CATACOMBES: one filmmaker, twenty minutes, and the problem of shots that must cut together

The creator's channel hosts the 19-minute-35-second film; about 145,000 views was a platform count on the check date, not a paying-audience count.

CATACOMBES is published on the director's channel in collaboration with French Horror Movies. The sci-fi disaster story moves through Paris above and below ground, with dialogue, pursuit, underground spaces and an ending. The whole film lets readers judge recognizable characters, shot continuity and sound in narrative context. When checked on 24 September 2026, the player showed about 145,000 views; that number changes.

The original film and view counter establish a public work and attention, not completion rate, paid viewing or an exhibition-rights sale. The video description credits Kévin Mendiboure for writing and directing and lists visual, music and finishing tools. Those credits clarify the maker's role beside the tools, not the project's accounts.

• Watch the complete film on the director's channel ↗

Sources for this section: Kévin Mendiboure: complete original CATACOMBES film

The director rewrote the story and dialogue before using new image capabilities for sci-fi scenes he could not previously afford.

Mendiboure says the sci-fi settings made the concept too expensive about ten years ago and that no producer backed it. He began learning image and video tools in 2023; in spring 2026 he judged newer video output close enough to the live-action look he needed and rewrote the idea as a short. That is one filmmaker's project and technical judgment, not evidence that every shelved script is now cheap to produce.

He describes beginning with a story and distinct dialogue voices, then planning sets and shots. He says François and General Moreau began from photos of himself and his partner and that he had rights to use those likenesses. The interview does not publish a complete script or a rights ledger for performers and music. Anyone borrowing the process must start with material they may use.

Sources for this section: Creative Bloq: production interview with Kévin Mendiboure

Multi-angle character sheets, location references, props and start frames supplied continuity across shots.

The interview shows front, profile, rear and close views of characters with costume details. The director says he updated the sheets after François, Kane and ARES-7 were injured or covered with alien material, so later shots had the right state to follow. Sets were not improvised anew for each shot: he prepared references for corridors, underground halls and combat spaces, along with recurring props such as weapons and a helicopter.

The interview pairs a Paris street reference photo the director took with generated settings. He considers the start frame fed into the video tool decisive for a credible shot: an unconvincing character in the starting image is hard to rescue in motion. The page offers selected examples, not all sheets, start frames or shot inputs. Its credited pictures are viewable there, not openly licensed for republication.

• Inspect the character sheets and street references in the interview ↗

Sources for this section: Creative Bloq: production interview with Kévin Mendiboure

The director reports testing shots in a lower-quality mode before several high-quality takes; an accidental high-angle close-up changed his plan.

His approach was to find the motion and prompt in Seedance 2's faster, lower-quality mode, then switch to high-quality generation and choose among multiple takes. It was a way to limit spending under his tools and pricing at the time, not a universal rate or a one-pass success formula. He sometimes left a shot brief open enough to discover new camera positions or staging from multi-shot output, then decided what to keep.

In an armoury scene where François talks about his brother, the plan called for a profile shot. A generation instead produced a high-angle extreme close-up. The director judged it more expressive, kept it and revised the shot list. Success here included recognizing a useful accident and reconnecting it to the story. The interview does not publish original side-by-side files for the planned profile and selected close-up, so this is not a controlled prompt comparison.

Sources for this section: Creative Bloq: production interview with Kévin Mendiboure · Kévin Mendiboure: complete original CATACOMBES film

The director says generated reverse angles crossed the dialogue axis, requiring generation and editing together.

The director says quiet dialogue scenes were often hardest. Reverse angles in three-person conversations could break the 180-degree axis rule, leaving the audience unsure who stood where. A shot might look fine alone yet jump direction when cut against its neighbor. While waiting the eight to eighteen minutes he says a Seedance render took at the time, he edited accepted shots, checked positions and refined upcoming ones. Those timings describe his experience, not a service guarantee.

He says a roughly ten-second helicopter transition took almost ten hours. The transferable check is whether a shot can cut to its neighbors and serve its story task, followed by a changed angle, shot or edit if needed. The interview supplies neither every failed helicopter take nor a controlled comparison proving that one prompt phrase solved it.

• Read the director on dialogue axes and editing alongside generation ↗

Sources for this section: Creative Bloq: production interview with Kévin Mendiboure · Kévin Mendiboure: complete original CATACOMBES film

The director reports time, generation count and spend, without priced labor, invoices, revenue or profit.

In the interview and a pinned comment under the film, the director reports working alone for about 242 hours and making 3,229 image and video generations combined. Those are attempts, not 3,229 finished shots or a success rate. His comment puts project spending at about $3,385 and separately discusses how an annual subscription is counted. The figures help frame the cost of iteration, but no itemized invoices, subscription allocation, compute log or priced labor make this a full production-cost account.

The public film can serve as a portfolio piece for audiences or prospective partners, but there is no disclosed client order, licence fee, platform payout, exhibition settlement or profit for this film. A Netflix discussion mentioned in the interview concerns another project; it is not evidence that CATACOMBES was bought or distributed by Netflix. Views and media coverage do not replace receipts.

• Inspect the director's cost comment under the film ↗

Sources for this section: Creative Bloq: production interview with Kévin Mendiboure · Director's pinned production-input comment under the film · Kévin Mendiboure: complete original CATACOMBES film

A page of story, three dialogue shots and an edit check reveal cost risks better than attractive standalone frames.

A small trial can begin with a one-page story you may use, two people, one place and three shots that must cut together: an establishing shot, A's line and B's reaction. Set position, facing, clothing and emotion, make front and rear character references and a location image, then test motion with a lower-cost setting. Keep each prompt, reference, cost, failure reason and seconds that survive the edit. Assemble the sequence while generating and show it to someone uninvolved to check who is speaking and whether the space jumps.

This three-shot exercise is BitShovel's trial derived from the director's experience, not his published reproducible recipe. A portfolio or client proposal also needs a record of script, likeness, music and asset rights, delivery scope, revisions, labor and generation spend. Enquiries, signed work, cash received and profit must be tracked separately. His method can inform a trial, but it does not grant rights to reuse his footage, audio or characters, or promise similar views or income.

• Return to the original film and production interview ↗

Sources for this section: Creative Bloq: production interview with Kévin Mendiboure · Kévin Mendiboure: complete original CATACOMBES film