6 shots, total 30s — 0.0-5.0s, 5.0-10.0s, 10.0-15.0s, 15.0-20.0s, 20.0-25.0s, 25.0-30.0s. Hard cuts, no dissolves. Normal speed throughout, no slow motion, no ramping.
CAPTURE CADENCE — CRITICAL: native 24fps, true 180-degree shutter, real 1/48s exposure every frame. Fluid, continuous motion blur. Never choppy, never juddering. No interpolation, no ghosting, no video look.
NO ON-SCREEN TEXT — CRITICAL: no text of any kind anywhere in frame. No captions, subtitles, titles, credits, watermarks, logos, timecode, UI overlays.
NOBODY ELSE IN FRAME — CRITICAL: no soldiers, bystanders, or extras. Only the duelist, the wraith, and one seabird are ever visible.
THE STORM — CRITICAL: lightning strobes the sequence in hard white flashes with blackout between. The stepped, jumping quality of the action comes entirely from this strobe, never from broken footage — camera motion between flashes stays smooth. Hard diagonal rain rakes every frame, screen-right to left.
Subject Lock — the duelist: lean bronze-toned build, cropped black hair in one tight rain-flattened braid, sharp jaw, storm-wet skin, clean face, no tattoos. Weathered indigo leather coat over cracked iron pauldrons and scarred vambraces, wide boots, one corroded iron ring. Grips a curved steel cutlass reverse-handed. Launches off the cannonball mound toward the wraith, holds strike discipline through every clash.
Subject Lock — the wraith: feminine hawk-formed spirit, no solid skin — dense crimson feather-smoke threaded with fracturing cobalt light-veins, taloned hands, tattered banner-remnants shredding into embers as she moves. No face beyond twin cobalt points of light. Hovers, never touches ground, closes from the mound's far side.
World Plate: shattered coastal fortress at night — a mound of black cast-iron cannonballs at the ruined gate, a flooded stone plaza beyond, a broken siege mast leaning across the square, distant walls collapsing into surf, one sodium beacon guttering on a far parapet. No other structures.
THE ATMOSPHERE — CRITICAL, depth only: heavy sea-spray haze at high density — mound sharp near, plaza softened mid-distance, walls near-erased far. Thickened wet air only, never fog or smoke.
SHOT 1 — 0.0-5.0s. THE LAUNCH. Low camera at the mound's base, cant 20°, punching upward. Duelist plants a boot on an iron sphere, launches airborne toward the wraith, coat snapping back. Duelist screen-left rising, wraith screen-right closing. Diegetic sound.
SHOT 2 — 5.0-10.0s. THE CLASH. Camera orbits tight at chest height, cant swinging 15-35°, never square. Cutlass meets talons in a shower of cobalt sparks, both bodies rebound. Both centered, mid-air. Diegetic sound.
SHOT 3 — 10.0-15.0s. THE GALE. Cut to a black cormorant fighting the crosswind above the plaza. A gust punches it sideways, it rights itself, keeps flying. Bird centered against churning cloud. Diegetic sound.
SHOT 4 — 15.0-20.0s. THE FALL. Low static camera in the flooded plaza, whip-panning up as the mast falls. The broken mast tears loose and crashes; the duelist rolls under it through standing water. Mast diagonal across frame, duelist emerging low center. Diegetic sound.
SHOT 5 — 20.0-25.0s. THE SURGE. Camera drops to ankle height, rockets forward through a wind-torn spray corridor lit by a fresh flash. Duelist sprints low, cutlass trailing water, closing on the wraith's last position. Duelist screen-left driving right. Diegetic sound.
SHOT 6 — 25.0-30.0s. THE AFTERMATH. Camera pulls back to a wide static plaza frame, rain falling straight now, wind dying. The duelist stands alone, cutlass lowered, breathing hard, as the wraith's feather-smoke scatters into embers and vanishes. Duelist small and centered, mound dark behind. Diegetic sound.
Cross-Frame Rules: duelist's coat, pauldrons, braid, and ring never change. Wraith never solidifies into flesh, never touches ground. Only duelist, wraith, and cormorant ever visible. Rain direction stays constant. Mound keeps the same shape wherever it appears. Strobe applies only inside Shots 1, 2, and 5. Plaza water line stays constant. No score enters at any point.
Last Frame: the duelist stands alone at plaza center, cutlass lowered, rain falling straight down, the dark empty mound behind them, embers from the dissolved wraith drifting up into the storm cloud. No on-screen text, no logo, no watermark.
Sound Bed: diegetic only — driving rain, gusting wind, distant thunder, steel-on-talon clangs, a guttural hawk shriek, boots scuffing wet stone, water splashing. No score, no subtitles.
Camera & Capture Realism: ~32mm/68° FOV, vintage 2x anamorphic with oval bokeh and streak flares off the lightning, shallow depth of field, color-negative rendition, fine grain. Violent handheld — cant swinging 15-45°, punching in and ripping back, every frame mid-move but smooth in its own travel, never locked, never gimbal-glide. No CGI look, no AI smoothness, no video-game HUD, no motion smoothing.