Culture & Arts
Clear, light watercolor tones connect moonlit water towns, seasonal customs and modern homecomings, carrying the Mid-Autumn reunion through scenes from past to present.
01 / Background
This Mid-Autumn greeting had to place traditional festival culture and today’s family reunions in the same painting. The film takes a gongbi light-color scroll as its visual direction, bringing water towns, osmanthus, tea and lanterns into family gatherings, then pointing to journeys home across mountains and rivers by high-speed rail and air. The full moon is the constant theme, and the images unfold around festival memories and life today.
Costumes, objects and settings differ between past and present, so a shared full moon, a consistent blue palette and warm lamplight tie them together. The images needed the layered depth of a moonlit night while keeping the relationships between characters and the seasonal details easy to read in a vertical frame.
02 / Creative Highlights
Water-town night scenes easily sink into a single mass of black. The film uses haze blue, gray-green and warm off-white as its base, linking pale-gold lamplight with silver-blue moonlight. Nearby water, osmanthus and figures stay crisp while the distance gradually lightens, so the details of everyday life remain visible at night.
Waterways, old bridges, houses and distant mountains unfold layer by layer, with figures and lanterns in the foreground and middle ground. The eye travels from everyday details up close all the way to the mountains under the moon, so viewers see the festival customs and sense the whole setting.
Water towns, osmanthus tea and lanterns share the same light watercolor, moonlight and lamplight as high-speed trains, airplanes and a modern dinner table. Traditional festival imagery doesn’t stay in the past; it carries through to today’s travel and gatherings, and the greeting lands in the life people live now.
Reunion can’t be shown just by filming the dinner table again and again. In a courtyard, the family first drinks tea and eats mooncakes; then the image slowly dissolves into mountains and rivers under the moon, widening from the closeness of one family to a broader blessing. The full moon and blue palette never break as the picture pulls back from one family to the whole landscape.
03 / Scene Breakdown
The opening uses the cover layout to state the theme, then moves from the water-town lantern market and the full moon behind osmanthus to the moon in the water, establishing that “today is Mid-Autumn.”
A full moon at top left, an osmanthus branch swaying gently in the breeze at bottom right, and “Wishing you a happy Mid-Autumn Festival” written vertically in the center. The opening and the cover share the same layout.
Seen from above, a stone arch bridge spans the canal, a black-awning boat glides out from under it, shops on both banks glow with warm light, and mountains and a pagoda rise in the distance.
The camera slowly pushes in as osmanthus branches reach into the frame from both sides, a large full moon holds at the center, and a few tiny blossoms drift down.
An osmanthus branch reaches over the water and the moon falls into it, broken by fine ripples and then made whole again, matching the caption “the round moon up in the sky.”
Starting from a family of six in a Song dynasty courtyard, the film passes a river lantern and moves to a reunion dinner on a city terrace today, a cup of osmanthus tea and mooncakes in a small courtyard.
Grandparents, parents and two children sit around a round table, each holding a mooncake, as the father raises his toward the moon. The caption reads “a sign of families reunited on earth.”
A pink-and-white lotus lantern floats on the river, sending out rings of ripples, with a lantern-hung stone arch bridge behind it.
The backdrop changes to high-rises and the lights of countless homes; the family dines around a round table, painted in the same light watercolor and blue tones.
A hand lifts a celadon teapot and pours tea into a cup, with a lake and a pavilion behind, and the caption “everyone drinks osmanthus tea.”
In a present-day courtyard, the grandfather sits in a rattan chair, the children lean against the adults eating mooncakes, and tea and fruit are set out on the coffee table.
The picture pulls back from one family to the whole land: a river flows through a thousand years as a city grows along it, sky lanterns rise, and high-speed trains and planes carry people home.
A river winds through blue-green mountains as the camera flies forward, and ancient pagodas and high-rises gradually appear along its banks. The caption reads “clear moonlight spills over mountains and rivers, flowing on for a thousand years.”
Two parents and their two children look up and lift a sky lantern into the night together, with lights glowing along the river in the distance.
A high-speed train emerges from a tunnel and crosses mist-wrapped mountains on a viaduct.
A plane flies in from the upper right across a sea of clouds and peaks, with the moon hanging at the edge of the sky.
Those who traveled far return to the family dinner table, and the film ends on a family watching the lanterns by the river and the institution’s greeting.
A family of six shares home-cooked dishes around a round table, with the moon outside the window. The caption reads “May every home live in harmony, and every year in peace.”
The family stands at the riverside railing, looking at the lanterns filling the river and the lantern market on the far bank, as “The NDRC wishes you a happy Mid-Autumn Festival” appears above.
04 / Storyboards & Final Frames
In the order of the finished film: for each shot, what was painted and why, followed by the final image used in the film.
Shot 1.1
A full moon at top left, an osmanthus branch at bottom right, and blank space in the middle for the greeting. The opening, cover and ending share the same base image and layout, so the video and posters read as one set at a glance.
Shot 1.2
A high-angle view of the water town: a stone arch bridge and a black-awning boat up close, shops and passersby on both banks in the middle, and mountains, a pagoda and the moon in the distance. Near, middle and far layers of life in a single image.
Shot 1.3
Looking up from beneath an osmanthus tree, the branches form a ring with the round moon in the center, unobstructed by leaves. This shot set the color of the moon and the blue of the sky for the whole film.
Shot 1.4
The whole frame is water: the reflection of an osmanthus branch reaches in from the top left, and the moon’s reflection in the center is broken up by fine ripples.
Shot 2.1
Costumes and hairstyles follow the Northern Song setting: grandparents, parents and two children sit around a round table, each holding a mooncake, so it’s instantly clear they are celebrating Mid-Autumn.
Shot 2.2
A low angle skimming the water: a lotus lantern floats in the foreground, with the same stone arch bridge and riverside lanterns in the distance, and the moon in the same position as in the earlier water-town shot.
Shot 2.3
Today’s city in a traditional painting style: high-rises and lit windows behind, a family of six dining together, with home-cooked dishes, bowls and chopsticks on the table.
Shot 2.4
A hand lifts a celadon teapot to pour tea into a cup, with a lake and a pavilion behind. A few sprigs of osmanthus decorate the table.
Shot 2.5
Today’s courtyard: the grandfather sits in a rattan chair, the children lean against the adults eating mooncakes, and tea and fruit are set out on the coffee table. This shot is rooted in life today.
Shot 3.1
The first frame is a river among blue-green mountains; the last frame is the same river with ancient pagodas and high-rises along its banks. The journey in between was generated from the first and last frames.
Shot 3.2
A present-day family looks up and lifts a sky lantern into the night sky together, leading into the modern life of the second half.
Shot 3.3
Looking down into a valley from a mountaintop: a high-speed train emerges from a tunnel and crosses the mist on a viaduct.
Shot 3.4
A sea of clouds and peaks seen from high above; a plane passes from the upper right, with the moon hanging at the edge of the sky.
Shot 4.1
An indoor dinner table, with the moon and the city outside the window. The table is set with home-cooked dishes, setting it apart from the earlier mooncake shot.
Shot 4.2
The closing frame: the family stands with their backs to the camera at the riverside railing, watching the lanterns filling the river and the lantern market across the water, with space above for the institution’s name and greeting.
05 / Results
We completed a one-minute 9:16 vertical Mid-Autumn greeting video, delivered on September 23, 2026, in time for the festival. The same imagery was also turned into a static cover, an animated cover video, a GIF and a landscape banner, with the opening, ending and cover sharing one layout.
Case Study
For Mid-Autumn 2025, we made a realistic film of moonlit mountains and rivers.
For Mid-Autumn 2026, we switched to a different style: a gongbi genre scroll in light color.
In one vertical minute, the camera sets out from a lantern market in a Song dynasty water town, passes through today’s terraces, courtyards, high-speed trains and planes, and finally returns to the family dinner table.
The past and the present are joined by the same moon and the same blue tones.
01
We chose the style of a gongbi genre scroll in light color: fine lines outline the figures, transparent watercolor is built up layer by layer, and the image is bright and clean.
We first recreated this style with prompts, then adapted it for Mid-Autumn. The hard part was the night scenes: a moonlit night easily turns gray or black, and the translucency of watercolor is lost.
So we set the rules up front, with three things shared across the whole film: one color palette (warm off-white, haze blue and gray-green as the base, lit by pale apricot-gold lamplight), one style description, and one list of don’ts (crushed blacks, overexposure, heavy yellow filters, 3D textures, watermarks and so on).
The moon had its own rules too: a complete, perfect circle, pale silver-gold, never overexposed, with no face, jade rabbit or palace drawn on its surface.
The opening was revised under the same rules. The earliest version was a close-up of a single osmanthus branch; it was later replaced with the same base image as the cover: a full moon at top left, osmanthus at bottom right and blank space in the middle for the greeting. The opening, cover and ending share one layout, so the video and posters look like a set side by side.
02
A genre scroll is captivating because it’s packed with detail. An image with only one subject looks thin.
So every major scene was designed in three layers: people going about their lives up close, streets and bridges in the middle, and mountains, a pagoda and the moon in the distance.
The water town in the opening works this way: a black-awning boat glides out under a stone arch bridge, shops glow on both banks, people cross the bridge, and the distant mountains fade into the mist.
The bridge and boat up close, the street market in the middle, mountains and a pagoda in the distance, building up layer by layer.
Distant figures tend to blur, so we placed the main characters in the middle ground and foreground, left only silhouettes in the distance, and checked the details of every shot individually.
03
All the historical scenes are set in the Jiangnan region of the Northern Song. Naming the dynasty alone often produced mismatched costumes, so the prompts specified the height of the hair bun, the neckline, the sleeve cut and the fabric colors.
Objects had to match the era as well: blue-and-white porcelain did not yet exist in the Northern Song, and mooncakes are painted as small, dainty “moon rounds and little cakes,” not giant mooncakes.
Reunion has to show three generations under one roof, so every family shot is arranged as a family of six: grandparents, parents and children all present.
04
The film speaks of “moonlight flowing on for a thousand years,” so there had to be a transition between past and present.
We painted a pair of first and last frames: the first is a river among blue-green mountains, the last is the same river with ancient pagodas and high-rises along its banks. Kling’s first-and-last-frame feature then generated the journey in between, with the camera flying forward all the way.
Testing showed that generating video from multiple reference images made the style drift, while first-and-last-frame and single-image generation preserved the gongbi linework and paper texture. Detail at 4K output was also clearly better than at 1080P.
A river flows from the past to the present, with the caption “clear moonlight spills over mountains and rivers, flowing on for a thousand years.”
05
After this shot, the people on screen wear modern clothes: a reunion dinner on a terrace, mooncakes in a courtyard, a family releasing a sky lantern, and high-speed trains and planes carrying people home.
They’re all reunions, but each shot needed to look different. We split the meal scenes across three places, a terrace, a courtyard and an indoor dining room: home-cooked dishes on the terrace and indoors, tea and mooncakes in the courtyard. The same courtyard was also changed from a period version to today’s rattan chair and coffee table.
A government greeting also calls for a sense of propriety: osmanthus wine was changed to osmanthus tea, and the sky lanterns were kept to a single shot.
The script originally called for osmanthus wine; the finished film shows a cup of osmanthus tea.
06
The finished film runs one minute in 9:16 vertical and was delivered on September 23, 2026, ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival on September 25. The same imagery was also made into a static cover, an animated cover video, a GIF and a landscape banner, with the video and posters sharing one layout.
Unlike the realistic landscapes of the 2025 film, this was a continuous illustrated narrative: more than a dozen shots and two eras of life, all of which had to look as if painted by one hand.
Our approach was to set the rules first: one palette, one style description, one list of don’ts and one dynasty setting. With the rules in place, no matter how many shots there are, the style holds together.
The same moon shines on a Song dynasty water town and on today’s dinner table.
FAQ
This project shared one palette, one style description and one list of don’ts across the whole film, and the moon was always drawn the same way. For video, we generated from first and last frames and from single images rather than multiple references to avoid style drift, and output at 4K for fuller linework and paper texture.
Settle on one dynasty first (the Jiangnan region of the Northern Song for this film) and spell out the hair bun, neckline, sleeve cut and fabric colors in the prompts; check objects shot by shot, for example no blue-and-white porcelain in the Northern Song and mooncakes painted as small “moon rounds.” Once the whole film is done, review all the costumes once more.
For this Mid-Autumn video, we started exploring the style in late August, refined characters, objects and image details shot by shot in mid-September, and delivered the film and poster assets on September 23, ahead of the festival on September 25.
This project delivered a 1080×1920 vertical video, along with a static cover, an animated cover video, a 540×960 GIF and a landscape banner, with the opening, ending and cover sharing one layout.
Approach
Once the style was set, the project used a palette, a style description and rules for drawing the full moon to unify the tone of the whole film. Costume research went down to hair buns, necklines, sleeve cuts and headscarves rather than just naming a dynasty; figures and objects were designed for the era of each shot, while the modern family kept everyday clothes and home details.
Stills were refined through reference gathering, local edits and detail retouching to set their layers; for motion, we used first-and-last-frame and image-to-video generation to keep the gongbi light-color style. Tests checked how figures, candlelight, drapes and distant scenery each looked in motion. Camera moves are mostly slow push-ins, pans and natural movement in parts of the frame, and the silk-paper texture and character outlines stay clear throughout.
The compositions also left room for publishing information: the full moon, osmanthus branches and characters’ sightlines are kept as unobstructed as possible, with the institution’s logo and greeting placed in the opening and ending respectively. Family scenes include grandparents, parents and children, and the passing of tea, sharing of food and conversation on screen are what “reunion” looks like.
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