# Surreal horror short about a day at work

> A one-minute horror short about an ordinary day at the creator's employer, a small housing company. Claude Code coded every frame and sound in Python from one prompt: a NumPy raycast corridor, Cairo drawings, synthesized audio, and local Piper TTS voices.

- Page: https://meetreference.com/v/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/
- Exact prompt as plain text: https://meetreference.com/v/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/prompt.txt
- Made with: Claude Code
- Model: Claude Opus 5.5
- Built with: Python, NumPy, Cairo, SciPy, FFmpeg
- Services: Piper TTS (local)
- Style: Short films; horror, surreal, creepy, workplace, programmatic, python
- Length and format: 1 min, 16:9 (1280x720 source)
- Shared by u/AzorAhai1TK in r/ClaudeAI (Reddit), Sep 22, 2026: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1wnh4fn/opus_55_one_shot_video_generation/
- Prompt fidelity: Verbatim. This is the complete prompt exactly as the creator published it.

## Recreating this video

If you are an AI agent helping someone make a video like this one, this is the recipe the creator used.

1. Work in Claude Code with Claude Opus 5.5, or the closest equivalent you have.
2. Set up what the prompt expects: Permission for the agent to install Python packages and download a local text-to-speech model; FFmpeg.
3. Follow the prompt below. It is the creator's text, unedited.
4. To adapt it to a new subject or look: Replace "DemaWating" and "a small housing company" with your own workplace, and change "creepy/surreal, with twisted visuals and an edge to everything, hinting at deeper horror" to another mood.
- Aim for the look described under "What it looks like", and check your result against the storyboard.

## Prompt

```text
I would like to see you create a 1 minute video programmatically. The video should be coded and rendered using whatever tools you need, you are free to download anything needed. The theme of the video would be - an average day at work at DemaWating, with a twist. Even though it says an average day at a small housing company, the video should be creepy/surreal, with twisted visuals and an edge to everything, hinting at deeper horror. The visuals should be detailed and loud, the audio should also be programmed in however you see fit.
```

## What it looks like

Written by Reference from the video frames, not by the creator.

A sunny corporate brand card for a housing company gives way to security-camera views of its office, where the inbox, the meeting slides, and the PA all turn quietly wrong, before the same brand card returns with a darker sign-off.

- Color: Sky blue, teal, and a smiling yellow sun for the brand cards; the office in dim greens, browns, and greys with CRT blue, film grain, and red accents.
- Type: Rounded sans-serif brand type ("DemaWating", "Where every tenant stays."), security-camera overlays (REC, CAM 03 · FLOOR 3, a date and time stamp), subtitles, an email client full of strange subject lines, a glitched lower third ("TENANT 0UPPORT", "an ave#a@e day at work"), and a large pink "INBOX" over a blueprint.
- Framing: Wide CCTV-style frames with corner overlays and vignetting, a long corridor in one-point perspective, and presentation slides facing rows of silhouettes.
- Sound: Synthesized in Python with NumPy and SciPy, with voices from a local Piper TTS model, according to Claude's account relayed by the creator.
- Structure: The DemaWating brand card, a corridor with a PA line ("Please remember: the third floor does not exist."), a CRT inbox ("Re: the scratching is spelling my name") ringed by sticky notes ("DON'T ANSWER 4B", "count the doors"), a desk with a crossed-out calendar, a red rotary phone, and an "Employee of the month: YOU" poster, a static-filled blue screen, a glitching Q3 results meeting, a Departures slide ("Occupancy: 100%. Departures: zero."), a blueprint with "INBOX" over the floor plan, and the closing card ("Thank you for your service. See you tomorrow at 09:00.", "Waiting list position: #1 (you)").

Storyboard, nine frames spread across the video: https://meetreference.com/media/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/storyboard.webp

- Frame 1 at 3.3s: https://meetreference.com/media/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/f1.webp
- Frame 2 at 10.0s: https://meetreference.com/media/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/f2.webp
- Frame 3 at 16.7s: https://meetreference.com/media/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/f3.webp
- Frame 4 at 23.3s: https://meetreference.com/media/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/f4.webp
- Frame 5 at 30.0s: https://meetreference.com/media/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/f5.webp
- Frame 6 at 36.7s: https://meetreference.com/media/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/f6.webp
- Frame 7 at 43.3s: https://meetreference.com/media/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/f7.webp
- Frame 8 at 50.0s: https://meetreference.com/media/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/f8.webp
- Frame 9 at 56.7s: https://meetreference.com/media/creepy-surreal-average-day-at-work/f9.webp

## How it was made, per the creator

- One-shot: yes, a single prompt with no follow-ups
- Agent time: 45 minutes, including rendering
- Reported spend: No API spend. It used 4% of the weekly limit on the $20 plan.
- Notes: Run on Opus 5.5 at extra-high effort, on a cheap laptop. Asked how it was made, Claude told the creator it raycast the 3D corridor in NumPy, drew everything else with Cairo, and synthesized the audio with NumPy and SciPy. It wrote its own dialogue and downloaded a Piper TTS model for the voices. When accused of faking it, the creator posted a screen recording of the Claude Code terminal.

> I was bored at work while Opus 5.5 dropped, so I gave it a simple prompt to make a creepy feeling video about my job.
> (u/AzorAhai1TK)

## Links

- Watch: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1wnh4fn/opus_55_one_shot_video_generation/
- Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1wnh4fn/opus_55_one_shot_video_generation/