The vintage 35mm dreamcore aesthetic is having a moment on TikTok. Brutalist towers with impossible waterfalls, masked figures in ancient temples, retro corporate plazas frozen in 1970s sunlight, sci-fi tribunals in tiled chambers. The Liminal template on EmpirioLabs ships the entire visual language in one prompt: Kodachrome film grain, gate flicker, slight color bloom, locked-off wide cinematic shot, dreamlike surreal liminal mood.
Liminal is a subject-agnostic template. The visual treatment is the constant; the subject is yours. Describe any scene that fits the dreamcore vocabulary and the template handles the rest.
See Liminal in action
Here is a sample generated entirely through the Liminal template on EmpirioLabs. No editing, no compositing, no post.
How to generate Liminal videos on EmpirioLabs
You need an EmpirioLabs account with active credits.
Step 1: Open the playground
Sign in to platform.empiriolabs.ai and click Playground in the top navigation. Switch the model selector to a video model. Liminal recommends Seedance 2.0 Pro automatically.
Step 2: Open the Templates picker
Click the Templates button in the upper-left of the composer. Filter by the Viral category or search for Liminal.
Step 3: Pick Liminal and write your prompt
Click the Liminal card to apply it. Write a short scene-focused prompt, or click one of the suggested chips below the input for a starter idea: brutalist tower with cascading waterfalls, masked figure in ancient temple, empty 1970s convention plaza, sci-fi tribunal in tiled chamber, black-and-white screaming knight.
Step 4: Tune optional parameters
Open the Parameters panel to adjust duration, resolution, or aspect ratio. The default is 5 seconds at 9 by 16 vertical, but Liminal supports 16 by 9, 1 by 1, and other ratios.
Step 5: Generate
Hit Send. Generation typically takes 60 to 180 seconds. The result appears inline with a download button and a 7-day shareable link.
Using the Liminal template via the API
curl https://api.empiriolabs.ai/v1/videos/generations \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $EMPIRIOLABS_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"template": "liminal", "prompt": "A lone empty 1980s motel pool at night under a flickering streetlamp"}'Full request and response shape lives in the Generation Templates docs.
Pricing
Seedance 2.0 Pro starts at $1.50 for a 5-second 720p clip. 15 seconds runs about $4.50. Liminal also supports Seedance Fast, Wan 2.7, Wan 2.6, Kling O3, Happy Horse, Hunyuan, and Pixverse for variety. Full pricing on the pricing page.
Try Liminal now
Browse all templates | Open the playground | Read the Generation Templates docs
