After Effects, Premiere Pro, Kling 3.0, Seedance 2.0
Music: Anxiety - dxncing dxvil, Drowning Roses
This project was inspired by a line in Little Miss Sunshine: "Life is one fucking beauty contest after another."
Most of the footage is generative, made with Midjourney 8.3, Kling 3.0 and Seedance 2.0. I then edited the sequence and did the VFX work in After Effects. The tools were chosen to serve the idea, not to be the point of the piece.
The edit runs on match cuts. It opens on an eye, cuts to the face of a clock, and the clock explodes. The iris and the dial are the same circle, so being looked at and being timed become the same thing. The explosion is that pressure giving way.
The last cut is a firework matched to a dandelion coming apart in the wind. Both open in the same radial shape, but they mean opposite things. The firework destroys itself to be seen. The dandelion just lets go, and the seeds land somewhere else and start again. Color carries the same idea. The main pageant is graded orange and teal, the standard commercial look, warm skin against a cool background, making the event feel like a manufactured spectacle.
I wanted to see whether generative footage could carry a real edit, where the cuts do the work and the shots exist for the story. The film is short on purpose. The contest is not.
Most of the footage is created by Midjourney, and then use the Kling 3.0 and Seedance 2.0 to generate the video later.
Using the ComfyUI with FLUX 2 to lock the character posture.
SFX Breakdown: