Image & video · Midjourney, Flux · 4 min read
Keeping one character consistent across a 3-shot sequence
Split identity anchors from camera and scene variables so faces stop drifting between wide, medium and close-up shots.
Why characters drift
Most drift comes from rewording. When the face description changes even slightly between prompts, or the lens and angle are written into the character lines, the model reinterprets the person every time. The fix is structural: treat identity as a locked block and only edit the parts that should change.
The two anchor blocks
Write the character once as an anatomy invariant and a wardrobe anchor. Paste both blocks word for word into every shot. Keep lens, angle and lighting out of them.
[ANATOMY INVARIANT]: {apparent age}, {bone structure}, {immutable traits, e.g. thin scar on left cheek, copper-threaded side braid}.
[WARDROBE ANCHOR]: {core garments with materials, e.g. worn tan leather utility vest over a charcoal waffle-knit henley}.Shot 01: establishing wide (24mm)
Low angle, full body small in frame. This shot sets location and light for the whole sequence.
Shot 02: medium action (50mm)
Eye level, waist up, mid-motion. Only the SHOT and SCENE lines change.
Shot 03: close-up reaction (85mm)
Tight, shallow depth of field, rim light. The anchors stay untouched.
Tip from the community: keep a trait sheet
A short written trait sheet (eye color, scar placement, hair length) pasted verbatim into every prompt beats any clever wording. Reword the camera and lighting, never the face lines.
Pro tip: when anchors are enough vs. when to train a LoRA
Anchors hold up well for multi-shot coverage in the same scene: lens changes, small angle shifts, steady lighting. They start to slip on big lighting swings (daylight to neon), extreme wide or 180° angle changes, and long campaigns with 50+ images, because the model reinterprets the text each time. That's where a character LoRA pays off, and the real work there is dataset prep, not training. Credit to a r/FluxAI creator (LoRA Dataset Studio) for this one. Your anchor blocks still sit on top of a LoRA for scene and lighting.
Model notes
Midjourney: add --cref with the shot 01 URL and --cw 100 for shots 02-03 (--cw 30 if you change the outfit on purpose). Flux: reuse the same seed for a first pass. Reference images help a lot; the structure alone won't guarantee a perfect match.
Know a trick other creators should learn?