DRAGON HUNTER

When an impoverished science prodigy from an African township discovers a rare fossil worth millions of dollars, he must keep it from a malicious fossil bounty hunter working with a township gangster.

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DRAGON HUNTER was inspired by the incredible 200 million year old fossils that can be found in the Karoo desert of my home country. They appear on the surface after millions of years of erosion has made them visible. The rarest of which is the Dracoventor Regensis, otherwise known as the Dragon Hunter. No complete fossil has ever been found and would be worth millions of dollars. Fossil Bountry hunters from all over the world scour the desert looking for valuable fossils which they steal, ship overseas and sell on the black market. The perfect world for a unique adventure film!

My screenplay for Dragon Hunter, in spite of being a quarter finalist in the Final Draft big break competition, was not able to raise the finance for a conventional shoot so that's why I have turned to ai to make it.

We built the film using personalized images created in Midjourney with help from Seedream and Nanobanana, upscaled with Magnific, then animated them with Seedance, Runway ACT 2, Kling, FLOW and Luma, upscaled with Topaz labs Astra. Sfx, music and voices came from from Eleven labs. Higgsfield filled in the gaps.

It was the hardest process I have ever attempted in my 30 years of film making. I had to invent a grammar and a style to suit the limitations of the tools and was forced to discover a pared down, simplified style of storytelling that didn't compromise the vision to create a filmic, exciting, real and intimate 90 min adventure film. Character and world consistency remain the biggest hurdles that we have yet to fully overcome.

We are most proud of the car crash sequence, incredible art direction and the depiction of South Africa 200 million years ago!

We hope to complete the film and release it on a streaming service.

Built With

  • eleven
  • flow
  • flow-and-luma
  • higgsfield
  • kling
  • luma
  • magnific
  • midjourney
  • nanobana
  • runway
  • runway-act-2
  • seedance
  • seedream
  • then-animated-them-with-seedance
  • topaz
  • upscaled-with-magnific
  • upscaled-with-topaz-labs-astra.-sfx
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