A Political Assassination

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  Recreated classic police drama, augmented with AI

Inspiration

I wanted to create a film to accompany a book manuscript I wrote about the 1963 cold case assassination of Benjamin Lewis, the first Black to represent the 24th Ward in the Chicago City Council. But there were very few archival video sources available. I needed to find a dramatic way to tell the story instead of relying on a "slideshow film" with a narrator speaking over photographs. I discovered that dozens of original Dragnet episodes were in the public domain. That inspired me to create a new episode using AI.

What it does

The piece restages a mid-century police procedural entirely through AI-assisted cinematography, using period-authentic framing, wardrobe, and dialogue patterns. The aim wasn't parody or imitation -- it was to explore whether AI tools can rebuild an aesthetic vocabulary that no longer exists in the industry. The result is a hybrid of* traditional narrative structure,* mid-century broadcast tone, and* contemporary generative imaging. It sits somewhere between cinema, digital archaeology, and genre storytelling.

How we built it

Wrote a script based on the historical record. Cloned a detective voice from the public domain audio as well as other voices, using Resemble.ai. Voiced all the parts using using Resemble.AI's Voice Changer feature. Cut scenes, soundtracks and other material from the public domain episodes into short clips and rearranged them to create a video track of new scenes based on the screenplay. Lip-synced the video track using Sync.so. Degraded the sound using Pro Tools to match the original audio and added Foley. Upscaled the video qualilty with DaVinci Resolve and used Topaz Video AI to restore black and white color tone and pixel details.

Challenges we ran into

We quickly realized out that we couldn't use Runway, Sora or other generative platforms to create convincing recreations of the original episodes. So we had to work from the original public domain clips, which was very time-consuming but delivered the best results.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Retelling the story of a cold case assassination in ways that would be impossible seventy -- or even two -- years ago.

What we learned

Current AI tech cannot recreate archival videos that are completely convincing. Even the best lip sync technology is imperfect.

What's next for A Political Assassination

Festival promotion to get feedback.

Built With

• davinci
• resemble.ai
• sync.so
• topaz