Clips 13-18

Clip 13: The witch presents a puzzle

I reuse the image of the witch and send Veo this prompt:

Hand-held camera. The woman says threateningly "She will sleep forever or until you solve this puzzle". She holds out a folded piece of parchment and the camera zooms towards that. Hyper-realistic. 

Brilliant! Just what I wanted, and it took me less than 10 minutes to make this clip.

I send that to Veo with this prompt:

Hand-held camera. The man  runs the forefinger of his right hand over the characters while the camera zooms in. He says with a noble British accent "There's only one man smart enough to solve a cryptogram like this." Then he shouts "Call for Sir Nigel!" Hyper-realistic.

I would really like to be able to use a starting image and a final image for this clip. That failed before, but maybe Veo 3 had progressed in the last week? I use this prompt to ChatGPT to get this final image;

Can you make a similar image in 3:2 format with the horseman at the right of the image who is approaching the king who is at the left of the image, facing the horseman? They are about 3 meters apart. Hyper - realistic, as always.

The result that ChatGPT  gives me is murky again, with warm tones. I fix that to get the second image. 

But I'm tired of telling ChatGPT that I want normal brightness and neutral colour balance, so we have this discussion:

I said:

That image is very dark and murky. Is it possible to give you quantified instructions regarding brightness and white balance? 

ChatGPT said:

Great question — here's how to address the image quality instructions:

✅ How to give quantified instructions for brightness & white balance

While I can't accept actual numerical values (like “brightness = 0.8”), you can guide the results more precisely using descriptive language like this:

Brightness

• "Brighter overall lighting, like a photo taken under soft daylight."

• "Avoid dark shadows or murky tones — midtones and highlights should be clearly visible."

• "Expose the image as if it's a well-lit overcast afternoon."

White Balance

• "Use a neutral white balance — no warm (yellow/orange) or cool (blue) color cast."

• "Avoid any golden-hour or sepia tones. Keep skin tones and armor tones natural and balanced."

You can also say:

• “Adjust brightness and color balance to mimic a professionally lit studio photo, but in an outdoor medieval setting.”

I will try including the last line from now on, though I don't know why the word 'medieval' needs to be included. 

So if you want to call me Simon Cowell from now on, I will understand.

I upload that image successfully to Veo and try with this prompt:

The scene is set in medieval times. The camera tracks the horseman as he rides across the field. He stops three meters away from a man dressed as a king. As he rides at a trotting pace across the field a loud fanfare can be heard. Once the horsemen has stopped near the king he shouts  with a noble British accent "Your majesty, I am at your service". Hyper-realistic. Cloudy skies.

Veo 3 still refuses to allow the use of a final image so I have to switch to Veo 2. Veo 2 cannot do sound so I remove the sound references in the prompt and run the prompt...

Veo 2 is unable to move between the starting image and the final image with a single movement so splits the video into three parts. I think I can use the middle part, though I will have to add sound (with a fanfare, naturally). It's a pity there aren't more shadows near the horse's hooves.

Elevenlabs can generate sound effects so I give it the prompts 'fanfare' and 'the cheering of a crowd of hundreds of people' and in each case one of the four sound effects that it proposes is usable. So, in CapCut, I add them into the video of Sir Nigel arriving and trim the unwanted beginning and end to get this short clip: 

Clip 16: Sir Nigel speaks to King Brian

Rather than using the image I made earlier of the king with Sir Nigel, I download a frame from that video to use as the first frame of the next clip (is it sharp enough for that use?). I use that image and this prompt:

The scene is set in medieval times. The hand-held camera orbits to the right. A loud fanfare can be heard and the two men bow to one another. Then the horseman dismounts from the horse and says with a noble British accent "Your majesty, I am at your service". Hyper-realistic. Cloudy skies.

Unfortunately Veo 3 isn't capable of rendering Sir Nigel dismounting from the horse, so we just get an awkward twitch instead. Are his hemorrhoids bothering him? I could redo the clip, but I decide to keep it - I'll edit out the twitch.

But wait! Why am I using a Veo-generated voice when I can replace it with the clone of my own voice that I made at elevenlabs.io? Before I can change the voice in that clip I have to isolate it because otherwise the background sounds  interfere with the voice changing. Once I have isolated and changed the voice into my own (and applied a 'no bass' filter to boost the treble) I export the result to CapCut where I combine the new voice with the original video, muting the original audio, to get this (later I'll have to try to put some crowd noise back in - I wish I had asked for no crowd noise in any clip since it's easy to add later).

I widen the image in Pollo and send it to Veo with this prompt:

The scene is set in medieval times. The camera is hand held and slowly zooms in on the paper that the man is holding. The man on the right holding the paper moves his pointing finger over the paper and says with a noble British accent "It says the only cure for the princess is held by the Holy Snail who lives beyond the Great Swamp." The men look into one another's eyes. Hyper-realistic.

I replace the original voice with my voice clone and get...

That worked well! But, as so often, the camera did not zoom as instructed.

Clip 18: The quest for the Holy Snail begins

I will reuse the starting image of mounted Sir Nigel facing the king and this is the new prompt:

Hand-held camera. The man at the right says with a noble British accent in an excited and determined tone "My quest shall be to find the Holy Snail. The road is long but I will succeed!" Then the horse turns and he rides away into the distance. Cloudy weather. Hyper-realistic.

That came out okay, but it would have been more interesting with some camera movement and there is no crowd noise - maybe I'll add some later. Actually, since I've decided to replace Sir Nigel's original voice with my cloned voice (possibly a mistake due to the work involved) I had to replace the entire audio with my voice, meaning I lost the sound of the horse neighing and its steps on the ground in this case.  It would be good if elevenlabs had an option to remove a voice in addition to isolating a voice, but I don't think it does. It occurs to me that maybe CapCut has that option and it does, for those who have paid for the Pro extra features. But I've learnt how to legally use the Pro features without paying...

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