Odori

Inspiration

Odori is inspired by Japanese modern dancer Ichi-Go. She reinterprets the ancient Shinto ritual dance of Kagura in a contemporary way. Odori is a trance-like ritual where the performer becomes a temporary vessel for a god.

Almost all the dance shots are filmed. The duplications are mostly created by using a motion control and filming several times.

It was shot on green screen in a virtual production environment using Unreal Engine, then completely reimagined with generative AI tools. So a complete hybrid filmmaking process.

The aesthetic simulates a hand - drawn, crafted and painted , 35mm stop motion look, but presented in full blown 24 frames per second dynamic motion. The visual expression purposely leans into the older ai models to achieve these artefacts and imperfections.

Tonally, the film also draws on 80s/90s Japanese horror cinema: shocks, surrealism and a sense that something uncomfortable, unseen is always present in the frame or just outside.

What it does

I hope Odori does: give you a feeling of energy, something unexpected and hopefully still touches you somehow, despite all the digital mechanics behind it. It is a dance film.

How we built it

• Green screen studio setup in a virtual production environment
  
• Unreal Engine live mixed with camera, space and lighting
  
• ComfyUI and Stability AI for AI-driven visual stylisation
• Loras from Civitai
• Kling AI for extra shots, variations and transformations
  
• Mago for additional AI passes
  
• Premiere and Davinci for editing and color grading
  
• Suno and Udio for AI-generated music
  
• ElevenLabs for voice, sfx and sound textures
  

Challenges we ran into

Originally, Odori was meant to be finished as a full 3D & Unreal project, but when the post house couldn’t allocate resources and funding ran out, the project died. AI tools “saved” the film from becoming just another unfinished piece in the digital graveyard.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Finishing. Surviving a tough shoot, rebuilding the post route with AI, and actually getting the film out into the world. Learning all the tools.

What we learned

Hybrid AI workflows are a huge part of the future for directors and production.

What's next for Odori

Submit to festivals and show it to as many people as possible. Chroma Awards is the premiere! YEEEAH!!

TOOLS

ElevenLabs Comfy Adobe Kling AI Mago Stable Diffuion Magnific Run comfy

Built With

• adobe
• ai
• civit
• comfy
• diffusion
• ellevenlabs
• kling
• mago
• stable
• suno