29 August 2026

First Date, a short film with MiniMax H3

A one minute short film made with ComfyUI's stock MiniMax H3 reference-to-video template, with two characters who stay the same person from shot to shot, in the same restaurant, with the same voice.

A character turnaround sheet, a 3D layout of the room and a sample of the voice all go in at once, and the prompt says which subject is in which picture. Here are all twenty one clip prompts and the prompts for the reference images.

16 of the 21 clips were made before the way images are cited was fixed. Those pages show the prompt as generated and the revised version, one tab each.

Workflow: ComfyUI's stock MiniMax H3 reference-to-video template, untouched
Clips: 864×480, 24fps, 20 steps, on an RTX 3060 with 12GB
Voice: Mia's voice reference is attached on every clip where she speaks
Music: Turned off in the prompt on 20 of 21 clips and added in the edit instead

Watch on YouTube

MiniMax H3 reference to video: a short film. Opens on YouTube in a new tab.

What we found

How do you keep a character the same person from shot to shot?

Use H3's reference to video mode. It takes reference images, video and audio in one generation, so a character turnaround sheet, a 3D layout of the room and a voice sample go in together, and the prompt says which subject is in which picture.

Cite each image inside the definition of the subject it shows. A standalone <Picture N> entry acts as a shot anchor, and the one clip written that way lost the character's coat.

<Picture N> is numbered by the order images are wired into the node, not by anything in the prompt. H3 also keeps no voice between clips, so attach the same short voice reference to every clip where that character speaks.