One Small Request (In the Style of...)

One Small Request took me roughly sixteen months to make, and though artificial intelligence played a significant role in its production, I want to be direct about something: this film was made by hand.

I built this project as part of a year-long AI Faculty Fellowship, using generative AI tools as instruments within a traditional animation pipeline, not as a replacement for one. Every stage of filmmaking is present here: scriptwriting, storyboarding, pre-production, production, and post-production. AI tools generated raw visual material, but almost none of that material made it to the screen untouched. I edited it, retouched it, composited it, recreated it, reanimated it, or redrew it by hand, frame by frame. The AI gave me source material. The film is what I did with it.

I made this choice deliberately, and it's also the film's subject. The story follows a man whose simple request for a picture of a kitten spirals into a surreal journey through the hidden infrastructure behind image generation. It's a film about the tension between technological convenience and the human labor and creativity that actually power it, and I wanted the making of the film to embody that tension rather than just depict it.

So while One Small Request is an AI-assisted film, it is not an AI-directed one. Every creative decision, every shot, every edit came from me. I directed this film the way I've directed every film I've made: by hand, with intent, one choice at a time.