# What? Short AI film for the Gemini 3 Film Festival · WonderLoop

> Case study: 'What?', a short AI film for the Gemini 3 Film Festival. 22 scenes, consistent AI characters and an original soundtrack, mostly AI-generated and made in-house.

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- Pagina: https://www.wonderloop.nl/en/case-what.html
- Markdown: https://www.wonderloop.nl/en/case-what.md
- Taal: en
- Contact: info@wonderloop.nl · +31 6 8102 5396 · https://www.wonderloop.nl/contact.html

---

## How we made What?

A short AI film for the Gemini 3 Film Festival: 22 scenes, consistent characters and an original soundtrack, mostly AI-generated and directed solo.

Beeld: What? film logo
- 90%+ — AI-generated
- 22 — Scenes
- 01 — Creator
Beeld: What? film poster

**The rules**

### A 10-minute short film, 90% AI-generated.

The Gemini 3 Film Festival set hard requirements: a finished film, believable characters and real dialogue. Not a tech demo, but a story that sticks.

- 10 minutes running time
- At least 90% AI-generated footage
- Realistic characters with real dialogue

**What success looks like**

- Characters that stay consistent across 22 scenes
- A cinematic look with real production value
- A complete film, poster and soundtrack included

**The challenge**

### Keeping one face consistent across 22 scenes.

AI easily makes one nice shot. The difficulty is in repetition: the same person, the same clothing and the same world, scene after scene, location after location. That was the real test of this production.

Beeld: Frank and Dolores, the lead characters of What?

**What sparked the story**

### A romcom about Frank, a runner whose hearing is fading.

Frank is an older jogger with hearing loss. At a hearing clinic on the Upper West Side he meets a woman. The idea comes from a personal experience with hearing loss, which gave the film a real feeling, not an AI exercise.

01

#### Personal

A personal experience as the starting point, the whole tone hangs on it.

02

#### Romcom

Light-footed and human, not the usual AI sci-fi.

03

#### Grounded

Real location, real feeling: New York, Upper West Side.

**Cartoon vs realism**

### From cartoon to photoreal.

We tested the look of characters and movement, from cartoonish to photorealistic, until it was believable enough for a whole film.

Beeld: Running scene in cartoon style
Beeld: The same scene, photorealistic

### Building the world

Consistency didn't come for free. We built fixed building blocks: locations, "ingredient sets" with close-ups and full-body shots per character, and tightly optimized prompts, so the same world returned in every scene.

- Locations
- Ingredient sets
- Gemini 3 Gems
- VEO 3.1 prompts
- Prop creation
- Color & grain

Beeld: Location set of a classic library: facade and wood-panelled reading rooms in fixed shots
Beeld: Location set of Central Park in autumn, with the New York skyline
Beeld: Location set of a night-time apartment and a rainy New York street
Beeld: Location set of a New York intersection with yellow cabs in autumn light

**Our approach**

### A stack of tools, one consistent film.

Each part had its own tool, chosen to keep consistency and cinematic quality high. Together they formed the production pipeline.

Beeld: Ingredient set for the character Glenda
A · 01

#### Ingredient sets

Close-ups and full-body shots per character kept faces and clothing stable across all scenes.

Beeld: VEO 3.1 prompt with start and end frame
A · 02

#### Gems & VEO 3.1

A custom Gemini 3 Gem optimized prompts; VEO 3.1 generated shots with start/end frames and ingredients mode.

Beeld: Props and graphics made with Weavy AI
A · 03

#### Weavy & CineDream

Weavy's node-based system made props and graphics; CineDream handled color grading and cinematic grain.

Beeld: What? Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album cover

**Yes, there's an album**

### An original soundtrack, on Spotify and Apple Music.

The original soundtrack, including "They don't make them like that anymore", was generated with Suno and released as an album. Not stock music under the visuals, but a sound of its own for the film.

[Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/album/0tWmiPT4pCPdEVdkOOwKfD)
[Apple Music](https://music.apple.com/us/album/what-original-motion-picture-soundtrack/1861487654)
Festival posters, generated with Gemini 3
Beeld: What? typographic poster
Beeld: What? main poster

**The film**

### What? The complete short film.

A finished short AI film with consistent characters, real dialogue and an original soundtrack. Below: the film and a look behind the scenes.

01

#### What? Short AI film

The full film, submitted to the Gemini 3 Film Festival.

02

#### Behind the scenes

The whole process: from first tests and failures to the final render.

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