Gossip Goblin is arguably the best AI filmmaker in the world.
His new film THE PATCHWRIGHT is a masterpiece (10M+ views).
But nobody knows how he actually makes these.
Until now.
He let me share every step of the workflow with you 🧵👇
His new film THE PATCHWRIGHT is a masterpiece (10M+ views).
But nobody knows how he actually makes these.
Until now.
He let me share every step of the workflow with you 🧵👇
2/ This is 4 months of work for 20 minutes of film, set in a world he's been building for years
The Patchwright didn't start from scratch.
Zach has been making 2 to 3 episodes a week in this universe for 11 months, so by the time he sat down to write the film he already had tens of thousands of midjourney images to pull from, established characters, a custom alphabet, even a custom language.
People love to ask about the tools but honestly the accumulated story bible is doing a huge amount of the heavy lifting here.
The Patchwright didn't start from scratch.
Zach has been making 2 to 3 episodes a week in this universe for 11 months, so by the time he sat down to write the film he already had tens of thousands of midjourney images to pull from, established characters, a custom alphabet, even a custom language.
People love to ask about the tools but honestly the accumulated story bible is doing a huge amount of the heavy lifting here.
3/ Visual exploration follows the story beats
The film opens in a corporate penthouse, descends through an aerial ship sequence, and lands on the gritty street.
So they broke their aesthetic exploration down by altitude. Penthouse, ship interior, midair city, street level, wet market.
Before animating anything in Kling, each location got its own dedicated midjourney pass, and then a nano banana pass to insert consistent characters in those midjourney "plate shots".
The film opens in a corporate penthouse, descends through an aerial ship sequence, and lands on the gritty street.
So they broke their aesthetic exploration down by altitude. Penthouse, ship interior, midair city, street level, wet market.
Before animating anything in Kling, each location got its own dedicated midjourney pass, and then a nano banana pass to insert consistent characters in those midjourney "plate shots".
4/ Push past the AI default, even when it looks fine
The interrogation room could've been a crappy table and gray walls like every other interrogation room in every other film.
Instead they pushed for a panopticon. Circular, no orientation, with a structure on top looking down. Then they kit-bashed brutalist chair references in nano banana to fill in the details.
Whatever the default agent gives you is going to look like what it gave the next thousand people who asked.
The interrogation room could've been a crappy table and gray walls like every other interrogation room in every other film.
Instead they pushed for a panopticon. Circular, no orientation, with a structure on top looking down. Then they kit-bashed brutalist chair references in nano banana to fill in the details.
Whatever the default agent gives you is going to look like what it gave the next thousand people who asked.
5/ @midjourney v7 still beats 8.1 for this kind of work
Zach thinks 8.1 has been sanitized again and v7 is closer to the peak of what midjourney can actually do.
The real lever, though, isn't prompt syntax or some fancy JSON prompt. It's spending real time building custom profile codes that reflect your taste, then layering them with mood boards and style refs.
That's how the Instagram creators with truly distinct styles are doing it. Prompt templates alone don't really get you there.
Zach thinks 8.1 has been sanitized again and v7 is closer to the peak of what midjourney can actually do.
The real lever, though, isn't prompt syntax or some fancy JSON prompt. It's spending real time building custom profile codes that reflect your taste, then layering them with mood boards and style refs.
That's how the Instagram creators with truly distinct styles are doing it. Prompt templates alone don't really get you there.
6/ @midjourney explores latent space, nano banana is the photoshop
His exact quote: "no image starts in nano banana. Nano banana is just our photoshop."
Midjourney has the widest range of aesthetic possibility, the weird color palettes, the greebles, the texture you can't really get anywhere else.
Going straight to nano banana skips all of that and you end up with its default visual grammar, which is faster but a lot more generic.
His exact quote: "no image starts in nano banana. Nano banana is just our photoshop."
Midjourney has the widest range of aesthetic possibility, the weird color palettes, the greebles, the texture you can't really get anywhere else.
Going straight to nano banana skips all of that and you end up with its default visual grammar, which is faster but a lot more generic.
7/ Lock in your hero shots, then connect the dots
For each environment, the team nails a handful of hero shots that establish the lighting and tone.
Once those are locked, they use nano banana to fill in everything between them.
The gradient of light as you move from the penthouse altitude down to the street level, for example, gets extrapolated from a few anchor frames rather than designed shot by shot.
For each environment, the team nails a handful of hero shots that establish the lighting and tone.
Once those are locked, they use nano banana to fill in everything between them.
The gradient of light as you move from the penthouse altitude down to the street level, for example, gets extrapolated from a few anchor frames rather than designed shot by shot.
8/ Color and tone refs do most of the grading before you ever animate
They imagined the wet market as Hong Kong meets Bangkok meets a Kowloon night market. Hazy, wet, makeshift.
They built specific color and lighting refs around that idea and baked something like 90% of the final grade into the images themselves.
So by the time anything is moving, the look is basically already there in the frame.
They imagined the wet market as Hong Kong meets Bangkok meets a Kowloon night market. Hazy, wet, makeshift.
They built specific color and lighting refs around that idea and baked something like 90% of the final grade into the images themselves.
So by the time anything is moving, the look is basically already there in the frame.
9/ Build the world
He avoids low hanging fruit like kanji lettering. They built their own alphabet plus a subscript based on Burmese, and the opening title literally morphs from alien script into their text.
He avoids low hanging fruit like kanji lettering. They built their own alphabet plus a subscript based on Burmese, and the opening title literally morphs from alien script into their text.
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