John-Ivar F. Eidsmo
ABOUT
A satirical short imagining Norway’s most recognizable politicians at a chaotic New Years party. Built from official parliamentary portraits using generative image and video tools, then edited into a fast-paced social film. Beneath the absurdity was a simple point: when fabricated footage can look this convincing, you should be careful what you trust online. The film went viral, reached millions of views and was picked up by national Norwegian news outlets, turning the piece itself into a conversation about AI, source criticism and digital trust.
SELECTED FRAMES — 5 OF 8
PROCESS
The starting point was deliberately mundane: official portrait photos of Norwegian politicians. The challenge was turning those static, familiar images into something that felt like footage from the same chaotic New Year’s party. I first developed individual party scenes as still images, working to keep faces recognizable while changing everything around them — expressions, clothing, lighting, camera angle and environment. The strongest images became reference frames for AI video generation. Most generations didn’t survive. Faces drifted, people changed identity mid-shot, hands broke, movements became unnatural and the illusion disappeared. I generated variations, selected the few moments that held together, and edited around the failures. Pacing, music, sound design, grading and the sequencing of increasingly absurd scenes did much of the work in making separate generations feel like one piece of footage. The final step was also the point of the project: making something obviously fictional feel believable enough, for long enough, to make people question what they were looking at. The finished film went on to reach millions of views and national media — with source criticism becoming part of the conversation around it.
Credits
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