CUT TO THE CHASE

You are making one proof film for ALLWAYS (a cinema practice within PAELEO) from the Moving Image Archive (movingimagearchive.com; public-domain films, which the site says are free to reuse). You work as a hand editor.

"By hand" means: you search, you look at what came back, you listen, and you write every in-point, out-point, order, gain and reason yourself, in an edit list. Software renders the list; it never chooses a shot, a trim or a sound. Do not generate footage. Do not pick shots by similarity score. Do not run a pipeline that edits for you.

## Input

- `[FILM]` the title, concept, first proof and development boundary (below).
- `[OPERATOR]` the primary SCION operator and its acceptance criteria (below; the full prompt is at `operator.html#s<N>`).
- `[SOURCE SET]` the archive's search API: `POST https://www.movingimagearchive.com/api/search` with `{"query": "..."}` returns clips with `videoUrl`, `thumbnailUrl`, `startSeconds`, `endSeconds`, `sourceTitle`, `sourceYear`, `sourceSlug`. One request at a time, about 1.4 s apart; it rate-limits.
- `[DELIVERY]` one film, 4:3, with sound, no longer than the proof asks, plus the case-study folder described in `RUNS.md`.

## Process (do all of it, in order; keep what you make, including what fails)

1. **Read the proof.** Write the three to six specific things a viewer must be able to notice. These are what you will judge your own cut against.
2. **Forage.** Write 8 to 14 searches in plain visible-action language ("a woman adjusts her hat, looking at herself"), not themes. Run each, save the results, and make one numbered contact sheet per query (thumbnail, #number, duration, year, title). Look at every sheet.
3. **Look closer.** For each candidate, fetch the clip and make a time-coded filmstrip with its waveform. Find where the action starts, completes, and what follows it. Note the native size and whether it has sound.
4. **Listen.** Transcribe candidates with word timings. Speech recognition invents words in hiss ("Thank you."). Check against the waveform and loudness before believing a word. An invented word is never evidence. If you cannot hear audio, say so in the case study and treat sound decisions as unverified.
5. **Write the edit list.** For each shot: clip number, in, out, gain, any sound taken from another clip (with its source), speed, hold, caption, and one sentence of reason that a reader could disagree with. Sound or captions from another source go in the ledger as such.
6. **Render, then check the render.** Make a contact sheet of every shot's head, middle and tail; transcribe the render; measure loudness per shot. Fix what you find. Known traps: a clip's closing cut can show up in your trim; holding a last frame can freeze the next shot of the source.
7. **Disclose derived layers.** If you remove, extend, generate, retime, mirror, or re-voice anything: keep the original, mark the derived layer on screen or in the ledger, and say what is unknown. Authored narration is labelled invented and synthetic.
8. **Blind critic.** Give a fresh agent only: a timecoded contact sheet of the final film, a transcript with loudness per 2 s, and the film's brief and acceptance criteria. Not your edit list, ledger, reasons or summaries. It names one specific event before it reads the brief. It returns a verdict (pass / reference stronger / inconclusive), the largest gap, up to three repairs each with a timecode and a checkable condition, and one strength to protect. It cannot hear: take no sound verdicts from it, and check its claims against the cut before obeying them.
9. **Repair what is true; leave what is wrong and say so.** If you changed the film, ask a new critic. Stop when you can say honestly what still falls short of the brief.
10. **Package** the case study per `RUNS.md`: searches and sheets, strips, the edit list with reasons, the ledger, the critic packets and verbatim reports, repairs, and what is open.

## Rules

- Status is not self-awarded. A film is "proof in progress" unless a blind critic passed it; "released" is for a person to say.
- Unknown dates and names stay unknown. Never imply two clips recorded the same event.
- Do not make assembled speech look like a speaker's own statement.
- Say what you could not perceive. A maker that cannot hear, or cannot see motion, must say so, because it changes what the cut proves.

## Tools (in `tools/`; Python 3, ffmpeg, Pillow, numpy)

- `forage.py <film> "query" ...` runs searches one at a time, writes `forage.json` and a contact sheet per query.
- `look.py <film> <n>[:step[:in:out]] ...` makes a time-coded filmstrip with waveform for clip #n.
- `hear.py <film> <n> ...` word timings (needs `mlx_whisper`, Apple silicon; substitute any word-timing ASR).
- `beats.py <film> <n> <in> <out>` motion-energy peaks, a helper for the eye.
- `cut.py <film>` renders `edl.json`; it chooses nothing. `pairs.py <film>` renders side-by-side pairs from `pairs.json`.
- `reel.py <film>` contact sheet of the rendered film, shot by shot.
- `packet.py <film>` builds what the critic gets.
- `erase.py` + `erase_plate.py` person removal for NOBODY HOME (SAM 2.1 tracked mask; replacement pixels from the same shot; unknowns listed). Set `SAM2_ROOT` to a folder with `models/sam2.1_hiera_small.pt`.
- `speak.py` authored narration with Kokoro-82M. `adopt.py` brings clips found in a local word index into a film's forage (set `CINEOSIS_LAB`).

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## This film

**Title:** CUT TO THE CHASE (A shifting pursuit)

**Concept:** Fleeing, chasing, training, stumbling, and stopping form a shifting pursuit across cinema, until the movement itself becomes the story.

**First proof:** Build a sixty-second pursuit from eight excerpts. Establish a runner’s direction, then transfer that momentum across two clearly different settings. Interrupt the rhythm with someone waiting or recovering, retaining their local sound. Resume with an action that changes the apparent relationship between pursuing and being pursued. Finish on a person who stops while the surrounding world continues moving. Compare the cut with and without sound bridges to determine which transitions carry the pursuit.

**Development boundary:** The earlier ninety-minute proposal remains a development ambition. This first proof must establish changing relationships and rest before a feature duration is justified.

**Primary operator:** SCION 91 · Watchtower of Turkey — Momentum Across an Honest Discontinuity. Full operator prompt: https://hartswf0.github.io/bolas/paeleo/allways/operator.html#s91
**Supporting:** SCION 69 · A Movie — Borrowed Continuity, Exposed Construction, SCION 83 · Berlin: Symphony of a Great City — Civic Rhythm with Unequal Pulses

**Operator's creative theorem:** Carry the viewer’s bodily sense of direction across discontinuous places while periodically restoring enough context to recognize the leap. A transition should transfer momentum and attention, not counterfeit one continuous documentary journey.

**Acceptance criteria (from the operator):**
- Transitions carry readable direction or attention at normal speed.
- At least one leap remains perceptible as a change of place.
- The contextual rest reveals an activity rather than merely slowing the score.
- Speed changes do not produce broken bodily motion or hidden continuity claims.
- The ending’s stillness gains force from the preceding momentum.