The original movie was created about three years ago – using DALL-E to generate the images. This story just grew – beginning with a dreamer falling through a wormhole and finding himself in a strange world. Again, DALL-E produced 1×1 format images, so I made them 4×3.
The music grew with the visual story. I mashed together several songs that underpinned the story that emerged. Special thanks to Jeffery Jones, who arranged my song “Pilgrim’s March” in a dramatic way with his DAW.
Now, in 2026, I was ready to create semi-believable images to illustrate the music. The first was the arrival of the strange machine. The Animator (OpenArt) added smoke and people servicing the machine. Perfect! Now onto the rest of the movie.
I hit a snag with a couple of shots, remade from the old movie, of our hero walking down the street. I wanted Animator to get rid of a hat and a walking stick. But it just wouldn’t work. I was running out of credits, so I stopped and spent the rest of the month just playing with OpenArt – figuring out what various animation programs did and how well they followed directions. My next month of credits arrived, and it was time to get cracking again.
Chat convinced me that the trick was to make exactly the still plate I wanted. Then Animator can do the motion. With this, I began to shape this dream. I learned to be happy with what Generator and Animator did – and relied on Chat to craft good, believable prompts. I also learned that a lot can be done in VideoPro with pacing (stretching the video clip to extend time) and cutting out the stuff that doesn’t work.
Filmmaking with AI is like directing through email.