Most AI video is a shot.
This is an episode.
Two of them, actually. Both vertical.And I never left my office —no crew, no camera, no location.
The lock
Same man. Shot seven to shot forty-one.
Six shots across the episode — golden hour, a skull corridor, a blue stairwell, candlelight. No retouching, no face swap in post. Forty-eight shots in the episode. One man in every one of them.
The work
The Wide Bright Dark — Episode 1: Ibiza
An enforcer searching an abandoned hacienda for a rich man's answers finds a bloodied card on the floor — and recognizes it. Adapted from the novel The Laredos, written by Jesse Estrada.
Every shot is built in the same four stages. Stage 02 is the one nobody does — and it’s why he’s still the same man in the last shot.
01
The page
The Laredos · Chapter 6 · p.148
02
The character lock
RICKY_BRAVO_1993 · 14 plates
03
The prompt
SHOT 03 — DRIVEWAY still: RICKY BRAVO DRIVEWAY_2K_9X16 Slow dolly push forward from behind a standing man, moving through an open iron gate toward an abandoned white villa at dusk. He remains still, shoulders slightly rising with breath. Overgrown grass sways. Camera glides low and steady. Cinematic, natural light falling. Audio: faint wind, a gate hinge creak, distant insects. RULE ZERO: The still goes in as the FIRST FRAME, not a style reference.
9:16 · 1080p · never Lite
04
The scene
Episode 1 · locked · pool cut for continuity
9:16 · 1080 × 1920 · 23.98 · 3:31 total
Written, directed and produced by Jesse Estrada · Full episode and sizzle available on request
What we do
Three ways to work with us
Production
from $11,000
per :30
Vertical/Horizontal dramas and brand spots — your choice, built end to end by one operator: script, generation, edit, sound, delivery to spec. A :30 in this cinematic style runs about fifteen hours.
Advisory
$5,000
per day
Twenty years plus on the carriage side of television, then this. What generative production actually does to a content P&L — from someone who has now sat on both sides of it.
Method
$18,000
two days, on site
Bring the assignment. That’s all. We build the first real cinematic shot with your people, then the system that makes fifty more of them match. They learn it on the job you’re paying for anyway. And what to cut — half the job is knowing which element won’t survive fifty generations, and killing it on day one instead of day nine. The parts where everyone else stops.
Who
Jesse Estrada
Jesse Estrada spent his career in television distribution, in executive roles at HBO and DIRECTV — the side of the business that decides what gets carried.
He founded Byrthmark Studios to make the work instead — the same business he came up in, at the moment it became possible to do alone.
The Wide Bright Dark is his first series, adapted from his own novel, and produced alone.
Next steps
Tell me what you’re trying to make.
Send me the assignment — a script, a deck, a reference video, a page of notes. You’ll get back what it takes in hours, and a straight answer on whether I’m the right person for it.
Book 20 minutes jesse@byrthmark.aiTaking two production slots for Q4.