OCCUPIED: a short film by David Martin

Close-up of a young man in a rust corduroy jacket and grey hoodie, eyes wide and sweating, standing in a narrow dorm corridor lined with dark doors.

A short film

Every door he opens, he’s already home.

Best with sound, full screen.

A college student keeps dreaming he opens his dorm door and finds himself already at his desk. Tonight, the dream follows him home.

A short film by David Martin · Psychological thriller · 1:47

1:47Runtime

8Locked references

1Face, everywhere

13Cuts to final

2.39:1Scope finish

−16LUFSFinal mix

00 · The idea

Make the weakness the subject.

The challenge. The best-known failure of AI video is the face. Keep one character the same across a whole film and the tools start to drift. Most AI films hide that problem. OCCUPIED is built on it: a film about one face that keeps turning up where it should not be.

The constraints. Under two minutes. Photorealistic and cinematic, with no exposition. Dialogue that never depends on a perfect lip sync. One clear idea, escalated three times, with an ending that answers the opening.

My role. Story, look, cast and location design, shot design, voice direction, score direction and every call in the edit. Directed end to end.

The point. AI is a crew with strengths and weaknesses, like any crew. A director’s job is to write for the crew you have. Here the limits of the tools shaped the story, and the story is better for it.

OCCUPIED poster: a tight close-up of Eli, sweating and wide-eyed, with the title in thin serif capitals — Key art · one face, everywhere

01 · The story

The opening and the ending rhyme.

A dream at 3:12 AM that comes true at 4:47 PM. Doubles in the background that are easy to miss the first time and impossible to miss the second. A last frame that hands the question to the audience.

Night. A figure in a rust jacket sits at a dorm desk in the glow of a monitor, back to camera

Cold open0:00

The dream.

3:12 AM. The door slowly opens on a figure at the desk. He looks back. It is Eli. Hard cut to black.

Eli seen through a rain-streaked cafe window, hand to his forehead

Act one0:12

The cafe.

Rain on the window. “He turns around… and it’s me.” Maya: “It’s just a dream.” Then, from the street: “Text me when you’re home!”

Eli walks a wet campus path; far ahead, a small figure in the same rust jacket

Act two0:41

The walk.

The path, the crosswalk, the lobby, the stairwell. A rust jacket far down the path. Another at the bus shelter. Easy to miss, on purpose.

Eli from behind in the corridor as every door opens on another Eli

Act three1:06

The door.

4:47 PM. Light under his door, typing inside. It opens exactly as in the dream. Every door he knocks on for help is answered by himself. Lights out.

One idea, three times

The dream, the walk, the corridor. Each beat raises the stakes on the same image.

No exposition

Nobody explains anything. The audience assembles it, which is what makes them lean in.

An open last frame

“home yet?” on a black screen. Which Eli is going to answer?

02 · The cut

Beat by beat.

The final cut, version 13, as it plays. Picture on the left, sound and dialogue on the right.

Time	Picture	Sound
0:00	3:12 AM. The door opens slowly. A push-in on a figure at the desk. He looks back: Eli.	A low drone. Hard cut to black.
0:09	Title. OCCUPIED, a short film by David Martin.	A single hit, then quiet.
0:12	A cafe in the rain. Eli tells Maya the dream.	Eli: “I had the dream again.” Maya: “The same one?” Eli: “I come home, I open my door, and someone’s sitting at my desk. He turns around… and it’s me. I’m already in my room. So I run. I knock on every door on my floor… and every single one… it’s me.”
	She covers his hand with hers.	Maya: “Don’t worry. It’s just a dream. Look at you, you’ve barely slept all week.”
	The street. Maya turns back as they part.	“Text me when you’re home!”
0:41	The walk home: the path, a crosswalk, the lobby, the stairwell, the corridor. A small rust-jacket double far down the path, another at the bus shelter.	A light flickers in the stairwell with a quiet static buzz. Real footsteps in the corridor.
1:06	His door. 4:47 PM. Light and the shadow of feet underneath.	Muffled typing.
1:09	The door opens slowly. At the desk, the double turns.	One latch click. The music drops to a drone, a low hit on the turn.
1:18	Eli backs away from the doorway.	“No! No, no, no!”
1:24	Rooms 214, 216 and 218. Each door cracks open on another Eli: irritated, eating noodles, on the phone.	“Hey! Hey, I need help!!” … “Seriously?” … “One sec.” A door shuts.
1:35	Every door opens. A double in every doorway. The lights flicker, his head turns, the lights die.	Hard cut to silence.
1:39	Black. A notification: Maya, “home yet?”	A text chime.
1:43	End title.	The score’s last held note.

03 · The look

A feature film, not an ad.

Real skin, motivated light and restraint in the camera. Every prompt was written to the standard of a feature film, not a commercial.

Scope. Finished at 2.39:1. Every shot was framed with heads and action in the middle band, so the letterbox never cuts a face.
Practical light. A monitor at 3 AM, a rainy window, autumn lamps, corridor fluorescents.
The camera moves; people mostly do not. Slow push-ins and tracks, small crowds, minimal movement.
Symmetry. A one-point corridor of doors for the climax, in the tradition of classic horror framing.

Generate wide, finish in scope. Faces live in the middle band.

The colour to watch

Cool teal shadows, muted skin and one grade over every clip, so shots from different generations read as one film. Eli’s rust corduroy jacket is the colour to watch. Once the audience clocks it on a figure far down the path, every rust shape on screen becomes a threat.

Teal shadowThe world

Muted skinPeople, held back

RustEli, and every double

Monitor blueThe dream

FluorescentThe residence hall

Stills

In the dream, Eli looks back over his shoulder from the desk — 0:08 · He looks back

Maya’s hand covers Eli’s on the cafe table beside a mug — 0:30 · “It’s just a dream”

On an autumn street, Maya turns back to Eli with a smile — 0:38 · “Text me when you’re home!”

His dorm door in the corridor, light showing underneath, timestamp 4:47 PM — 1:07 · 4:47 PM

Another Eli answers a door holding a cup of noodles — 1:30 · Room 216

Title card: OCCUPIED in thin cream serif capitals on black — 0:09 · Title

04 · Writing for the crew

Direct around what the tools do badly.

The double must be easy to miss.

Lock the face, lock the places

Eight reference images: Eli’s portrait, his full outfit and his back, Maya, and four places: the cafe, the dorm room, the second-floor corridor and the campus street. The doubles are built from Eli’s own references, because they are the same person.

Place descriptions are written once, to create the references. After that, every shot prompt points to the attached picture, “exactly as shown”, and describes only what changes. The picture, not the words, sets the room.

Every keyframe and motion prompt spells out emotion, posture, which way people face and where the camera is. Everyone on screen gets an obvious reason to do what they do.

Stage the shot for the model

Doors are hard. The model cannot walk a person through a doorway or land a fist on a door. The door reveals are clips of doors closing, played in reverse and slowed. Every knock is added in the edit.
Doubles stay small. Far away, back turned, never next to or facing Eli until the corridor.
Silence the model. Video models invent dialogue, so every motion prompt names the ambience and who stays silent.
Hide the drift. When a face starts to drift from Eli, shallow focus covers it, or the shot ends before the head turns.
Three tries, then restart. A failing shot gets two or three attempts, then one clean restart from the last prompt that worked.

05 · The voices

Lines go where the mouths aren’t.

AI video does not give a reliable lip sync or the same voice twice. So every line is recorded separately with one locked voice per character, and most of them play over hands, through glass or over a back. Where a mouth is visible, the line is lined up with the clip’s own speech.

For Maya’s line in the street, the model was prompted to say the exact words. That second was slowed to 1.25× and her recorded line sped up 1.3× until the two met.

The doubles speak in Eli’s voice. That sameness is the scare.

Every voice gets the acoustics of its room: the cafe, the street, the dorm, the corridor. Nothing sounds like voiceover laid on top of a picture.

I had the dream again.Eli · Cafe

The same one?Maya · Cafe

He turns around… and it’s me.Eli · Cafe

Don’t worry. It’s just a dream.Maya · Over hands

Text me when you’re home!Maya · Synced

No! No, no, no!Eli · Soft focus

Hey! Hey, I need help!!Eli · Over a door

Seriously?Double · Room 214

One sec.Double · Room 218

Plays where no mouth has to matchMouth on screen, lined up by hand

06 · Score and sound

Silence is the loudest moment.

One original score, cut to picture and ducked about 10 dB under dialogue. At the reveal it drops to a drone, with a low hit as the double turns. At lights out it cuts to nothing. Then a text chime, and the end title over the score’s last held note.

Level of the final mix

Measured from the finished film, every half second. Integrated loudness −16.3 LUFS.

Sound effects carry the realism

Footsteps come from the clips’ own audio, which beat synthetic ones. Knocks are a solid thud with a short decay, never hollow. Each door gets one latch click and no creak: synthetic creaks read as a horn. The stairwell light flickers with a quiet static buzz.

Mixed for the screen it plays on

Around −16 LUFS integrated with true peak held at −1.5 dB, the level online platforms expect. Nothing is ever laid over a face or a double.

07 · The pipeline

Directed by a person. Built with AI.

Stage	Tool
References, keyframes and motion	Google Flow, Omni Flash
Voices	Speechify
Score	Suno Pro
Story development, shot plan, prompts, edit, grade, sound design, mix and overlays	Claude (Anthropic)

The story began as my skeleton: a recurring dream, a walk home, a door. Thirteen cuts later it was finished in three days. Every version was watched, noted and kept.

Review caught what the tools missed. In version 12, motion interpolation left a white sliver on the edge of a door at 1:12; the fix was frame blending. A generated poster on a dorm wall read like a real game title; it was replaced with an invented one. Every sign and poster was checked for real brands.

The tools generated the material. Every decision about what stayed, what moved and what got cut was made by a director.

Writer and director

David Martin

Creative Director · North Vancouver, BC

I wrote and directed OCCUPIED: the story, the look, every shot and every line. It is pure storytelling. No product, nothing to sell, only the feeling in the last frame.

I have spent 15+ years across video, content, brand, technology and business. In 2006 I founded DJC Media, an independent studio where I direct every discipline in-house, with a quarter billion views directed.

AI is my production crew. The idea, the standards and the final cut stay with me.