Written against `the-offer.fountain`, draft of 10 September 2026 (the printers' council, from the candle-lit table through "What will you do then?"). Supersedes the evening portion of the parked `shots-scene1.md`; the parked sheets stay parked. Nothing here moved in the 7 Aug revision — it cut the morning's market beat and touched no other scene. **The 10 Sep pass is the opposite: it is almost entirely this scene**, nineteen changes across two sittings plus a register pass, and it is what the draft is now dated for. The rows below carry it; the reasoning is in the two pass sections under the grid. **One thing moved on 25 Aug 2026, and it came from the morning**: Lufft now works the near press in M-04, so E-03 is no longer the audience's first sight of him and the evening plays as recognition rather than reveal (Mabel's call, made knowingly). No line, framing or length changes here; what changes is what E-03 and E-12 are for.
One row = one AI video generation. **Paste the BOILERPLATE block into every prompt**, then add the row's Action and Camera text. All dialogue is recorded separately and laid in as VO/dub in the edit — the framings below favor listeners, hands, and profiles so on-camera lip-sync is rarely needed.
Left deliberately undecided on 10 Sep 2026 at her direction: *"put a flag on it and a dif session can ask later."* Every one of these was raised with her and not answered — none is an oversight, and none should be resolved by a session acting on its own judgment. They are listed newest first. The rows themselves carry the same notes in place; this is the index.
1. E-19 is now unlit — is that the ending, or does the candle move? The Young Printer pinches the candle out in E-18, and it is the scene's only light, so the Old Printer's question and Lufft's *"She will understand what he will not"* play as two voices in the dark. That may be the ending — the coldest line in the film with no picture under it, and one generation fewer. The alternative is to move the extinguishing after E-19, keeping the two-shot the row was designed as and making the blackout the scene's last image. 2. *E-06 — should "As though they were nothing" become "As though they were his to give"? The line used to be "hands his manuscripts to whichever press stands idle", and as though they were nothing* followed from that carelessness. It is now "to whomever he pleases," which is a charge of presumption, not carelessness — a man giving away what is not his to give. The proposed line follows the new clause and puts the film's argument in the Old Printer's mouth. Her dialogue, so not changed. 3. E-15 — cut "Who in Germany has ever paid such a sum?" It is not hers; it was written to replace "Can we bear such a sum?" after she asked for the sum's size rather than the printers' poverty. It is the third magnitude claim in three consecutive speeches and it repeats E-14's *"Is there so much in all Wittenberg?", and it cost the "Can we bear such a sum?" / "Can we bear Leipzig?"* echo, which was the sharpest exchange in the scene's back half. The poverty she objected to was in the deleted *"It would bleed every shop in Wittenberg", not in bear* — so restoring the question without that clause gets the echo back and keeps the magnitude. 4. E-04 — does the Old Printer turn to Lufft? His speech now opens *"And he'll refuse a fourth," finishing the Young Printer's "you know he has refused us three times"* — so the two are completing each other's challenge to Lufft, while the row still directs him *to the table more than to any man*. Either the blocking turns, or the two speeches stop being a pair. 5. E-14 — should Lufft be in the "are we really doing this?" look? She changed it from two anonymous masters to *"Lufft and the Old Printer exchange a look"*, which puts the doubt on the face of the man who wrote the sum and who says "It is decided" two beats later. It reads against her own direction that Lufft is in charge. Either the look is the Old Printer's with another master, or it stays and plays as complicity rather than doubt. 6. E-07's German — is the biblical echo wanted? "was Wittenbergs ist" has the shape of "was des Kaisers ist … was Gottes ist" (Mt 22,21), and the same speaker says "daß er Gottes Wort nicht verkaufen will" two speeches later. Either the sharpest thing in the scene or too loud a wink. The neutral alternative is "was Wittenberg zugehöret." 7. THE GATE — may this sheet's Audio column be re-quoted in German? PLAN § 1a holds that no sheet may quote a line until the verification pass by a native or period-literate reader; the morning proceeded on a scene-scoped exception granted 1 Aug 2026. The evening has no such exception, and the re-quote is the next item on this sheet (PLAN § 1b names it). This has been open since the start of the 10 Sep session and is the one question that blocks work rather than just improving a line.
Raised and waved off, so do not re-ask: the scene's shot rows hold 99s of picture against 196s of dialogue — a 2× shortfall, meaning half the evening has no shot assigned. Put to her on 10 Sep and answered "whatever." Recorded here so it is not mistaken for an unexamined problem. `seedance_2_5` reaches 25s at 720p, so longer rows rather than more of them is still the fix. It is not free, though: every roll since 10 Sep has been charged 6.5 credits a second, so 99s more picture is ~645 credits a pass before retakes (PLAN § 2b, *Unlimited stopped being free*).
Also true as of 10 Sep 2026: none of that day's work is committed. Nineteen dialogue changes across two passes, the register pass, the header trims, the draft redate, `pronunciation-guide.md` §3.14, and a `tools/build.py` caption change are all sitting in the working tree.
Live-action cinematic footage, Germany 1539. Night interior, single-candle chiaroscuro — one warm flame at a long oak table, the rest of the shop falling away into cold darkness. Wittenberg, late June 1539 (`resources/table-talk-4690.md`). Unretouched documentary photography on 35mm film, fine grain in the shadows. Muted earthy colors, shallow depth of field — the one scene where it is physical rather than stylistic, a single candle forcing the lens wide open (`resources/film-style.md`, approved 7 Aug 2026). Still and hushed where the morning was lively.
Luther and Katharina do not appear in this scene.
Cuts in hard from M-15's silence; the scene's first sound is the night quiet of the same room, hours later.
| # | 🎬 | Shot | Int/Ext | Framing | ~Len | Action & camera | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E-01 | ✓ 5 | The dead shop | INT | Wide, slow dolly | 6s | The shop dark and silent — presses still, aprons hung in a row, drying lines empty. Far down the room, one candle at the long table, men seated around it. Dolly drifts toward the light. | Night quiet: settling timber, a bench creak. No press — its absence is the point. |
| E-02 | ✓ 6 | The candle and the letter | INT | Static insert, shallow focus | 4s | CLOSE ON: the candle flame; beside it the morning's letter, smoothed flat, its creases keeping the shape of the runner's fist. | Lufft's VO opens over this, unhurried: "Then we ask him again." A low groan runs around the table. |
| E-03 | ✓ 2 | Lufft at the head | INT | Medium, candlelit | 5s | Recognition, not reveal, from 25 Aug 2026: Hans Lufft at the head of the table — ink to the elbows, unmoved by the groan. The masters' faces flank him, half in shadow. This was written as the audience's first clear look at him, and it no longer is: he works the near press in the morning's M-04, so by here we have watched him beat a forme for ten minutes. Play the difference rather than ignore it — the man we saw with ink balls in both hands is the man now proposing to buy Luther's output, and the shot is about the change in him, not about meeting him. Same costume both times, deliberately (the good dark doublet), so he is recognisable across the cut. The line is aimed at him from 10 Sep 2026 ("you know he has refused us"), which gives this framing a reason it did not have: an off-screen voice challenging the man in frame, rather than a remark the camera happens to be pointed away from. | Young Printer, off-screen: "Again? You know he has refused us three times." |
| E-04 | ✓ 1 | He gives his books away | INT | Medium on Old Printer | 6s | The Old Printer speaks low, to the table more than to any man, hands flat before him. Open tension, 10 Sep 2026: the line now opens "And he'll refuse a fourth," finishing the Young Printer's "you know he has refused us three times" — so the two of them are completing each other's challenge to Lufft, and to the table more than to any man pulls the other way. Either the blocking turns him toward Lufft, or the two speeches stop being a pair. Undecided. | "And he'll refuse a fourth. He has never taken a gulden for God's work. Not once in twenty years. He gives his books away." |
| E-05 | ✓ 10 | Counting the refusals | INT | CU hands → rack to face | 5s | The Young Printer counts off on his fingers — one, two, three — faces around him watching. OPEN, 14 Sep 2026 — come back to this (Mabel: "not bad ig. Idk about the rap hands though, it doesn't look good"). Latest take `E-05-02` (the 16:07 roll, handheld over the Old Printer's shoulder; cut onto E-04 as `evening-scene-10`, nothing approved). The problem is the hands: the counting hand is held up beside his face with the fingers splayed and flicking, and the other hand's index finger jabs across them, so the gesture reads as a rapper's hands, not a man counting three refusals — and the one-two-three never reads cleanly. What worked in the same take: no cut inside it, no tears, black windows, the angle. Ideas for when it is picked up: drop the second hand's tapping and let one hand count alone; keep the counting hand low, near the table, below his chin; slower, smaller finger movements with the ring and little fingers kept folded. `E-05-01` (15:47) got the finger count right but played the line crying and too angry, and stuttered "Zum ersten. Zum ersten". | "The first time he laughed at us. The second time he preached at us. The third time he would not so much as lay down his pen." |
| E-06 | ✓ 3 | Whomever he pleases | INT | Continuation of E-05: holds its last framing, then pulls back and right to a wide of the whole table | 10s | APPROVED 17 Sep 2026: `E-06-03` IS THE E-06 TAKE (Mabel: "Yup I like it") — and the first shot in this film built as a continuation of another. It opens on the last frame of the approved `E-05-09` and travels back and to the right in one unbroken move until all three men sit small in the one pool of candlelight, the dark shop closing over the argument. The Young Printer speaks all three sentences once each and in order; the Old Printer never answers; Lufft's eyes come up on "dieser Stadt ganzer Handel". This supersedes the over-shoulder framing and the 5 s the row used to carry, both of which predate the continuation. Known defects, approved with them: a dish appears under the candle by 4 s where it is bare on the wood at the join and in E-04 and E-05; the wide ends less wide than specified; he speaks from frame one, so the opening beat is gone. Paper is in frame and was cleared by an enlarged read — no letterforms, no numerals. Cut onto E-05-09 as `evening-scene-17`. THE LINE MOVED TO THE YOUNG PRINTER, 17 Sep 2026 (Mabel: "I'm thinking maybe it should be yp again talking", then "do that for e06 and e07 too") — the German is unchanged, only the speaker, in both scripts. Why: the Old Printer defends Luther everywhere else in the scene (E-04, and E-10's "you would bend him with a purse?"), so this was the one speech where he prosecuted, and it read as him changing sides and back. The grievance is the young man's. It also makes E-05, E-06 and E-07 one rising run, so Lufft's rebuke in E-08 lands on a speech three shots in the building. The Old Printer now says nothing between E-04 and E-10, and the Young Printer has three speeches in a row — E-07 needs its own angle so it is not a third pass at the same man in the same posture. The Young Printer speaks; the Old Printer listens and does not answer. Superseded takes: `E-06-01` (14 Sep, the wide orbit, the Old Printer speaking — predates the change) and `E-06-02` (17 Sep, the first continuation: it dropped "Als wären sie nichts." and the camera barely travelled). SUPERSEDED BLOCKING, kept for the record: the Old Printer's hands stay flat; he does not gesture; past him, down the table, the listening faces. Re-blocked 10 Sep 2026: he used to tip his head toward the dark shop and the presses loomed behind him, because the line named an idle press. It no longer does — the charge is now about a man doing as he likes — so the press gesture goes, and E-11 gets it back undivided, which is where the pan into the dark belonged anyway. | "A man who hands his manuscripts to whomever he pleases. As though they were nothing. As though they were not the whole trade of this town." |
| E-07 | ✓ 18 | Leipzig grows fat | INT | Continuation of E-06: keeps its backward travel going and arcs round until the table is centred | 12s | APPROVED 25 Sep 2026: `E-07-04` IS THE E-07 TAKE (Mabel: "yesss i like e0704") — and the first take in this film rolled in `video_extension` mode, extending the approved `E-06-03` itself rather than matching a described first frame, so the join is seamless rather than merely matched. Higgsfield job `5130fa5a`, 12 s, 720p, 84 credits. Cut onto E-06-03 as `evening-scene-23`, every frame verified hash-identical to source. THE SHOT: the camera picks up E-06-03's backward glide in mid-travel and arcs round until the table is centred, the Old Printer's shoulder clears the foreground and the whole table sits in frame with the drying lines overhead. THE PALM ON THE WOOD IS GONE (Mabel, 25 Sep) — he droops back into his chair on the last word and the tension goes out of him. This retires the row's old direction (leans into the light, heat rising, a palm coming down) and the 5 s and medium, slight push-in it used to carry, both of which predate the continuation. It also answers the third-speech problem below: the shot is not another pass at his face, it is the room opening out around him. MEASURED: speech 0.50–9.55 s (9.05 s) with 2.39 s of tail and one internal pause of 1.20 s — against 10.85–11.00 s of speech and a ~1.9 s dead gap in `-02` and `-03`, which is why 12 s was enough where 13 s had been advised. No transient at the end of the speech: the slap did not creep back. KNOWN DEFECT, APPROVED WITH IT: the leaded windows read blue and lit from about 6 s as the shop opens out, against a prompt asking for unlit night glass, and the wall around them carries the same spill. `E-06-03` has the same blue, so it is consistent across the join rather than a break. A local window grade was in progress at approval and is not part of this take. SUPERSEDED TAKES: `E-07-01` to `E-07-03` (18 Sep), all built on the rotation onto the Old Printer and a palm on the table, and none of which arrived at the Old Printer before the blow. SUPERSEDED DIRECTION, kept for the record: The Young Printer leans into the light, heat rising, a palm coming down on the wood — the loudest thing the room has heard tonight. (was) OPEN, 17 Sep 2026: this is now his THIRD speech in a row (E-05 counts the refusals, E-06 carries the charge that moved to him the same day), so a medium push-in on him is a third look at the same man. The row needs a framing that is not another pass at his face — his hands and the table, the other two men's reaction, or the shot playing off Lufft — decided before it is rolled. | "And Leipzig thanks him for it. We buy the paper, we cut the type, we pay the men — while he gives it away, and Leipzig grows fat selling what should rightfully belong to Wittenberg." (Line changed 10 Sep 2026, Mabel: the claim of ownership replaces "what Wittenberg was given free." The head clause was missing here and is restored — the sheet carries no shortened speeches.) |
| E-08 | ✓ 6 | Mind what you say | INT | CU Lufft, profile | 9s | APPROVED 19 Oct 2026: `E-08-02-cropB-dark-nohome` IS THE E-08 TAKE (Mabel: "i think i like e 08 02 cropb dark", then "approve whatever cut you used for e08") — and the first shot in this film approved on a locally edited file rather than on a platform take. It is `E-08-02`'s picture cropped 1.45× (crop B) and window-graded, with "Die Gesellen sind heim" lifted from the audio; picture bit-identical to `E-08-02-cropB-dark`, audio bit-identical outside 3.155–4.400 s. The uncut take is NOT the approved shot: it still says the four words Mabel cut from the script on 19 Oct, so a rebuild off it would put them back. Cut onto the reel as `evening-scene-32`, which is now the approved evening cut. The duration is 9 s, not the 4 s this row used to carry — 4 s cannot hold two speeches and 27 words of German; measured against `E-05-09` and `E-07-04`, 27 words runs 7.0–8.4 s before the beat between them. KNOWN DEFECTS, APPROVED WITH THEM — and the first one needs a re-roll: (1) the German is wrong: the Young Printer says "warum soll es dich" where the line is "warum sollt ich", which asks the question about the wrong person. Both E-08 rolls do it, so it is a mispronunciation and not a transcription slip, and neither crop nor grade nor mix touches it. (2) The 1.45× blow-up of 720p makes the shot softer than the seven before it. (3) The crop takes the candle and the table out of frame — the two things that tie the shot to `E-07-04`'s wide, where the candle stands centre frame — so the cut reads as a jump to another room. Measured across the join, the lit areas match (R−B +55.9 against +56.7), so this is framing and not grade. (4) The silent beat before "Warum sollt ich?" is 2.9 s, up from 1.76 s in the take, because the lifted clause was replaced with room tone rather than closed. SUPERSEDED TAKES: `E-08-01` (26 Sep, generated the Old Printer instead of Lufft — no picture of Lufft went out on that roll), `E-08-02` (26 Sep, the loose framing with an empty seat across the table), `E-08-02-cropA` (1.83×, tighter) and `E-08-02-cropB` / `-cropB-dark` (the crop before and after the window grade, both still carrying the clause). SUPERSEDED DIRECTION, kept for the record: Lufft does not raise his voice or his eyes. The heat dies around him. (He now blinks part way through the Young Printer's speech and turns to look at him, unhurried, holding that look through the silence — Mabel, 26 Sep.) | "Mind what you say of him." — a beat — Young Printer, off, quieter: "Why should I, when he minds nothing we say, to his face or behind it!" |
| E-09 | ✓ 4 | The flame leans | INT | Static insert, opening a continuous take that runs through E-10 | ~3s of a 14s shot | APPROVED 19 Oct 2026 AS PART OF A BLENDED SHOT: `E-09-02-nomusic` COVERS THIS ROW AND E-10 IN ONE UNBROKEN TAKE (Mabel: "This shot is very simple, so I would like to blend it with the next shot, e10", then "Ok ok I I like it. Approve it and add it to the best evening scene"). CLOSE ON: the candle flame leans, holds, rights itself. No one has answered — the silence runs about 3s before the camera draws back and rises to the table, and E-10 begins without a cut. THE CANDLE STANDS IN A DARK PEWTER CHAMBERSTICK — round dish, short socket, ring handle — read off `E-08-02` and now fixed on screen, which settles the holder against `E-06-03`, where it stands bare on the wood. This row no longer generates on its own; see E-10 for the take, the defects and the cut. Superseded take: `E-09-01` (the accidental 9s roll — the speech started at 0.00s and there was no silence at all). | Silence; the faint crackle of the wick. The take arrived with a sustained G drone over the opening (97.7 Hz and 392.0 Hz) which was replaced locally with the take's own room tone over 0.000–2.200s — `notes/morning-sheet-history.md`, `evening-scene-33`. |
| E-10 | ✓ 0 | The Emperor himself | INT | Continuation of E-09: the camera draws back and rises off the candle to the table | ~11s of a 14s shot | APPROVED 19 Oct 2026: `E-09-02-nomusic` IS THE E-09 + E-10 TAKE (Mabel: "Ok ok I I like it"). Higgsfield job `68a95655`, 14s, 720p, 98 credits at 7.0 a second. Cut onto the reel as `evening-scene-33`, every frame verified bit-identical to source; the reel holds at -17.5 LUFS. The Old Printer turns to Lufft, almost gently — an old man telling a younger one what he already knows. APPROVED WITH FOUR DEFECTS, all on the record: (1) the German is wrong in the words that carry the line — Kaiser reads "Eiger", widerrufen "wie überlieben", Fürsten deutscher Lande "führten deutsche Lande", beugen "begegnen" both times, Beutel "Beitel", so the speech does not say bend him with a purse; this is the third roll running to fail the same way after E-08 and `E-09-01`, so it is a reproducible fault in how the line is fed and not one bad roll; (2) it is not the two-shot this row asks for — it travels out to nearly the `E-07-04` wide, repeating the framing of the shot before it; (3) the Young Printer is in frame from about 5.5s, where the prompt put him in the room but outside the picture; (4) the windows read blue, as in `E-06-03` and `E-07-04`. CLEARED: the drying sheets were read at double size — texture only, no letterform and no numeral, so the figure stays off screen. SUPERSEDED DIRECTION, kept for the record: a separate 6s two-shot. | "He stood before the Emperor himself and would not recant one word. All the princes of Germany in one hall could not bend him. And you would bend him with a purse?" |
| E-11 | ✓ 5 | The dark presses | INT | Slow pan off the table into the dark | 6s | From the candlelit faces, the camera drifts to what Lufft nods at: the two silent presses, the row of hung aprons — every apron a man. | Lufft VO, even: "And if we do not try? Frankfurt is gone. Basel is gone. Come the autumn, Leipzig will set our own Bible and sell it under our windows. Our presses will stand cold by winter — tell me which of you I am to send home first." |
| E-12 | ✓ 3 | Lufft into the light | INT | Medium on Lufft | 5s | Lufft, forward into the light for the first time this evening — the phrase is now scoped, since he has been in full daylight in M-04 (25 Aug 2026). The room is stiller than it has been all night. He says nothing here as of 10 Sep 2026 (see below), so the shot plays him listening — which suits the sheet's preference for listeners over lip-sync. | Young Printer, off: "He will refuse. He will say what he always says — that he will not sell God's Word." |
| E-13 | ✓ 1 | He writes | INT | Medium close on Lufft from across the table, camera at candle height, locked off (was: CU over the candle, page angled away) | 10s | APPROVED 4 Nov 2026: `E-13-01` IS THE E-13 TAKE (Mabel, thread t6: "Ok fine. Approve and do all that stuff."). Higgsfield job `dcd759bd`, 10 s, 720p, seed 1646874598, 70 credits, rolled by Mabel from the web page. On the reel as `evening-scene-36`, every frame verified bit-identical to source. THE SHOT, as re-blocked on t6 (Mabel): the candle soft in the near foreground, Lufft facing us behind it. He leans back to a stool just out of frame for a blank sheet, lays it flat and smooths it, leans back again for the inkhorn and quill, dips, writes, and drops the quill back into the inkhorn. The line is split across the actions — "So machen" on the first reach, "wir ihm das" as the sheet goes down, "Abschlagen … schwer" while he writes — one sentence with pauses, not three deliveries. The prompt names no image references (Mabel: "the model won't see them as that"); the four character and room sheets go along unnamed, with Lufft's voice as a 14.9 s sample: `E-02-05`'s line followed by 10.5 s of `E-11-02-smooth-clean2`. PAPER CLEARED: read enlarged across the take — no letterform and no numeral in any frame. KNOWN DEFECTS, APPROVED WITH THEM: (1) the German is wrong in one word — both faster-whisper models hear Abschließ- where the line is Abschlagen (about 6.5 s); his head is down over the page, so it is to be fixed in the dialogue pass, not by re-roll — the fourth roll running with this fault, after E-08, `E-09-01` and E-10; (2) the leaded windows read faintly blue behind him, as in E-06, E-07 and E-10; (3) the sheet is still blank after he writes; (4) it lies flatter, and reads more as a surface, than the prompt's thin sliver. SUPERSEDED DIRECTION, kept for the record: Lufft draws a blank sheet to himself and writes. The page faces away from the lens — we see the quill's movement, the candlelight on his knuckles, never the writing. 6 s. | His answer as he writes: "Then we will make the refusing hard." ("So machen wir ihm das Abschlagen schwer.") Quill scratch, loud in the quiet. |
| E-14 | — | The back of the sheet | INT | Medium-wide down the table | 5s | He turns the paper and holds it up — to them, not to us. Camera sees only the blank back of the sheet. Eyebrows shoot up; a low whistle; Lufft and the Old Printer exchange a look — are we really doing this? | The whistle; a chair creaks. Young Printer: "Is there so much in all Wittenberg?" |
| E-15 | — | The ledgers twice | INT | Shot on Young Printer | 5s | The Young Printer looks from the sheet to the faces around him. Play awe, not reluctance (10 Sep 2026) — he is not a man who cannot afford it, he is a man who has never heard of such a sum. | Lufft, off: "We have it. I have been through the ledgers twice." — "It is more than the Elector pays him — and you would pay it every year. Who in Germany has ever paid such a sum?" — "Can we bear Leipzig?" |
| E-16 | — | Folded, once, twice | INT | Top-down insert on hands | 4s | Lufft folds the sheet once, twice — writing inward, never to camera — creases it with his thumbnail and sets it in the dead center of the table. This is the contract prop of the later scenes. | Two crisp folds; the soft tap as it lands. Lufft: "Every shop bears its share, or it cannot be done." |
| E-17 | — | What will you lose | INT | Slow pan across the masters, ending on the Old Printer | 7s | Face by face down the table: a fur collar, a ring, good Flemish cloth — and no one meeting his eye. The pan must land on the Old Printer on the word "wife" (10 Sep 2026) — Lufft turns the appeal on the one man who has defended Luther all night, and the turn exists only in the picture (see below). | Lufft VO: "Glass in your windows. Silk and velvet in your chests. A tile roof on your house. His pen paid for every bit of it." — (to the Old Printer) — "And your wife is among the finest dressed in the church every Sunday." — (to the room again) — "And if Leipzig takes the work from us, you lose all of it." |
| E-18 | — | The meeting ends | INT | Wide, the table breaking up | 7s | Rebuilt 10 Sep 2026 — the third version of this beat, and the first that is not a poll. A long beat, then chairs push back and a hat comes off a peg: the meeting is over because Lufft ended it, not because the table agreed. He lifts the folded contract off the wood. Then the Young Printer — the man who argued hardest all night — reaches over and pinches out the candle. His submission is performed, not spoken. The two earlier versions are both dead: nods around the table (Mabel: "NO THIS wONT WORK") and hands flat on the oak one by one ("i dont like the hands on the table"). They were the same idea twice — polling the room man by man — which is exactly what a man who does not ask for agreement would not do. This also retires the casting problem on this row: counting six hands needed six approved masters, and dispersal needs bodies and a hat, not faces. | Lufft: "It is decided." Then no voices at all — chair legs, a hat off its peg, and the candle going out. |
| E-19 | — | She will understand | INT | Black, or the last of the light — see below | 5s | This row changed shape on 10 Sep 2026 and needs a decision. The candle now goes out in E-18, and it is the scene's only light source, so this exchange happens in darkness: two voices and nothing to see, held, then the hard cut. That is arguably the ending — the film's coldest line landing with no picture under it, and one fewer generation to pay for. The alternative is to move the candle after this row, keeping the two-shot the sheet always had (Lufft answering to the folded paper rather than to the man) and making the blackout the scene's last image instead of its second-to-last. Undecided; Mabel's call. The old direction, for whichever way it goes: the Old Printer asks it quietly, Lufft answers looking at the paper, not at him. | "He will refuse, and refuse again. What will you do then?" — "His wife keeps his accounts. She will understand what he will not." Hold the silence. Hard cut. |
Mabel read the scene through and changed six things. All six are in both fountains, in the rows above, and in `notes/scratch-timings.md`.
Mabel: "i dont think i want it explained until it is explaineed to luther." Lufft's **"Not a purse. A contract. He grants us first access to everything he writes — and we pay for it, year upon year, as we pay for paper and type. Let Leipzig reprint what we have already sold"** is gone from both fountains. The audience now watches the council commit to a deal whose terms it has not heard; the explanation happens once, in the study, to Luther — *"First access. That is all we ask", then his "Explain it to me once more" and Lufft's "To us first. Leipzig may copy what all of Germany has already bought."* Nothing is lost from the film, only from this scene. Note this goes further than the standing rule, which hides the number (AGENTS.md) — the nature of the offer is now withheld here too.
Two knock-ons still open:
A third knock-on — E-15 echoing a "Jahr um Jahr" the audience had never heard — was closed by change 4 below, which rewrote that line anyway.
Was "selling what Wittenberg was given free." The claim of ownership is the printers' error stated in their own mouths, which is the film's argument. The German is "was Wittenbergs ist" — the shape of the Luther Bible's *"was des Kaisers ist … was Gottes ist" (Mt 22,21), and the same man says "daß er Gottes Wort nicht verkaufen will"* two speeches later. Open question: whether that echo is wanted. The neutral alternative is *"was Wittenberg zugehöret." The head clause "And Leipzig thanks him for it"* was missing from this row and is restored — the sheet carries no shortened speeches.
Mabel: "he talks to old printer when he says your wife." The speech now carries (to the Old Printer) and (to the room again), and the wording is "your wife is among the finest dressed in the church every Sunday" rather than "in Flanders cloth at church on Sunday." Three things follow:
Mabel: "more emphasis on how great the sum is and not how little they have." Since the figure is withheld until the final shot, the reactions are the only way the audience learns its size, so they carry magnitude and not scarcity. "Have we so much?" → "Is there so much in all Wittenberg?", and "It would bleed every shop in Wittenberg" → **"It is more than the Elector pays him — and you would pay it every year."**
The Elector is the yardstick because it is the one the sources supply: the printers' 400 gulden a year against Luther's own stipend, which Pettegree takes as never above 300 (Brand Luther, p. 290; stipend at 200 fl. in Table Talk Nr. 4690, 300 fl. in Nr. 5131 — see `resources/table-talk-4690.md`, which warns that Nr. 5151's own 400 is the Elector's provision and not the printers' offer). So the comparison is sound without naming either number, and it plants Luther's own salary speech in the study — *"A salary. Unasked. The year I married, Prince John Frederick doubled it."*
DRAMATIC LICENSE: that the Wittenberg printers knew the size of Luther's
electoral stipend well enough to measure their offer against it. Plausible for
a public salary in a small university town; not recorded.
Also restores the yearly term, self-contained this time, which is what closed the third knock-on above.
Was "His ink." Ink is the printers' own material and kept the line inside their frame; words concedes the thing Luther will refuse over, in a printer's mouth, and chimes with "he will not sell God's Word" two rows earlier (E-12) and with the film's title beat. German: *"Seine Worte haben das alles bezahlt."*
Mabel: "lufft is in charge, he shouldn't ask if they agree." **"Are we agreed?" → "It is decided."* ("Sind wir eins?" → "So ist's beschlossen."*) The picture is unchanged — hands still come down one by one, the Young Printer's last — but they now ratify a decision instead of casting a vote, and the slower hands read as falling into line. Note the **pre-existing mismatch this row already had* is still open: the sheet counts hands* on the oak, the fountain's stage direction says nods ("Nicken um den Tisch"). Settled 10 Sep 2026 in favour of the hands — Mabel struck the nods ("NO THIS wONT WORK, FIND SOMTHENG ELSE HERE") and both fountains now read hands flat on the table, one after another down both sides, the Young Printer's last. This row was right and the script has caught up to it.
Typed straight into the rendered screenplay and folded back in. Nine were finished rewrites and went in as written; four were notes asking for a line. Everything below is in both fountains, these rows, and the timings.
As she wrote them: rightfully belong to Wittenberg (E-07); the Young Printer's retort, which answers Lufft instead of talking past him (E-08); *No one speaks* (E-09); the Old Printer's charge turned into a question (E-10); the presses made ours (E-11); Lufft and the Old Printer exchanging the look rather than two anonymous masters (E-14); the thumbnail crease on the fold (E-16); the Old Printer's closing question (E-19). Six of them were then pulled back into period English — see the register pass below.
Register pass, 10 Sep 2026. Mabel: "fix the modern stuff." The new lines had drifted into modern idiom, and in three places the ENHG was tighter than the English it glossed, which is backwards for a script whose English is the source of truth. "Every luxury of it you can afford because of his pen" → **"His pen paid for every bit of it"*; "But if Leipzig continues to take our work, you will lose all of this wealth" → *"And if Leipzig takes the work from us, you lose all of it"; "He will only continue his refusal" → "He will refuse, and refuse again"; "will be standing cold" → "will stand cold"*; "you attempt to bend him"* → "you would bend him." The retort tightened to "when he minds nothing we say, to his face or behind it" — which buys a riposte the first phrasing missed: Lufft says "Mind what you say of him," and the answer turns on his own word. The German gets the same effect on a different word, reden, against Lufft's "was Ihr von ihm redet." Nothing in the sense changed; only the register.
The four she left to me:
1. E-15, "SOMETHING eLSe HERE" replacing "Can we bear such a sum?" — which was the capacity framing she had already ruled against. Now **"Who in Germany has ever paid such a sum?"* Lufft's "Can we bear Leipzig?"* no longer answers it directly; it now plays as him brushing the question aside, which is in character. If the call-and-response matters more, the alternative is "And you would have us bear it?" 2. E-17, "FIND SOME OTHER WAY TO SAY LOTS OF FANCY CLOTHES" — **"Silk and velvet in your chests."* Keeps the list's thing in your place* shape, carries quantity as well as luxury, and both fabrics were sumptuary-regulated for burghers, so a printer's chest full of them is precisely the overreach the line is naming. 3. E-17, "I DONT LIKE THE PRASING HERE, FIX THIS" — read as the redundancy, because her own new sentence *"Every luxury of it you can afford because of his pen" already says what "His words paid for every bit of it"* said, one address earlier. The second one is cut, so the turn to the Old Printer is now the wife's Sunday clothes and nothing else — which lands harder without the gloss after it. Note this reverses the ink → words change made earlier the same day: pen is the surviving metonym, in her sentence. 4. E-18, "NO THIS wONT WORK" — the nods are gone; hands come down flat, one after another down both sides, the Young Printer's last. This also settles the hands/nods mismatch that had been open on this row: the sheet was right and the fountains have caught up.
And two things her edits collided with, both fixed rather than flagged:
SUPERSEDED 19 Oct 2026 — the four words are now cut (Mabel, on the
review server: *"Yeah not the gone home part. Keep the rest of the words but
not that. Change the shot list and whatever else"*). This was exactly the
later pass §3.13 said it would not survive. The row's dialogue, both
fountains, the title-page Notes line and §3.13 now read without the clause:
nothing in the film speaks the language boundary any more. The seam is
kept where §3.13's own last paragraph already put it — in the structure (day
shop floor against evening table, and Lufft's *"tell me which of the men I am
to send home first"* nine lines later) — and §3.13 was rewritten to claim
that and nothing more. The clause is still in the audio of both E-08 takes,
which have not been re-rolled.
23 Oct 2026: that line changed too. Mabel, on the review server: *"I dont
like who should I send home first. It should be should I send you home first
or smth like thta." Line 100 now ends *"tell me which of you I am to send
home first"* (German "welchen von euch"*), both fountains and the E-11 row
with it, so the seam is now carried by the structure and the E-11 pan alone.
No generated take contains the line yet.
Pass the character sheets and the set still together in `seedance_2_0`'s `image_references` array — the array is the identity lock, and one image wastes it. Same rule as the morning sheet.
| Subject | Still |
|---|---|
| Hans Lufft | `lufft`, a three-view sheet on grey — full body frontal, full body back, ¾ face close-up in one image (approved 7 Aug 2026). Costume canon: flat black wool cap, undyed cream linen shirt, pale tan canvas apron — the mid-tan register that is his and not the Old Printer's dark leather. He sits through the whole scene and no seated view exists; the pose comes from the prompt. |
| Old Printer | `old-printer-summer-02`, the three-view sheet (approved 12 Aug 2026, superseding the 7 Aug sheet; mole on HIS RIGHT forehead, left side clean; ¾ close-up from his right). Summer costume canon, 12 Aug 2026: pale linen shirt, sleeves rolled above the elbow, throat lacing loose; sleeveless black wool jerkin open over it; near-black leather apron. No doublet, no sleeve below the elbow, head bare. Apron off in this scene — so what he sits in is the open sleeveless jerkin over the rolled-sleeve shirt, forearms bare and ink-marked. The sheet shows him aproned, so the prompt has to say the apron is off. Keep him clear of Lufft, who is capped and wears a pale tan canvas apron. |
| Young Printer | `young-printer`, the three-view sheet (approved 7 Aug 2026; ink on HIS RIGHT cheekbone). Same jerkin as the morning, same face. |
| Print shop, night | `shop-night-03` — the same room as the morning's `shop-day-19` at a different hour, empty of people, drying lines cleared, candle tall on the long oak table. The candle is the only source: it falls off steeply and the room goes to darkness around it, and the leaded windows read as near-black glass throwing no light, glow or pale patch onto walls, presses, floor or tables. Lineage `02` → `03` (windows killed). Supersedes `shop-night-02`, which was lit mostly by its windows, and `shop-night-01`, which kept sheets on the lines. 04–08 were deleted 7 Aug 2026 — Mabel kept 03; the retired line and what it proved are recorded in `shots-morning.md`, and the files are still in the bucket. Not yet approved; see the texture note there. |
The set still is `shop-night-`, never `shop-day-` (7 Aug 2026). The two prefixes are one room at two hours — see the naming block in `shots-morning.md`. Conditioning an evening generation on the day still hands `seedance_2_0` a sunlit room for a scene whose entire texture is one candle in the dark, and the light would come through with the layout.
The masters have no turnaround sheet and are the scene's open casting problem: E-17 pans face by face down the table and E-18 counts hands one by one, so half a dozen men are on camera in close-up without an approved face among them. Either they stay in shadow and in the soft background by framing, or they need sheets before those two shots can be generated.