Alien Interview: Reel 1

Inspiration

The original inspiration came from an idea I had where classic 'grey aliens' were actually evolved humans from the far future. After some success with CG animated "Alien Interview" clips on YouTube - and the emergence of generative AI, I became further inspired to create the word's first AI generated documentary feature. Although based on these earlier CG shorts, this film is the first 10 minutes of an entirely new, AI generated story playing on the "Alien Interview" theme - where the alien being interviewed is not just a time traveling visitor from the future, but regular human from Earth's past. This expansive project is being built in sections, or 'Reels' - and this ten minute film is the first in roughly six reels in total.

How I built it

This project is AI generated with some CG augmentation. AI tools used are Luma Dream Machine, Veo 3, Midjourney, Hedra, ElevenLabs, and Suno. More 'traditional' tools are After Effects, Photoshop, LightWave 3D and Davinci Resolve. Adding traditional tools to my AI workflow allows for added control of generations to sustain narrative consistency.

Challenges I ran into

This project took several months to create throughout 2025, but by the time the film's first pass was completed, much of the footage was already outclassed by more modern generative models. So over the last 3 weeks I updated as much as half of the film to take advantage of newer AI technology.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The core challenge of this project is to make it look and feel like a found footage documentary film, and not AI generated content - specifically with human performance. I'm proud to have made some progress to reduce the 'AI curse', and hopefully approach more natural and deliberate human performances.

What I learned

The pace of generative AI advanced so rapidly during production that some older generations felt outdated. So I've learned to revisit and sometimes iterate older shots. Also, I've learned that performance is the most important, and most difficult, thing to get right in AI. The solution is to know what you want, and repeatedly push the technology to produce the most natural performance possible.

What's next for Alien Interview: Reel 1

The intention is to continue making more reels until a feature length documentary is complete. It's an ambitious goal, but one I intend to follow through.

Built With

• after-effects
• davinci-resolve
• elevenlabs
• luma-dream-machine
• photoshop
• suno
• veo3