2004 Berlin Apartment Home Video

Prompt

Main Subjects: Young German man, 24, short messy dark-blond hair, light stubble, gray T-shirt, faded blue jeans, worn sneakers. His female friend, 23, shoulder-length brown hair, simple green sweater, black trousers, carrying a small cardboard box. Location: A modest apartment building in Berlin, Germany, around 2004. Narrow stairwell with beige walls, old wooden handrails, mailboxes near the entrance, bicycles parked downstairs. Inside the small empty apartment: wooden floor, plain white walls, second-hand furniture, stacked cardboard boxes, old kitchen cabinets, large windows overlooking ordinary residential buildings. Visual Style: Ultra-realistic early-2000s family home video. Authentic documentary feeling, imperfect and spontaneous. No cinematic polish, no modern aesthetics. Camera Style: Consumer MiniDV camcorder, heavy handheld movement, uneven framing, accidental zooms, autofocus hunting, exposure pumping, faded colors, soft contrast, slight motion blur, digital compression, sensor noise, occasional overexposure, no stabilization. Timeline — 15 Seconds: 00:00–00:03 — Camera follows them struggling up the stairs with cardboard boxes. One box nearly slips, causing everyone to laugh. 00:03–00:06 — They enter the empty apartment. The camera quickly pans around the room while the friend drops a box on the floor. 00:06–00:09 — They assemble a cheap second-hand chair. One part doesn't fit, and they stare at it confused before laughing. 00:09–00:12 — The man finally gets the chair together and proudly sits down. It makes a loud squeak. 00:12–00:15 — Both laugh while the camera shakes wildly. The man looks directly into the lens and says something casually in German. Audio: Cardboard scraping, footsteps on stairs, keys jingling, furniture sounds, German conversation, laughter, distant traffic, hallway echoes, birds outside. No music, no narration. Goal: Make it feel like a forgotten MiniDV recording from a German friend's first apartment move in 2004–awkward, funny, ordinary, intimate, and genuinely nostalgic.