The Odyssey

Amid the chaos of war, Frank clings to the memory of a mysterious woman he met before leaving, finding both solace and longing in the hope of one day reconnecting.

I prompted all of the still images using Midjourney, then used Kling’s image-to-video generation feature along with prompted text to turn them into suitable videos.

Director/Writer/AI Artist – Matthew Hazandras
Voice – Cameron Carnegie Brown
Music – Sebastian Hyatt
Sound – Frontline Audio

The idea of this film was birthed late last year. I did not know at the time what I would do with it. The scale was too grand for it to be turned into a short film, and it didn’t feel big enough to turn into a feature script either. I was stuck, and ended up just writing a short script for fun. Upon re-reading it, I noticed the dialogue had a poem-like flow to it, which was something I had never done before. As someone who is very active on social media, I began noticing a few talented generative AI filmmakers making short films with strong, emotional cores to the stories. It was at that point where I realised I could actually turn The Odyssey into a film, and for a lot less money than I ever imagined too.

Start to finish, it took two months to come to an edit I was proud of. Using some of the latest tools in generative AI, I was able to bring this very special short story to life. If not for the development of technology this past year, I don’t think this story would have ever seen the light of day.

First and foremost I wanted to tell a captivating story, but with AI there comes the obvious challenge of creating something that audiences can connect to without finding flaws. All I hope is that my film is able to help prove that AI films deserve their place our ever-growing industry, and I hope that audiences find the courage to give them a chance.