View the trailer - "Fur, Fins, & Felons"
Check out schmede's article highlighting art direction/image generation for this project.
Give schmede a follow/buzz!
Check out the blooper reel collection.
Intro / Concept
What started from a joke on Discord has now become a full movie/show trailer for Project Odyssey Season 2 you can view on Civitai!
Quickly following the posting of schmede's Glock 17 (G17) Gen 4 Gun model for FLUX, I remixed his feature image at the time of an axolotl cop with my cat (Allie), and the idea was born:
"What if we made a buddy cop show starring these two?"
We had a few laughs, generated a script in ChatGPT, and let it go. Then after Project Odyssey Season 2 was announced, I asked schmede if he wanted to bring this to life, and he hesitantly agreed.
Scoping
From there we decided to start scoping out the idea and determining feasibility:
how much time would we have to commit?
what tools would we use?
would the quality be good enough?
can we make it consistent enough?
would it actually be interesting/fun?
On Tuesday, December 17th, we agreed to spend the week trying out tools, scripting, and making our decision by that weekend if we were to move forward.
By Saturday (20th), we had a shared folder full of b-roll clips, character profiles, voice lines, and didn't even end up making the decision to move forward: we already had.
Creative Process / Editing
From the video description: all video footage was produced using img2vid on MiniMax / Hailuo with images generated on Civitai with the FLUX LoRAs linked there (see schmede's article for more info). All voice clips were created using ElevenLabs (including the Police Chief trained off my own voice) along with multiple SFX. Soundtrack and additional SFX are royalty-free clips from Envato. All videos used in the trailer were upscaled using Nim's upscaler to bring our generations up to 4K/50fps for better editing/slo-mo.
What schmede didn't know coming into this project was that I have a fairly extensive history in video editing/production, along with a vision of my mind of how I wanted this to look.
Schmede began producing images of our characters and the mice villains doing police/criminal activities, and we honed in on the style we wanted to go for: semi-realism. While it would've been easier to make this in a cartoon/anime style for all sorts of reasons, we agreed the gritty police drama would be better focused on realism.
From there we tried the img2vid tools on multiple partner sponsors on Project Odyssey, and quickly found that Hailuo / MiniMax gave us the animation we liked best (often without even using a prompt). Then upscaled those clips in Nim.
While we had an initial script that covered the characters/plot, we adapted what we had into multiple iterations that always kept the video into 3 general focus areas:
Introduction - dark and foreboding to make the setting and introduce the main plot/conflict
Character reveal / police action - introduce the characters and have them show their personalities while doing police stuff
Character details / title shot / close - really hone in on the characters, then close out with the title with slow motion action
We tested multiple AI tools for voice generation, and found that ElevenLabs offered the best voices and flexibility for our project - though there wasn't a deep enough voice for the police chief narration, so I trained a voice model there using my own voice:
(Other voices used: Allie - Lily, Sal - Gigi, Reporter - Liam)
From there I loaded up DaVinci Resolve for the first time (previous experiences in editing/production were in Premiere/Vegas) and got to work.
After 4 days of editing and iteration adaptation, my flow in DaVinci Resolve looked like this:
All-in-all, it likely took around 20 hours to edit this 2-minute trailer together, but I wanted to get every little transition timing, lip sync, and title as close to perfect as possible.
Submission / Promotion
This is where we are today! I've submitted our video and it's been accepted, so now we're promoting it and sharing behind-the-scenes content (like this article) and cutting-room floor content like this blooper reel collection.
What's Ahead?
This one's up to you! We have a lot of unused footage and ideas, and we'd love to take what we've built forward to the next level in making some short videos focused on the characters we've built. But considering how much time and effort this trailer took, we'd definitely be looking for ways to fund it (hey Netflix, care to sponsor a season then cancel it?) so we want to gauge reaction and see what you all think.
Would you watch this?
How long should the episodes be?
Would you share this with family/friends?
Would you contribute to a Patreon if we went that route?
Are you secretly an HBO executive randomly following me on Civit? (please DM me if so)
Please provide your feedback, thoughts, and ask any questions below!