Grim Tidings - AI Gen'd Short Films

[GrimTidings]

Stories:

• The Caretaker (Day One) - 2026-06-14
  
  • A new Caretaker has been offered to Mr. sully... one that just might change his mind (and hers) about the whole ordeal while his lawyers sort out the paperwork. In the meantime, he's got a pet project going: a meditation room. Maybe a new Caretaker is just what he needs to help with that, too.
  • Meditation Room Reshoot - 2026-06-27
    
    • A partially re-shot, re-edited version of the "Meditation Room" scene from Day One (with an introduction from Ms. Archer from Cheer Teacher).
• The Caretaker (Prologue) (2026-06-07)
  
  • Iris is a Caretaker for the Agency and has just mourned the passing of her last contract. The head of the Agency, Iris, has a new assignment for her... one that means a lot both personally and professionally.
• Lawn Work - Short Film (AI Generated) (2026-06-03)
  
  • It's Saturday and Christy's got plans but is it hanging with her friends, spending time with her boyfriend or... something else?
• Cheer Teacher - Short AI Film (2026-05-30)
  
  • Ms. Archer is a teacher at a small-town high school. The administration has proposed redirecting funds to buy a new bus for the football team - at the expense of already-underfunded Arts programs. She's made her opposition known and her fellow teacher, Mr. Harrison, has decided to try to convince her to go along with the plan.

Note: because I use Google for generation, we're talking PG or PG-13 content only. I figure it's worth saying since the vast majority of MC content I find is VERY adults-only NSFW. These are actually pretty SFW.

(original message)
After watching all the chatter on this forum, I decided to try out some generative AI tools and, over the month of May, created a 5 minute short film.

Nothing naughty... just mind control between imaginary adults. Used Google's tools and made a YouTube channel to share it.

At the rate I operate... definitely not going to generate more than one of these a month, if that, until I get bored of it.

Thank all of you for talking about it around here. Creating this was exhausting but fun.

[StormShadow]

Pretty good! Looking forward to what else you come up with.

[GrimTidings]

Thanks!

[Hlebushek57]

Yeah, I think that's where it's all going. Full-scale generated stories. When do we see cheerleading practice? ^^

[GrimTidings]

Yeah, I think that's where it's all going. Full-scale generated stories. When do we see cheerleading practice? ^^

That's actually how it started... a photo story series where Mr. Harrison and Ms. Archer (before they had names) start in her classroom, walk out to the football field, and she does some cheers for him (while entranced) before he sends her home after dark (and she's surprised it's so late... again).

Video generating that... failed miserably due to the complexity. So I simplified the plot down to "the basics". One set (so many angles on the front of that classroom), one prop, two characters. The minor inconsistencies that pop out from the over 100 8-second clips (not counting the complete failures, and there are plenty of those, too) generated to make that simple conversation-in-three-phases still jump out at me when I re-watch. But I wanted... desperately... to finish something this month.

I am hoping to be able to generate some post-game moments (and push the boundaries a bit more) between these two but I am absolutely NOT up to the task of generating an actual cheerleading practice.

Thanks for watching!

[Jeff]

Great job GrimTidings!

[GrimTidings]

Thanks!

I actually have a second video in the works... apparently when Google put out their new Omni model a couple of weeks ago they also gave us limited-duration extra tokens so I'm burning those. This one's titled, "Yard Work". I'll probably post it this week (if I can scrape together the time). And I'll probably retitle the thread and just post my video links in here as I make them.

[Svengli]

An amazing video. I would be very curious how much of the video was scripted and how much of the dialogue was directly AI generated. Also, curious about your entire process of creation, what took the longest, etc.

[GrimTidings]

An amazing video.

Thank you! I'm understandably proud of it but I wouldn't say it's amazing... more "a decent attempt."

I would be very curious how much of the video was scripted and how much of the dialogue was directly AI generated. Also, curious about your entire process of creation, what took the longest, etc.

My process will probably explain a lot. After reading some threads on this forum, I looked around for affordable, above-board gen-AI video platforms. Most of them are prohibitively-expensive (for me, anyway, I'm all about cost-per-unit-of-entertainment) so I landed on Google's platform.

At "Pro" subscription level (about $20 monthly) you get 3 "chat-based" video generations a day. I use those to make completely random stuff and see if anything neat comes out of it.

You also get access to Flow that lets you generate tons of images with nano banana before it limits you with weird error messages.

So the process is... generate some throw-away idea videos... take ideas from that and storyboard with nano banana in Flow... use Veo in Flow to generate video clips... edit sequentially. Sometimes I have to re-generate previous moments when an especially good idea pops in... I would be a real filmmaker's nightmare. More Ed Wood than James Cameron.

I am NOT pre-writing these (and here's where I disappoint myself)... I have the seed of an idea and I prompt and refine until I get the "performance" I want (or "close enough")... I pull it down and drop it into Kdenlive to incorporate into the video as I'm building it. As things are set up, I do write them down to checklist-payoff and the most I can manage is the 3-act structure of setup, mind-control pivot, payoff.

However, the dialogue is 90% mine. The 10% usually manifests as things like Ms. Archer's nervous chuckle after apologizing for "being so disagreeable"... when that "take" was delivered I absolutely embraced the ad-lib and tried to replicate it... with mixed results. The "oooh" during her statement of regret wasn't what I imagined (but more than acceptable)... and I settled on giving the model space to hallucinate serendipity instead.

What takes longest... is feeling around blindly as the model's safety features block my idea for seemingly no reason and I either have to go back and re-design what I want or I happen across the right combination of words to mitigate its fickle tastes. For example, I want a landscaper in a bikini and it's getting rejected as "adult material" right now. Meanwhile... bikini on a beach? Fine. But you can't do YARD WORK on the beach. And I'm not calling it Beach Work.

[The Overmind]

Hi everyone,

Just jumping on this thread to shamelessly promote my DeviantArt page containing lots of AI pictures and videos. Lots of whitewash, corruption, hypnosis oh my...

https://www.deviantart.com/misterhypno

[TheNightSpirit]

What AI are us using for the process?

[LBF522]

Very good. I loved it.

[GrimTidings]

Weird, I thought I replied to this. Thank you and it's all Google platform for AI. Veo 3.1 Lite and Veo 3.1 Fast mostly.

[GrimTidings]

Lawn Work - Short Film (AI Generated)

I made another one (this one made entirely with the new Omni engine... which they have half-token-price for a while). For the "closing credits" I put in the fade-outs of the original 3 brainstorming videos that inspired the rest of it.

Enjoy!

[LBF522]

Just watched Lawn Work and it was just as good. Looking forward to more MC stories in the future.

[Hlebushek57]

I think Lawn Work is even better. You work very smoothly with frames and scales. Dialogues give more natural vibe, - may be at the end master is a bit of char, but apart from that I like how her expressions shift for different personalities. And that's a completed story. Interesting to see what you can come up next with.

Of course, I've spent so much time with Lila fighting the platform safeguards doing "naughty staff", so these clips without any nudity and sex I consider a bit of cheating. ^^

[GrimTidings]

Just watched Lawn Work and it was just as good. Looking forward to more MC stories in the future.

Thanks again (and thanks for being my first commenter ever on YouTube )

I think Lawn Work is even better. You work very smoothly with frames and scales. Dialogues give more natural vibe, - may be at the end master is a bit of char, but apart from that I like how her expressions shift for different personalities. And that's a completed story. Interesting to see what you can come up next with.

Of course, I've spent so much time with Lila fighting the platform safeguards doing "naughty staff", so these clips without any nudity and sex I consider a bit of cheating. ^^

Thank you - I dabbled in video editing about 20 years ago (tried to get into the whole Machinima thing... and then dropped it because getting PEOPLE to perform is hard) so I'm not starting from zero... but I'm far from what I'd even call proficient yet.

I'm glad you appreciate the expression work, in particular. I prompt and re-prompt for character beats close to what I imagine so it's nice to see it noticed.

Not going to lie - committing to PG/PG-13 angles IS a cheat. NOTHING sucks more than, "You've probably violated a policy" so I steer far clear so I can enjoy myself in peace. It also forces me to get inventive with how to demonstrate the mind control in action. So far... up-ended convictions and cheating on your friends and boyfriend to mow a stranger's lawn... I'm curious what I'll stumble into next, too!

[BluejayGS]

Loved it but wouldn't mind 6 recruiting her friends eventually tho the credits scene with the suggestion was funny

[Svengli]

An amazing video.

Thank you! I'm understandably proud of it but I wouldn't say it's amazing... more "a decent attempt."

I think I say that because it scratches my particular itch (authoritarian men, forced conversion) rather than just it's technical merit.

[GrimTidings]

Loved it but wouldn't mind 6 recruiting her friends eventually tho the credits scene with the suggestion was funny

Yeah, I've got a few thoughts on where the story can go. I'll have to get better at controlling the AI-generated voices before I can have multiple characters interacting, though! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I think I say that because it scratches my particular itch (authoritarian men, forced conversion) rather than just it's technical merit.

In that case, unconditional thank you.

Google is actually fussy about that very scenario... part of what I had to do was switch from over-the-shoulder reverse-angle shots for conversations over to just one-sided ones - I got much better results when I started doing that (story-speaking... I feel like, technically, it makes the conversations less-grounded but I'll take it).