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Film Complete

Team Topaz — "The Printmaker's Ghost"

Supernatural Kaidan • Ukiyo-e Woodblock Print Animation • 26 shots • 53 storyboard frames • 4:46 runtime • Zero reshoots

Final Cut

Locked

Shots

4:46

Runtime

Score Stems

Reshoots

Ukiyo-e

Visual Style

Ghost love story in the visual language of Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Zero reshoots — 26/26 clips approved first take. Runtime trimmed creatively: two [SILENT] shots replaced narration cuts, improving the film. Scene 6 silent by design.

Characters

Hiroshi — The Printmaker

Voice: narrator (Kore TTS)

A man of sixty winters. Grief as material to be worked — he carves because it is the only thing he knows. Candle progression tracks his emotional journey across the film, each shot the candle burns lower. Woodblock carving hands are a recurring close-up motif.

Yuki — The Ghost in the Print

Non-speaking — manifest through light and ink

Not a presence but a process — she develops the way an image develops on paper when ink meets fiber. Pale blue-white inkwash technique. Exists only in the candlelight. Never solid in the physical world. Never sudden. Always arriving, always forming, never quite finished.

hiroshi headshot

hiroshi body sheet

yuki headshot

yuki body sheet

Settings

Setting A — The Studio (Night)

Edo-period printmaker's studio by candlelight. Warm amber glow, visible woodgrain surfaces. Carving tools arranged with care. Cherry woodblock on the bench. The candle is the only light source — and the only place Yuki exists.

Setting B — The Studio (Morning)

The same studio in honest gray morning light. Cold wax smell. Cherry wood smell. The warmth is memory now. The unfinished block on the carving table — her face half-formed, one eye open, one eye still sleeping in the wood.

Key Objects

Candle (Full)

Four fingers of wax. ~3 hours. The film opens with this measurement. The candle is both clock and soul — when it dies, Yuki dies with it.

Candle (Dying)

One finger of wax. Perhaps less. The moment of impossible choice — finish the carving, or watch her. Hiroshi sets down the chisel.

Candle (Dead)

The flame gutters out. Not dramatically — gently, without drama, the way Yuki herself had gone. Warm darkness. The darkness that remembers light.

Woodblock (Early)

Cherry wood, tight-grained, golden. The face emerging — forehead, the right eye, the arch of brow.

Woodblock (Half-Carved)

The unfinished masterwork. One lip, no chin, no jaw. One eye open, one still sleeping in the wood. More beautiful for its incompleteness.

Carving Tools

The finest gouge — called tsuki (moon), made from a horseshoe nail beaten smooth as silver. Hands that know this. Hands that have always known this.

Washi Proof Print

Good Mino washi — thin as breath, stronger than faith. The proof reveals Yuki looking at Hiroshi with the late-night-studio expression.

Storyboard

53 frames across 7 scenes — every frame a living Ukiyo-e woodblock print. Shot 6.2 mid-point keyframed for large motion delta. Yuki's palette: pale blue-white inkwash on warm amber woodgrain. 4 storyboard regens; 0 video reshoots.

Scene 1 — Quiet Industry (The Studio at Night)

shot 01 01 start

shot 01 01 end

shot 01 02 start

shot 01 02 end

shot 01 03 start

shot 01 03 end

shot 01 04 start

shot 01 04 end

Scene 2 — Recognition (Yuki Appears in the Print)

shot 02 01 start

shot 02 01 end

shot 02 02 start

shot 02 02 end

shot 02 03 start

shot 02 03 end

shot 02 04 start

shot 02 04 end

Scene 3 — Desperate Hope (Racing to Finish)

shot 03 01 start

shot 03 01 end

shot 03 02 start

shot 03 02 end

shot 03 03 start

shot 03 03 end

shot 03 04 start

shot 03 04 end

Scene 4 — Discovery (She Lives in the Light)

shot 04 01 start

shot 04 01 end

shot 04 02 start

shot 04 02 end

shot 04 03 start

shot 04 03 end

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shot 04 04 end

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shot 04 05 end

Scene 5 — The Impossible Choice

shot 05 01 start

shot 05 01 end

shot 05 02 start

shot 05 02 end

shot 05 03 start

shot 05 03 end

Scene 6 — Surrender (He Sets Down the Chisel)

shot 06 01 start

shot 06 01 end

shot 06 02 start

shot 06 02 mid

shot 06 02 end

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shot 06 03 end

Scene 7 — Stillness (Morning After)

shot 07 01 start

shot 07 01 end

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shot 07 02 end

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shot 07 03 end

Audio Design

Score

7 stems • Lyria 3

mvt_I_solo_koto
mvt_IIa_koto_shakuhachi
mvt_IIb_trio_urgent
mvt_IIIa_ensemble_climax
yuki_signature (+ 4s)
credits_reprise
Scene 6: silent by design

Narration (VO)

23 stems • Kore TTS

Third-person literary narration — lyrical, intimate, present tense. Prose-poem style following Hiroshi's internal experience. Two [SILENT] shots added to replace narration cuts, improving the pacing.

Dialogue

None — Yuki is wordless

Hiroshi never speaks on screen. Yuki communicates only through the work — a line that curves more gently, a color that bleeds warmer than the pigment should allow. Silence carries the emotional weight.

Ambient

Embedded in Veo video

Chisel-on-wood rhythm, ink stone grinding, paper handling. The steady wooden percussion of printmaking. In Scene 6: only the candle and breathing. Garden sounds at dawn in Scene 7.