The Vulture — "Suffocation" (Pt. III)

• 

  Fake

• 

  Suffocating

• 

  The Vulture

• 

  Drowning

Inspiration

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

What it does

This is the third part of a series of cinematic, phantasmagoric vignettes exploring the subconscious lives of four women whose pasts, traumas, and destinies converge in the apocalyptic world of my novel series, 'The Elevator'.

Set within a symbolic dreamworld, each short captures a woman’s private encounter with Death. In Zoey’s world, she welcomes it. Monica’s world — it lurks and feeds. In Jilisa’s, it isolates and taunts. And in Sheena’s… it tempts.

Each vignette is one part memory, one part nightmare, one part prophecy of what’s to come.

Each video was designed as a means to promote my book through captivating, cinematic storytelling. 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. Zoey is alive and drowning and after living long enough with no air, she considers letting it escape her. This concept caught the erratic essence of her character quite well.

How I built it

I originally used LTX Studio’s storyboard and video generation tools in the first trailer version of this concept as a means to promote a book-centered even I was hosting online, as well as a captivating, story-driven introduction of her character. I crafted Zoey’s sequence shot by shot. I guided the AI with careful prompts, using Actors, layered references for consistency, and curated the results to keep her appearance closely aligned with the novel’s description. The workflow involved: • Storyboarding Zoey’s character arc visually. • Iterating on generated clips until the expressions and atmosphere felt true. • Editing sequences into a short cinematic teaser with external video editing and motion graphics software. In this altered version, I worked with Nano Banana in Envato to create new clips with the focus of sustaining her character appearance.

Challenges I ran into

The Actor feature struggled to maintain her appearance leaving me with many different faces, though it very effectively caught the essence of her character. Plus, the shots Veo 3 gave were just too good to pass up. And so I rolled with it, because Zoey, indeed, wears many faces. That said, it was still kind of chewed at me how different she looked.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Building the scenes and generating the shots I wanted was my most exciting accomplishment. In the first project, all the clips were essentially happy accidents. I went in with a completely different concept, but because of my limited knowledge and experience, I couldn't achieve the original storyline. But, LTX is so powerful it gave me something I actually feel like was a far superior concept. Still, it was only in what I've learned since that I was able to even entertain creating a series, which meant I had to be able to effectively pull of the vision this time around. I took her existing video, updated, and then extended it in a way that tied in the overall narrative of "The Vulture" series.

What I learned

After continuing to work with AI on various platforms, I learned more and discovered more effective ways to maintain a character's appearance. I took one of the many faces LTX gifted me in the first iteration of Zoey's video and revamped/rebuilt her look. I also learned how to better build scenes and prompt. Then I took all this knew knowledge to Envato to craft new clips to replace the ones with drastically different looks for Zoey. It was hard to replace certain stellar clips, but because of what I've learned I was able to craft just as compelling shots (though not as magical as Veo 3) with Zoey's appearance better in tact. I wish I could have done all the recreations in LTX, but I had no more credits.

What's next for The Vulture — "Suffocation" (Pt. III)

The next vignette, "Mirror".

Built With

• chatgpt
• envato
• facetool
• finalcutpro
• ltx
• motion
• photoleap
• pixelmator