A shadow clock has one moving part, and it is not on the clock: the shadow moves, the blade never does. A character kept on a shadowclock card is kept by the same arrangement. Described fresh at every job, she is re-cast by whoever is tired, rushed or inspired that day — and the woman who comes back has shifted like a shadow at noon. Written once and rested at the clock’s base, the card is the blade: fixed, and read the same way at every hour.
The card holds five lines in fixed order. Age, a plain number. Hair — colour, length, one habitual style. Build in two or three words. Face — one or two enduring details. Signature — the detail that survives a tight crop. Below the lines, the hour’s line: outfit, corner, light — the things meant to move, like the shadow, at every sitting.
Paste the card word for word at the head of every prompt. Generate at the standard 6 credits, keep the best third, and let repairs, swaps and upscales touch only what has been read against the card and passed.
Shadows are supposed to move. Blades are not. A studio that knows which of its parts is which never loses the time of its own series.