And Now?

(1) Inspiration: And Now was inspired by a moment of pause. As I started my MBA journey at MIT, I wanted to look back at how far I’ve come — from a small town in China to New York City, and now to MIT Sloan. These years were not a straight path, but a decade of resilience, discovery, and transformation. This film is my way of honoring that story in a visual form — not as a highlight reel, but as a quiet reflection on the strength behind every turning point, and a moment to pause, look back, and look forward with the muscles, lessons, and resilience I’ve built along the way.

(2) What it does: The film uses AI-generated visuals, voiceover, and animation to recreate fragments of memory — from my first winter in New York to snowy mornings at MIT. We designed four key colors to represent the chapters of my last ten years. (1) Winter Blue — New York Beginnings. I arrived in New York in the winter. Life felt cold and empty, and I had nothing except determination and hope. (2) Spring Green — Growth and Awakening. After three years working in a nail salon and attending community college, I transferred to Baruch. Like spring leaves emerging, this was the season when my world opened up and I began exploring the world for the first time. (3) Summer Gold — Energy and Momentum. Summer is hot, long, and full of life — just like my time at KPMG. I worked extremely long hours, but those years gave me opportunities to see new industries, meet inspiring people, and learn faster than I ever had before. (4) Autumn Gold — Harvest and New Beginnings. Fall is when the harvest arrives. Nine years into my immigration journey, I finally brought stability to my family. For me, that stability meant it was time to begin a new chapter — to return to school. At MIT, I can use everything I’ve built so far and expand my focus to a bigger world. MIT’s motto is to solve the most challenging problems in the world and make it a better place. As I look to my next chapter, I’m carrying everything from my past and bringing it onto a larger stage.

(3) How we built it: The workflow began with a written memoir that we broke into structured narrative segments. For each segment, we defined emotional keywords, seasonal imagery, and color palettes. These elements guided the generation of visuals using OpenArt and Runway for motion, and Midjourney for creating static master frames. We iterated on each prompt to maintain consistency, mood, and character coherence across scenes. After building the visual library, we sequenced the shots. The narration and SFX were produced in ElevenLabs, where we aligned tone and pacing with the emotional arc of the story. Finally, everything came together in CapCut, where we layered color transitions, sound cues, and timing to create a cohesive narrative flow. The entire film was created without any traditional animation background — relying on AI tools to transform written reflections into visual storytelling.

(4) Challenges we ran into: The biggest challenge was finding authenticity in AI-generated art. I wanted the character to feel true to who I was at each stage of my life, but the models could only capture about 60–70% of my real appearance and expressions. Getting closer required endless fine-tuning.

We also wanted the protagonist to reflect different stages of growth, so we designed changes in outfits, hairstyles, and even glasses to mirror my own evolution. But preserving these details across shots was difficult — small variations would break continuity, and glasses were especially hard to generate reliably. Achieving a coherent character while still showing transformation took dozens of iterations.

Another challenge was resource limitation. High-quality motion generation required careful prompt engineering and selective rendering to stay within credit constraints. Many scenes had to be regenerated multiple times to capture the right emotion or maintain consistency, making each second of the film feel truly earned through iteration.

(5) Accomplishments that we're proud of: This film began as a personal reflection but grew into something much larger. I never thought I could make a short film about my own life — this story existed only in my mind, and no production company would ever take on something so personal. But now, I’m able to watch my story come alive on a screen. That alone feels incredible.

We’re proud of the visuals we created, especially the four key colors representing each chapter of my journey. They brought the emotions I carried — winter, spring, summer, and fall — into a visual language that finally feels true to what I had imagined. Seeing that translation from memory to moving image is one of the accomplishments we value most.

(6) What we learned: We learned that creating a 6–7 minute short film with AI is still incredibly hard. The process demanded far more credits, time, and energy than we expected — generating shots, fixing inconsistencies, and writing hundreds of prompts can be surprisingly exhausting. Prompt fatigue is real. On the technical side, we deepened our understanding of prompt engineering, scene continuity, character coherence, and emotion mapping across generative video tools. Each challenge taught us how to shape AI outputs with more intention and precision. Most importantly, we learned to see the future in these tools. Even with their limitations, they opened a door for someone with no animation background to bring a deeply personal story to life — and that possibility feels powerful.

(7) What's next for And Now: We want to continue refining the story. Given the limited time and credits we had, we did our best — but there is so much more we hope to bring out. With more iteration, we want the emotional arc to become clearer and stronger, relying less on narration and more on visuals that speak for themselves. As generative video tools evolve, we hope to deepen the storytelling, improve character consistency, and expand scenes that we couldn’t fully explore this time.

Built With

• and-final-assembly-chatgpt-?-for-script-development
• and-transitions-openart-?-for-additional-video-generation-and-style-exploration-midjourney-?-for-key-visual-frames-and-concept-art-elevenlabs-?-for-voice-narration-and-sound-effects-capcut-?-for-editing
• capcut
• chatgpt
• elevenlabs
• midouney
• motion-sequences
• openart
• prompt-design
• runway
• sequencing
• timing