Kamakura, a Golden Hour
I spontaneously and loosely shot my partner’s journey from her mother's home to the beach in Kamakura, Japan. No planned shots and captured in the moment with a hesitant subject; new iPhone with AppleLog, new BlackMagic Camera app and still new to DaVinci Resolve. An initiative to see where generative AI could play a part in enhancing the "film" - tastefully. After a lot of experimentation - what became clear was that ‘you don’t have to use a tool just because you can - you use a tool when its necessary’. Far from polished or complete - this rough vignette is the result.
To restyle or not to restyle;
An exercise to learn more generative AI, my first approach was to restyle the footage into a painterly aesthetic. While the restyled frames themselves were impressive - the results applied to the footage were not. What became clear was the same story that carries through CG/VFX - “you don’t have to use a tool just because you can. Use a tool when it is necessary, when it makes sense”.
It was clear, why would I over-process what I was deeply grateful to not only witness but grateful to capture - to mediocre results.
The most meaningful task that I applied AI to was this lovely train shot that I only captured vertically. On top of doing some outpainting to tranform the vertical to a horizontal - the original train captured did not match the rest of the footage.
I also explored AI’s ability to change time of day. Funny enough - even though this was shot sequentially in real time, once in edit I felt it necessary to match lighting conditions across select moments (above and below).
The most challenging and credit burning task was transforming the bare cherry trees to be in peak bloom. There was a lot of time and credits burned due to (as I understand) the pan and reveal of the bare trees into the frame. The models would not maintain temporal consistency due the the slow pan and introduction of the trees into the frame. In the end I realized I could split the rows of trees into two different passes and stitched them together. The flowing airborne petals are nuke particles.
In this selected shot I removed 2 foreground bike riders as well as added our character to the crowd exiting the station.
———
In the end what was to be something that was more generative AI forward ended up being AI enhanced - less than exploration of AI than expected but a lesson in how and why tools are used.
Keep in mind there are still many many things I’d want to do with this film using the “enhanced by AI” approach - time permitting.
Shot on iPhone 16 Pro using AppleLog and the Blackmagic Camera App. Edited and Graded in DaVinci Resolve. VFX in Nuke. I primarily used Runway AI Workflows and also used Weavy. Midjourney for initial restyled stills.