The Vulture — "Provocation" (Pt. I)

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  Running

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  Falling

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  Death

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  Prey

Inspiration

This project is inspired by my original sci-fi novel 'The Elevator'.

What it does

It was designed as a means to promote my book through captivating, cinematic storytelling. Monica is a woman who's grown tired of death and the grief she can't seem to escape. The book itself is not so surrealistic and dream-like. I approached this concept not just from a video creator's perspective but also as a writer. I tapped into the symbolic essence of what each character endures before the core plot of my novel series and then I created a visual nightmare. It was a great way to showcase something gripping about the character while also keeping audiences guessing — no spoilers. Monica isn't the type to be preyed upon. Not even by Death itself. So, this concept caught the essence of her character quite well.

How I built it

I used LTX and Firefly, using Nano Banana almost exclusively for generations. But I also designed my scenes in Pixelmator. Layering my characters (who I designed outside of LTX) onto backdrops and then uploading them into LTX to create the Start and End frames. Then I generated the video. Once I'd collected all my clips. I took them to Final Cut Pro and completed the editing there.

Challenges I ran into

Still learning the system. I thought I'd figured it all out, but there was still quite a bit I hadn't fully understood about building the scenes in order to get the shot I wanted and character consistency. My situation is unique give that my characters were created outside of LTX. So, the Actor feature isn't really useful for my purposes and I burned a lot of credits before I realized this. I also didn't understand fully how to use the start and end frames and so I burned credits figuring how to efficiently get my characters from A-B. Prompting is still a tough one. From clip to clip, it's hard to really nail a prompt on first try. That said, Nano Banana has been a spectacular upgrade where this is concerned. I do actually achieve some clips on the first try. It used to not be that way in any case. Now, it's great how much more simply you can get what you envisioned, but always the quality is excellent.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The whole video! I'm super proud of how it turned out. And also proud that even though I burned up all my credits for the month, I was able secure all the assets I needed to complete my project.

What I learned

I detailed what I learned in the section above, but to reiterate, I have definitely learned how to more efficiently build my scenes.

What's next for Provocation

The second episode in this series of shorts will pick up where we left off.

Built With

• envato
• finalcutpro
• ltx
• pixelmator