After watching the growth of AI in video with both curiosity and anxiety, Berlin-based director Xaver Boehm says he felt overwhelmed but decided to embrace the tools when he realized the technology was here to stay.

Xaver Boehm: “I wanted to explore the potential of AI for an experimental short film and the task of creating a music video for the trippy pop song ‘Velvet’ by Berlin artist Night Thing provided the perfect environment for this adventure.

“We have all seen the wild creations based on text-to-image models. And also the trippy animated tunnels created with Stable Diffusion models (which I also used a bit in this video). But while we wait for a more reliable text-to-video tool, I wanted to see if Midjourney could help me create the frames for a more traditional and controlled approach to video.
 

“I have to say that after spending weeks with Midjourney’s prompt interface, I started to feel like I had a real collaborator on this project.”

 
“So I asked Midjourney to create many variations of the same image. I quickly ended up with a lot of material to turn the initial single frame into moving image sequences.

“The ‘variation’ prompt also gave me the opportunity to develop the scene. I mainly used prompts like melt, flow, flames, turn to gold, etc. to get interesting transitions between frames that represented the fragile and dreamy quality of the song’s lyrics.

“As humans, we tend to see sentiment in things. Some people name their cars and feel for them, etc, and I have to say that after spending weeks with Midjourney’s prompt interface, I started to feel like I had a real collaborator on this project. The suggestions it brought to the table were sometimes quite funny and interesting.

“All in all, it was a strange, confusing, and fascinating experience that I would like to expand on in future projects.”
 
 

 
Artist: Night Thing

Director: Xaver Boehm
Editor: Xaver Boehm

Toolkit: Midjourney, Deforum Stable Diffusion