Louis Chi 用 Kling 4 一次生成 TikTok 熱門趨勢仿拍影片，公開完整流程與提示詞

I wrote this with AI assistance (Claude) and checked every number against our own files. The stills are from our own clip; the original TikTok is linked, not shown.

Our remake. Tap the picture to watch the 8-second clip.

I'm Louis Chi, and I work on RefVid, a tool that keeps the same character in every AI video shot. On 3 November we remade a trend that was taking off on TikTok, with our two demo characters, Leo and Mia. It took one generation and 688 credits.

This is the whole process, including the part where our first idea was wrong.

1. The trend

"My wife every year on November 1st" is an 8-second, one-take TikTok by thequistfamily. It was posted on 1 November and had 1.4 million views two days later. A husband calmly takes a drink from the fridge while his wife, in a red reindeer onesie, sprints past behind him trailing lit Christmas lights.

A second couple had posted the same format with the same punchline (1.3 million views). That told us it was a format people were copying, not a one-off.

The original's account on 3 November: the clip, outlined, at 1.4M views. We blurred the thumbnails; the video itself is only linked.

2. Read the frames, not the caption

Our first concept was guessed from the caption and one quick watch. It would have been a different joke:

Mia yanks a freezer open and mist rolls out; inside is a block of ice with a tiny Christmas tree frozen in it. She hugs the block, turns to the camera and grins as it starts to drip.

So we downloaded the original and made a contact sheet at 4 frames a second, plus 8 frames a second around the 4-second mark. The drink is only the setup. The punchline is the wife dashing past behind him at about 4 seconds, and we stopped before generating anything, so the wrong idea cost nothing.

A 4-frames-a-second contact sheet, here of our own take. We made the same one of the original to find its beats.

The real gag, as we remade it: he faces the camera with a drink…

…and she is already decorating behind him.

3. Copy the beats one to one

We changed only the people: Leo plays the husband, Mia the wife. Here is the original next to our take.

• Original 0.0–0.5 s: he stands at the fridge, hand on the handle. Ours 0.0–0.15 s: the same.
• Original 0.5–3.0 s: opens the fridge, takes out a can, closes the door. Ours 0.15–1.8 s: yanks the door open and reaches in.
• Original 3.0–4.0 s: turns to the camera, small smirk. Ours 1.8–2.3 s: hard cut, he faces the camera with a silver can.
• Original 4.0–5.0 s: his wife dashes past behind him with a garland, trailing lit lights. Ours 2.3–3.6 s: Mia runs through behind him, trailing lit lights.
• Original 5.0–6.0 s: he turns to look where she went. Ours 3.6–4.8 s: he looks after her; the lights stay on the floor.
• Original 6.0–8.2 s: he stares off to the side. Ours 4.8–8.0 s: hard cut to a closer shot, he stares, mouth open, and blinks once.

The run lands about a second earlier than in the original. That was on purpose: we wanted the remake a little faster.

4. Three shots, two hard cuts, one generation

The original has no cuts. We split ours into three shots of 2, 3 and 3 seconds inside one 8-second Kling 4 generation, each with its own prompt, and the model put a hard cut between them.

Why not four shots? Our studio takes up to three shots per clip, and in the original the smirk and the run happen in the same frame. Splitting them would have killed the joke, so the smile and Mia's run share the middle shot, filmed from the same spot as the first.

One key frame from each shot: 0.5 s, 3.0 s and 6.0 s.

5. Two review passes on the script

Before spending anything, the script went through two independent AI reviews. An AI-video director pass found 8 faults, then 2, then none. A Kling 4 prompt-engineer pass found 7, then none.

The script comes before any prompt, shot by shot with camera, set, light and action. An excerpt, shot 2's camera note:

Camera: identical position and lens to S1 (a jump cut in time, like a phone video
trimmed) — makes the background sprint readable because the doorway/kitchen
behind Leo is unchanged.

The biggest fix was the last shot. Before the review it told a different joke:

BEFORE  Tight close-up of Leo's face, the kitchen blurred behind him, a string of
        glowing Christmas lights now lying across the floor in the background.
        Leo turns back to the lens with a flat, deadpan stare, mouth closed, and
        holds completely still.

AFTER   Medium close-up from the waist up, the same kitchen behind Leo, who stands
        alone. Behind him one string of glowing multicolor Christmas lights lies in
        a long line across the floor. Leo keeps his body toward the camera and his
        head and eyes turned to frame right, staring blankly, mouth slightly open.

After the fix: he keeps staring after her, as in the original.

The other fixes that mattered:

• The length limit. Our studio allows 480 characters per Kling 4 shot once names become reference tokens. Shot 2 was 498 and came down to 475.
• The sprint. "In a flash" could read as a flash of light and gave Mia no entrance. It became "sprints fast in from frame left along the back wall … out of frame right".
• Small ones. The fridge is closed when shot 2 starts, so the door can't hide her exit. "Silver can" and "glowing multicolor Christmas lights" are worded the same in every shot, and the lights get an end state: "the lit string stays on the floor".
• No big grin. A grin at running speed in the background melts, so the prompt only asks that her face reads as Mia.

Mia at full speed: her face holds.

6. The exact prompts

Settings: Kling 4, 1080p, 9:16, 8 seconds (2 + 3 + 3). Leo and Mia are saved characters with four photos each. There was no first frame, so the kitchen comes from the first prompt.

Shot 1, 2 s:

Medium shot, phone camera at chest height. A bright, clean modern kitchen in daylight: white cabinets, sage-green walls, bare counters, a stainless-steel fridge at frame right, an empty open doorway in the back wall. Leo, in his navy shirt, stands alone, side-on, hand on the fridge handle. Right away, in one quick pull, he yanks the fridge door wide open, cold light spilling out, and holds it open, staring into the fridge. Fixed camera.

Shot 2, 3 s:

Same kitchen and shot, fridge closed. Leo, left of center, faces the camera, silver can at his chest, closed-mouth smirk. Then Mia, her reference face and copper bob, in a red fleece onesie neck to ankles, antler headband, garland on one shoulder, sprints fast in from frame left along the back wall, dragging glowing multicolor Christmas lights, out of frame right; the lit string stays on the floor. Leo snaps his head to frame right and holds. Fixed camera.

Shot 3, 3 s:

Medium close-up from the waist up, the same kitchen behind Leo, who stands alone. Behind him one string of glowing multicolor Christmas lights lies in a long line across the floor. Leo keeps his body toward the camera and his head and eyes turned to frame right, staring blankly, mouth slightly open, silver can at his chest, completely still. He blinks once, slowly, and keeps staring. Fixed camera.

Swap in your own character names to reuse them.

7. One take, and what came out differently

We generated once and kept it. The joke survived, both faces matched their photos and no extra people appeared.

Four things differ from the prompt. Mia came in from the right instead of the left, stopped to wave and ran back out on the same side. Leo's smirk came out as an open smile, and in the last shot he slowly turns toward the lens and blinks at 7.3 s.

None of it hurt the joke, so there was no retake and no trim. The clip runs the full 8.0 seconds and cost 688 credits: 8 seconds of Kling 4 at 1080p, which always comes with sound.

She leaves on the side she came in (3.5 s)…

…and at the end he turns to the lens (7.6 s). The prompt asked for neither; we kept both.

8. Caption and sound

The caption goes on in the edit, never in the prompt: "My wife every year on November 1st 🎄", white with a thin outline, near the top. Kling 4 makes its own audio, and we took it out.

On TikTok the clip went up with the trending "It's time" sound from TikTok's library, and on Instagram and X with the original's own sound, the way the trend's viewers know it. On YouTube and on our site it has our own arrangement of Jingle Bells, a public-domain tune.

What I'd tell anyone copying a trend

Download the original and read it frame by frame before writing a word. Copy its beats and its timing, change only the people, and let a second pair of eyes (human or AI) attack the script before you pay for a generation.

The full making-of, with the beat table and every still, is on our site.

Louis Chi works on RefVid, AI video with the same character in every shot.