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Jaehong An with Haeyun Shin and 1 other

Film · 2025 · 3 credits

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Category
Film

Made with
Gen-4.5 · Aleph

Released
2025

Views
18

ABOUT

A woman steps into an elevator with quiet apprehension, ascending to an upscale cosmetic clinic. After payment, paperwork, and a procedure, she pauses before the elevator mirror. Her reflection appears smoother and more refined, bringing a moment of reassurance. She descends and steps outside, where media screens greet her with ever more idealized faces. The satisfaction she felt begins to fade, making room for a new comparison and a renewed desire for change. With each journey up and down, her appearance gradually shifts, growing less familiar even to herself. Each ascent holds the promise of becoming someone better. Yet as she moves closer to an ever-receding ideal, her sense of who she is quietly begins to slip away.


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PROCESS

Elevate was created for Runway Gen:48 Aleph Edition, a filmmaking competition with a strict 48-hour production window. To work within that deadline, the actor and I stayed at the production location for the full two days, filming performances on site and immediately using the footage as motion reference. A single actor’s performance formed the foundation for the film’s changing characters. Using Runway’s Act-Two, I transferred the actor’s facial expressions and performance to AI-generated characters, giving them a more lifelike, expressive presence. This approach kept human performance at the center of the film, even as the character’s appearance became increasingly unfamiliar. All visual source images were generated in Midjourney, then animated through an image-to-video workflow. Music was created with Suno, and sound effects were generated using ElevenLabs SFX. The production brought live performance, generative imagery, and AI-generated sound together within a tightly coordinated two-day process.

Credits

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