A personal project by Michael Korniltsev, part of Madpixel Studio.
I wanted to tell a story through one complex camera flight. I picked a product, started building the animatic — and right in the middle of the process, an Oscar-worthy story was born.
It's about how, even through the old, the fast, the loud, the restless, the constantly moving, building and entertaining, you can catch the sound of silence. It's the state that comes when you put on truly good headphones — in this case JBL (and we're open to collaboration). But really, this story isn't only about headphones; it's about that state as a whole — about staying yourself in the middle of any rush.
This state is very subtle. Only creatures like butterflies can catch it — the living embodiment of beauty, harmony and nature. They hear this silence, this beauty, and fly towards it through everything. Through the old, the intrusive and the loud — a woman with a barking dog. Through the fast and the restless — a cyclist. Through temptations and addictions — a girl in red. Through the inner search for yourself, worries, problems and transformations — an underpass. And finally — into a window flung wide open. It lets in all the sounds of the street, yet inside the room the noise suddenly breaks off, as if we had passed through an invisible threshold.
In the finale — calm and peace: a girl meditating. The music in her headphones is very quiet and soothing, and yet it shuts out all the noise around her.
All this time the viewer has been flying in first person — through the eyes of a butterfly. And other butterflies flock to this silence: true, natural silence and subtle vibrations hear it and reunite with it into something vast and whole.
From this comes one conclusion: you can be in this state whenever you want. You can simply be.
No post-production. Video generated with Seedance 2.5, sound generated in Higgsfield — everything was made in Higgsfield.
Work in progress — from Blender previz to Seedance 2.5
First, Claude built the animatic and the camera in Blender. Then I refined the camera by hand, making it more detailed and smoother. The key was to get the butterfly's dynamics across.
There were several approaches. At first I gave Seedance references of finished frames and scenes, but every time it tried to repeat those frames, even though the movement in the animatic was different. Then I made each character separately and described them inside the prompt — and Seedance understood and picked everything up. One flight took more than 15 generations.
References — each character and location generated separately
Top — final, bottom — Blender previz
Seedance 2.5 prompt
Show full prompt
VIDEO REFERENCE @Video 1 is a 3D render animatic, one continuous camera flight from the street to the woman's apartment. Take the camera movement, pacing, shot sizes and blocking from it one to one. SETTING A busy Italian town, sunny day, late afternoon, low sun in backlight. WHAT HAPPENS 0–4s: we are on the street of @Image 1 — its location, buildings and layout. Low angle, camera below knee height. Ahead of us a wide pavement, with people walking towards us along it (in @Video 1 — purple figures). To the right, a cycle lane runs along the pavement. Right beyond it, along it, two taxis are parked (@Image 11 and @Image 12; in @Video 1 — yellow boxes). Beyond the taxis, further right in frame, the road. The camera flies forward along the pavement, past the first and then the second pedestrian. At 3s a woman with a dog comes towards us (@Image 8; the dog in @Video 1 — green box). As the camera comes right up close to them, the dog barks a couple of times straight into the camera. The camera flies past them and past several more people. 4–7s: from 4s a cyclist (@Image 6) rides towards us on the cycle lane to the right. The camera closes in on him, and at 6s, just as his foot comes down on the pedal, it slips low between the sole of his shoe on the pedal and the ground — the sole passes right over the lens — and flies on. 7–10s: right after the cyclist, the camera turns left — towards the outdoor café that stands at the very end of the building on the left, on its corner. Right past the corner of that building the crossroads begins, as in @Image 1. In front of the café stand four flower planters. Under the awning, four small square tables set out in a square: two rows of two. People sit at the tables in pairs (in @Video 1 — purple figures). At the last table — the far left one, by the wall on the very corner of the building — a woman in a red dress sits alone (@Image 2; in @Video 1 — red figure). She sits with her back to the wall, looking to the right of frame. On the table in front of her, a glass of red wine. At 7s the camera flies through the planters and in under the awning, between the tables. At 9s it reaches her table — she lifts the glass off the table, and at that moment the camera flies between the glass and the tabletop and carries on. 10–13s: past her table, the camera turns left around the corner of the building. There the way down into a pedestrian underpass begins — a staircase going down. From 11s the camera descends the stairs, past two people coming up towards it (in @Video 1 — purple figures). At 13s, at the bottom, it passes one more person walking towards it. 13–16s: at the bottom the camera immediately turns right around the corner, and the underpass corridor opens up (@Image 3). Midway along the corridor, against the right wall, a street drummer sits with his back to it (@Image 4), beating out a rhythm on upturned plastic buckets. Opposite him, against the left wall, three teenagers stand watching him silently and motionless, one of them filming him on a phone (@Image 5; in @Video 1 — purple figures). At 15s the camera reaches the drummer and flies between his stick, as it lifts up, and the surface of the bucket. Then at the end of the underpass, at 16s, it turns left onto the stairs going up, where a person is coming down towards it. 16–20s: the camera climbs the stairs up to the street, and from 17s flies up along the building's facade to a window. The window is wide open; on the sill a cat lies on the left and a flower stands on the right. At 20s the camera flies in through that window into the room (@Image 10). The room has a second window, in the left wall, which gives extra light. 20–23s: in the centre of the room a young woman in headphones sits on the floor (@Image 9; in @Video 1 — pink figure, headphones yellow). She is in a meditation pose, eyes closed. She sits facing the window the camera came in through — so as the camera enters, she is facing it straight on. She stays motionless to the very end. From 21s the camera begins to orbit her in a spiral, anticlockwise when seen from above, gradually closing in. 23–28s: at 23s the camera is behind her, and the window we came in through is back in frame. At exactly that moment butterflies begin flying in through it (@Image 7; in @Video 1 — red spheres). This is their first appearance — there are no butterflies anywhere earlier in the film. They fly into the room and begin circling her. The camera continues its orbit. 28–30s: by 28s the camera, having gone a full circle around her, slowly comes to rest on a portrait of her from the front — her face visible. One butterfly settles on an ear cup of her headphones and folds its wings. After that, she opens her eyes and smiles faintly. Until that moment — no emotion, no movement of the face, mouth closed. CAMERA ARRI Alexa 35, vintage Petzval-style lens at T2.0. Physically plausible movement, as on a real rig: every turn banks into itself with a slight overshoot and recovery, like an aircraft. Natural motion blur matched to speed, slight lens breathing, mild barrel distortion, faint chromatic aberration on high-contrast edges, gentle swirly bokeh towards the frame edges, occasional anamorphic flare towards the sun. Even exposure right out to the corners, no darkening at the edges. STYLE @Image 1 style only, not composition or content. Broadcast television commercial, Rec.709. Kodak 250D negative emulation under a Kodak 2383 print film emulation, D65 white point, film density and tonal separation. Gentle highlight rolloff with no clipping, rich shadows with retained detail, halation around rim light and speculars. Warm, natural skin tones against cooler shade, gentle split-tone. Fine 35mm negative grain. Photorealistic, documentary realism, not CGI, not a render. SOUND Effects only, no music. <busy street ambience, footsteps, chatter> <small dog barking up close> <bicycle chain and spokes right by the lens> <café cutlery and glasses> <footsteps on stairs, underpass echo> <sticks beating plastic buckets> <quiet room, distant street noise through the window, birdsong> <butterfly wing flutter> One continuous take, no cuts, seamless. Avoid: cuts and shot changes, camera stopping, butterflies before 23 seconds, music, facial expression or open mouth on the woman before 28 seconds, vignetting, on-screen text.
Thanks to superwise.studio for support and management.
