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AI Short Film

The First Artist

Before the written word. Before civilization. Someone pressed their hand to a cave wall in Sulawesi, Indonesia, 35,000 years ago. This is that moment, told from inside their body.
2024 • AI Short Film • Historical Narrative • First-Person POV

The call

A platform building a home for AI-generated content saw my work and asked if I had any ideas.

I looked to my right and found my kids' textbook. This page was open.

Textbook spread about the first cave artists
The page that started it. My kids were learning about 35,000-year-old cave paintings in Sulawesi, Indonesia.

It fascinated me. The first artist ever. The person who put the first figurative drawing on a cave wall. I wanted to tell their story.

Building the world

I went to Shot Deck and pulled reference frames from films to build the visual language. Not to copy, but to study. Last of the Mohicans for the feeling of moving through a primordial landscape. Our Planet for the light. Jurassic Park for the awe. Kubrick for the precision. These references shaped the prompts, the color palette, and the pacing of every shot.

Shot Deck interface showing reference frames for The First Artist
The actual Shot Deck board for this project. 94 reference frames pulled from films to build the visual language.

I researched the real cave drawings and learned everything I could about Sulawesi 35,000 years ago. And I kept thinking about Andy Goldsworthy. He only uses natural materials and makes these beautiful things. When I thought about the first artist, his work felt like the right reference point.

Real prehistoric cave paintings used as research reference Andy Goldsworthy nature art reference
Left: Real cave paintings. The source material. Right: Andy Goldsworthy. Art made from and returned to nature.

First person

I had just made another AI video in first-person perspective, and that was fresh on the brain. I decided to do The First Artist the same way. You never see the protagonist's face. Only their hands, their view, their world.

First-person POV became the defining creative decision of the film.

Rows of AI-generated hand stencil iterations in Midjourney
Iteration after iteration. Getting AI to generate convincing first-person hands on cave walls.
Before the written word. Before civilization. Someone pressed their hand to a cave wall. That's the story I wanted to tell.

The battle

I made 4,000 images for this piece and used 62 of them. Mistake after mistake after mistake, then something clicks. That was the process. Generation after generation, refining the prompts, pushing toward the image in my head.

Rows of AI-generated prehistoric Sulawesi landscape and fauna iterations
Landscape and fauna generations. Building the world of prehistoric Sulawesi one prompt at a time.
AI-generated cave fire and ochre bowl scenes AI-generated red ochre pigment preparation scenes
Left: Firelight, ochre bowls, hands in pigment. Right: Red ochre sourcing and preparation. Each row is a different generation attempt.
AI-generated cave painting hunting scene iterations AI-generated Goldsworthy-style nature art iterations
Left: Cave painting hunting scenes. Right: Nature art inspired by Goldsworthy. Hundreds of generations to find the ones that worked.
4,000
Images generated
62
Made the final film
9
AI tools in the stack
$400
Production budget

Professional foley

My son went out to the backyard and smashed rocks together while I recorded on my phone. That audio made it into the final film.

Erich's son smashing rocks in the backyard for foley recording
Professional foley. The sounds of stone on stone, recorded on a phone in the backyard.

The sounds of stone grinding against stone, 35,000 years later, made by a kid in a backyard.

What it opened

The First Artist opened a door that doesn't close. The same production method scales to any historical subject, any time period, any story worth telling.

History textbook table of contents
The table of contents. Every page looks like a creative brief now.

The AI stack

Every stage of production used AI. Not one tool bolted on. The entire process.

Perplexity
Historical research
ChatGPT
Persona, narrative, scene structure
Midjourney
All imagery
Runway ML
Image animation
Pika
Image animation
Photoshop
Generative fill
ElevenLabs
Voice and sound design
Adobe Premiere
Edit and assembly

AI-native video production.

Research, visual world-building, production, edit, score, distribution. Every stage built on frontier AI tools. If you have a story worth telling, let's talk.

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