Brooklyn CD/director Chris Carboni just dropped a fresh bit of AI-generated fun with this visual book review of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone driven by the disarming honesty of a 98-year-old reader named Lillian.

Chris Carboni: “We wanted our visuals to be infused with the same unexpected interpretive qualities found in Lillian’s review. The goal was to take a beloved, iconic story and put it in the hands of possibly the only two collaborators with the ability to spin it into something new.

“Lillian’s creative recap of the book is taken through a funhouse hall of mirrors by inputting her prompts into the Midjourney image generator without any added context that might guide its interpretation toward the original source material.

“We wanted to remain as hands-off as possible. So, the image prompts that led us to all of our final artwork were the ones most closely aligned with Lillian’s actual quotes.

 

“Lillian’s creative recap of the book is taken through a funhouse hall of mirrors by inputting her prompts into an AI image generator without any added context.”

 

“The fact that the initial representation of Ron was as a man with red hair was a happy coincidence. Of course, once this interpretation was selected, we guided the subsequent images to resemble the same character.

“The only consistent guidance we provided the AI pertained to art direction. We wanted the images to be surprising throughout, and we wanted this film to be as pure an experiment as possible. But our goal was to still make something entertaining that could be understood by an audience unfamiliar with the technology.

“By keeping the palette and the general use of paint and texture consistent, we were able to create a measure of continuity and prevent the viewing experience from becoming confusing.”
 

 
Production: Reunion
Director: Chris Carboni
Animator: Chris Carboni
Producer: Laura Bandel
Design: Chris Carboni, Midjourney

Audio: Ambrose Yu
VO: Lillian Restivo