A test film. Two phone takes of me in my room, turned into a creature in an armory.
Made with AI.
The design starts from my ink drawing of Pride: a muscular back with a halo of bone spines. A sealed, faceless head of aged ivory; ivory plates over dry black fibrous muscle; about eight heads tall. The heavy armour sits on the left side, the spines grow only from the back, and black tubes hang where hair would be. Every reference was made as a photograph of a practical suit on a soundstage, never as a render.
From my ink drawing of a sword: a ram-skull guard with bone wings and curled horns, a bone grip wrapped in black cord, a long straight dark blade. In the generated footage the prop kept changing shape, so the sword got its own reference photo, and one clip went through a second pass that replaced only the sword.
An empty set first, then the light: one hard cold key from high on the right, haze, everything else in the dark. The sword hangs from a holder of wet black sinew instead of an iron hook, and the sinews tear when it is pulled free. Re-rendering the set as CGI looked worse than darkening the original plate, so the plates stayed.
Look tests: the creature in the armory before any footage.
Nine panels and two takes: a wide from behind, and a close-up of the hand along the blade. The sketches only fix framing and timing; the shoot decides the picture. I filmed it in my room on a phone, horizontally, in dark fitted clothes, with a wooden stick for the sword, moving slowly and clearly. In the end it was two takes, one by the door and one by the bed, cut together: walk in, tear the sword off the wall, swing, look it over, wipe the blade along the arm.
The same thirty-six seconds three times: the phone footage from my room, the Genjutsu output before any grade, and the finished film. The cut was made on the phone footage first and the generated clips were laid over it, so all three line up frame for frame.
The grade only darkens and cools the generated footage; nothing is re-rendered. The set falls back into the dark, and the hard key from the right is left on the creature and the blade.
Original
Raw
Graded
Higgsfield Genjutsu carries the motion and the camera of the phone take onto the creature. A four-second test first, then the take in parts. Seen from the side, the creature lines up with me almost exactly; from behind it is bigger than I am, so it drifts a little.
One recording per sound, never stacked fragments. The footsteps are a monster footstep recording; the calls are a reference creature sound, pitched down and re-voiced, low while it handles the sword, a short shout when the sword tears free.
The reel starts on the phone take. Tracking boxes lock onto my joints as I walk in, a hard edge wipes me into the creature, the frame pushes in, and rectangles bring the phone take back on the beat.
Trial and error, in order: turnarounds, a costume pass, set directions.
Made with AI.