RESET — 30 sec surreal sci-fi/mystery short Format: 16:9 | Style: Real humans, real interiors, VFX-driven surreal destruction/reversal sequence Total runtime: 0:30, second-by-second cuts Music: Starts as a single anxious piano note repeating, distorts into a low sub-bass rumble at the earthquake, breaks into glitchy reversed strings during the destruction, then resolves into one clean rising synth tone as the world stabilizes. 0:00–0:05 — THE TYPE A woman sits alone at a desk, laptop open, dim room. Her fingers hover, hesitate, then type — stop — retype. Something's wrong and she can't name it. Camera: slow, creeping dolly-in on her hands, then her face, unease building. Audio: keyboard clicks, held breath, ticking piano note. 0:05–0:10 — THE SHAKE The room lurches. Objects rattle off shelves. Camera whip-cuts to a first-person POV from the woman's own eyes, looking down — we see only her arms and torso shaking as she grips the desk. Lights flicker. Audio: sub-bass rumble, glass shattering, her sharp inhale. 0:10–0:15 — THE REVEAL She shoves the laptop off the desk and bolts for the balcony, camera tracking low behind her shoulder. She grips the railing — and in the distance, far past the skyline, a mushroom cloud blooms silently on the horizon. Audio: sudden silence, wind, distant boom arriving late. 0:15–0:22 — THE UNRAVELING Reality inverts. Camera cuts rapid and disorienting, no single character — just the world breaking rule by rule: Traffic lights melt and reform into pulsing, eye-like shapes. Entire buildings crack loose from their foundations and drift upward, debris raining sideways instead of down. A flock of birds freezes mid-air, then scatters backward in reverse motion. Water from a fountain rises off the ground in a slow, wrong-way spiral. Camera: fast whip-pans and Dutch angles, cutting on impact beats, nothing holds still. Audio: reversed strings, glitching static, a heartbeat under all of it. 0:22–0:26 — THE MAN Cut to a small, quiet control room — cables, monitors, a single indicator light glowing green. A man enters, breathing hard, sits down, and refreshes a terminal screen. Data reconnects across the monitors — each feed matching a piece of the chaos we just saw: the balcony, the traffic light, the floating building. Camera: slow push-in on his face, then whip to the green light as his hand reaches for a drone control unit. Audio: quiet room tone, keys clicking, a soft rising tone as the connection locks in. 0:26–0:30 — THE RESTORE The instant he connects the drone, everything snaps back in reverse — buildings settle down into place, traffic lights un-melt into normal red-yellow-green, the fountain water falls back down, the mushroom cloud folds in on itself and vanishes. The woman, back at her desk, exhales — laptop open again, room silent and still, as if nothing happened. Camera: one smooth pull-back from her face to a wide, calm, static final frame. Audio: single clean synth tone resolving to silence. Camera Movement Throughline Creeping dolly-in (calm) → whip-cut to POV (shock) → low tracking follow (dread) → fast disorienting whip-pans/Dutch angles (chaos) → slow push-in (control/reveal) → smooth pull-back to stillness (resolution). The movement itself tells the story: it gets faster and more broken as the world unravels, then deliberately slows and steadies as the man restores order. Mystery Hook Never explicitly explained: why the man's system is tied to the woman's reality, or what "connecting the drone" actually restores. The green light is the only clue — intentionally ambiguous, built for a sequel or fan theory. Negative Constraints No text overlays until an optional end card, no additional characters beyond the woman and the man, no CGI that looks like a video game (VFX should feel unsettlingly real, not stylized), no comedic tone — the destruction sequence should feel dreadlike and dangerous, not cartoonish.
