Watanabe | Short Film
A visual poem about the meaning of life, our obsession with it and a potential reprieve.
This short is the culmination of my research into GenAI video tools as of March 2024 and does not incorporate any AI upscaling.
From brainstorming themes to scripting a story, and bringing it to life with a blend of AI magic and personal touch, here’s a peek into my process.
Selected for the Indie Shorts Mag Short Film Festival 2024.
Short Film
1 min 6 secs
Released
17 March 2024
ChatGPT
Midjourney
Runway Gen2
Elevenlabs
My Process
The whole process took me 16-24 hours to perfect, including the initial learning phase of each tool.
1️⃣ Started with a short story I had written a long time ago on self-discovery & self-love.
2️⃣ Teamed up with ChatGPT to refine it into a mix of prose and poetry.
3️⃣ Storyboarded each scene in Notion, mixing AI suggestions with my own creative vision.
4️⃣ Used Midjourney to craft stunning visuals, ensuring a consistent style by leveraging their style and character reference features for continuity, which is a game changer.
5️⃣ Brought these stills to life with Runway ML's superior brush tools for that perfect animation with a bit more control over the motion.
6️⃣ Added depth with a carefully modulated Elevenlabs voiceover, aiming for a narrative that breathes emotion.
What I've learned
🆕 GenAI will enable a whole new set of people to join the creator economy. I truly believe there will be a net gain with the wider adoption of these tools. Take me as an example. I was never able to create this film before.
🎥 Hollywood will become interactive. Movies will become personalised, as it will be possible to generate the many number of paths a movie can morph into easily. Gaming and Hollywood will blur. I expect lots of M&A to streamline production of both.
📊 Control is where existing models fail a bit. Due to their statistical nature, it’s very hard to get exactly what you want. It’s always a bit random, so I’ve learned to embrace and love the random.
🧑🏫 Education will be the primary driver of adoption. GenAI education is and will continue to be a business on its own. Without the resources I found, I couldn’t have done what I did.
