Mercury -- a new short film
Trying out Midjourney's new video function!
I needed to switch to a cotton candy project today, after vibe coding with Python for like 10 hrs yesterday! I made SO much progress on my app, got a UI going, and now I’m just doing finesse to make it nicer for end users — but — if I had to go through another try-fail code testing cycle I was gonna cry, SO — it was time to switch it up!
(a still from Mercury, coming up here!)
I explained in a different substack how I hop from thing to thing so that I can stay busy without burning out — and this was SUCH a good change for me.
I tried out MJ’s video function, and while it’s not super precise, since MJ’s just vibing with what your image presents and you’re not able to direct it (AFAIK? I just started playing with it?) — but then I realized, I’ve got this great short story I wrote in 2007, called Mercury, which is super surreal and dreamy, intentionally so.
It’s about a little girl whose father turns into a statue and she starts crying mercury tears, and she goes to the Moon for help.
And it would be super forgiving of MJ’s video style, if I can get the images going in consistent — PLUS MJ gives you four videos per image you ask to animate…
So what I did was break down that 4000 word short story into MJ prompts and now they’re running through MJ on my autoloader!!!
Now, ppl who’ve been reading here for awhile are probably all like, “Cassie, WTF, this is Too Many Projects” and I can see why you’d think that, LOL. ‘Cause I’ve mentioned here:
The House’s Visual novel (just finished the code last weekend, still needs art)
FF version of Bend Her
Mystery App!
3000 books landing next month (and etc w/the rest of my year)
But!
This film project is good prep for The House’s visual novel — ‘cause I’m gonna use MJ art for that project, and if I can use video to get the immersive vibe going (which I think/know I can!) it’s gonna be amaaaazzzinnngggg!
This project’s pretty time delineated — I think it’ll take just 2-3 days to do, total, phew — and, I can use the program from my booktrailer project to do a script for 11labs’s API and get the whole thing narrated AND do the SFX for it in one fell swoop.
Like I’m so excited to see this project come together, the visuals for it are SUPER STUNNING so far —
They’re just so juicy — so if even a fraction of these animate well — holy COW.
So that’s what I’ve been doing today!
I’ve got time the next two days off still, although I’ve got a social engagement tomorrow, and I need to do some Real Life Maintenance.
But — these IMAGES YO.
THESE PICTURES!
So — yeah!
I’ll keep juggling projects this week — but this one is like cotton candy and ice cream and really quality party drugs, all at the same time, so chances are Imma keep working on it till it’s over, LOL — and then I’ll hop back into something that’s more broccoli for sure, but then I’ll have more energy for it, LOL!
xo!
Cassie