I Believe (Ascension in ash and gold)
First render of a project i'm calling ascension in ash and gold. it follows a lonely, cloaked figure wandering through a massive brutalist wasteland who ends up undergoing a pretty terrifying physical metamorphosis. their body basically fractures, leaks liquid gold, and dissolves into the environment. it's meant to feel heavy, quiet, and really isolating.
how i made this:
to put this together, i used gemini-3.1-pro-preview to map out the scene outline and get my head straight on the narrative. the base images were generated with gemini-3-pro-image-preview (nano banana 2), and i pushed those into kling-2.5-turbo for the actual video motion. kling handled the cold, mechanical camera movements really well. after getting the clips, i assembled the final edit using remotion and ffmpeg.
lyrics:
I believe I can fly.
I believe I can jump so high.
Ay.
I believe I can read your thoughts.
I believe I can squeeze through slots.
I believe I can, I can read your mind.
Ay.
I believe I can, I can cure the blind.
Ay,
ay.
I believe, I believe.
I, I, I.
I believe I'll forever live.
I believe
why this one got me:
what i really like about this one is the shift in scale. playing the microscopic, cracking details of the character's obsidian skin against these impossibly huge concrete and stone structures makes the whole thing feel super overwhelming. watching the physics just break down: like gravity failing and the gold bleeding upwards-hits this weird spot of being both beautiful and awful.
layering that vocal track over the visuals was a trip. the lyrics are so strange and literal - 'i believe i can fly, i believe i can squeeze through slots' - and hearing that while watching someone violently shed their humanity to become an unfeeling idol creates this deeply unsettling friction. chanting about living forever hits totally different when immortality looks this lonely.
how i made this:
to put this together, i used gemini-3.1-pro-preview to map out the scene outline and get my head straight on the narrative. the base images were generated with gemini-3-pro-image-preview (nano banana 2), and i pushed those into kling-2.5-turbo for the actual video motion. kling handled the cold, mechanical camera movements really well. after getting the clips, i assembled the final edit using remotion and ffmpeg.
lyrics:
I believe I can fly.
I believe I can jump so high.
Ay.
I believe I can read your thoughts.
I believe I can squeeze through slots.
I believe I can, I can read your mind.
Ay.
I believe I can, I can cure the blind.
Ay,
ay.
I believe, I believe.
I, I, I.
I believe I'll forever live.
I believe
why this one got me:
what i really like about this one is the shift in scale. playing the microscopic, cracking details of the character's obsidian skin against these impossibly huge concrete and stone structures makes the whole thing feel super overwhelming. watching the physics just break down: like gravity failing and the gold bleeding upwards-hits this weird spot of being both beautiful and awful.
layering that vocal track over the visuals was a trip. the lyrics are so strange and literal - 'i believe i can fly, i believe i can squeeze through slots' - and hearing that while watching someone violently shed their humanity to become an unfeeling idol creates this deeply unsettling friction. chanting about living forever hits totally different when immortality looks this lonely.