Master

The definitive, highest-quality version of a finished work, from which every delivery is derived and to which no compression is ever applied.

The master is the work's original testimony: full resolution, lossless or gently mastered, graded, mixed, final. Everything the audience ever meets, the web loop, the cinema DCP, the compressed social cut, is a descendant, and descendants can always be re-derived while ancestors cannot.

The rules are monastic because the stakes are total: the master is never overwritten, never re-encoded, never edited in place; it lives in the archive under version and date, and deliveries are exported from copies. Studios that lose masters retell the story for years. Ours are boring, named, duplicated, and untouched, exactly as they should be.