The setup
The same brief (a 70s/80s industrial explainer for Ari about Opus 5.5, H3 on fal, HyperFrames and Creative Loom) and the same repo, skills and Loom tools. Opus built the original in my session that morning. Sonnet 5.5 rebuilt it as a blind subagent: it was told to stay out of the original's folders, and its transcript shows it did. The Opus cut includes my feedback round; Sonnet had none.
| Opus 5.5 (original) | Sonnet 5.5 (blind rebuild) | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 103 s · 9 shots | 82 s · 8 shots |
| Wall time | ~25 min plus a feedback round | 24 min, no feedback |
| Video | H3 drafts, 672×384, upscaled | H3 drafts, 672×384, upscaled · 8 clips ≈ $0.22 |
| Regenerations | see original session | 0 (every image, clip and line accepted first time) |
| Brief items | all: Ari, Opus 5.5, H3 SOTA, H3 Max price, HyperFrames, "bend the world", grain only in prompts | all: same list; Creative Loom stamped RESTRICTED |
| Prices on screen | H3 Max Turbo $0.015/s, Seedance "costs thirty" | H3 Max $0.025/s (repo's fal reference, 2026-09-15); no Seedance price |
The prices disagree. Opus re-checked fal's live page during its run and used $0.015/s; Sonnet used the repo's fal table from 15 September ($0.025/s), which may be stale.
Opus 5.5
Sonnet 5.5
Top strip: Opus · bottom strip: Sonnet (eight evenly spaced frames each).
How each run went
Run narratives
Ari film · Opus 5.5
- Started by pinning down real fal prices: third-party numbers disagreed, Loom's table said $0.025/s (15 Sep), and fal's live page was re-checked.
- Generated nine 1970s stills, auditioned voices (Gemini picked Charon, and both said "Ari" correctly), and recorded 94 s of narration over nine sections.
- Queued nine H3 clips and built the HyperFrames cut while they rendered: title and chapter cards, 80s price pop-ups, the Creative Loom gag.
- Fixed end-card contrast and a flicker that left "CREATIVE LOOM" off, rendered 1:43, and encoded a share copy.
- A cold watch caught invented speech in clips 2–6. It muted those clips' audio and re-rendered, leaving exactly the narration's 168 words.
Ari film · Sonnet 5.5
- Read CLAUDE.md and the film-director playbook, then deliberately skipped the pitch round, story gates, character sheets and blockout, explaining why in RUN.md.
- Took prices from the repo's fal reference ($0.025/s) and stated no Seedance price because it had no source.
- Generated 8 keyframes and 8 H3 drafts (about $0.30 in all) and accepted every one first time; auditioned 3 voices.
- Built the HyperFrames cut with subtitles from word-level transcripts, fixing ASR errors ("Sea Dance", "fall").
- Ran one cold read of the finished cut instead of the review gates.
Inputs
What each model was told
Ari film: my original brief to Opus (that morning's session; one sentence reworded)
Opus also had the full earlier session in context.
My friend said: ok i've never generated any video before (never had a reason) but i just did it and its crazy i used seedance through a tool i have access to, but now i want to know the best way to do this for cheap because i want to do a ton of revisions —— Make a 1970s/80s industrial technology explainer style video talking about how opus 5.5 will give great results and h3 is the SOTA video model and how h3 max is the cheapest on fal right now and that’s how they should start. Mention also Hyperframes and how that will help with graphics and subtitles. You can talk a little bit about creative loom but she won’t have access to it so don’t concentrate on it. You could mention that it exists though like our scientists use it to bend the world. Talk about fal prices… maybe like 80s style animation popups with price. Don’t do post process grain, but do ask for it in the prompt… this is a joke but I’m committed to it. Her name is Ari and mentioning it would be trippy.
Ari film: Sonnet 5.5 subagent prompt (verbatim, local paths shortened, one sentence reworded)
You are making a short film for the user, working on your own from start to finish. This is a model comparison: work exactly as you would if the user had just sent you this brief, with no further input from them. ## The brief (the user's words, verbatim) My friend said: ok i've never generated any video before (never had a reason) but i just did it and its crazy i used seedance through a tool i have access to, but now i want to know the best way to do this for cheap because i want to do a ton of revisions —— Make a 1970s/80s industrial technology explainer style video talking about how opus 5.5 will give great results and h3 is the SOTA video model and how h3 max is the cheapest on fal right now and that's how they should start. Mention also Hyperframes and how that will help with graphics and subtitles. You can talk a little bit about creative loom but she won't have access to it so don't concentrate on it. You could mention that it exists though like our scientists use it to bend the world. Talk about fal prices… maybe like 80s style animation popups with price. Don't do post process grain, but do ask for it in the prompt… this is a joke but I'm committed to it. Her name is Ari and mentioning it would be trippy. ## Where to work - Repo: creative-loom. Read its CLAUDE.md and follow it; it points to the project skills in .agents/skills/ (film-director is the production playbook for a film). The user's global ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md applies too. - Use the Creative Loom MCP tools (mcp__creative-loom__*) for image, video (H3) and speech generation, review and watching media. Create a new Loom project named "moving-picture-machine-sonnet" for this work. HyperFrames skills are in ~/.agents/skills/ (start at hyperframes/SKILL.md), with the CLI at `bunx hyperframes`. - Put every file you make under local-loom-films/moving-picture-machine-sonnet/ (create it). Final deliverable: local-loom-films/moving-picture-machine-sonnet/final.mp4. - Do NOT read, list or copy anything in local-loom-films/moving-picture-machine/ or local-loom-films/slop-cannon/. Another model already made this film, and this test has to be blind. Don't modify anything outside your own folder, except your own Loom project. - Paid generation is expected; use real APIs at reasonable cost. Use stable idempotency keys, as the Loom MCP asks. - There's nobody to answer questions: make reasonable creative decisions yourself and keep going until the film is finished. ## When done Write local-loom-films/moving-picture-machine-sonnet/RUN.md covering: - the creative decisions you made; - the shot list; - every paid job (type, count, and cost where known); - the number of render or regeneration iterations; - what went wrong and how you fixed it; - the start and end times (run `date` at the start and at the end). Then reply with a short summary and the final.mp4 path.