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THIS IS NOT AI SLOP! [“Flow” Music Video]

Last year I started a music video collaboration with my friend Mark who was working on a song for his band No Berlin. You see, Mark moved overseas to Berlin over 10 years ago and we really wanted to figure out a way to make this work. Before that, in the US, we worked together at tech companies, played live music together, and even made a music video for him and his daughter, generously funded by a Kickstarter project.

Right about this time at the end of 2024 generative video platforms like Runway were really advancing and I wanted to see how practical this could be. So I chipped away over the course of a few months. I would ask Mark to send me photos of himself that I would Photoshop and prompt in Runway. I had him send me videos of him singing the song 5 different ways so I could accurately apply those movements to my compositions. I eventually landed on some styles and techniques I liked and eventually ended up with the below video. Mark, on the other hand spent the next year working on the perfect mix, mastering, and label logistics so almost a year later the video for “Flow” is here.

If you feel compelled to comment “AI Slop” then I would appreciate you pointing me to your own work and I will be happy to give you an honest critique in return. Enjoy!

No Berlin – “Flow”

No Berlin – “Flow” on Bandcamp

Some “Behind the Scenes” of making this video.

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My 20 year-old viral YouTube Video

I just got this amazing comment on a YouTube video I posted nearly 20 (!) years ago:

"My god. Its still here, my first ever youtube video search. I typed in "Trainwreck" of all things no idea why, and was greeted with this absolute masterpiece. I must've been 15. Happy birthday youtube and thanks keith whoever you are for this awesome memory! Its still hilarious and I'm 35 now lol." - @Yawgmoth904


🥦 🚂 A silly video my roommate (pictured in the thumbnail) and I shot on his miniDV camera and uploaded to YouTube in 2006 is still bringing joy.

📺 YouTube (launched February 14, 2005) was a different beast back then.
📹 Not everyone had a camera.
📞 The iPhone didn’t exist.
🤷 Even if you had a camera you probably didn’t have the means to edit.

So when I uploaded this video I was pleasantly surprised to find it on the hand-curated YouTube homepage. The featured videos on the front page were hand-picked by the (very small) YouTube staff. The video was “viral” for all intents and purposes. I think it hit like 40k plays that week. The other 5 or 6 videos on the front page were around there or upwards of 100k. That’s what “viral” was then.

🥱 Now we just scroll past TikTok videos that are viewed millions of times and don’t bat an eye. Those were different times. And I’m happy that some of my earliest content on the internet is still being discovered or re-discovered.

It’s 1 minute long and features the intro music to “Magnum P.I.” and some additional explosive sound FX 🙂 🔥

“Trainwreck” (2006) on YouTube by Keith Hopkin

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Using AI to help make a music video

In 2010 I directed a music video for my friend Mark and his daughter. A fun little recording project they called “Catastrophic Neon Rainbow”. We created a simple set in his music studio and filmed away. Now, 15 years later, we are collaborating again, this time for a new track for his band “No Berlin“.

A few months ago we started talking about making a music video for one of his songs. The catch? He’s based in Berlin, Germany these days. So since I wasn’t about to fly over there to shoot a music video I thought I’d try having him send me photos of himself and I would see if I could try some generative AI tools. I also had him send me video of him singing the song so that I could try Runway’s “Act One” feature which is basically like motion capture of one’s face that you can apply to another photo or video.

The final video will be on this site soon but for now you can see some short clips and how I went about achieving them. I ended up doing a lot of prep in Photoshop and then fed those images into Runway with “image to video” and eventually using those resulting videos for my Act One shots for lip syncing.

Here are a few behind the scenes of the process I’ve been going through. After a lot of time spent figuring out what I was going to do with these shots I eventually landed on the idea that I could “inform” Runway with some simple visual cues. For example in this first sequence I added some small fires using Photoshop Generative AI. Runway took it to the next level.

This one demonstrates a use of Runway’s Act One feature. Sound on:

This kind of blew my mind. Using a few photos Runway was able to tween together a sequence. Although the lighting in the original photos wasn’t entirely consistent you could really do a lot with this.

This final clip was a bit of a process. I knew I wanted to have a drone style fly-in shot revealing Mark laying lifeless on a long road at night. It turned out that the most realistic way to achieve this was to go in reverse. This would make sure the final shot was my composed image. There is certainly some degradation the wider the shot went but I think the idea is there.

I’ve thought about making another music video. We’ll see!

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Elon Musk as a Best Buy Employee

In my last post I shared my recent exploration of Midjourney’s powerful AI image generation capabilities in the form of 4 images of Mark Zuckerberg in an alternate timeline. I now present Elon Musk in an alternate timeline as a Best Buy sales associate. These 4 images were generated with Midjourney V6 and some tweaks were made in Photoshop.

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AI

2023 was quite a year for AI. I don’t think I need to write about how much it has impacted everything as we know it or how it will impact the future.

Instead I will leave you with these 4 images I generated using Midjourney V6’s unbelievable image generation tool. I spent some time with Midjourney to see if I could sculpt a specific mood and narrative and ended up with this concept of an alternate timeline of Mark Zuckerberg who, in this timeline, is a manager of a Staples office supply store. Some tweaks were also done in Photoshop which has also made huge leaps in the AI space as well.

Happy new year!