ABOUT

SOMEWHERE. NOWHERE. NEVER. is an experimental short film created entirely with text prompts and AI. On the verge of 1000 days of war in Ukraine, the film raises attention to heartbreaking events that it is still ruining the lives of innocent people on a daily basis. Through an innovative AI storytelling approach, the film tells the story of a fictional Ukrainian family through their mock-up VHS home videos of a boy born in the late 90s. He grows up in a peaceful country house, have a carefree childhood, loving friends and family, but Russian tanks invading his homeland destroy his life, so he has to go to war to defend his home.

IDEA:
Our creative idea was to show the horrors of war through contrasting emotion, showing happy nostalgic VHS-style mock-up documentary pictures associated in Eastern Europe with happy childhood, vibrant memories, bright sunlight, the quietness of wild forests, vastness of nature, and endless beautiful fields that have been so common in Ukraine. Yet today in some parts of Ukraine there is nothing but a scorched land. Destroyed cities and villages, endless fields and cities burnt to the ground, with bomb craters, and no life.

AI CRAFT
The film craft is unique in the sense that this short is created entirely with AI using only a text-2-video model by Runway AI. Art direction, camera movement, and cinematography are the result of precise and accurately crafted text prompting. Over 250 scenes have been processed with nothing but words (10 pages of text prompts in total for this short film)—no color grading tools, Midjourney, ChatGPT, After Effects or any other video enhancement tools have been used in the process. Even VHS glitches featured in the film are created exclusively with text prompts. As well as the original music which was also created with prompts in a text-to-music model by Udio. The film showcases the innovative abilities of generative AI while addressing an important social issue (showcasing how advanced AI generative tools like Runway could be used to create meaningful stories). The film received tens of thousands of views on social, and as people watched – we re-directed the viewers to several Ukraine NGOs urging them to help with donations.