If you ask any film student or director who tries to work within a small budget, what are the common issues they face, most of them would agree that storyboarding is pretty difficult. I was always terrible at drawing, I mean I suck at drawing and this is why doing storyboard was one of my biggest struggles. I think Midjourney and other AI programs can be used in a way to get influence and feedback for our creative ideas. In this article, I will show examples and compare the storyboard from my first Short film Absurd, the shots from the film and AI generated versions of them to see how they differ from one another, and if it is possible to use Midjourney as a tool for filmmaking.
Midjourney is probably one of the most known and used Artificial Intelligence programs right now. The website describes Midjourney as “ an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.” The last part carries a significant message, because how you describe the prompt plays a huge role when creating AI generated images. Every letter, word, sentences and punctuation is important, because every detail can affect the final product directly. The beta version of Midjourney was not accessible to everyone, but few changes, now everyone who has a Discord account can access this beautiful world, and have the freedom to use it as they want.
Returning to our topic, I will start putting my non-artistic terrifying storyboard below, and the actual shot from my short film. Considering my drawing talents, I mostly focused on camera moves, and direction hints while filling these rectangular spaces.
As you can see the storyboard consists of stockman as the main character, and Turkish notes to remind myself what to do in that particular shot. Even though this can be accepted as a helpful tool with many technical hints to refresh my memory, it does not contain any visuals. It lacks the atmosphere, lightning, any visual similarity to character and information about the places we are going to shoot the film. To see what Midjourney could offer us in these types of situations, now I will attach the visual art that was created by Midjourney and will compare to the previous image.
Compared to the second visual from the film, I think they look pretty similar. The fact that Midjourney created a visual where the girl is standing between two doors was shocking to me, because I also shot this scene where Viktoria was standing between two doors, symbolizing the struggles she overcame, and the last and biggest barrier she was facing. I did not mention this in my prompt to Midjourney, and I think it is just amazing to see this coincidence.
I can say that I highly regret not using Midjourney while preparing for my first short film, and from what I see, it is more than capable of creating storyboards for no budget filmmakers. To give one more example of an AI generated visual, I want to try making a storyboard for a scene from Absurd. This scene sequence was one of my favorites from the film even though it was very hard to shoot it, because I had to sit on my knees for the most part. The tension rises with the music and her slow steps that are filled with fear. She looks tense in this scene as she should be, and as she approaches the outside door, it almost feels like a thriller movie. Let’s see how Midjourney creates this sequence.
The script for this sequence goes like this;
INT. Apartment. Day
Soon she will be ready to go outside for the first time. While she walks towards the door, it is just her, and we are hearing her breathing. Scene should be simple, plain as much as possible. She is walking towards the unknown, shadow, fear. Tension gets higher as she gets close to the door. She will stare at it for a few seconds. Hold her breath, close her eyes, and try to be stronger. She opens the door, walks a few steps, breathing gets faster and faster, it is like a panic attack, the long hallway of the building makes her feel like trapped. It makes her remember all the things she fears…
As a prompt, simple and short sentences tend to be more successful. So, I made some arrangements, and wrote the prompt as “ sequential movie storyboard. Young woman with agoraphobia can not go outside of her home. She walks towards the door through a narrow hallway. She is facing the closed door.” To create a storyboard for a sequence, it is better to start writing the prompt by saying “a sequential movie storyboard…” The result was successful and it looked like this;
When you write the prompt, Midjourney gives four different options to choose from. I wanted to attach all four of them here, because the actual scene from Absurd, contains similar shots and camera angles from all of them. Which is a great example of maximizing AI’s benefits. I would encourage you to analyze what you receive and take what is best. When looking at these storyboards, the atmosphere and the feeling are reflected successfully from the script. It would seem like a big mistake not to take advantage of the benefits of intelligent intelligence. I believe AI technology will play a significant role in filmmaking, and it is better if we start using and understanding as soon as possible.
In following weeks I will work on the script for my new short film Hoax, and I will be sharing my storyboarding process as well. Until then, I would like to hear from you. Please let me know how do you use AI for filmmaking, what do you think is missing, how can we improve ourselves with it? See you in responses.
