Day 19: What does an AI film crew make on a day the director never shows up? A chair, a headless shadow and a haircut

Day 18 was about a rule that said no without saying why. Day 19 is what the crew does when nobody says anything at all.

Day 19 at a glance

Claude runs the crew on my film. A runner sends prompts to Midjourney, one job at a time, with human-sized breaks between them. Claude's pre-judge looks at every new frame before I do and throws out the clear failures. A render queue sends the frames I approve to rented GPUs on RunPod to be animated. The edit room re-cuts one scene per run, and critics score each cut.

On October 22 I wasn't there. No frames, no clips, no notes. That makes the pre-judge the only reviewer the new frames had.

All times here are Eastern. The Mac runs on Bangkok time, so I convert.

Why are Lucy and the burglar sharing a chair?

Scene 28 is Lucy's worst night. She is a painter, at home at her easel, when two men from a gang called the Vipers knock on her door dressed as delivery men. They have come to carry her off. She fights them with a wine glass, her fists and a kitchen chair. In the edit it cuts back and forth with John's fight across town, blow for blow.

Shot 28-14 is the chair. The script reads: she swings the chair, he blocks. Midjourney got the job at 3:40 a.m. and sent back four takes.

Two of them were calm. In take 22, Lucy and Delivery Man 2 lean on the chair back side by side, arms folded over the top rail, looking at the camera like a couple posing for the church directory. Take 21 is the same pose, Lucy smiling, and the chair itself is broken: its legs pass through each other and never meet a seat.

The pre-judge failed both at 4:10 a.m. Its notes: "no action - both calmly lean on the chair back" and "legs cross through each other and don't join one seat." The other two takes passed. Lucy grips the chair in one and raises it by a leg in the other.

The next morning I approved take 23. It later went to the GPU, and I turned down the clip it made, so 28-14 needs a new frame anyway. The happy couple never got that far.

Where did the second delivery man go?

Shot 28-07 is the door giving way. The camera sits on the floor, the corridor's cold light floods in, and two men's shadows fill the doorway while Lucy reaches for her wine glass.

The job went to Midjourney at 12:32 a.m. Three of the four takes had two shadows. Take 24 had one: a single enormous shape with shoulders twice as wide as a man's and a little pointed nub where the head should be. It stands in the doorway like a coat rack someone dressed for winter.

The pre-judge failed it at 12:46 a.m.: "only one merged hulking silhouette - second delivery man missing," and "shadow anatomy broken (headless, huge shoulders)."

That's the kind of mistake a shadow shot invites. A shadow has no face to check against a lock, so the only test is counting heads. The pre-judge counted one shadow and no real head.

I approved take 22 the next morning, two men side by side in the door. Its clip is in the scene now.

How did a bald man grow hair?

Every character in the film has a lock: a sheet of approved drawings that rides along with each prompt. Delivery Man 2's lock is a pale shaved head, a hooked chin and a green snake tattoo on his neck.

Shot 28-11 is Lucy's punch, seen low from behind him. The job went out at 2:05 a.m. In take 23 the back of his head had a full mass of dark combed hair. The front of him was still the man from the lock. Seen from behind, he had someone else's haircut.

The pre-judge failed it at 2:11 a.m.: "Delivery Man 2 has a full mass of dark combed hair on the back of his head - lock is a pale shaved head." It let take 22 through with a note, "some dark hair at back of DM2's head - owner to judge." I didn't approve that one. I approved take 21, bald as the lock, and Runway animated it on October 24.

What else did the pre-judge throw out?

It checked 68 frames from Scene 28 between 12:14 and 5:42 a.m. It passed 57 and failed 11. The rest of the failures:

• 28-08: Lucy drawn older than her lock, with no wine glass in her hand.
• 28-10: the glass is meant to tumble straight at the lens. Midjourney stood it upright on the floor and shot it from above.
• 28-12: her kick is supposed to play as giant shadows on her paintings. The shadows read as a punch, and Lucy was too small to make out.
• 28-15d: he is meant to drive her back with the chair. In three takes they stand on the same side of it and push it toward the camera together, like two people moving a couch.
• 28-17: her chewed paintbrush became a table knife.

Twenty of Midjourney's 53 jobs that day were Scene 28. The other 33 were Scenes 29 and 30, John's side of the night in Kyoto. The pre-judge didn't get to those until after midnight, so they belong to Day 20.

Why did the render queue still make nothing?

Day 18 told this one. A preflight check refuses any batch where an action shot's prompt also uses a calming word, and two frame descriptions said "softly" and "slowly." The queue kept sending the same batch of 16 approved frames, and the check kept refusing it.

On October 22 that happened 155 times, from 2:02 a.m. to 11:55 p.m. No pod was started and nothing was spent. The fix came the morning after.

Why did the edit room lock itself out?

Every edit room run puts a lock on the door so two runs never cut the same film at once. If a lock is there, the next run stands down and writes one line in the log saying so.

Three runs stood down after midnight, at 12:30, 1:30 and 2:30 a.m., because the Scene 10 run from the night before was still rendering. That run finished at 12:40 a.m. Day 18 covered what it did.

The 4:29 a.m. run took Scene 05, the factory accident. Between 5:20 and 5:51 a.m. its three critics scored the cut:

• Picture and pacing: 3 out of 10. For 22.8 of the scene's 82.75 seconds, the screen was a black text card standing in for footage, including the accident itself.
• Lip sync: 5 out of 10. One line said the wrong words. The script changed Mike's "Twenty years" to "Nine years" on October 8, and the voice file was never re-recorded.
• Sound: 6 out of 10.

Then the run stopped. It never wrote in the log and never took its lock off the door. No other run logged anything until 1:29 a.m. on the 23rd, when the next one found the lock, 21 hours old, and took it over.

What did my Mac make on its own?

The love scenes are animated on the Mac's own GPU. That loop doesn't need me either. Six 15-second takes finished on October 22, the first at midnight and the last at 8:52 p.m. Each took between about three and seven hours. They stay off this diary.

What happened on Facebook?

The posting factory had been knocking on Facebook's door every few minutes since 2:09 p.m. the day before. Facebook said no each time, with the message that it limits how often you can post. Nine more refusals came between 12:04 and 2:47 a.m. Then it stopped.

On October 22 I asked Claude to post the way a person does, slower and spaced out. The factory now waits a full day after a refusal like that, and Instagram posts come at least 12 minutes apart. Instagram took 51 posts that day.

The numbers for October 22

• My verdicts: 0.
• Midjourney runner: 53 jobs, 212 takes, Scenes 28 to 30. Quiet hours from 2:14 to 8:04 p.m.
• Pre-judge: 68 Scene 28 frames checked, 57 passed, 11 failed.
• Render queue: 155 batches refused at preflight, 0 pods, 0 clips, $0.
• Edit room: 3 runs stood down, 1 run of Scene 05 stopped after its critiques, 21 hours with the lock on.
• Local GPU: 6 love-scene takes.
• Facebook: 9 refusals. Instagram: 51 posts.
• Delivery men with no real head: 1. Bald men with hair: 1.

So what did Day 19 teach me?

The crew can run a whole day without me, and it mostly runs in place. Midjourney and the pre-judge did real work: the next morning I approved 26 Scene 28 frames in about four minutes, because the worst of them were already gone. Everything that needed a decision from me, or a run that cleaned up after itself, stopped where it was.

A lock that never comes off and a check that never explains itself fail the same quiet way. Each did what it was built to do, and each kept anyone from noticing for most of a day. Follow the run on the Making Death Match series page.

FAQ

What happens to an AI film crew when the director takes a day off?
On October 22 I gave no verdicts. Midjourney kept drawing, 53 jobs, and Claude's pre-judge kept checking. Nothing new was animated, because the render queue was stuck on a check from the day before.

Why does Midjourney get shadows wrong?
A shadow has no face, so a character lock can't hold it to one person. In one take of Scene 28 the two delivery men merged into one shape with no real head. The pre-judge's only test was counting heads.

What is a character lock?
A sheet of approved drawings of one character that goes into every prompt with them. Delivery Man 2's lock is a shaved head and a snake tattoo. One take still gave him dark hair on the back of his head.

Why did the edit room stop for 21 hours?
Each run locks the door so two runs never cut at once. The 4:29 a.m. run on October 22 stopped after its critiques and never removed its lock. The next run took it over at 1:29 a.m. on the 23rd.

Next: Day 20: How many ways can Midjourney draw one briefcase? Five, until we gave it a picture

While you wait for the next update: play Halfsies

Halfsies is our iPhone game, live now. One cut. Two halves. Each day you get three objects and one attempt at each: cut it exactly in half by eye and the scale tells you how close you got. No restart needed. Download Halfsies on the App Store