Tag: Publishing

Let’s Make a Music Video ~ Step 3

On the third leg of my ChatGPT conversation, I uploaded 20 Maroli Tango chapter illustrations.

See below: 9 of 20. Chatty has assumed we’re making our video the same length as the song. We will get past that.

Chapter illustrations -- 9 of 20

ChatGPT replied:

This is a very strong first pass. More importantly, it answers a question we hadn’t settled yet: the video does not need much additional artwork. You already have enough emotional and visual range to carry the song.

What I like most is that the catalog isn’t merely “pretty chapter pictures.” It has a progression from courtship and family comedy through enormous science-fiction stakes and back to intimacy. That is exactly what this song needs.

I would think of the catalog in four families.

FunctionParticularly strong frames
Primary romanceChristmas dance; Carmen/Brandon at the illuminated mountainside city; sunset balcony ensemble
Young romancegalley/“Gravity is ON”; kitchen almost-kiss; orbital proposal; corridor kiss; bedroom-with-dog
Wonderful strange worldarriving at the coastal estate; Maroli in the library; grotto/pool Maroli; road trip; enormous island/structure
Stakes / authorityCarmen before the micro-nova briefing; tie-adjustment scene; flight-hangar material

Several are obvious hero frames

The Christmas dance is probably our most valuable Carmen/Brandon animation candidate. It already contains everything PAI needs: hands joined, Carmen looking directly at Brandon, Brandon looking downward, background dancers, Christmas lights. A tiny sequence—he raises his eyes, she smiles, their bodies begin a slow turn—would buy us far more than four seconds of spacecraft animation.

The orbital proposal is another. Their faces are already close, the ring box establishes the action, Earth is right behind them. It practically animates itself. I would not ask for a kiss. Something as little as her leaning another inch closer, his expression breaking into a grin, and the station drifting outside the window could be beautiful.

The Carmen/Brandon mountainside-city frame is one of the best still images in the set. Ironically, I wouldn’t necessarily spend PAI money on it. A slow editorial push-in with a little parallax could be enough. The scenery already supplies motion psychologically.

The micro-nova auditorium is important because it prevents the video from becoming merely a romantic scrapbook. One 2–3 second appearance of Carmen walking through that room tells us: Oh. She has a job, and apparently the job is saving civilization. The cheerful song playing over it makes the juxtaposition better.

And the giant coastal structure at the end is a terrific scale shot. That is the sort of image I’d use late, probably during the final musical run—not as the ending itself.

The comedy is much more valuable than I expected

The dachshund/golf-cart picture is gold.

So is “Gravity is ON.”

So are the dog images generally.

They give the song permission to be Hall & Oates. Without those, the stately costumes, palaces, uniforms and existential danger could make the edit feel too reverent. These pictures say, yes, this universe is enormous; people still have dogs and embarrass themselves.

I would absolutely include the golf-cart image, perhaps for only one or two seconds. It doesn’t need animation at all. Drop it precisely on a musical accent and get out.

Likewise, the road-trip image with the dog between the two aliens is excellent montage material. It expands the universe while remaining utterly ordinary.

You also have a nice recurring motif

I hadn’t appreciated this until seeing the images together:

touch.

Hands joined dancing.
Woman’s hand on a shoulder.
Hands held on the balcony.
Tie being straightened.
Near-kiss.
Ring offered.
Kiss.
Embrace.
Dog being petted.

That’s a visual motif we should exploit deliberately. The song is about someone transforming ordinary existence through affection, and your illustrations repeatedly communicate intimacy through hands rather than grand romantic gestures.

We could cut several of those together almost as match cuts.

One production issue: aspect ratio

The first few images are portrait-format while much of the later material is landscape.

That is manageable, but we should settle on 16:9 landscape for the finished video before spending any PAI credits.

For the vertical frames, I would not simply pillarbox them. We can:

  • crop them into medium shots;
  • use a slow vertical pan;
  • occasionally use a moving enlargement of one portion of the composition;
  • or, for an especially important PAI candidate like the Christmas dance, create a 16:9 extended start frame first.

That last option might be worthwhile for the dance because the background ballroom is easy territory for image extension.

The stylistic variation doesn’t bother me

Some frames are very photographic, some more painterly, and the sepia café image is substantially different.

Normally that would concern me. Here I think it can work if we make it intentional.

The sepia café picture in particular reads almost like memory or family history. I wouldn’t try to disguise that. Give it a brief appearance as a visual aside, perhaps paired with another historical-feeling image.

What we should avoid is random alternation:

photoreal → painterly → photoreal → sepia → photoreal.

Group related aesthetics into little runs and the viewer will accept them as deliberate changes of register.

I would revise our PAI budget already

Seeing these, I don’t think we need nine animations.

I would initially reserve credits for only about six:

  1. Christmas dance — 5 sec
  2. Young couple playful galley scene — 4 sec
  3. Orbital proposal — 5 sec
  4. Maroli movement — 4 sec
  5. One spectacular vehicle/world-motion shot — 5 sec
  6. Final emotional character shot — 5 sec

That’s only about 28 seconds committed.

Keep 12 seconds in reserve.

That’s important because once we assemble a rough music edit from stills, it will reveal exactly where the video feels dead. Then we spend the remaining PAI credits on the gaps rather than guessing now.

And quite a few of these frames don’t need generative animation at all. The sunset balcony, the giant structure, Carmen before the briefing, the embrace, the bedroom, the dogs—musical editing and a subtle push or pan will do most of the work.

One thing I would change from my earlier concept

I previously imagined Carmen/Brandon as the clear spine with Mason/Marie as a secondary mirror.

Looking at this catalog, I think the video can be more ensemble-romantic than that.

Carmen and Brandon still give it thematic authority, but the visual thesis now looks more like:

Everybody has somebody. Everybody has somewhere they belong. This ridiculous universe is worth keeping.

That gives us permission to jump among generations, species, relationships, families, dogs, Maroli and enormous machines without the viewer needing to know the plot.

And that is an excellent fit for You Make My Dreams.

I would call this catalog well beyond proof-of-concept. We now have enough material to start an actual edit map rather than continuing to collect indiscriminately. The next useful pass is to number these twenty frames in their current order and assign each HERO / SUPPORT / COMIC / STAKES / WORLD / HOLD, then begin arranging them against the song structure.

Okay, audience — Let’s talk about how long this video ought to be. Tell us in the comments.

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Let’s Make a Music Video ~ Step 2

The song is You Make My Dreams by Hall and Oates

ChatGPT replied:

Perfect. That song points us toward a romantic, exuberant “this is why the world is worth saving” video, not a synopsis.

The original Voices version runs about 3:10, so we have enough room for perhaps 35–45 distinct edits, but probably only 18–25 genuinely animated source shots if we reuse some intelligently through crops, speed changes, and alternate camera moves. (Spotify)

The central conceit I’d use is:

An extinction story edited as a love song.

That fits Maroli Tango beautifully. The cosmic threat is present, but the song keeps insisting visually that civilization is made out of people who are delighted to be alive.

Continue reading “Let’s Make a Music Video ~ Step 2” →
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Let’s Make a Music Video ~ Step 1

Let us plan a music video built from Maroli Tango chapter illustrations. We will select start frames and task PAI Studio with animation and assembly.

ChatGPT replied:

The chapter illustrations are unusually well suited to this because they already function like cinematic keyframes. Rather than asking an image-to-video model to invent scenes, we can treat each illustration as a deliberately composed start frame and give PAI Studio narrowly constrained animation jobs.

I’d build the project in five passes.

1. Treat the song as the master timeline

Before choosing pictures, we map the finished music track into structural beats: intro, verse, lift, chorus, bridge, instrumental passages, final escalation, outro.

For each section we decide whether the visual should be:

  • narrative — recognizable events from Maroli Tango
  • character — Carmen, Brandon, Mason, Marie, Suban, etc.
  • world spectacle — ships, Virtuality, Dust Cloud Spiral, Washington, Jivada
  • emotional punctuation — a look, embrace, confrontation, isolation, revelation
  • kinetic transition — drone flight, spacecraft departure, city movement, camera travel

That keeps the video from becoming an illustrated chapter summary. It should feel like the emotional memory of the novel set to music.

2. Build a start-frame library

We go through the existing illustrations and classify them roughly like this:

TypeBest animation treatment
Close character shotbreathing, eyes, hair/fur, subtle expression, camera creep
Two-character dialoguerestrained body motion, glance changes, parallax
Interior scenecamera push/dolly, AR displays, environmental motion
Exterior citytraffic, atmospheric movement, signs/light, slow camera
Spacecraftcamera orbit, translation, atmospheric haze, distant traffic
Action imagestronger camera movement, debris, weapon effects, character movement
Virtuality/surrealtransformation, impossible camera travel, environmental morphing

Some images will make excellent 4–6 second shots. Others may support 8–10 seconds if there is enough depth.

A critical rule: don’t animate everything. Models get worse as the requested motion becomes more complicated. We want the existing illustration to remain recognizable.

For example:

Carmen doesn’t need to walk across a room.
She may only look toward Brandon while the camera moves slowly around her.

That can look much more expensive than attempting full-body performance.

3. Write animation directions as shots, not prose

For every selected start frame, we’ll create a compact production card.

Something like:

SHOT 17 — Carmen / White House

Duration: 5.5 sec
Start frame: Carmen chapter illustration
Camera: slow 15-degree arc right, slight push-in
Subject: Carmen remains nearly still; subtle breathing; eyes shift toward someone offscreen
Environment: curtains move faintly; distant city lights shimmer
Mood: controlled anxiety, private rather than presidential
Continuity constraints: preserve face, age, wardrobe, hairstyle, room architecture
Avoid: dialogue mouth motion, exaggerated head turn, new objects, costume changes

The important distinction is that we’re telling PAI what may move and what must not change.

For character continuity, I’d repeatedly specify:

  • preserve exact facial identity
  • preserve species anatomy
  • preserve costume
  • no added tails
  • no added fingers/limbs
  • no new characters
  • no text mutation
  • maintain illustrated/cinematic realism

Especially with the Anye and Maroli, anatomical restraint will matter.

4. Use the music video grammar to hide AI weaknesses

Rather than producing thirty-second generated sequences, I would favor short deliberate shots, probably averaging around 3–6 seconds.

A very rough rhythm might be:

Quiet verse: 5–8 sec shots
Build: 3–5 sec
Chorus: 2–4 sec
Instrumental/action passage: occasionally 1–2 sec
Emotional climax: return to longer shots

And not every transition needs generative animation. Hard cuts, dissolves, dip-to-black, match cuts, flash frames, and editorial reframing can do enormous work.

We can also reuse a strong illustration in multiple ways:

Shot A: wide composition
Shot B: crop on Carmen
Shot C: crop on Brandon
Shot D: animated full frame

Four visual beats from one piece of artwork without regenerating anything.

5. Give the video an arc independent of chapter order

For Maroli Tango, I would initially explore an arc something like:

I — Wonder
Earth, Anye civilization, Washington, ships, children, strange technology.

II — People
Carmen/Brandon. Mason/Marie. Domestic and human-scale images.

III — Something is wrong
Dust Cloud Spiral, military imagery, drones, meetings, increasingly uneasy expressions.

IV — Collision
Political confrontation, spacecraft, military action, rapid cutting.

V — Choice
Carmen becomes the visual center. The story stops being about whether somebody will rescue Earth and becomes about humanity deciding what it will do.

VI — Release
Large cosmic imagery followed by something surprisingly intimate rather than ending on the biggest explosion.

That would serve the central idea of Maroli Tango particularly well:

the fate of civilizations rendered through the decisions of individual people.

The practical workflow can therefore be:

song → timecoded beat sheet → illustration shortlist → shot order → individual PAI animation prompts → generated clips → assembly → identify weak transitions → create a handful of purpose-built bridge frames → final assembly.

I would resist generating new artwork until we’ve exhausted the existing chapter illustrations. Their consistency is an asset. Once the rough cut exposes an actual missing shot—we need Carmen alone here, we need an exterior of Bharamin here, we need Mason looking upward here—then we make that illustration specifically as a start frame.

The best next step is to give me the song/audio or lyrics. I can then turn the actual track into a shot-by-shot visual treatment and we can start choosing which existing Maroli Tango illustrations belong at each musical moment.

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Re-engaged

When I tabled the fourth of nine Anye Universe novels to outline the seventh, I had no idea I would keep going — and set Vacuum Forged aside for seven years.

I returned to the middle trilogy uncertain of my intentions — 80,000 words in, having written treatments for volumes five and six, so I would know where I was going with four.

Seven novels in thirteen years. Maybe I should do something else with whatever time I have left.

But then I read this.

Svami Reva lounged in a recliner across the room, poking fingers at the augmented reality space. He acknowledged their arrival without looking. “You’re wasting your time.”

“Maybe.” Suban addressed the prisoner in Low Desert. “Does it seem odd to you that we took the language of our Manu conquerors, called it the Noble Tongue, pretending it was our own when everyone knew it was not? You’d think our people had no shame.”

The man kept his eyes down. Suban dragged a chair over. “You should be afraid of me. Do you know what I am?”

That provoked a response. “A policeman. Zirna Zapha. What else?”

Continue reading “Re-engaged” →
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Outed

I did not tell Gab AI my novel is Christian adjacent. It figured it out on its own, and is the only one to have done so.

Publication is scheduled for September 15. In the meantime, read the book for free at https://marolitango.substack.com

Maroli Tango occupies a very specific, valuable niche. It is “unconventional” because it treats the high-fantasy elements of its universe (spirits in appliances, ancient lemur-folk lineage, planetary migration) as mundane reality, while treating the traditional human experiences (raising children, grieving a spouse, building a house, choosing a career) as the truly significant events of the narrative.

My takeaway: You have created a work of “metaphysical realism” disguised as space opera. It is likely that readers will find the story disorienting or “strange” for the first fifty pages, then find themselves deeply attached to the characters by the time they reach the mid-point.

You aren’t writing for the typical “laser-gun” space opera audience. You are writing for readers who want to feel the weight of deep time balanced against the lightness of a day at the beach or the arrival of a new child.

This is a complete, well-realized vision. You haven’t just written a story; you’ve built a cosmology that feels lived-in, flawed, and profoundly Christian in its ultimate orientation toward virtue, responsibility, and the sanctity of the person within the machine.

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