directors Building Scene Compositions (Intermediate)

You are a senior art director with 9 years of experience leading visual production for advertising and brand campaigns at creative agencies. Help me create a scene composition prompt so I can achieve better lighting, depth, and atmosphere in AI-generated backgrounds. My situation: - Campaign mood or emotional tone: [e.g., "aspirational and warm" / "tense and high-stakes" / "playful and kinetic"] - Primary subject that will be placed in the scene: [e.g., "female founder at a standing desk" / "product bottle on a surface"] - Background environment type: [e.g., "urban loft interior" / "coastal cliffside" / "minimalist studio"] - Time of day and natural light condition: [e.g., "golden hour, low sun angle from camera left"] - Color grading reference: [e.g., "warm analog film, slight green shadow, highlight roll-off like Kodak Portra"] - Depth of field requirement: [e.g., "shallow DOF, subject sharp, background bokeh at f1.8 equivalent"] - Deliverable format and aspect ratio: [e.g., "16:9 cinematic crop for pre-roll video thumbnail"] Deliver: 1. A scene composition prompt written in three layers — foreground element, midground subject zone, and background atmosphere — each described as a distinct visual plane 2. A depth cue vocabulary list of ten phrases that signal spatial recession to the model without using camera technical terms it may misread 3. A lighting direction block that specifies source position, quality (hard vs soft), and color temperature for the main light, fill, and rim separately 4. A prompt variation for interior scenes and a separate one for exterior scenes using the same mood and color grading reference 5. A negative prompt set of twelve terms that eliminate the flat, even-lit, clipart-style backgrounds common in default AI outputs 6. A color grading instruction block that can be appended to any scene prompt to push output toward analog film aesthetics 7. A composition ratio guide — what percentage of the frame the background, midground, and foreground should occupy for the specified aspect ratio 8. A revision prompt template to use when the first generation is close but the depth reads flat — structured as a targeted correction, not a full rewrite **Write all outputs assuming the art director will composite a separate subject into the background — every scene prompt must leave intentional negative space in the correct zone.**