ORIGINAL SHORT · 1:47

MARS DROP

A chef and a rocket executive find themselves standing on a Mars colony with no memory of getting there. Over a hundred and seven seconds they stop arguing about whose fault it is, work out that they are inside a demonstration, and start giving notes to the person running it.

Runtime: 1:47
Format: 1920 x 1080 / 24 fps / 16:9
Structure: 4 beats, one location, two characters
Episodic engine: Showrunner

An animated frame of the executive in a blue flight suit standing at the foot of a booster, arms open, mid-line, with red rock and two moons behind him.

The wide Mars colony frame: two figures in front of a landed rocket and a domed habitat. — MARS DROP
One hundred and seven seconds, two characters, one location, no action. Watch the one who is not talking. Watch on YouTube ↗

Two men, one red planet, and the growing suspicion that somebody is testing something.

THE SPINE

WANT: Both men want an explanation for why they are standing on Mars.
OBSTACLE: There is no explanation available to them inside the scene.
TURN: They stop asking each other and start addressing the thing watching them.
COST: Admitting they are a demo, which is also the only way out.
LAST IMAGE: The wide it opened on, with one of them asking for a snack.

Every other film we publish leans on movement. This one deliberately has none: no chase, no weather, no creature, nothing for a viewer to look at while the performances settle. If the two of them are not listening to each other, there is nothing on screen to cover it, which is the whole reason the piece exists.

THE BLOCKS, WITH THE PROMPT AS IT WAS WRITTEN

The wide establishing frame: two figures on the colony floor, a landed rocket to the right, a domed habitat and antenna masts to the left, red rock formations behind.

A · 0:00 – 0:26

Arrival

The wide is held longer than is comfortable. Both men are in it, neither is centred, and the joke lands before either has moved.

PROMPTWide establishing shot, flat 2D animation, thick ink outlines and flat colour fills. A Mars colony floor in mid-afternoon light: a landed white booster on a four-legged pad right of frame, a silver geodesic habitat and lattice antenna masts left of frame, layered orange rock formations across the background, a small second moon high in a blue sky. Two figures stand about four metres apart on the dust, both full length, both small in frame. Camera locked off at eye level. No camera move.

A single of the chef in a black suit and tie under a water tower, one hand raised, his expression somewhere between suspicion and irritation.

B · 0:26 – 0:52

Act natural

The first single. The line is an instruction to the other man and a piece of direction to the film at the same time.

PROMPTMedium single, same flat 2D animation register. A tall man in a black suit, white shirt and black tie, blond hair swept up, standing in front of a dark steel water tower on lattice legs. Orange dunes and a signal mast behind him, cyan sky with scattered stars. He raises one hand shoulder height, palm out, eyes wide, mouth open mid-word. Slight breathing motion only. Camera static, eye level, subject centre-right.

A single of the executive at the foot of the booster, arms open in a shrug, two moons and a rock face behind him.

C · 0:52 – 1:20

The demonstration

The turn. He works out what they are in, and the shrug arrives a beat before the line rather than on it.

PROMPTMedium single, reverse of the previous angle, same register. A man in a navy-blue flight suit with shoulder flags and a round mission patch, dark hair, standing beside the lower stage of a white booster with vertical lettering down it. A deep orange rock wall fills the right third of frame, two moons in a dark blue sky, pale cloud bank low behind him. He opens both arms in a shrug, palms up, shoulders lifting. Camera static, eye level, subject centre.

A single of the chef, hands on hips, leaning slightly toward camera as he delivers the closing note.

D · 1:20 – 1:47

Notes to the operator

The address to camera, then straight back to the opening wide so the film ends where it started, with nothing resolved.

PROMPTMedium single, same setup as beat B. The man in the black suit plants both hands on his hips and leans a few degrees toward camera, chin lifted, talking past the lens rather than into it. Water tower and orange dunes behind, unchanged. Hold, then cut to the beat A wide, identical framing, both figures back in position.

THE DESIGN SHEETS

Two figures, both caricatures, both invented for this piece. Neither is presented as a real person and nothing either of them says is attributed to anyone.

THE CHEF

Black suit, tie, blond sweep

The impatient one. Carries the film’s frustration and the closing note. Built tall and angular so he reads at wide-shot scale where the other figure would disappear.

THE EXECUTIVE

Navy flight suit, mission patch

The one who works it out. Rounder silhouette, lower centre of gravity, so the two of them are separable in a two-shot at any distance.

THE COLONY

One location, three angles

A pad, a habitat, a water tower and a rock wall. Three camera positions on it and no fourth, because a two-hander that keeps finding new corners of its set stops being a two-hander.

The designs are broad on purpose. A caricature survives a shot-size change that a rendered likeness does not, and it removes any question about whose face is on screen. Both were locked as reference sheets before the first shot and neither was re-described in a prompt after that.

THE PIPELINE, STAGE BY STAGE

01Written first, in full

Write the scene

All eleven exchanges, in order, before anything rendered. A dialogue scene assembled from whatever the model happened to produce is a montage with subtitles.

02Four blocks

Fix the beats

Arrival, act natural, the demonstration, the notes. Each beat gets one camera position and keeps it, so the cutting pattern is decided before the first frame rather than in the edit.

03Nano Banana 2, ChatGPT Image 2

Lock the two designs

Reference sheets for both figures and for the colony, generated and approved before any shot. Nothing after this stage describes a character in words.

04Showrunner

Build the scene

The episodic engine carries the scene and the character continuity across shots. This is the stage that makes a two-hander possible at all: the same two figures, in the same place, across four beats.

05Higgsfield

Performance pass

Motion on each block, directed to the listening rather than the speaking. The reaction is generated first and the line is timed to it.

06ElevenLabs

Voice

Two reads, cut against the picture rather than under it. Both were retimed after the motion pass, because a line that arrives on the gesture instead of just after it reads as a puppet.

07CapCut

Assembly

Cut, room tone, and burned-in speaker-labelled subtitles. Two voices in one wide need attributing or the audience spends the first exchange working out who is who.

Seven stages and only two of them are generation. That ratio is the finding: on a piece with no action in it, the work moves out of the render and into the writing, the casting and the timing, which is where it sits on a live-action two-hander as well.

WHAT DRIFTED, AND WHAT HELD IT

THE PROBLEM	HOW IT SHOWED	THE LOCK
Dead listener	The character not speaking froze into a held pose for the length of the other man’s line.	The reaction is generated before the line, and the line is timed to it. If the listener is idling, the beat goes back regardless of how the delivery reads.
Shot-size drift	Both figures lost proportion between the wide and the singles: heads grew, the jawline moved.	Two reference sheets, fixed at stage 03, and no verbal description of either character in any prompt after that.
Line-crossing	Cutting between the two singles put both men facing the same way, so the conversation stopped reading as a conversation.	Camera positions fixed to three, each one assigned a side. The tower single looks camera-right, the booster single looks camera-left, and nothing else is shot.
Voice ahead of gesture	Lines landed on the movement rather than just after it, which reads as lip-sync on a puppet.	Voice is cut last, against picture, and every read is retimed after the motion pass rather than before it.

DELIVERY

RUNTIME: 1:47
MASTER: 1920 x 1080, 24 fps, H.264
SOUND: Two cloned reads, mixed against room tone in the edit
SUBTITLES: Burned in, speaker-labelled, because two voices in one wide need attributing
CUT FOR: Wide only. There is no vertical version and there should not be

The closing single: the chef with his hands on his hips, talking past the camera to whoever is running the demonstration.

THE OTHER ONE

A rooftop arena under two moons, a bladesman clearing it, and a phase assassin arriving on a burning wing.

YOUR MOVE

This, with your world in it.

Same pipeline, same locks, same published process. Bring the brief and the deadline.