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It was a Tuesday sort of a Wednesday

Vertical 9:16, woodcut, black and white with red. Self narrated by the detective. 47 shots.

4:35

Runtime

Shots

4:14

VO measured

~$45

Est. cost

Motion tests

Real rendered motion, not stills with a pan faked on top. Left is the opening cut with narration. Right is the camera vocabulary: a locked off frame, a lateral slide, and a pull back, so no two shots in a row feel the same.

Opening cut, 17s, with narration

Camera moves, 15s, labelled

Title card, on the shades

Serif treatment you picked, moved onto the window shade plate. Pick one in the decisions below.

Look reference

The lead, framed medium so he stays handsome

Narration, Bill

The red rule

You liked the leak, so it becomes a system instead of an accident. Red escalates with her panic and resets when she is composed. The audience will feel it without being told.

NonePure black and white. His world.

ContainedRed on her and nothing else.

BleedingRed spills onto the frame, door, floor or light around her.

FloodRed takes the whole frame. Used exactly once.

Shot by shot

Every shot reframed for vertical. Fewer wides, more verticals: the alley drop, the stacks of paper, the doorway, the look straight up. Tap a header to collapse an act.

Title1 shots · 4s

TITLE CARD. Black. The title builds line by line, last word lands in red.

STATIC Camera dead still. Only the light through the slats moves.

Red: None

Act I. The desk, no red exists yet10 shots · 53s

Vertical. The building from the street, looking straight up. Fire escape, one lit window near the top. Late sun.

VO "It was a Tuesday sort of a Wednesday."

TILT UP Up the face of the building to the one lit window. Finds him.

Red: None

Vertical wide of the office floor to ceiling. Towers of paper, one tall blinded window, him small at the bottom of frame.

VO "I have got a pile of three days worth of work, but only two days left to get it all done."

STATIC Let the room do the work. Stillness makes it feel like a cell.

Red: None

Tilt down a leaning stack of case folders to the desk. Cold coffee, dead matches.

VO "Somehow I have worked myself to the bone these past few days, yet I have got nothing to show for it."

TILT DOWN Down the leaning stack of folders to the dead coffee.

Red: None

Wall calendar, vertical, days crossed off in heavy strokes. The crossings stop two days short.

VO "It did not help that it is also just after the daylight savings time change, and my internal clock is all messed up."

STATIC A calendar is a fact. No move.

Red: None

Medium. He pushes back from the desk and throws his head back against the chair. NOT a close up.

VO "With a sigh, I push away from my desk and throw my head back in my seat to stare up at the ceiling."

DRIFT Barely perceptible handheld. His exhaustion, not the camera's.

Red: None

His POV straight up the vertical frame. Ceiling, water stain, a slow bleed out of focus.

VO "That is, until I see nothing at all."

PUSH Slow push into the ceiling stain as his eyes go.

Red: None

Black. Full silence. The only true black in the film.

CUT TO BLACK No camera.

Red: None

Hard cut. He snaps upright, chair rocking, a sheet of paper sliding off the desk.

VO "I jolt awake with such a force that I nearly fall out of my chair."

SNAP ZOOM The one violent move in the film. A hard jolt in on the wake.

Red: None

He rakes papers into the briefcase. Shot low from the desk surface so the stacks tower over him.

VO "I will start fresh tomorrow, I think to myself, and begin packing my things."

STATIC Low from the desk surface. The stacks tower, he does not.

Red: None

The sun finds his eyes through the blinds. He turns his face away, hand up.

VO "With the sun peeking in through the blinds. Blinding me in the process."

DRIFT Light stabs his eyes, the frame flinches with him.

Red: None

Act II. The woman below, red is born10 shots · 64s

He crosses the room toward the tall window. Full figure, bars of light on the floor ahead of him.

VO "I stride over to the only window in my cramped office to close the blinds."

SLIDE Track sideways with him as he crosses to the window.

Red: None

HERO SHOT. Steep vertical look down the alley through the slats. She is small, far below, the only colour in the film so far.

VO "And that is when I see her."

HOLD then PUSH Two full seconds locked off before it moves. The move IS the realisation.

Red: Contained

Closer, still from above. Red dress, matching hat, scarf, oversized dark glasses.

VO "In stark contrast to my own appearance, she is well put together."

PUSH Continues the push. The only place two pushes run back to back, on purpose.

Red: Contained

Detail pass down her: the hat brim, the glasses, the hem moving, the shoes on cracked pavement.

VO "Walking down the street below, wearing a one of a kind vibrant red dress that looks like it was made exclusively for her, with top of the line matching accessories to boot."

TILT DOWN Down her, hat to shoes. The camera appraises her the way he does.

Red: Contained

Full vertical of the alley. Filth, trash, a dented car, and one perfect red figure moving through it.

VO "Her whole ensemble looks like it cost more than what I pay to rent this shabby room, in this worn down building, on this side of town."

STATIC Wide and still. She is one red mark in a grey world.

Red: Contained

Him at the glass, slats across his face. Medium, not close. Unimpressed.

VO "She looks like the kind of person that knows what day of the week it is."

STATIC Cut to him, no move. Deliberately flat against her glamour.

Red: None

She passes a black doorway. Two shapes inside it turn to track her.

VO "I am surprised she has not been robbed yet."

PAN Follow her past the doorway. The shapes inside turn, the camera does not.

Red: Contained

His hand on the cord. The blinds drop. The red goes out of the world with them.

VO "Fortunately for her, my curiosity is not winning today."

STATIC The blinds drop through a locked frame. Red leaves the world.

Red: None

He sweeps the whole desk in and forces the latches. Shot from inside the briefcase looking up as it shuts.

VO "I close the blinds and resume my packing. After a very decisive choice of what work to bring home with me, if you can call just grabbing everything decisive, I lock my briefcase."

PUSH Into the briefcase as it swallows the desk.

Red: None

Coat off the hook, hat on, hand closing on the doorknob. Vertical, his back to us.

VO "Grab my coat and hat, and open the door to freedom."

TILT UP Hook to hat to door. Up into leaving.

Red: None

Act III. The client, red starts to leak25 shots · 149s

The door swings in. She fills the lit doorway, head to foot. Red bleeds onto the frame and the floor around her.

VO "Unfortunately for me, freedom is not behind the door. She is."

PULL BACK He opens the door and the camera retreats. He is the one who flinches.

Red: Bleeding

Her in the doorway, a flick of the wrist to the watch. Red still bleeding at the edges.

HER "Oh? Am I too late? Your ad said you close at five, and it is still five till."

STATIC She speaks into a still frame. Composed.

Red: Bleeding

Insert, vertical. The watch, loaded with stones. Red contained again, just a glint.

VO "She said, after a quick look at her probably diamond encrusted watch. The movement was so quick there was no way she actually read the time."

RACK FOCUS Pull focus from her face to the watch. Attention, not movement.

Red: Contained

Him. Medium. Bone dry.

VO "So. She is a woman who knows the day and the time. What is next, the date?"

STATIC Bone dry. No move for a dry joke.

Red: None

He smiles. It stops well short of his eyes.

HIM "Come on in."

DRIFT A small lie needs a small wobble.

Red: None

The hat and coat going back onto the hook. Shot looking up the wall.

VO "With an internal smile I re-hang my hat and coat."

TILT UP The hat going back on the hook. Resignation.

Red: None

He sits. The briefcase goes down on the desk between them like a wall. She is a red shape behind it.

VO "Then move to sit in my seat, setting my briefcase down on the desk between us."

CRANE DOWN Down with him as he sits. The camera takes the chair with him.

Red: Contained

Across the desk at her.

HIM "What can I do for you?"

STATIC Across the desk. Professional, flat.

Red: Contained

Her hands working at each other in her lap. Vertical, tight on the hands and the red skirt.

HER "I, um... I..."

PUSH Into her hands working at each other.

Red: Contained

She stares down at her shoes. The camera stays on the shoes a beat too long.

VO "She stammers, and trails off."

STATIC Hold on the shoes a beat too long. Discomfort.

Red: Contained

Paper pushed across the desk into the light. Sound only.

VO "Then proceeds to just hand me some paper."

SLIDE Travel with the paper as it crosses the desk.

Red: Contained

The papers in his hands. A photograph, a name, a date. Greyscale, no red at all here.

VO "I glance through what she handed me, and put two and two together."

RACK FOCUS Face to photograph. The moment he understands.

Red: None

Him over the top of the page.

HIM "So you want me to tail your husband on Thursday the fifth?"

STATIC The question lands in a still frame.

Red: None

PEAK. Her composure goes. Red floods the entire frame for the length of the line, then snaps back.

HER "Tomorrow. Yes, please. I will pay whatever, I just need to know if it is true!"

PUSH Fast push as she breaks. Red floods. The only aggressive push.

Red: Flood

Flash back to shot 13, same frame, but now the glasses and scarf read as a disguise.

VO "I should have known from the moment I saw her down below, in those too big sunglasses and that scarf wrapped around her head."

STATIC Exactly the frame from shot 13 but frozen. Same image, no move, reads wrong on purpose.

Red: Contained

The alley from shot 15, empty now, the light gone out of it.

VO "That is what she is doing on this side of town. On my side of town."

SLIDE Mirror of shot 11, reversed direction. The alley, empty now.

Red: None

Him. Just tired.

VO "It has been a long couple of days."

STATIC Tired. Nothing moves.

Red: None

Her hands flat on the desk. The wedding ring catches the lamp.

VO "These women never think they can be cheated on. They think they are too pretty. Their lives too perfect to be betrayed."

PUSH Into the ring catching the lamp.

Red: Contained

Not a real place. A corridor of doorways receding up the vertical frame, a red shape standing in each one.

VO "Some deny the fact because they started out as the mistress themselves, and it could not possibly happen to them as well. Though something tells me the woman before me does not fall under that last category."

DOLLY FORWARD The showpiece. Travelling through a corridor of doorways, a red figure in each.

Red: Bleeding

10s

The desk lamp, the unpaid bill beneath it, the stack of other cases climbing out of frame.

VO "Whatever the reason, it does not matter. These cheating scumbags are what keep my lights on, and give me the resources to do some real investigative work."

TILT UP Up the stack of other people's ruined marriages.

Red: None

10s

He forces the new paperwork into the already overflowing briefcase.

HIM "I will get right on it. First thing Thursday morning!"

STATIC He forces the case shut in a locked frame.

Red: Contained

She stops in the doorway and turns back. Red bleeds onto the frame again, the mirror of shot 21.

HER "You mean tomorrow, right?"

PULL BACK Mirror of 21. She turns, the camera gives ground again.

Red: Bleeding

Him. One beat too long before he answers.

HIM "Right."

STATIC One word. One still frame.

Red: None

The calendar from shot 4. We can read it now.

VO "Is tomorrow Thursday already?"

PUSH Into the calendar. Into the date.

Red: None

Him in the slatted shadow. Cut to black on the word.

VO "Crap."

STATIC His face. Cut on the word.

Red: None

End1 shots · 5s

END CARD. Black. Written by, then the title again, small.

STATIC End card.

Red: None

Decisions

Which title card? (A, B or C above)

Settled: A, all white. Shown here for reference.

Bill is chosen. What still needs fixing in his read?

Settled: Bill. This asks which fixes you want on his read.

Her two spoken lines?

Right now he reads everything, including her. Classic noir, and it keeps one voice.

Is the leak rule right?

Levels 0 to 3 below, escalating with her panic. Flood fires once, on her line about needing to know if it is true.

Score?

What do I build first?

How should she be credited, and does she want the title changed?

Free text.

Cost at this length

Item	Detail	Cost
Still frames	45 shots plus re-rolls, ~140 images	~$6
Motion clips	45 clips, 1080x1920, Kling turbo	~$25
Re-rolls	Budget 40% needing a second pass	~$10
Voice and music	Final narration plus score	~$4
Total	Full 4:35 vertical short	~$45

Current kie.ai balance is about $4.78, enough for the proof of concept only. A $50 top up covers the film.

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