A series of short clips that display a countdown to the 2024 Nordic Growth Summit - a conference about digital marketing, technology and AI. Each clip deploys a new generative video technique. The project also included a "screen saver" that would run on stage between speakers.
I received the visual profile and was tasked with making it move. I did the motion design, coding, AI network design, editing and final compositing.
To reflect the diverse technologies represented in the event, the clips were equally diverse in their execution. New generative algorithms were designed for each new clip, some more complex than others. The two most demanding ones were for the 2 weeks left and 1 week left videos.
2 weeks left
This clip would represent the AI component of the summit. It looks like a dreamlike warping Nordic landscape, with waterfalls and clouds drifting in and out of view in impossible ways. To achieve this, I first designed a baseline video which the AI could use as an input. I then generated the frames using AnimateDiff and ComfyUI, running Stable Diffusion. At first I tried prompting a simple scandinavian landscape. In one of the tests, I saw a hint of a mountaintop in the upper curve of the number two. This was a perfect parallel to the word summit in the event itself, so in subsequent trials I made sure to include plenty of references to mountains and a winding stream that I imagined would run diagonally down the shape. Eventually I got the generation I was looking for, which is the one seen in the final clip. To make the number more readable, I applied a mask that would sharpen its edges and make the shape recognizable.
1 week left
I wanted to use a particle simulation for the final video. I made a very dense rectangular field of particles that I overlayed with the number one. The particle field is then displaced using two noises at varying scales. The parameters of the larger noise are driven by the sound effects themselves. One set of frequencies increased the total displaced distance, another zoomed through the 3D noise along the Z-axis. The beeps that can be heard also influence the shading of the particles, making them light up for each second.
The same system was used for the logo placeholder video between speakers.
