- What
- An original short film, written, directed and produced by Studio Dave
- Logline
- One diary. Two stories. Time to talk.
- Running time
- 77 seconds (current cut)
- Format
- 2.39:1 anamorphic, 24 fps, cut in Final Cut Pro
- Score
- Composed by an AI composer, working from my music cues
- Cast
- A photoreal AI actor and an AI-generated voice. No camera, no crew, no location.
- Shots
- 17 shots plus 8 split-second inner-monologue flashes
- AI generation cost
- Under US$80 for the whole film
The idea
A teenage girl keeps one diary and writes it from both ends. The good days go in the front, in blue ink. The bad days go in the back, in red, upside down. Every day the two halves creep closer together, and she doesn't know which one of her will reach the middle page first.
When the two halves of her run out of space, she decides it's time to talk. Then the diary closes on its title page: "Where there's light, there's shade. It's ok to make room for both."
A film about mental health that ends on hope, not on a statistic.
It was written with mental-health safe-messaging guidance in mind: no self-harm imagery, nothing graphic, and a clear, gentle route to talking.
Why I made it
The conference opener proved AI can do spectacle. I wanted to prove it can do the harder thing: a quiet, human performance that makes you feel something in under a minute and a half. Pharma, healthcare and HR teams spend a lot of money telling people it is ok not to be ok. A lot of the time that content is stock footage, which is limiting. Other times it comes from an expensive shoot, which takes time and depends on many variables. This is what it looks like when you can cast, light and shoot the exact story you need, without a shoot.
It is also the first film in Imagination Station, my series of original AI films.
My role
Writer, director, producer and editor. I wrote the hook, chose the direction at every fork, cast the actor and the voice, directed the look of every shot and cut the film myself in Final Cut Pro. That is the same job I have done for 25 years in broadcast, live events and corporate film. The difference is the crew: an agentic AI production team instead of a camera unit.
How it was made
01
Casting an AI actor
Before a single shot, the girl was cast like a real actor: one locked identity sheet with a full-length turnaround and four expressions (joy, hurt, hesitation, relief: the film's whole arc in four faces). Every shot is built from that face, so she is the same girl in the canteen, on the football pitch and in her bedroom at 3am. Mum got the same treatment, plus the diary itself and the bedroom set.
02
Throwing away the first version
The first board was a split screen, the two halves sliding together across the frame. I watched it and called it ham-fisted, so we stopped. A day of good direction is knowing when the concept is right but the execution isn't. The rework went diary-led and cinematic: straight cuts, anamorphic widescreen, shallow focus, 35mm grain, golden light for the good days and cold blue-black for the bad ones.
Because every stage is signed off as stills before anything moves, changing direction cost a few pounds, not a reshoot.
03
Storyboard, then motion
The new direction was storyboarded as full-resolution 2.39:1 stills: 17 shots and 8 flashes (a swing, a sunroof, a corridor that doesn't see her, a photo she is being rubbed out of, a mirror that shatters). Once the boards were approved, each still became a shot, with start and end frames to control the camera moves. The hardest shot, a single move that turns her from warm to cold in one continuous take, was frame-matched to its other half.
04
Voice casting
Her voice was cast too. Three AI voices were designed from her face and auditioned; I picked one and every line was generated from it, so she sounds like the same person all the way through.
05
Sound and score
AI voice lines and an original score from an AI composer, written to my cues and laid against picture with every clip, voice line and caption on its own lane.
06
The edit
Cut by me in Final Cut Pro from a full package of clips and stems, so nothing about the edit is locked inside an AI tool.
Toolset. Stills: Nano Banana Pro. Video: Kling 4.0, Seedance 2.5. Voice: Seed Audio. Music: ElevenLabs. Edit: Final Cut Pro. Orchestrated through an agentic AI workflow that handled prompts, shot logs, version control and cost tracking, so I could stay on the creative decisions.
Why it matters for your next project
- Cast exactly who your audience needs to see.
- Age, look, setting and voice, chosen for the story rather than for who was available on the day.
- Handled with care.
- Wellbeing, inclusion and patient-experience stories need restraint. Every frame is reviewed and signed off by a person.
- Sign-off before spend.
- The cast, the look and the boards are approved as stills, so motion only ever runs on approved creative.
- Change your mind without a reshoot.
- The first version of this film was thrown away. It cost a few pounds, not a day of crew.
You no longer have to choose between stock footage and a five-figure shoot.
By the numbers
- 77 s
- Running time (current cut)
- 17 + 8
- Shots, plus inner-monologue flashes
- 9
- Storyboard versions, including one I threw away
- 3
- AI cast: 1 actor, 1 parent, 1 voice
- 0
- Camera crew, location or lighting rig
- < 2 days
- Blank page to complete first edit with sound
- < US$80
- AI generation cost, including the rejected first version
Total AI generation spend was 1,386 credits, about US$77, plus about US$1.26 of music. Every generation is logged, including the takes that didn't make the cut: