Drawing on visual references including vintage museum dioramas and the pioneering stop-motion of Ray Harryhausen, LA director Brent Bonacorso leverages a happy accident in Midjourney into a rousing spec spot for Johnnie Walker.

Brent Bonacorso: “As a director, I’m always testing ideas and innovations involving different ways to tell stories. And so like many people, I’ve been experimenting with AI platforms for a while now. I feel the key to staying relevant as a director is staying curious and creative, and using these new tools to tell the stories we want to tell, and not the other way around.”

“This latest film began as an accident. Over the last two years I’ve generated thousands of images in Midjourney for various treatments and projects. One day, when prompted with ‘figures walking in a forest’, Midjourney got a bit confused and created an image of ‘figurines walking’ including all the hallmarks of a miniature diorama.

“As a fan of miniatures and dioramas since childhood, I thought it was such a fantastic look and knew I had to do something with it. So I continued to refine the aesthetic to get it exactly where I wanted it to be.
 

“Johnnie Walker: Civilization is a celebration of the miniatures I was so fascinated by as a kid, that now I get to play with using a medium that was unfathomable just a few years ago.”

 
“Lately a few AI animation programs have popped up, allowing one to animate a still image. As of now, they’re all pretty wonky, creating surreal distortions in otherwise realistic images. It doesn’t quite work. Yet. It’s moving so fast that by the time you read this, I’m sure it’ll have advanced significantly.

“However, at the moment it has severe limitations, and so I sought to work within those limits – to highlight them, even – drawing from the aesthetics of stop motion animation, shoddy museum displays, Ray Harryhausen films, the frenetic pace and philosophical reach of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, even a bit of impressionist painting.

“Johnnie Walker: Civilization is a celebration of the miniatures I was so fascinated by as a kid, that now I get to play with using a medium that was unfathomable just a few years ago, and which will no doubt define every aspect of filmmaking in the very near future.”
 
 

 
Director/animator: Brent Bonacorso
Editor: Brent Bonacorso

Music: Edvard Grieg “In the Hall of the Mountain King” performed by Trent Reznor