Let me show you how you can win $2.5M to fund your dream film.
I originally made this trailer for the XPRIZE competition.
Making this actually led to my film 'Nexus' being funded!
You can steal my entire playbook to get your optimistic sci-fi film greenlit via XPRIZE 👇🧵
Many users praised the XPRIZE for optimistic sci-fi films and the creator's playbook because they found the detailed workflow inspiring and the trailer impressive.
No Digg Deeper questions have been answered for this story yet.
Thanks PJ, read this if you are competing for the Future Vision XPRIZE
Let me show you how you can win $2.5M to fund your dream film.
I originally made this trailer for the XPRIZE competition.
Making this actually led to my film 'Nexus' being funded!
You can steal my entire playbook to get your optimistic sci-fi film greenlit via XPRIZE 👇🧵
THE COLLABORATIVE FRAMEWORK:
Once you have a script, put it in a Figma-like board and break it down scene by scene.
Lastly, I'm doing a workshop about this whole process this Wednesday (tomorrow) at 12pm PT!
Make sure you join us!
https://luma.com/aghmkp6b
Then tell Seedance not to have the actors move and change angles every second to show them from a different angle (15-30 angles over 15 seconds in 1080p)
Then drop the video into Luma and tell it to "extract every first frame and upscale"
But @henrydaubrez, @kaigani and @techhalla have been posting about 'burst coverage,' and I wanted to give their technique a shot for my scenes:
I knew I needed a lot of unique visuals that Nano Banana couldn't deliver, so I enlisted the top Midjourney artists.
I gave them a big Figma canvas to play on, asking them to contribute high-level looks for the major scenes.
They had their own tab on the left, so they wouldn't be too influenced by the other artists' work.
I wanted each of them to give a fresh vision to each location.
Massive thanks to my early look dev artists: @Ben__Springer @h_khachatrian @rofoverse @NEXUS_TO_NOVA @_OAK200 @karim_yourself
.@PeterDiamandis created this particular XPRIZE competition to put $2.5M towards the film of someone who can showcase an optimistic, abundant future of humanity.
I heard about it just after watching Project Hail Mary and knew that I wanted to make something similarly inspiring
The easiest way to organize your Luma board is to have script / scene headings up top, characters below, then locations and then props.
I spent a solid day perfecting Adam and Sophie's core looks.
I know you can generate characters 'fast' with AI, but I have become a perfectionist with making my characters look as human as possible.
Tip: Use Nano Banana Pro 2k and prompt for 'anamorphic, shallow depth of field, 21:9'.
I like doing character sheets like this because the text on the image helps the model understand how to animate them and how they speak.
Use a prompt structure like this (and add text in photoshop)
Horizontal character reference sheet on pure white background, three views side by side: front view (left), side profile (center), upper body close-up (right). THE DEFINITIVE ROYAL GUARD — best elements combined: smooth dark metal mask with narrow eye slits and subtle gold etching along the edges. Deep black velvet hood with exceptionally dense gold embroidery. Heavy black velvet robe, broad armored shoulders with dark metal pauldrons, armored gauntlets on the hands, gold chain clasp at the throat. Anonymous, powerful, loyal, terrifying. The pinnacle of the guard aesthetic. Photorealistic, studio lighting, 16:9 horizontal layout.
For the core image generations, we used @LumaLabsAI.
Check out how MASSIVE our total board was (over 10,000 images)
If you want to win $2.5M for your optimistic sci-fi film, check out XPRIZE!
Very thankful for this competition, which inspired me to create my film, Nexus.
It indirectly helped secure my film's funding from another financier, so you never know what can happen when you create a trailer like this!
Make something epic and know that you won't be competing against me 😂.
https://futurevisionxprize.com/
The Story: You may notice similarities (and stark differences) between this Nexus Trailer and my Nexus Teaser, which went mega-viral last week.
That's because this Trailer was made first, and then I later realized that animals in crisis made a more interesting theme than a drought 😂
So this trailer isn't 'canon' to the Nexus universe anymore but we'll be pulling some characters and locations to the final feature film that we're re-writing over the next two months :)
I spent two months on this trailer (above), only to scrap it for the teaser (below), but that's the nature of storytelling; you don't always bottle lightning the first time it strikes.
Here's a prompt template you can copy for scenes like this:
EXT. AIRSHIP DECK. DAY. CANYON EDGE BEFORE THE FALL.
1) @ airship_deck - Environment ref from uploaded image. Open exterior deck of the organic baroque airship, weathered timber planks, rope rigging, gold filigree spars and membrane sails overhead, low rail at the edge. Parked on a mountainside above a vast dry canyon, cracked earth where Lake Geneva used to be, the ringing city ravaged. Golden hour light. Environment only.
@ adam - Already image referenced. Voice: neutral American accent, mid-pitch, low-grade urgency, tightening into mocking sarcasm when defensive. Voice only.
@ sophie - Already image referenced. Voice: neutral American accent, same register as @ adam, slightly higher pitch, clipped and practical, snapping when pushed. Voice only.
@ termie - Already image referenced. Small creature roughly the length of @ adam's torso, perched on @ adam's right shoulder against his neck throughout, leaning forward. Creature appearance only.
Scene context: @ sophie on the LEFT walking the length of the deck, prepping the ship for departure, checking rigging, testing rope tension, hand on the hull, scanning the spars, talking as she moves, never stopping. @ adam on the RIGHT a step behind, uncertain, @ termie on his right shoulder. Geography never flips. Both keep walking through every CUT until the rumble. Resolves on @ sophie pointing at @ adam as the deck pitches.
Arri Alexa 65, anamorphic 2.39:1, no lens flare. 35mm Kodak 5219. Fine grain. Hyper-realistic. No cloning. Tracking handheld follows movement, close-ups and medium close-ups, one wide. Hollywood acting. Natural light only, low golden hour sun raking from camera left, long shadows on the planks. Atmospheric haze, dust in the light.
CUT - tracking medium @ adam on the right third, @ termie perched on his right shoulder, normal speed - walking camera left following @ sophie off frame ahead, eyes scanning the deck and the canyon below off frame, wind in his curls, accent quiet and unhurried, "How do we get back?" - holding a beat, the walk continuing -
CUT - tracking medium @ sophie on the left third, normal speed - walking camera right along the deck ahead of @ adam off frame behind, hands moving as she goes, tugging a rope at the rail, testing tension, releasing, stepping past, not looking back, jaw tight, accent clipped and practical, "We're not going back." - the walk continuing, hand pressing flat against the hull as she passes - then sharper, eyes flicking back over her shoulder toward @ adam off frame, "The drought is happening in every reality. Not just ours. We're gonna figure out why." -
*Sound design: wind across the dry canyon throughout, @ sophie's boots on the timber planks walking, her hands on the rope and the hull, creak of timber and rigging, @ termie's claws scrabbling on @ adam's shoulder cloth, @ adam's exhale on the mocking line, a deep mechanical groan, a long low rumble, ropes snapping taut, @ sophie's boots sliding as the deck tilts, no music, sound design only.*
Writing a 3-Minute Trailer:
My writing partner, Dan Weller, and I spent 3 weeks on this 3-minute script.
I've spent less time writing 30-page scripts 😂
The issue is that you have to create an entire movie universe from scratch and THEN distill it into the most poignant moments in 3 minutes.
It's actually really difficult to do it well.
One cheat code we found was transcribing various Project Hail Mary trailers and working with Gemini to reverse-engineer how those beats mapped onto our story.
@AhzStudioeva not too much, here's the raw clip i used to screenshot
An airship flying through these incredible visuals has always been the core driver of this story.
I want the story to have a Firefly-like cast of characters who travel to adjacent worlds, solve problems, and unravel the greater mystery of how to save Earth.
(Other inspirations: Star Trek, Mass Effect, and Stargate.)
This is where your various cinematographers and artists will put their takes on your scene.
However, before they can do that, they need a vision for the core elements of your project and world.
Originally, I envisioned my XPRIZE story is about a mysterious drought that affects Earth.
Oceans begin to recede, rain is scarce, and our lead scientist at CERN finds a way to travel to adjacent realities to search for clues, only to find that their worlds are also experiencing this drought.
These adjacent realities are breathtaking; they're splintered realities of our world. What if Rome, Egypt, or the Mayan empire never fell?
What if these empires had super-cities with 2,000-foot monuments and structures?
It would have been too expensive to enlist them all on the core images, so I chose @karim_yourself to do the bulk of the core images with me after getting a general feel for the look of most scenes thanks to the work of all our look dev artists.
Karim's early work (pictured below) really impressed me and I knew we'd be working together a TON after getting the first batch of images from him.
While the other artists primarily used Midjourney, he used a mix of Nano Banana and Seedream to get these.
(We'd later use GPT-2 a ton in the teaser)