WEBGRS/borrow-style

Borrow style

The person shows a film they like and hands over their own material. Make the film the reference's editor would have cut from it: whoever knows the reference feels the family likeness and finds nothing of it on screen. Then write the packaging down, so their next film can wear it without the reference.

What defines it

Their content in the reference's packaging. A film that reuses the reference's shots, lines or order of events is a copy; their content in a look the agent chose is not this either. OpenFilm's own replicate is the other job: the reference's structure, shot for shot at the same moments, with the person's content swapped in. Their own story in the reference's feel is this skill.

What has to be true

• In this order. 1. Measure the reference and look at the pictures its last line names. 2. Tell the person what you will borrow (With the person). 3. Write the house style: a folder skills/<name>/ beside film.html (not beside this skill: that is their library) from <this skill's folder>/house-style.md, every <…> filled from the numbers and the frames, with an openfilm.json. 4. Cut film.html from that folder, not from memory. 5. Render, compare, fix, render, compare. 6. Run house.mjs check, then report.
• Speech comes first where people speak on camera. A voice is over its speaker's face or over footage with no face, never another person's; no cut goes through a word; no caption is one or two words of a sentence. If the reference's pace cannot hold that, the pace gives way: leave the measure OFF and say why. Label voice and footage data-speaker="Name"; house.mjs check lists each break with its time.
• Their library only on their yes. Run npx openfilm skill add <folder> only after the person said yes in this conversation; otherwise offer it at the end.
• Nothing of the reference in the film. No frame, footage, logo or person of it, none of its words, not its order of events, not its music file.
• Their material as it is, in the reference's framing. Footage trimmed with #t=, never re-encoded. When the reference sets its material on a background (cards, tilted pages, windows, crops), their screenshots and pages go into that framing, not full frame. Pages carry only the key words and titles the reference sets apart from its captions.
• Captions are a caption track made from the .vtt beside each voice, in the house style's look, by house.mjs captions. A page never draws them.
• Cut on the music's beats. Music of like tempo and feel: the person's, npx openfilm get music-search (free), or a library whose licence allows it. Run beats.mjs on it and cut on the beats it finds, not a grid from 0 s.
• Close on the numbers. Compare marks each measure OFF outside its tolerance. Fix what the footage does not hold you to (loudness, grade, cut timing and kinds), render and compare again, and name what stays off, and why.

What you have

• node <this skill's folder>/scripts/style.mjs <reference video> measures a film into style/<name>.json, style/<name>.html and a picture per shot (pace, cuts, motion, colour, loudness, tempo). The pictures show what numbers miss: captions, titles, framing, backgrounds.
• style.mjs compare <reference> <film.mp4> --music <music file> sets the two side by side with tolerances, and exits 1 when the film holds a picture of the reference or six words in a row of its words.
• node <this skill's folder>/scripts/house.mjs captions film.html --like skills/<name>/captions.vtt writes the caption track from the voices as film.html places and trims them; house.mjs check says what the house style and the film's captions still lack.
• node <this skill's folder>/scripts/beats.mjs <music> measures a track: tempo, beats, bars, hits.
• npx openfilm look checks frames, captions included. Each script's last line says what next.

With the person

Their words come first. Before cutting, tell them in three lines: the reference's numbers; what you will borrow; what you won't. When done, tell them in a few lines: which measures are still off and why, where the house-style folder is, and whether it was added to their library.