01 · Generated video
Working title Old Brain, Young Money. A documentary built shot by shot from generated video, with the narration recorded before any picture and every quoted claim traced to an archived source.
The thesis, in Tony's words: money is a young, man-made object next to the long history our bodies evolved in. Fear and greed were built for lions, not markets, and the modern world amplifies the misfire. The way through is to understand human nature, transfer risk to institutions, time and a diversified market, and practise small decisions often.
The pipeline, in order
Tony stated the thesis in one capture on 25 September. It was filed verbatim and became the spine of the film. The ending was decided before a single shot existed: the truth stays in the film, the invitation goes on the end card.
apex-philosophy/captures/2026-09-25.md · Linear project "The Evolution of Financial Decisions" · quality bar: a high-end documentary reference clip Tony supplied
A sources file holds every person and fact. Quotes marked VERBATIM must be exact substrings of the archived copy of the page, and a script checks that mechanically. Paraphrases say they are paraphrases. The file also records what the script may not say: Markowitz's 50/50 split is stated only for 1952, because he later said "Now I don't do that"; Ted Benna does not blame the 401(k) for killing pensions.
research/sources.md · research/audit_quotes.py · research/raw/
Draft 01 was the cold open and chapter one. Draft 06 was the full film at 9:57. Tony approved a target near 9:15 and draft 07 made four cuts to reach it. The structure that survived: a cold open at two in the morning, then One · Built for Lions, Two · Fear and Greed, Three · The Storm, Four · The Way Through, and a close.
script/draft-01.md … draft-08.md · script/directions.json (per-line pacing)
Tony picked the voice from Fish Audio: "Anthony", at speed 0.85, sentence by sentence. A voice tool caches every sentence take keyed by voice, speed, model and text, so a re-rendered draft only re-records the lines that changed. A re-roll tool takes several takes of a line and keeps the one nearest the target pace. Every clip is checked with Whisper clip by clip, because Whisper on the long joined file both loops and drops words.
tools/voice.py · tools/reroll.py · audio/cache · audio/drafts/draft0N-narration.mp3
Every row starts at the sentence it illustrates and carries its kind: B-roll, character, clock, UI, scan, graphic or reuse. The kind decides the route: generated video for B-roll and character shots, designed screens for phone UI and data cards, real anatomy for the brain scans, HyperFrames typography for chapter cards. The edit adds a 4 s pre-roll and a 9 s title and end card.
script/shotlist.md · script/shotlist.json · tools/shotlist.py
The film follows one woman. Her identity is carried by a canonical FACE paragraph pasted verbatim into every prompt; only wardrobe and scene blocks change. A character sheet of stills (front, three-quarter, profile, eye close-up, full body, morning and night wardrobe) is the reference set for every later reference-to-video call.
visuals/character/her.md · sheet A-01 … A-07 · Seedream 5 Pro stills via Renoise
A paid test batch ran the same shots through Seedance 2.5 and MiniMax H3 Max. Seedance gave smooth motion and the best identity, but a scene reference hijacked the composition. H3 Max gave strong B-roll but inserted a hard cut inside a two-action character shot. Rules that came out of it: characters get identity references only and one action per shot; B-roll goes to H3. Price lists for every route were read from the vendors' own pages and recorded next to the decision.
visuals/tests · tools/runway_i2v.py · tools/heygen_video.py · tools/gen.py · tools/rn (Renoise CLI)
Each generated clip is written with its prompt, its request, its task record and a line in the chapter log. Where a real object exists it is used instead: the first coin is a real Lydian gold stater from The Met's open-access collection; the brain is real MNI152 anatomy swept by a scan tool with glows placed at published coordinates; the payment screens are a captioned reconstruction of the 2007 experiment.
visuals/coldopen · visuals/ch1 … ch4 · visuals/scan · tools/scan.py · each clip: .mp4 + .prompt.txt + .request.json + .task.json + LOG.md
Each chapter is a HyperFrames project with a sub-composition per scene. The timeline is generated by a build script from the take cache, so every cut lands on the sentence it belongs to. Screens that must be accurate are designed, not generated: the phone lock screen with fictional alerts, data cards from the Fed, SSA, CDC and BLS, a Benna NPR card, an assistant chat scrolling at two pixels a frame. Chapters two to four share one library so the timeline code exists once.
edit/cold-open · edit/ch1 … ch4 · edit/lib/timeline.py · edit/lib/comps.py · tools/build_index.py per chapter · npx hyperframes check
A generated music bed is carved under the narration with a voiceover group so the voice always wins. Clock, heartbeat, wind and the lion were generated as sound effects; two hits came from a stock library. One lesson is now a rule in the script: asking a sound model for something "quiet" returns a near-silent file, so every effect's peak is measured before it is placed.
carve.mjs (group voiceover) · tools/runway_sfx.py · tools/audio_levels.py (fails on a lane mismatch)
A chapter verifier was calibrated first on a chapter known to be good and a version known to be bad, so a pass means something. It transcribes the delivered render and requires every narrated word to be recognised under the mix, requires no sentence to be buried, and reads loudness. Tony's review then fixed what no instrument flagged: a slow zoom that made phone text shake, and a scanner hum that ran too loud and too long.
tools/verify_chapter.py · ch1-v4 · cold-open-v5 · ch2-v1 · ch3-v1 · ch4-v1 · phone copies for review on Remote Control
An assembly tool joins the cold open and four chapters and levels each part by plain gain to −14.0 LUFS as measured in the joined file, peak −1.0 dBFS. The result is dev cut 1 at 9:29.8 with a 480p phone copy for review. The end card still reads "text to come".
tools/assemble_film.py · edit/film/renders/old-brain-young-money-dev1.mp4 · git: every step is a commit in the project repo
Gates before anyone outside sees it
What this workflow taught the studio