Paul White blurs reality in Surreal AI music video

The music video for Surreal began as an experiment to embrace the deformations and irregularities of AI models.

"The initial concept was to depict a person's fragmented memories, with the distorted imagery symbolising how details fade over time. However, the resulting visuals ended up looking more like the generic AI-generated content often seen on social media. To avoid this, I took a different approach, focusing on quick cuts and simple shots to reduce the AI's presence.

The final concept evolved into a play between the environment and the woman featured in the video, blurring the line between reality and illusion. Is it the creases in the duvet or her body? A flock of birds or her dance? A grapefruit or her lips?"

Paul White – Surreal

Credits

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Production Company Greatcoat Films
Director Kims Mihailovs

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Credits

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Production Company Greatcoat Films
Director Kims Mihailovs
Producer Simon Oxley
Animator Kims Mihailovs

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"The video leaves these questions open, exploring the fluid boundary between past and present.

Creating a fully AI-generated video was a new and tedious process. Unlike traditional creative processes, where you can get lost in the act of creation, working with AI involves a lot of waiting. You generate images, wait, select the best ones, run them through video AI, and wait again. This interrupts the creative flow, though the technology's speed and results are rapidly improving.

While generating images for each shot, I noticed a stop-motion effect when scrolling through similar images. Intrigued, I produced hundreds of images which resulted in the creation of the effect featured during the song's chorus."