Denys Popov
AI Video Creator Crafting Cinematic Stories and Commercials
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THE ROOM BEFORE DAWN
What if a museum room could remember the life it once held?
Inspired by Bedroom from the Sagredo Palace, created in Venice around 1720 and now preserved at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I reimagined the room not as a static museum interior, but as a living memory.
Using FLORA, I explored the world beyond the museum piece — reconstructing the atmosphere of Palazzo Sagredo, imagining Zaccaria Sagredo returning to the space, and bringing the room back to life as Venice slowly awakens outside.
The project moves between the preserved room we see today and an imagined moment from its past — a brief return to the life, light, and people that once surrounded it.
Original artwork:
Bedroom from the Sagredo Palace, ca. 1720
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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KEEP EXTENDIIIING!!
My entry for the CapCut Seedance 2.5 Video Challenge.
I'm interested in the gap between fear and comedy — how quickly something that reads as threatening can collapse into something tender, or ridiculous, once you actually look at it. I wanted to build a short film around that flip: a jump-scare setup that resolves into a domestic, almost absurdist punchline.
The film follows a woman walking alone through an empty underground parking garage. She senses she's being watched, panics, and hides behind a car — only to find a small trembling creature with glowing red eyes in the dark. She coaxes it out, and a deeper growl announces something larger: a one-eyed blue monster who chases them down a stairwell. Cornered at a locked door, the woman braces for danger — but the monster turns out to be irritated rather than menacing. His demand is absurdly specific: a CapCut subscription, and the ability to generate 30-second Seedance clips and keep extending them, over and over. The small red creature, watching, quietly admits it wants the same thing.
The film ends far from the parking garage: the three of them at home in the evening, the woman walking in with a tray of burgers, fries and cola, saying simply, "Dinner, guys." The horror-movie shape of the opening resolves into something closer to a sitcom — the monsters were never really a threat, just difficult roommates.
WORKFLOW
I developed the film in CapCut Video Studio using Seedance 2.5, across five scenes: the first is the opening continuous shot, three scenes were built using the Continue (extend) function to carry the same characters, camera language and location forward beat by beat, and the fifth — the apartment ending — is a separate, standalone continuous shot.
I worked from three character references: the woman, a small dark creature with glowing red eyes, and a one-eyed blue monster, each supplied as a full turnaround pack (front, profile, back) to keep identity, fur texture and proportions consistent across every generation. Each prompt was written in timestamped blocks defining camera movement, character action, dialogue and diegetic sound design per beat, with one named camera move per block to avoid drift between cuts.
Camera language stayed handheld and grounded through the chase and stairwell scenes, then shifted to a locked-off composition from behind a monitor for the final domestic scene, keeping the screen's content hidden and using its glow as the only artificial light source against the warm room tone.
Created with CapCut Video Studio and Seedance 2.5.
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Wow, not long ago I built a very similar scene, but I had to piece it together from multiple generations. Today I got it done in one shot. First try, no extra editing, no added sound layering. One single, consistent scene from start to finish. I'll just say it: this is amazing!!!
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One video this spring.
Thousands of new people.
A completely different direction in life.
This project brought me more than 4,000 followers, opened the door to an ongoing collaboration with CapCut, and gave me something even more valuable: confidence in myself.
It taught me that there's no formula for what people will connect with. Sometimes the idea you least expect becomes the one that opens new doors.
So I keep creating, exploring, and taking creative risks, because you never know which story might change your life.
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