ATELIERVermeer's Light — a 120-second museum installation about an empty 17th-century studio at the moment of arrival
No figures. No characters. The protagonist is the light. Twelve painterly shots that walk a viewer through Vermeer's atelier — the window, the empty stool, the easel turned away, the lapis pigment on the bench, the dust in the morning beam — paced for a museum bench, narrated by a soft scholarly voice, scored by baroque chamber music. This is the showcase for what storyboard does when the brief is not "a hero" but "a place".
The atelier bible — the place is the cast
When the cast is empty, the style brief carries the entire identity. ATELIER replaces the 5-axis cast spec with a 5-axis place spec — atelier_identity + window + palette + light_direction + change_policy. Re-pasted verbatim into every shot prompt. The result: 12 shots that read as one continuous room, one continuous morning.
window: single tall leaded-glass window, north light, slightly opened upper pane, lace curtain caught against the frame
palette: Vermeer warm + cool — ultramarine lapis, lemon-ochre, lead-white, vermillion · plaster cream walls · oak-brown floor
light_direction: north window left, low warm morning angle, golden beam falls diagonally across the floor
change_policy: SAME ROOM across every shot · same window, same easel, same stool, same Persian-blue cloth · light intensity grows ~10% per shot through the 12-shot arc
absence: no figures, no hands, no shadows of a body — only the room and the light
Twelve shots, one cap, one room — a single i2v cap can carry an entire museum piece
ATELIER is the inverse of OPUS 1. Where OPUS 1 mixed two premium caps for cinematic variety, ATELIER deliberately uses only kling-v3-i2v across all 12 shots. The motion budget is even tighter: each shot has exactly one allowed motion (dust drifts, lace stirs, light brightens, pigment-glint pulses). The cap can carry the whole piece because the brief never asks it to do too much.
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kling-v3-i2vCap assignment plan vs actual — twelve shots, twelve clean returns
All 12 shots used the same cap with deliberately constrained prompts. This proves the storyboard MCP can carry long-form installation work on a single workhorse i2v, when the motion budget per shot is small enough.
| Shot | Motion budget (B9 discipline) | Cap | Returned |
|---|---|---|---|
| S1 · ARRIVAL | light brightens 5%, lace edge stirs once | kling-v3-i2v | ~95s ✓ |
| S2 · ABSENCE | dust mote drifts across the seat once | kling-v3-i2v | ~110s ✓ |
| S3 · EASEL | canvas catches a tiny breath of air | kling-v3-i2v | ~98s ✓ |
| S4 · PIGMENT | lapis glints once as light moves | kling-v3-i2v | ~107s ✓ |
| S5 · CLOTH | drape edge lifts subtly | kling-v3-i2v | ~91s ✓ |
| S6 · DUST | three motes drift through the beam | kling-v3-i2v | ~104s ✓ |
| S7 · KNIFE | light gleam travels the blade | kling-v3-i2v | ~99s ✓ |
| S8 · BRUSHES | brush tips catch + release a glint | kling-v3-i2v | ~88s ✓ |
| S9 · BREATH | lace billows once + settles | kling-v3-i2v | ~95s ✓ |
| S10 · FLOOR | diagonal beam advances ~3 inches | kling-v3-i2v | ~117s ✓ |
| S11 · WALL | warm shadow softens + lifts | kling-v3-i2v | ~104s ✓ |
| S12 · HELD | the room breathes once | kling-v3-i2v | ~89s ✓ |
Audit gate verdict — Wave 1 (Keyframes)
- Atelier consistency held across all 12 keyframes: same window, same beam, same easel, same stool, same Persian-blue cloth
- Palette held: ultramarine + lemon-ochre + lead-white + warm plaster on every shot
- Light intensity arc visible across the 12: ~10% brighter from S1 to S12, narratively justifying the runtime
- Zero accidental figures or hands in any of the 12 — the absence is the point
- krea-2-large delivered painterly atelier on 12/12 first pass
Audit gate verdict — Wave 2 (Animation)
- 12/12 shots shipped clean i2v under the strictest motion-budget discipline in any of the 3 flagships
- No shot had more than ONE moving element (dust OR lace OR light OR pigment-glint — never two together)
- Atelier identity preserved through every i2v — the easel does not drift, the stool stays where it was, the window does not warp
- This proves a single reliable cap (kling-v3-i2v) can carry an entire museum-grade installation when the brief is disciplined
The narration — gemini-tts · soft scholarly female voice (Gacrux) · curator-bench voice
It is a morning in Delft, in the autumn of sixteen hundred sixty-five. The painter has not yet arrived. The room is waiting.
Light comes through a single north window — light that no painter ever painted better than the one whose work hung on this wall. It touches the stool where he will sit, the easel he turned away last night, the small dish of ground lapis that cost a guilder a teaspoon.
This is the room he chose to study. The cloth he draped to catch a blue. The beam of dust he watched cross the floor at exactly this hour, every morning for nine years.
Nothing here is famous. The boy on the lace pillow, the woman at the virginal, the soldier and his girl with the wine glass — they would all step into this light. The light remains. The room remains. The painter, for a moment longer, has not yet arrived.
Pipeline trace — honest end-to-end, one cap, one room, twelve shots
create_media action=generate, model=krea-2-large → 12/12 done in 25-30s each
Each prompt: [Vermeer atelier brief] + [verbatim 5-axis place spec] + [per-shot detail + light direction + absence reminder]
Stage 2 — audit gate Reviewed all 12 keyframes against atelier bible + palette + absence-of-figures invariant Atelier held — zero re-fires (saved ~$0.76 in re-renders)
Stage 3 — animation (single cap, strict motion budget) 12 ×
create_media action=animate, model=kling-v3-i2v, duration=10s
Each prompt enforced ONE motion: dust OR lace OR light OR pigment-glint, never two
Each prompt re-pasted the atelier_identity + change_policy SAME ROOM clauses verbatim
12 / 12 shots returned → in 88-117s each ($0.525 / shot)
Stage 4 — audio (parallel with Stage 3) 1 ×
create_media action=tts, gemini-tts voice=Gacrux, 4-paragraph scholarly script → done
1 × create_media action=music, minimax-music, "baroque chamber music, lute and viola da gamba" → done
Stage 5 — finishing (local ffmpeg) 12 × vertical-fit anim mp4 (1:1 source → 1920×1080 with blurred-source side bars) Concat 12 fitted clips → mix voice (1.0) + music ducked (0.15) → trim 120s output:
atelier-vermeers-light-reel.mp4 (~34MB · H.264 · AAC 192k · 120s · 1920×1080)
Why this matters ✓ Long-form (2 minutes) is doable on a single reliable cap when the brief is disciplined ✓ "No characters" is the cheapest premium-quality showcase you can ship — no cast-lock drift risk ✓ Museum bench, lobby loop, exhibit-wall display — this is exactly the format Storyboard handles best
Cost — honest end-to-end
ATELIER is the cheapest of the three flagships at $7.61 for 120 seconds. Per-second cost: $0.063. The "no characters" choice cuts cast-lock retries to zero; the "one cap" choice makes scheduling predictable; the "one motion per shot" choice keeps every i2v call clean on the first try.
Reproduce with your own museum-installation brief — the playbook is open
This is the museum-installation pattern: a place-spec instead of a cast-spec, one disciplined motion per shot, a single workhorse i2v cap, scholarly voice over baroque score. Pipeline lives in the museum-installation playbook — the heart of it is the absence-of-figures invariant and the per-shot ONE-motion rule.