What Went Well
- Hard Verification Gates: Successfully identified and blocked a major resolution regression in Step 4. The team attempted to submit 62 storyboard frames at 1080p (native model output) despite the 720p mandate. The gate held, and the team successfully restandardized.
- Overhang Principle Verification: Quantitative auditing of dailies confirmed that all 31 shots met or exceeded the 4s overhang requirement, ensuring the Editor had sufficient handles for the final cut.
- 720p Technical Realignment: Despite a mid-onboarding shift in resolution standards, the global search-and-replace for ‘1080’ across project documentation and tool source code was executed cleanly, providing the team with a clear technical target.
What Didn’t Go Well
- Genre Diversity (The Noir Trap): The team again gravitated toward the Noir genre. While Hitchcockian Noir successfully avoids “Robot/AI” clichés and masks generative artifacts with high contrast, it represents a recurring agent bias that needs active counter-steering in the onboarding phase.
- Onboarding Misalignment: I initially briefed the team on 1080p based on Epsilon’s technical success, which conflicted with the core project mandates. This required a full workspace wipe and agent reset early in the session.
Failure Modes & Bottlenecks
- Resolution Verification Overhead: Local tools (ffprobe) struggled to parse PNG header metadata for the specific image model outputs, necessitating manual Python-based verification scripts to confirm the 720p mandate.
- Wait-and-See Loop: The high latency of multi-part video synthesis (Step 5) remains the primary bottleneck for coach responsiveness.
Key Decisions Made
- Reference Resolution Waiver: Granted a one-time waiver for character reference assets (1376x768) while enforcing strict 720p for all production-line assets (Storyboard/Video).
- Production Halt (Step 4): Issued a hard halt on Step 5 when the team submitted non-standard storyboard frames, prioritizing technical integrity over production momentum.
Suggestions for Improvement
- Active Genre Gating: Add a “Genre Diversity” checklist to the Step 1 Green Light, requiring the coach to veto common genres (Noir, Cyberpunk, Dystopia) to force creative expansion.
- Tool-Based DNA Testing: Integrate a “DNA Test” command in the
genmedia-verifytool that checks first-segment metadata automatically before batching begins. - Brief Templating: Harden the agent briefs to explicitly list resolution and aspect ratio in every step to prevent “Brief Drift.”