DSRGDucharme Roxanne with Daniel Scott and 3 others
ABOUT
FOSSiLS is a poetic meditation on humanity’s impermanence and the traces we leave behind. Imagining a future where humankind fades into history like the dinosaurs, this haunting and reflective work intertwines themes of fragility, legacy, and the cyclical nature of life on Earth. Winner of Best Non-Fiction Short at the 2025 Seattle AI Film Festival, Best AI Short at the Tokyo Film & Screenplay Awards, and recipient of a Highly Commendable mention at the AIfa Awards 2025.
SELECTED FRAMES — 8 OF 8
PROCESS
FOSSiLS began with a script by my cousin, writer Johanne Tremblay, about what traces of our present-day world might remain 20 million years in the future. Before building the full film, I made two short visual and sound tests using a narration sample, Midjourney, and Runway. Those tests helped establish the film’s quiet, contemplative pace and its balance between melancholy and hope. I developed the visual language in Midjourney, with one image created in Flux, then animated almost entirely through image-to-video in Runway Gen-3, with a small number of shots made in Kling. I used ChatGPT as a research and visual-development partner, asking questions about future fossils, monuments reclaimed by vegetation, and the kinds of human remnants that might survive across vast spans of time. My main creative test was whether an image could suggest an end-of-the-world future without becoming bleak or apocalyptic in a familiar way. I kept the images that felt beautiful, calm, and coherent with the narration, and discarded anything too literal, depressing, or visually chaotic. The aim was not documentary realism, but a poetic vision of deep time: strange, fragile, and ultimately hopeful. The film was edited in Premiere, with the narration cleaned using Adobe Podcast, then finished with original music, sound design, colour work, captions, and a 4K upscale in Topaz. Because the film reflects on humanity, memory, and what we leave behind, it was important to me that its emotional core be created by people. While I directed and created the AI visuals and edit, FOSSiLS was a human collaboration: the script was written by Johanne Tremblay; the narration was performed by voice actor Kim Bubbs; the original score was composed and performed by Daniel Scott; and the final sound edit and mix were completed by Roger Guerin.
Credits
- Ducharme RoxanneCreatorVIEW PROFILE →
- Daniel ScottMusic
- Roger GuerinSound editing and re-recording mixer
- Kim BubbsNarrator
- Johanne TremblayWriter
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