Dystopian
A worn future where the systems still run but nothing is cared for.
Opens a video model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
The systems still work and nobody maintains them. Trains run, cameras record, forms get processed, and every surface is stained, patched or held together with tape.
The wear is the argument. A future that is broken but still operating says more about where a society went than a ruined one does, because somebody is still turning up to keep it going.
How it works
Grey polluted light. Overcast skies, smog, fluorescent interiors that flicker, and a palette drained of anything warm except the occasional failing sodium lamp.
Infrastructure in frame. Ducts, cables, concrete, signage in a language of forms and numbers. The architecture is oversized compared with the people inside it.
Surveillance present and unremarked. A camera on a pole, a screen showing a queue, a checkpoint. Nobody in the scene looks at any of it, which is what makes it read as normal.
When to use it
Use it for a near future, for an oppressive institution, and for any story about a person against a structure that will outlast them.
Skip it when the future is meant to be hopeful. Clean surfaces and open light are a different genre with the opposite argument.
Told apart from its neighbours
Tech noir shares the near future and lights the scene with machines and screens, keeping the noir shadow. Dystopian can be flat grey daylight with no shadow scheme at all.
The test is the light. If a screen is the key and the frame is mostly black, the name is tech noir. If the light is dull and even and the world looks worn, it is dystopian.
On film
Terry Gilliam filled Brazil (1985) with ducts, paperwork and machines that nobody can repair, and the state functions perfectly while nothing in it works. Alfonso Cuaron shot Children of Men (2006) in a near future where the infrastructure of the present has simply carried on decaying, with checkpoints and cages treated as ordinary street furniture.
- Brazil (1985)
- Children of Men (2006)
The prompt
Replace the blanks, keep the rest. Then run it on a video model.
dystopian setting around <subject>, worn infrastructure, grey polluted light, surveillance present, scale crushing the individual
What goes wrong
The model returns a clean sleek future, which is the opposite reading. Ask for worn infrastructure, stained surfaces and repairs by name, and say the buildings are not maintained.
The second failure is a ruin. A dystopia is still running, so keep people at work inside it and keep the lights on.
Leave out
clean future, bright optimism
Watch for
Show the wear. A clean future is utopian, not dystopian.
Questions
Shoot it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
Next to it in big screen looks
