Shrinking 4 years to 4 days with AI generated music video
Photographer and filmmaker Nicholas Kouros spent “hundreds of hours” over 4 years creating a stop-motion meme-themed music video using paper prints and cutouts for a song called Ruined by the metal band Blame Kandinsky. He then created a new version using AI – in 4 days.
The work on the original physical shoot was intense:
“Cutting out all individual pieces was a serious task. Some of the setups were so labor-intensive, I had friends over for days to help out,” says Kouros.
“Every piece was then assembled using various methods, such as connecting through rivets and hinges. We shot everything at 12fps using Dragonframe on a DIY rostrum setup with a mirrorless Sony a7S II and a Zeiss ZE f/2 50mm Macro-Planar lens.”
In a move that likely avoided copyright issues, he used freely usable images. “Most of Ruined was made using public domain paintings and art found on museum websites like Rijks or the Met”
After everything had been shot, the RAW image sequences were imported to After Effects and later graded in DaVinci Resolve.
Using AI instead
Kouros then created a second music video but this time he used AI. The video took a fraction of the time to make. “In direct contrast with my previous work for the same band, Vague by Blame Kandinsky, it took a little over four days of experimenting, used a single line of AI text prompting, and 20 hours of rendering,”
“The text prompt line used was: ‘Occult Ritual, Rosemary’s Baby Scream, Flemish renaissance, painting by Robert Crumb, Death.’”
Kouros describes his experience with AI as “fun” and was impressed with the results that the image synthesizer gave him.
What was his final take?
“In my opinion, this specific style of animation won’t stand the test of time, but it will probably be a reminder of times before this AI thing really took off.
I embrace new tech as it comes along and I have already started making images with the aid of image generators.
I’ve actually learned more about art history in this last year using AI, than in seven years of art schools.”
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