“Strangers” is the first film in the series to be made almost entirely with generative A.I. (excluding the music and sound effects). It was also my first experience working with this new technology. The tools used—Midjourney, Runway, and ElevenLabs—offer a good starting point in the creative process, but the outputs still required extensive work in post-production to better fit the film’s story and aesthetic. A workflow that is not that dissimilar from working with traditional camera footage or 3D renderings.

Here’s a breakdown of the visual process:

1a) Create characters in Midjourney
2a) Prompt scenes with characters as still images in Midjourney; convert images to video in Runway
3a) Adjust color, add grain, and distort footage in Premiere

Some scenes were created in Runway first:

1b) Prompt scene in Runway then export the first frame as a still
2b) Retexture the still in Midjourney* and use that as the first frame in Runway to generate a new stylized video
3b) Adjust color, add grain, and distort footage in Premiere

*I went with the look of Romanticism painters, including Caspar David Friedrich, J.M.W. Turner, and Thomas Lawrence, since the film features the William Wordsworth poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” published in 1807.

To learn more about the Midjourney-Runway workflow, check out filmmaker Gabe Michael’s video on YouTube.

Starting Point

Light and Shadow

Floral Elements