Cut · Print · Wrap: one gown, one day in New York

For fashion and lifestyle brands planning a launch campaign. A self-initiated trilogy I conceived, directed and made with AI video tools: three one-minute films, twelve moving boards and a printed page for each film. It was not a paid client project.

Cut · Print · Wrap is a fashion film trilogy I conceived, directed and made. It follows one woman and one gown through a single day in New York, and each film is one stage of the gown. At 06:00 it is cut in calico. By 17:00 its sunrise pattern is printed. At 23:59 she wraps it in a coat made from umbrellas nobody came back for.

I laid the case study out as the shoot's call sheet for that one day: every section is a scene, each film plays at its call time, and the studio work comes last, as the wrap notes.

Role: concept, art direction, films and design

Deliverables: three one-minute films, twelve moving boards, a printed page for each film

Tools: seedream-v5-pro for stills, Veo 3.1 Fast for motion (the final masters are 3840 x 2160), FaceFusion and ArcFace for the face lock, ElevenLabs for music

Type: self-initiated. AI image and video models made the stills and the motion, and ElevenLabs made the music. The story, the garment, the casting rules, the edits, every printed page and every board were my direction. Every frame was checked at full size before I approved it.

The calico toile at 06:00, the Dawn Proof gown at 17:00, the umbrella coat at 23:59.

The story on one plinth: the atelier, the print works and a Times Square block, joined by a red thread, her route.

Dawn in the atelier. The calico toile is fitted, she watches the sun come up over the water towers and paints its colours in watercolour.

Before the face lock, new frames scored 0.33 to 0.67 against her five master portraits. I used a face-lock process and sampled-frame scoring to check continuity, with separate visual checks where automated scoring was unsuitable.

Six pattern pieces, ten cut in cloth, princess seams carrying the column. The gown is fitted first in calico, before it has a colour.

The sunrise she painted becomes the gown: night blue at the hem and collar, the sun at the hips and cuffs, white across the chest.

The sunrise is laid down one ink at a time, and the sequinned gown comes into register.

Black, then magenta, yellow and cyan, each on its own screen angle. The same four-ink screen is sewn over the gown in sequins.

She wraps the gown in a coat cut from umbrellas nobody came back for.

Unclaimed umbrellas unpicked to the bare frame, their gores pieced in navy and black with red at the front. The rain is real video, so the coat reads soaked in its true colours.

Each film as a strip of its real shots, every shot as wide as it lasts, with one red playhead running all three.

The three looks aligned on her face and cut into strips. If any of them had drifted, it would show here first.

A printed page for each film, set in code: the pattern sheet, the press sheet and the claim ledger.

At 0:22 in an early cut, the face lock left a ghost eye on a side-on face. The shot was restaged as a three-quarter view and now scores 0.82 to 0.84. I reviewed every shot for face, wardrobe and continuity. Sampled frames were scored against the reference portraits, with visual checks for profiles and smaller faces.