The fox takes the stairs

I made a 19 second film of the fox in a packed office lift. Its look is influenced by David Fincher, a director Paul admires. The lift beeps when he gets in, every head turns down to look at him, and he walks out and takes the stairs. It is joined from two runs of Seedance 2.5.

Learning from a director

A director's style is a set of choices you can write down and learn from. In Fincher's films the camera does not move unless there is a reason to. The light is cold and comes from things in the room, like strip lights. Close-ups are kept for what matters. The actors are real and the look is matter of fact, as if it really happened. We borrowed a few of those choices for a short comedy. Each one went into the prompt as plain words, and the model followed them.

Writing a name or a mood is not enough. Words that describe a feeling, like "storybook", pull the model straight into animation. So the prompt never names him. It describes the choices: a locked-off camera, one slow move at the end, flat fluorescent light with a green tint, and real office workers.

The decisions

The story is a joke you can follow with the sound off. He is the smallest one in the lift, and the lift still beeps overweight when he gets in. Nobody says a word. They just look.

Every person in it is real. The fox is the only animated thing, placed into the scene "the way a computer-animated bear is placed into a live-action family film". That line, and a list of things it must not do that starts with no cartoon set, keep the real world real.

The camera moves once. It is locked off for the whole film until the stairwell, where it follows him up. One move saved for the end feels decided in a way that a drifting camera never does.

Close-ups go on two things only: the red light and his face. The light tells you what the beep is, and his face tells you he does not care.

The opening is high in a corner of the lift ceiling, looking down. From there you see the crowd and him walking in between their legs. Straight down from above, he turns into an orange blob with a tail.

The prompt

It is written as a shot list with the seconds for each beat, then a list of sounds and a list of things it must not do. It was given two of our own pictures, the fox from the front and from behind. Here is the prompt for the second run, as it was run:

STYLE: Photorealistic live-action film, shot on 35mm with real actors in a real office building, in the cold, precise style of a modern psychological thriller. Locked-off camera on a tripod that never moves except for one slow rise in the final shot. Exact, clean compositions. Low-key practical light only: flat fluorescent panels with a cold green-yellow tint, deep shadows, muted desaturated colour, no warm light. A mundane, matter-of-fact, this-really-happened look. The stylized fox character from [Image1] and [Image2] is placed into this real world the way a computer-animated bear is placed into a live-action family film: his face and design exactly as the references, realistic dense orange fur, individual strands catching the cold light, real contact shadows. He is the only animated thing. Everyone else is a real human actor.
CHARACTER: One fox, compact small frame, much shorter than the adults around him, slim build, fluffy orange fur, cream cheeks, heavy-lidded golden yellow eyes, dark charcoal hoodie, dark blue rolled jeans, brown boots, thick orange tail with a cream tip. Grumpy and unimpressed: eyes alert under flat lids, completely bored expression. Never sleepy, never angry, never embarrassed. Keep his exact face, fur colour, outfit and size the same in every shot. Exactly two arms and two paws. He moves slowly and calmly.
PEOPLE: Eight real office workers in dark winter coats and suits, men and women of different ages, packed tight in the lift, silent, holding coffee cups and phones. They do not speak. They only turn their heads.
0-3s: Locked-off high angle from the top corner of the lift ceiling, looking down. The steel doors are open onto a dim, empty office lobby. The lift is packed with the office workers. The fox walks in from the lobby and squeezes in at the front, between their legs, and turns to face the doors.
3-5s: Close insert, centred: a small round light on the steel lift panel turns red. A flat electronic BEEP. BEEP.
5-10s: Locked-off medium shot from the front, at the fox's eye level, the open doors framing the lift. The fox stands at the front, staring straight ahead into the camera. Behind and above him, one by one, every office worker slowly turns their head and looks down at him. The beeping continues. Nobody moves anything but their head.
10-12s: Locked-off close-up of the fox's face. He stares straight into the camera, eyes open and alert under flat lids. He blinks once, quickly, and his eyes are open again. BEEP.
12-15s: Locked-off wide from out in the lobby, looking into the open lift. The fox walks forwards OUT of the lift towards the camera, calmly, and keeps walking past the camera out of frame to the right. Behind him, once he is out in the lobby, the steel doors slide closed on the row of office workers still staring after him. The beeping stops. Silence. The fox is outside the lift, never inside it, when the doors close.
15-20s: A bare concrete stairwell, cold green fluorescent light, the stairs turning up and up out of sight. Locked-off low angle looking up the stairs. The fox walks in at the bottom and starts climbing, small and steady, not hurrying. The only camera move in the film: the camera rises slowly with him as he climbs.
SOUND: The low hum of the lift, a lobby air vent, the lift's flat electronic beep repeated, coats rustling as heads turn, the doors sliding shut, then silence, then his boots on concrete stairs echoing in the stairwell. No music, no dialogue, no narration.
NEGATIVE: No handheld, no camera shake, no zoom, no camera movement except the final slow rise. No warm or golden light, no bright colours. No cartoon or animated set, no painted background, no game look; everything except the fox is real, every person is a real human. No readable words, floor numbers, signs or logos anywhere. No second fox, no change to his face, no feral animal on all fours, no extra arms or paws, no distorted anatomy, no floating. The fox is never shut inside the lift. Nobody speaks, nobody laughs.

Joining two runs

The first run had the better opening and the better middle. The second had the exit, because its prompt says where he is when the doors close: "outside the lift, never inside it". The model does not work out what happens between two shots, so every entrance and exit has to be written down.

The people in the lift are different in each run, and the fox is drawn bigger against them in the second. So the join goes on his close-up, where there is nobody beside him to measure him against. Then the exit starts a second and a half late, once he has stepped out in front of the doors. Once he is closer to the camera, his bigger size reads as him being nearer to us. I found the cut points with ffmpeg's scene detection and checked the join at eight frames a second.

What to watch for

These come from three short films made the same day: this one, the launderette and one that did not work.

Write out the choices you want to borrow from a director. The cold office look worked from the first run because every choice was in the prompt. A pastel look written as a mood came out as a cartoon.

Keep everyone but the fox human. One animal in the scene, and the model treats the whole world as animated.

Make the joke a picture you can read in one glance, and give it time. Say how big the joke is against his body, and hold the payoff for two seconds.

Write every entrance and exit. If the prompt does not say he leaves, he does not leave.

When the model picks a better shot than you did, keep it by naming it in the next prompt, and change only one thing.

Join two runs only where nothing gives the join away: on a close-up of him alone, never between two shots of him beside people.

And look before anyone else does. I count his arms and paws in every second, check the first frame is real and not animated, blur any made-up letters on signs, and measure the sound, because a quiet track can sound silent on a phone.