AMTAKevin K. Shah with Akanksha Mishra and 1 other
ABOUT
The Secret Life of Anjali is a poetic short film set in war-torn South Asia. After losing her father, young Anjali asks her mother to repeat his secret bedtime story: a cosmic lullaby that journeys across 4.5 billion years through reincarnation, love, destruction, and the search for home. As her mother speaks, Anjali’s imagination transforms grief into a vast, surreal inner universe. Made with human actors (voice) , translation, and directing/editing + Runway, VEO, Suno (Score), Eleven Labs (Sound Effects).
SELECTED FRAMES — 8 OF 8
PROCESS
This film for me was an experiment to see if I could create an organic, authentic and deeply emotional 'performance' with an AI character. Additionally, I wanted to see if I could create a 10 minute narrative in a language I don't know (Hindi) - while keeping it compelling and fresh. The first step was writing out the bedtime story I created to help my kids fall asleep. It's an endless tale of reincarnation and a life force that travels through time. Once I had the story, which took the form of a poem -- I had to translate it. Since I didn't know Hindi, I wasn't able to rely on Claude to keep the 'poetry' of the story, so I turned to my friend Tanvi Appa who helped me translate a previous film as well. She brought life to the words as they went from English to Hindi. After I had the story and the translation I started production on the images. I decided to set the poem in a fictional war-torn South Asia landscape. I drew from current conflict at home and abroad and set the entire story at night, while a mother tries to get her daughter to sleep by telling the story of reincarnation the way the girl's father used to. I used primarily Google Veo with experimentation from Runway to craft the 'look' of the film, and was extremely pleased with what I could do with just delicate prompting. While I was in production on the images (entirely text to video) I also started my search for the 'voice' of the mother in the film. I used Eleven Labs recording of my Hindi script as a 'place-holder' -- as again AI wasn't able to breathe the life I needed into the words. I turned to a professional Bollywood voice actress named Akanksha Mishra to voice the character. She performed beautifully. After that, I had what I needed for the edit. Once the edit was complete, I crafted the sound effects I needed while scoring the film using Suno. Lastly, I translated the Hindi version of the poem back into English with Tanvi's help, and crafted the subtitles.
Credits
- Kevin K. Shah CreatorVIEW PROFILE →
- Akanksha MishraActor
- Tanvi AppaTranslation by
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