Two real job photos, two short Kling 4.0 shots: the push-in prompts with blanks for your house, the settings, the credit costs and the mistakes that waste them.
Swipe or tap Next · checked on 2026-10-20
Not technical? Start here. Copy this prompt into ChatGPT or Claude (the free versions work) and it walks you through the whole guide, one step at a time, in plain English. It asks before it assumes anything and checks with you before anything that costs money, reaches a real customer or deletes something. The rest of the page is the same guide, written out, if you'd rather do it yourself.
Just want the prompt from the video? It's under The shot prompts below.
The walkthrough prompt (copy all of it) · lines 1-4 of 52. Copy all copies the whole prompt; read it in full on the page.
Hi! Please be my patient guide for this step-by-step guide from Receipts Group: "Turn your before and after photos into a drone-style roof ad"
The guide is here: https://receiptsgroup.com/guides/kling-before-after-roof-ad (open it if you can; if you can't, everything you need is below).
About me: I run a roofing or home-service company and I'm not technical. Use plain words and short sentences.Two photos become four frames, the four frames become two short shots, and the cut between them does the before and after. Here's the whole thing on one screen.
B and C are the same crop of two photos taken from the same spot. That's the whole trick: on the cut, the frame doesn't move and the roof is suddenly new.
An ad shows your work, so both photos have to be your own real photos of a job your company actually did. Don't make an “after” with AI, don't show a roof you didn't do, and don't borrow somebody else's job. In my video, the after was an AI edit of the before, made for the demo, and that's how it lined up so perfectly. On a real ad that's a fake after. Line up two real photos instead. Kling only moves the camera between them.
Pick a spot where the whole front of the roof shows, like across the street. Note exactly where you stood (the crack in the sidewalk, the mailbox), and stand there again for the after. Same direction, same zoom (leave it at 1x), phone held upright both times. Take a few each time, so you can pick the pair that matches best.
Don't tidy it up. The tarp, the streaks, the missing shingles: that's the story. The whole ad is the trip from ugly to brand new, so the uglier the before, the better it plays.
If you want the golden-hour look from my video, take the after late in the day when the sun is low. Asking Kling to change the light is one more change, and every change is a chance to drift. Shoot the light you want.
If you already fly a drone on jobs, a high photo from the same spot before and after is the “start high over the old roof” version from the video. Same rule: same spot, same height, same direction. With ground photos, the shot starts where you stood, and that works fine.
I'd ask the homeowner before their house goes in an ad. Keep the house number, street signs and anything with a name on it out of the frame, or crop it out.
You can still make each shot on its own: Shot 1 from the before, Shot 2 from the after. Join them with a quick flash or whoosh in your editor instead of a match cut. Then shoot the next job from one spot.
Put the after photo on top of the before in any photo or video editor that lets you change a layer's opacity, and set the top one to about half see-through. The roof edges, the ridge and the corners of the house should sit in the same place. A little off? Nudge or scale the after photo until they match. Never paint or change the roof itself.
Crop to the 9:16 shape (tall, like a phone screen), at least 1080 pixels wide. Start from the full-size photos, not screenshots. Kling takes the video's shape from the first frame, so this crop is what makes the ad vertical.
The easy way to get the same crop on B and C: keep both photos lined up as layers from the last step, crop once, and export each layer. Check every frame is still at least 1080 pixels wide. A small or blurry frame gives you a blurry video.
Something like A-before-wide, B-before-close, C-after-close, D-after-closer. Mixing up a first frame and a last frame means you pay for a video that runs backwards.
Each shot's start and end frame are the same photo with a small camera move between them, so Kling has nothing to invent. When our end frames were different views, it had to make up everything in between, and that's where the drift came from.
These are the prompts from the ad in my video, with blanks for your house. Fill in every [bracket] with what's really in your photos, and delete the examples. Use the same words for the house and the light in every shot: the model reads each prompt fresh, so the same words keep it the same house.
Shot 1: the slow push in on the old roof (5 seconds, frame A to frame B)
Camera: [24mm drone lens / phone camera at eye level]. Starts [where you took the photo from, e.g. high in front of the house / across the street at eye level], looking at the front of the [one-story / two-story] [colour] [stucco / brick / siding] house with the [hip / gable] roof, the old roof in the centre of the frame: [what's wrong with it, e.g. worn grey shingles, dark streaks, a blue tarp on the upper left, missing shingles on the right], the [what's on the left, e.g. palm tree on the front lawn] on the left, the [what's on the right, e.g. garage] on the right. 0.0 to 1.0 seconds: the camera holds still at the start position. 1.0 to 3.0 seconds: a slow push in begins, moving straight toward the centre of the old roof, gently easing in, keeping the same heading and the same angle. 3.0 to 5.0 seconds: the push continues at a steady pace, the old roof growing to fill the middle of the frame, [the worst of it, e.g. the tarp and the missing shingles] coming into clear detail. Ends close on the old roof at the same angle, the roof filling the middle of the frame, matching the end frame. The house, the old roof, the lawn and the shadows stay fixed; only [the trees, e.g. the palm fronds] move gently in a light breeze. Photoreal, [the light in your photo, e.g. warm low sun from the left, long soft shadows], natural colours, crisp sharp detail, bright and clean. Smooth, stable, eased motion, level horizon. No text, no letters, no logos, no signs, no house numbers.Shot 2: the new roof (3 seconds, frame C to frame D)
Camera: [the same lens as shot 1]. Starts close on the new roof of the [the same house words as shot 1], [the same angle as shot 1], the roof filling the middle of the frame: brand-new [colour] [architectural shingles / metal panels / tile] in crisp straight [courses / rows], the [what's at the edge, e.g. palm tree] at the [left] edge. 0.0 to 1.0 seconds: the camera holds still at the start position. 1.0 to 3.0 seconds: the slow push in continues straight toward the centre of the new roof, keeping the same heading and angle, then eases to a gentle stop, [the light, e.g. the warm low sun raking across the new shingles]. Ends closer on the new roof's front slope at the same angle, [e.g. the ridge near the top of the frame], matching the end frame. The house, the new roof and the shadows stay fixed; the [shingles] stay crisp and sharp; only [the trees] move gently. Photoreal, [the same light words as shot 1], natural colours, crisp sharp detail, bright and clean. Smooth, stable, eased motion, level horizon. No text, no letters, no logos, no signs, no house numbers.Optional Shot 3: a slow slide across the new shingles (4 seconds)
Camera: 50mm macro lens on a motion-control slider. Starts a few inches above the new [colour] [shingles] at a low grazing angle, looking up the roof slope, the [courses] running across the frame, [where the light comes from, e.g. the low sun in the top-left corner]. 0.0 to 1.0 seconds: the camera holds still at the start position. 1.0 to 4.0 seconds: a slow, steady slide to the right, parallel to the [courses], at the same height and angle, [e.g. the warm sidelight raking across the granules] and the crisp shadow line under each [shingle] edge, easing to a gentle stop. Ends on the same [courses] a little further to the right, matching the end frame. Focus holds on the nearest [course]; the [shingles] stay perfectly still. Photoreal, [the same light words as shot 1], natural colours, crisp sharp detail. Smooth, stable, eased motion, level horizon. No text, no letters, no logos, no signs, no house numbers.This is what I described in the video: one shot that starts on the old roof and ends on the new one. First frame A (the before), last frame C (the after, cropped in). Kling will let you set it anywhere from 3 to 30 seconds. Keep it at 5.
One take: old roof to new roof (5 seconds, frame A to frame C)
Camera: [24mm drone lens / phone camera at eye level]. Starts [where you took the photo from], looking at the front of the [one-story / two-story] [colour] [stucco / brick / siding] house with the [hip / gable] roof, the old roof in the centre of the frame: [what's wrong with it]. 0.0 to 1.0 seconds: the camera holds still at the start position. 1.0 to 3.0 seconds: a slow push in begins, moving straight toward the centre of the roof, gently easing in, keeping the same heading and the same angle. 3.0 to 4.0 seconds: as the push continues, the old roof is replaced by the brand-new [colour] [shingles] in one smooth sweep from [left to right], the walls, windows, trees and lawn staying exactly the same. 4.0 to 5.0 seconds: the push eases to a gentle stop close on the new roof, matching the end frame. Only the roof changes; the house, the yard and the shadows stay fixed. Photoreal, [the light in your after photo], natural colours, crisp sharp detail, bright and clean. Smooth, stable, eased motion, level horizon. No text, no letters, no logos, no signs, no house numbers.The roof turning new in the middle of a shot is the hardest thing in this guide to get clean, so expect more tries. And longer isn't better: drift builds with every second. Our 30-second take went through six very different frames, which made it worse, but the length was part of it too. The two short shots are the safer way, because the roof changes on a cut instead of a morph.
Kling 4.0's options as Kling listed them on 2026-10-20. Kling changes its screens, so look for the same names: image to video, first frame, last or end frame, length, resolution.
You'll also see Omni-Ref, which mixes images, video, subjects and audio as references. You don't need it for this. And if you were hoping to wire this into your own app: Kling's API listed 4.0 as “coming soon” when I checked. The website and the app have it now.
Before you spend a credit, check every prompt against its frames. Most bad takes are a prompt that describes something the frames don't show. You can do it yourself with the list in Step 3, or paste this into ChatGPT or Claude. Before you attach a photo: crop out the house number and anyone's face.
Prompt: check my Kling prompt before I spend credits · lines 1-7 of 23. Copy all copies the whole prompt; read it in full on the page.
Please check this prompt for an AI video app (Kling 4.0) before I spend credits on it. The app animates a camera move between a first frame and a last frame, and both frames are my own real photos of a roofing job.
What my first frame shows:
[describe it, or attach it]
What my last frame shows:
[describe it, or attach it]Then make Shot 2 first. It's 3 seconds, the cheapest real test: about 40 credits at 1080p. Good: it sits still for about a second, moves smooth and slow, the house stays the same house, the shingle lines stay sharp, and it ends on frame D. Bad: the roof smears, windows move, something new shows up, or it never gets to D. Change one thing in the prompt and try again. Once Shot 2 is clean, make Shot 1.
Cut off the part where the camera sits still at the start of each shot. Let Shot 1 run all the way to its last frame, then start Shot 2 right before it starts moving. Same frame on both sides of the cut, new roof.
Land the roof change on a word or a beat in your music. In my video it lands on the word “new.”
Your company name, your number, a BEFORE and AFTER label: all of it goes on in your editor, never in the Kling prompt. Mute the clips' own sound, if they have any, and put your voice or music on.
Turn on the platform's AI label when you post. The roof is real and the camera move isn't, and people should know that. And don't caption it as drone footage if it isn't.
Measured in our own Kling 4.0 runs on 2026-10-20: about 13.5 credits a second at 1080p. We didn't measure 720p. Plan on a couple of tries per shot.
Normal. Kling holds the first frame for about half a second to a second and a half. That's why every prompt starts with a 1-second hold. Trim it in your editor.
The shot's too long or asks for too much. Split it into two shorter shots, each with its own first and last frame, and give each one move.
The prompt describes something the frames don't show, or the frames don't agree. Describe only what's in the photos, keep the "stays fixed" line, and make both frames from the same photo.
Write the seconds into the prompt and make the last frame a crop of the first, not a different view.
The two photos weren't taken from the same spot. Line them up with the half see-through check, crop to match, or put a quick flash or whoosh on the cut.
Video models make up text. Keep the no-text line at the end of every prompt, crop signs out of your frames, and cover anything left in your editor.
The shape comes from the first frame. Crop it to 9:16 before you upload it.
1080p needs a Kling membership (as of 2026-10-20). 4K isn't turned on for 4.0 yet.
Start from the full-size photo, keep every frame at least 1080 pixels wide, and pick 1080p if you have it.
That's the hard one. Try again, or switch to the two short shots and let the cut do the change.
Kling updates its screens. Look for the same names: image to video, first frame, last or end frame, length and resolution.
That's fine. Everything it needs is in the walkthrough prompt. Tell it to keep going without the link.
What each page backs up is listed at the end of the full guide.
Two real photos, two short shots, and the cut does the before and after for you. The uglier the before, the better it plays.
Want help setting this up? Receipts Group builds these systems.
Open the full guide as a page (every file in full, plus the table of contents).