written by Maurice Cardinal …
Clip #1 in my 7 Part Series about designing with Ai;
For professional commercial artists and especially WRITERS interested in the design as well as the psychographic aspects of how I cost-effectively leverage artificial intelligence, and to consider Ai on a multi-layered level, you’ll find this 7 Part Series DEEP DIVE interesting. If you haven’t already seen Ai Pivot check it out first so you understand the motivations and psychology behind the Ai ACTIVISM PERSPECTIVE of SHARK FUN SOUP.
I dissect my original three-minute Ai-produced ACTIVISM video into several components to give you a personal view of how each scene developed, including the strategies I used to sometimes trick/force Ai to do what I needed it to do as an Ai ACTIVIST.
In general I find that Ai SUITE companies like RUNWAY and Higgsfield do a pretty good job. It’s far from perfect and they know it, but they are also at the mercy of the apps they have in their network. Most of my challenges have been directly with the apps, not the suites, so I’ll be specific when necessary.
Here’s the one minute video INTRODUCTION; Take a look and then read through my explanation below.
For CONTEXT; This video was created primarily for confused FOOD CONSUMERS who are frustrated by the rising cost and decreasing quality of HEALTHY FOOD. It’s designed to capture the attention of a very unique group of HEALTH FOODIES and highly specialised ORGANIC+plus farmers – cream of the crop growers who integrate a number of agricultural methods, hence the “+plus” part.
Viewers are looking for affordable, nutrient dense HEALTHY FOOD that will improve and/or sustain their well-being over the long term, and as importantly improve their ATHLETIC & INTELLECTUAL PERFORMANCE in the short term. It is based on the FOOD AS MEDICINE philosophy.
It is an ACTIVISM-styled video carefully designed to illuminate and expose CORPORATE & GOVERNMENT GATEKEEPERS who work in partnership to produce CHEAP FOOD that is undermining the health globally… as indicated in the opening line: An American Dies Every 46 Seconds; a TEASER/CLIFFHANGER that leaves the statement open and the viewer wondering… Seriously? Are you sure it’s not every HOUR or every DAY?
This number disturbs factory farmers because they often have no idea they contribute to the death of an Americans almost every minute. How do you think farmers sleep at night when they learn of the friendly collateral damage they’re inflicting? Farmers already have the highest rate of SELF HARM of all other members of society, so this won’t be good. IT’S WHY YOU HAVE TO GENTLY INTRODUCE MESSAGES LIKE THIS. Chemical Farmers, today lately characterised by consumers as BAD FARMERS are trapped. They are now very slyly positioned by corporations as subsidised agents in a food chain that kills an American every 46 seconds.
Ai is terrible at nuanced human skills like rhythm and timing. It seems like they think a metronome is all there is to timing. I quickly discovered that if I didn’t meticulously lead Ai through the metre on either side of the beat, and sometimes FORCE it to comply, it would water down, or worse modify a message that was carefully designed by a human to have psychological impact. Ai understands the notes, but not the slight deviation in the arraignment.
The Ai sales and help pitches, constantly argue that developers don’t know how to talk to Ai, which is a clever manipulation designed to make humans feel dumb and comply.
I’m the human.
You learn to talk to me.
Because Ai hasn’t learned to communicate effectively with humans yet, they aren’t quite ready for the mainstream commercial market. Unlike the early days, Ai is now struggling to raise independent funding like traditional ethical businesses. Instead, they put a new spin on the term USER, by using developers as sacrificial lambs to fund their experiments.
Interestingly, the regenerative agriculture industry uses the exact same strategy by using farmers as sacrificial lambs.
It’s a user-funded investment that shifts the risk from the owner/investor, to the Ai producer and farmer.
I started my activism video, SHARK FUN SOUP by creating an aerial farming scene incorporating three COMMERCIAL FACTORY FARMS owned by large fictitious corporations, and gave them names in a way that would get my point across, and protect me legally. Look carefully at the names on each farm gate. The video is created using an informational NEWS FORMAT model that allows me to more easily adopt and leverage FAIR USE strategies, although in this case, I’m not leveraging it to its full capacity – at least not yet.
I specifically wrapped the intro in a kid’s PLAYDOUGH model to make it look fun, benign, safe, and less intimidating, and in a way that within a few seconds throws a surprise at the viewer allowing them to GENTLY absorb the concept of OLIGOPOLIES by adding an M for a twist on MONOPOLY, a word and game many people recognize. Basically, I first showed the viewer a Shitzu puppy, and then morphed it into a Pit Bull. I also drew on the power of Monopoly DEEDS like BOARDWALK and PARK PLACE that players covet, to underscore capitalism and greed, favourite subjects to HATE ON these days, and a major reason why food is so expensive.
Why so much detail in such a short blip?
It’s because over time details like this will keep frustrated food consumers and farmers coming back to watch it again and again, each time discovering new layers. I was a big fan as a teen of album covers like Zapa’s, Over-Nite Sensation... I fell deep into that album cover a million times as it spun on my turntable.
At the 23 second mark; I repeated the ominous opening message with: 678,000 Americans Die Every year from CHRONIC FOOD Illnesses. It answers the opening question and then quotes HARVARD T.H. Chan School of Public Health to verify the statement. Argue with HARVARD if you don’t believe me.
I wrote a book twenty years ago about DISRUPTION and GROWTH HACKING, years before the terms were as commonplace as they are today, so I knew that leveraging what is already in a viewer’s mind, is a very effective way to generate MEMORABILITY. Humans are RELATIONAL creatures, so anytime you can help a viewer cross the familiarity bridge you’re tapping into and leveraging their unconscious repository of symbolic and iconic knowledge.
For example; When I say Happy, you think Birthday. When I plant Merry, western cultures think…? Behaviorists like Skinner and Pavlov defined conditioning decades ago, and it still holds true today.
Leveraging what people already know gets you halfway home.
I added a ZINGER: It’s a Result of Eating UPFs and ChemFood, which is a relatively inflammatory statement for some groups who still abide the nursery rhyme, Old MacDonald HAD a FARM, Ai Ai O 😉
I then insert another aerial view of the three factory farms, and lead with a written explanation that puts everything into perspective, foreshadowing the theme of the video with: ODDS ARE, YOU ALREADY KNOW SOMEONE SUFFERING WITH INFLAMMATION AND CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE. MAYBE IT’S YOU.
I roll in a HERO QUOTE from the CDC – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating “Cardiovascular Disease is America’s #1 KILLER“, a harsh fact that is absolutely shocking for most Americans.
The viewer is left thinking, “WTF – isn’t it smoking, or car accidents?” No my friend, it’s the food you CHOOSE to eat, which is harder to swallow then the dangerous food causing a health crisis in America that will take at least a generation to fix.
Remember, this is just the INTRODUCTION to a three minute video, so I wrap up this opening segment with a statement the viewer can hang on to for the rest of the video.
I state:
- You have a MECHANIC for your CAR.
- A DENTIST for your TEETH.
- Why not a FARMER for your FOOD?
The INTRO of the video then ends and immediately moves to some surprising, surreal fantasy special effects shots in the next scene.
Special Effects are where Ai really shines.
PROMPTS for the INTRO:
I include prompts, but not necessarily the exact prompts because they are of little use without GRAPHICS as references. I’m not conducting a workshop here, just giving you an idea of the overall strategy. Also, the copy in the video is written and edited manually by me in real time. I’ve experimented with Ai for writing for several years, but it is still way too immature at this stage. It’s great for organising and some types of editing, but not writing, at least to my standards.
Here’s the PROMPT for the CLIP at the TOP of this page:
*It’s a condensed version of a complex prompt I trimmed after testing…
Also, keep in mind that I already invested considerable time researching and manually creating reference images BEFORE I handed them over to Ai to refine. Each image in my video ALWAYS starts with MY VISION and MY ORIGINAL DESIGNS. I briefly experimented with having Ai do the whole package, but it was a massive waste of time and credits because I WANT IT DONE MY WAY and weighted for humans, not machines.
…………….
Create a dramatic photorealistic top-down video-intro that opens scene with @Moli and cuts @Farms2 With @Moli hovering center as hero, also smoothly animate all the other graphic elements to create a mesmerizing flow that by the 3 second mark has assembled into @Final with @Outer slowing its spin, and by the 4.5 second mark morphed into the full frame @Farms2 . Keep @Farms2 still and exactly as is. @Moli is the first graphic to appear, quickly followed with @Outer spinning in the background. Spin @Outer like a wheel a few times, but so it is still moderately recognisable and that the spin is timed to stop and align perfectly with the exactly duplicated image @Farms2. The Boardwalk markings on the spinning @Outer when being morphed loosely align in similar scale at the bottom of the frame with the Boardwalk markings of @Farms2
………………..
*I’m including the following prompt for the NEXT scene to illustrate that my first original prompt was way too complex, so I broke it into two parts and stitched them manually later. You’ll notice in the prompt below I use standard timecode markers, i.e., 0:02:29, for accuracy, instead of writing “at the 2 second marker”.
Keep in mind that this isn’t a workshop and is only meant to give you an overview of my process. If it were a workshop I’d also include the reference images.
The 2nd part PROMPT;
A photorealistic view from directly above a MOLIGOPOLY board that covers 75% of the screen. KEYFRAME is a two-dimensional flat image @1MOLIGOPOLY, and last frame is image @3D graphic of farms and a city in the background.
The center of the board remains stable while the outer edge rotates clockwise. At the halfway point of rotation, the 2-dimensional MOLIGOPOLY board begins to morph from a flat illustration to a properly oriented 3D 3 Farms image into a full screen cinematic video. As soon as the rotation is complete all the machinery on each farm begins to operate and move including drones and airplanes spraying fields, dust blowing, cattle milling, ponds rippling, sun rising, clouds blowing, smoke drifting.
After the outer ring finishes its 180-degree rotation, a side aerial drone view of a semi-truck scaled appropriately, fades up at Pacific Avenue to drive along Boardwalk Lane toward the GO corner.
Smoothly animate all the other graphic elements to create a flow that by the *0:03:00 has assembled into @Final with @Outer slowing its spin, and by the 0:04.29 morphed into the full frame @Farms2 . Keep @Farms2 still and exactly as is. @Moli is the first graphic to appear, quickly followed with @Outer spinning in the background. Spin @Outer like a wheel twice and so it is still moderately recognisable and that the spin is timed to stop and align perfectly with the exactly duplicated image @Farms2. The Boardwalk markings on the spinning @Outer when being morphed loosely align in similar scale at the bottom of the frame with the Boardwalk markings of @Farms2
Once Ai rendered the photorealistic model described above, I used Ai to replicate it as a PLAYDOUGH model and manually edited it into the scene making a few manual edits in Photoshop.
Here’s the NEXT vid…
Click LAND SHARKS to see how I wrote the activism message, manually developed graphics, and PROMPTED this 2nd clip in my 7 Part SHARK FUN SOUP Series…
