Monday
1.5 hrs- The idea, and the first two versions of it
Five Years
A five-minute animated short, from first idea to final cut in under four days. Kling did the animation, Blender the 3D, and Claude wrote the tools that put it all together.
The film is personal, so it isn't shared here. This page is about how it was made.
By the numbers
- 3 days, 19 hrsfrom the first idea to the final cut
- 5:08minutes of film
- 12 hrsof hands-on work, in 28 sittings
- 91cuts, each one on a beat
- 45of those timed by hand, tap by tap
- 28AI animation clips made; 7 made the film
- 53times the whole film was rebuilt
- 8sounds recorded at home
- 3different ideas before one stuck
Every line is a cut
The whole film, start to finish. Red lines are photos landing on drum hits. Dark lines are the slideshow, one photo per bar of music.
It took three tries to find the story
- 1
A cartoon astronaut
Beautiful, but not personal enough.
- 2
A real toy, made to look real
A photo-real toy helicopter flying through a real room.
- 3
The same story, fully animated
Everything animated is restyled like a feature cartoon, while the photos stay real.
Four days, twelve hours of work
Spread over 28 sittings, fitted around everyday life.
Tuesday
5.9 hrs- Photos picked and put in order
- The animation style and every animated shot
- Water drops built in 3D, frame by frame
Wednesday
4.3 hrs- Sound design and home recordings
- A rough cut, then the beat fixes
Thursday
Day offFriday
0.7 hrs- Last timing taps, then the final version
A tiny studio, built for one film
- Kling Animation
- Turned photos of a real room into animated shots.
- Blender 3D
- 490 frames of water drops with photos inside, rendered on a laptop.
- Claude Edit and code
- Wrote the custom tools that put the film together: the frame-by-frame renderer, the sound mix and the photo editor.
- A beat finder Timing
- Mapped every beat in the song, including where the band speeds up near the end.
- A face finder Framing
- Uses Apple's face detection so no one gets cropped out of a photo.
- A photo editor Sequencing
- A drag-and-drop page for choosing the order and tapping each cut in time with the music.
Music David Bowie, “Five Years” (1972), plus a layer of sound recorded at home