The vehicleKeep the same car.
Wheel patterns, brake hardware, badges and paint needed attention as the camera angle and movement changed.
Mercedes
G-Class.
Polar Vortex / Mercedes G-ClassDirection & editorial — Anthony Furlong
My role
Creative direction
Workflow development & editorial
The experiment
Codex + Higgsfield
Generative film production
The finish
DaVinci Resolve
Picture, compositing & sound
The project
Self-initiated
Independent spec film
01 / What I wanted to test
How much of the production could I give to Codex?
I’ve been thinking about production intelligence a lot lately, and I wanted to see how well Codex could perform as a layer on top of GenAI.
I started with an old director’s treatment and drawn storyboards, connected Codex to the Higgsfield MCP, rewrote parts of the script and gave it simple car photos for reference. It wrote prompts, generated shots, checked its own work and built the conform in DaVinci Resolve.
It did a decent job at a first pass, but I still had to watch everything closely. There were issues with consistency, shot movement and the snow behaving properly. Getting a useful revision meant working with the system and checking whether it had actually been fixed.
01
Treatment & references
Establish the story, vehicle and visual direction.
02
Generate & review
Compare takes. Keep useful parts. Revise the rest.
03
Edit & finish
Shape the film and rebuild the sound around the cut.
02 / The starting point
From the page
into the picture.
I chose an old director’s treatment with drawn storyboards, changed the vehicle and parts of the script, and supplied photographs of the G-Wagon.
Start with the shot.
The drawing establishes the low angle and tight crop. The generated shot carries that idea into the snow, with a different vehicle and a new photographic treatment.
03 / Reviewing what came back
Generation was only part of the work.The changes
got specific.
I tried shots in both Kling and Seedance, including driving scenes and dialogue. I was looking at what each shot needed: a believable turn, a natural glance, or snow that moved with the car.
I wanted to keep her performance but make the storm outside the car stronger. Later, I changed the ending to morning light while keeping the timing and movement. The man inside the car also needed another pass to match the actor in the outdoor shots.
The vehicle
The movementMake the action read.
The car had to travel forward, arrive and stop. The snow needed to come from the tires, then fall and settle.
The performanceWatch the people.
I kept checking expressions, eye lines and how the characters responded to the movement of the car.
Reframing the ending.
Several generations pushed the car too close to the edge. The fix kept the useful performance and restored the intended framing in compositing.
04 / Bringing it into the edit
I re-edited the film.
The sound followed.
Codex built an initial assembly in DaVinci Resolve and worked on compositing and color. The cut wasn’t where I wanted it, so I re-edited it myself.
I had it rebuild the generated music and sound around my edit. I kept making revisions during the process just as I would with a team I’m directing before performing some final finishing.
I would step in, change the edit, and have it pick up from there. I could move between directing the system and doing the work myself.
In the end it felt a lot like how I would normally creative direct a project, except I’m typing notes into GPT instead of Slack.
Contact
Let’s talk.
I’m open to full-time studio leadership roles and conversations with studios and productions that could use my experience.
Email Anthony LinkedIn