ANKH is the story about Civil Rights on a Human Scale as told through the eyes of two friends: Shelly “Traction” Jones and Scott “Splinter” Owens. They’re friends who see the world very differently. Traction believes there’s a future, while Splinter dwells on what was.
The project’s philosophy: it takes one person to make a change and two to start a revolution.
ANKH | Scott “Splinter” Owens
Several people in grade school through college were just like Splinter–we probably all know someone like him. Their underlying stories were remarkably similar: they grew up in an absolute train wreck of a home. All of them had hearts of gold. But, because they were misfits, authority figures didn’t like them–one of the many reasons I got along well with each and every one of them.
Where they diverged was based on their own personal motivation to a large extent as well as help from their friends and plain-old luck. Today some are successful in ways that are meaningful to them. Others couldn’t pull themselves out of the hole dug for them.
Traction is the type of person who would help Splinter with one caveat: he has to put in the effort to be a better person if he can. She’s well aware from her own life that sometimes people get dealt such a poor hand that they may not know where to start or are simply incapable of helping themselves due to no fault of their own.
Concept, AI Prompt Engineer, Retouches || Tom Libertiny
ANKH | Wild Jackass
Splinter is all hard edges. As you can imagine, the rock music he sings doesn’t pull any punches. He says what’s on his mind.
In the Wild Jackass video, Splinter shows us his destitute origins and why that leads him to make desperate decisions. All the while, he dreams of what he really wants from life. After a particularly harrowing experience, he makes a difficult life decision to put himself on a path where he has a chance to reach what he longs for. But all isn’t what it seems.
The first part of his story is reflected in the first song we released for him: Wild Jackass, and the accompanying music video.
Vocals (Splinter) | Javier Yuch
Guitars | Greg Ayers
Piano and Keyboards | Boh Cooper
Bass, Keyboards, Guitars | Tom Libertiny
Drums | John “JR” Robinson
Produced by | Tom Libertiny
Music by | Tom Libertiny
Lyrics by | Tom Libertiny and Caroline Six
Mix Engineer | Jason Groves, Sneak Attack Studios
Mastering Engineer | Sangwook “Sunny” Nam, Jacob’s Well Mastering
ANKH | Making a Video in the World of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
During pre-production for a music video or movie, I sketch my brains out to create an annotated template (storyboard) for the shoot that I can share with our team (along with the script and shot list). In the past, I spent a lot of time using the detailed drawing techniques my parents and art teachers taught me. Later I found that simple sketches with shorthand notes for camera positions, framing, movement, and lighting were more efficient. This was after completing the concept, writing and revising the script, casting, location scouting, and assembling our production team (set design, audio, costume or wardrobe, hair, and makeup (MUA)).
For a music video, pre-production averaged 6 weeks. All that planning allowed us to relax on set because we knew what shots were must-haves, allowing us time to capture the unplanned magical images.
Of the 6 weeks, 3 to 5 solid days were spent on the storyboard and shot list.
When I started working in depth with AI image generation at the beginning of 2023, I was excited to start using it as a substitute for traditional storyboarding and shot lists.
And that’s what you see here in this “music video.” It’s actually the storyboard and shot list for the final video, which will be completed using the latest version of text-to-video AI–most likely DALL-E2.
It still took me 3 solid days, but I ended up with renderings that inherently included the storyboard and shot list. If I was going to shoot this video in live action, while it didn’t save me time during pre-production, it would save me time during the actual shoot because there would be much less ambiguity about what we were attempting.
Also, preparation time by set design, audio, costume/wardrobe, hair, and MUA would have likely been somewhat reduced. In other words, we would have lower costs to do this in live action. And this will still come into play when we do live performances of the whole Ankh production.
ANKH | In Numbers and Process
First, a note about the video:
- There are intentionally anomalies in some of the images. Some are more obvious than others.
Here’s what I produced by using the MidJourney AI to help create the images in the video:
- Images created: 286
- Images used in the video: 52 (18% of the images created)
The majority of the time I used for creating images came down to two items:
- Prompt refinement:
- Each iteration of MidJourney AI, with significant weekly changes now happening, reduces the time needed for prompt refinement. It’s incredible how far the system has come in just the last 6 weeks.
- Rendering time:
- While I’m a paid member and use the fastest setting, rendering time remains hit-or-miss.
Photoshop:
- In addition to the usual Photoshop adjustments (color corrections, etc.), on 6 images, I used Photoshop extensively, including comping multiple images together, Generative Fill (infill and outfill), and a combination of the healing brush/blur/smudge primarily to retouch errors created by Generative Fill for images with complex backgrounds.
PowerPoint:
- I’m still not a fan of Photoshop’s text functions. Having used PowerPoint forever, I personally can create text, adjust the perspective and other attributes, and then import it into the primary Photoshop file via PDF faster than Photoshop’s native text system. After it’s imported, I use FX for particular layers focusing on outer glow, inner glow, color overlay, satin, and 3D.
Non-Linear Video (NLV) Editing:
- Most NLVs now have the same color correction systems. Select your favorite one for final color correction and grading. Technically, this isn’t necessary for a storyboard video.
ANKH | Second question, second
What process do you use for storyboarding and creating videos?
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