Short film · 1:04 · made with AI · v1

One Round

One round of boxing, told through the round. Halloran walks him down and works the body. Adeyemi keeps his range, takes the punishment, and finds the counter. The clock and the punch count in the black bar under the picture tell the story in numbers.

Chapters

0:00Cold open: a punch from the future
0:03The bell
0:07He comes to the centre
0:17Inside, to the body
0:27The clinch: the eyes change
0:30The jab, the jab, the jab
0:36He loads up
0:402:47
0:47After

How it was made

Seven steps, from the brief to the bill. Every prompt and decision is kept in the project’s board and decisions log.

The brief

Tell the story through the round.

One round of boxing, super cinematic. One fighter walks straight to the centre and presses; the other keeps his range. A minute of jabs and body shots, then the out-boxer switches to counter-fire, jab after jab, until one big shot knocks the other man spark out. What happens after that was left open.

The answer chosen: the crowd erupts, the referee waves it off, and the winner walks away, then goes back to check on him.

The board · after the Claudia films

Every prompt written before a penny was spent.

The method comes from the Claudia films (claudia.gallery): a shot list of 15 shots and a cold open, every still and motion prompt written down first, a cost estimate, and a hard $20 cap that the scripts check before each paid call.

The story needed a through-line, so the round clock and a punch count live in the black bar under the picture. The clock jumps between shots, so three minutes play in one, and the count tells you who is winning: body shots for Halloran, then jabs for Adeyemi.

Film frame at 1:32 of the round: the referee breaks the clinch; the bar reads Halloran 12 body shots — 1:32. Halloran has landed 12 to the body, and the referee’s “Break!” is the turn.

Film frame at 2:47: the overhand right lands; the bar reads Adeyemi 41 jabs — 2:47. The clock stops on the punch, then the bar fades away.

Casting · Nano Banana Pro

Two fighters who don’t exist.

Halloran, the red corner: shorter, stocky, shaved head, a pressure fighter. Adeyemi: tall, rangy, black and gold, an out-boxer. Each began as a character sheet, and both sheets went into every start frame as references, so faces and kit hold from shot to shot. Both men are invented.

Character sheet for Halloran: front, three-quarter, side and back views, plus face close-ups — Halloran.

Character sheet for Adeyemi: front, three-quarter, side and back views, plus face close-ups — Adeyemi.

Start frames · Nano Banana 2

One still for every shot.

Every shot starts as a single still: one hard lamp over the ring, haze, the crowd in silhouette, teal shadows and amber light. The video model animates from that frame, so the look of the film is decided here, before any motion is paid for.

Contact sheet of the 15 start frames in story order — The 15 start frames, in story order.

Motion · the knockout bake-off

Three models, one punch.

The plan was Seedance 2.0. It refused every start frame (“may contain a real person”) because the invented faces looked too real. The refusals cost nothing, and the frames were not altered to get past the filter. So the knockout became a bake-off: the same start frame and prompt through three other models.

Hailuo 3 Max · $0.48. A clean impact and the mouthguard, but he never falls. It became the cold open.

HappyHorse 1.1 · $0.59. It lands and he falls, but the fall is a little cartoonish.

Kling 3.0 · $0.50. The dip, the overhand, the mouthguard, the crumple. Kling made the whole film.

The edit and the sound · ElevenLabs

Slow motion without slowing anything down.

None of the models would make slow motion, and no shot is slowed in the edit. So the knockout slows down in the sound: on the punch the score cuts dead, the clock freezes at 2:47, and all that is left is a ringing ear and a heartbeat. You also see the punch twice, once as the cold open and once for real.

The score (two cues), 21 sound effects, the ring announcer and the referee’s “Box!” and “Break!” were all made with ElevenLabs.

Six frames of the Kling take, half a second apart, from the dip to the canvas — The Kling take every half second, from the dip to the canvas.

The bill · and what’s still wrong

$10.20 of a $20 cap.

37 stills: $2.66; Character sheets, start frames and their 16:9 versions.
17 clips: $7.54; Fifteen shots plus two bake-off takes. Refusals were free.
Sound: ~1,400; ElevenLabs credits from an existing plan: score, effects and voices.

Known flaws in v1:

no true slow motion (see step 06);
the jab shot at 0:34 runs only 2.3 seconds, because after that the AI gave Halloran a grin and invented lettering on his shorts;
a small invented mark on Adeyemi’s waistband at 0:18;
after the knockout, the fall is seen a second time from another angle.

Every person in the film is invented and AI-generated. Stills by Nano Banana; motion by Kling 3.0 (with Hailuo and HappyHorse in the bake-off) through OpenRouter; score, sound and voices by ElevenLabs; production by Claude, after the method of the Claudia films.