# Risograph film of a starling murmuration

> A 70-second square risograph-print film of one evening's starling murmuration over a marsh, from sunset to roost, drawn in Canvas with a string score. Opus 5.5 chose the subject from a three-sentence free-range prompt, inside a repo of riso skills and docs.

- Page: https://meetreference.com/v/risograph-print-film-starling/
- Exact prompt as plain text: https://meetreference.com/v/risograph-print-film-starling/prompt.txt
- Made with: Claude Code
- Model: Claude Opus 5.5
- Built with: Canvas 2D, Web Audio
- Skills or plugins: riso-film, riso-score, riso-still
- Style: Generative; risograph, halftone, print texture, procedural, nature, birds, one take, square
- Length and format: 1 min, 1:1 (720x720 source)
- Shared by u/mshort3 in r/ClaudeCode (Reddit), Sep 22, 2026: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1wnod5q/opus_55_creates_a_dusk_murmuration_entirely_in/
- 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: The riso-windowseat repo cloned locally, since the prompt leans on its docs, skills, and examples.
3. Follow the prompt below. It is the creator's text, unedited.
4. To adapt it to a new subject or look: Change "~70s" for your length. Keep "of your own choosing, free range" to let the agent pick the subject, or replace it with one of yours, and change "free instrument sound effects" for a different kind of score.
- Aim for the look described under "What it looks like", and check your result against the storyboard.

## Prompt

```text
Lets make a ~70s riso film of your own choosing, free range. The project docs here for this session are for support and examples, but you're not required to follow them. Find and use free instrument sound effects when making the score for this film
```

## What it looks like

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

A risograph print of a marsh at dusk seen from one fixed spot: a low sun over still water framed by reeds, a flock of starlings in a dark halftone cloud above it, and the sky cooling from gold to night blue.

- Color: Golden orange and yellow sunset over a pale gray-green sky, then lilac and periwinkle dusk and deep night blue, with indigo reeds and birds, a visible halftone grain, and slight color misregistration.
- Type: None in the sampled frames.
- Framing: Square frame with reed silhouettes on both sides and along the bottom, a far shoreline across the middle, and the flock above it with its reflection in the water. One frame looks straight up into a sky full of individual birds.
- Structure: The empty marsh at sunset, small groups gathered over the sun, the flock bent into a dark ribbon, the flock in changing shapes against the afterglow with a falcon speck nearby, a close pass of birds overhead, the flock low over the far reeds at dusk, then the empty water under the first stars.

Storyboard, nine frames spread across the video: https://meetreference.com/media/risograph-print-film-starling/storyboard.webp

- Frame 1 at 3.9s: https://meetreference.com/media/risograph-print-film-starling/f1.webp
- Frame 2 at 11.7s: https://meetreference.com/media/risograph-print-film-starling/f2.webp
- Frame 3 at 19.4s: https://meetreference.com/media/risograph-print-film-starling/f3.webp
- Frame 4 at 27.2s: https://meetreference.com/media/risograph-print-film-starling/f4.webp
- Frame 5 at 35.0s: https://meetreference.com/media/risograph-print-film-starling/f5.webp
- Frame 6 at 42.8s: https://meetreference.com/media/risograph-print-film-starling/f6.webp
- Frame 7 at 50.6s: https://meetreference.com/media/risograph-print-film-starling/f7.webp
- Frame 8 at 58.3s: https://meetreference.com/media/risograph-print-film-starling/f8.webp
- Frame 9 at 66.1s: https://meetreference.com/media/risograph-print-film-starling/f9.webp

## How it was made, per the creator

- Notes: Run inside the creator's riso-windowseat repo. Its README says that making the first film, Window Seat, and two shorts before it produced a reusable kit of Claude Code skills (riso-film, riso-score, riso-still), craft docs, and a render harness, and that Roost was made with it next. The post doesn't name the film, but it matches the repo's Roost: 70 seconds, 1080 × 1080, a starling murmuration from sunset to roost, scored for strings. Roost's notes say each starling is a 2 to 3 px ink dot on an analytic flock sheet rather than a simulation, and the score uses CC0 string recordings from VSCO 2 Community Edition embedded in the HTML file, as the prompt's request for free instrument sounds allowed.

> prompt was simple since the project (repo) had the docs and examples already
> (u/mshort3)

## Links

- Watch: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1wnod5q/opus_55_creates_a_dusk_murmuration_entirely_in/
- Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1wnod5q/opus_55_creates_a_dusk_murmuration_entirely_in/
- The riso-windowseat repo, with the skills and docs: https://github.com/sevenevesai/riso-windowseat
- Roost's film notes in the repo: https://github.com/sevenevesai/riso-windowseat/blob/main/films/roost/FILM.md
- The creator's earlier film, Window Seat, in a comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1wnod5q/comment/pbgixi8/