The Heir | Award-winning GenAI Short
In a kingdom built on blood and legacy, power is never freely given. An aging Sultan turns to a gifted inventor to secure his dynasty. But ambition stirs in the palace shadows—and not every heir is born.
The Heir is my most ambitious AI film to date—a dark historical fantasy drama set in a richly imagined Ottoman-inspired world. The project was brought to life in 3.5 weeks, blending cutting-edge AI tools with immersive storytelling and sound design.
From the very beginning, I knew this story had to be set in a fantastical Ottoman-inspired world. The Ottoman Empire is such a rich and fascinating period in history, yet it's rarely explored in film. I wanted to give it the attention it deserves. That’s why I chose to have the dialogue in Turkish—with subtitles—to create a more authentic experience.
Narrative Short
5:39
Released
12 January 2025
Midjourney
Leonardo.Ai
Kling 1.6 PRO
Minimax
Runway Act One
Topaz VideoAI
Elevenlabs
The Challenge
The story of The Heir was written months before production began. Yet, without the right technology, bringing this vision to life felt impossible. I needed tools capable of handling complex motion, detailed visuals, and consistent characters.
The Solution
By December 2024, the tech caught up to the vision. The right tools made production possible:
Runway Act One for facial motion capture
Kling 1.6 for the best-in-class dynamic video generation
Midjourney's External Image Editor for achieving near perfect character consistency
ElevenLabs Voice Changer for stylising recorded dialogue into different voices
The Filmmaking Process
The whole film was made using image-2-video workflows, which allows for utmost control of each scene. The tricky part with this film was achieving near perfect character consistency. Given multiple angle shots of the same characters in the same scene, I couldn't afford even a single deviation from each character's look.
1️⃣ Story Development: Wrote the story myself and then improved the script with ChatGPT using my custom GPT.
2️⃣ Visualisation: Designed detailed shot lists and key frames with Midjourney, later upscaled using Leonardo AI.
3️⃣ Animation: Leveraged Kling's new 1.6 PRO model for 90% of the shots as it has best-in-class prompt adherence, dynamic motion and fidelity. As for all dialogue scenes, I used Runway Act One, using motion capture driven by my own acting. Minimax was used in a few shots as well.
4️⃣ Audio Design: Stylised speech with ElevenLabs, and leveraged SFX and music freely available on Freesound and YouTube Audio Library under Creative Commons 0 license.
5️⃣ Video Editing: Upscaled animations to 4K with Topaz VideoAI and completed final edits in CapCut.
Why It Matters
The Heir was made for the Project Odyssey Season 2 AI Filmmaking Competition, where it won an Honorable Mention. Furthermore, the film won 'Best Historical Film' at the Berlin Indie Film Festival 2025 and was an official selection at several more festivals around the world, showcasing how AI can be harnessed to craft deep, narrative-driven films. This project is a testament to the growing potential of generative AI in narrative filmmaking.
Creative Insights
Achieving consistent character design in Midjourney can be challenging, but I found that including the character in the image when using the external editor helps maintain clothing, accessories, and facial features. I’ll share a full walkthrough on the blog next week.
Sound design was just as important as visuals. Every sound effect was thoughtfully chosen to make each scene feel dynamic and immersive.
Combining Runway, Kling, and Midjourney unlocked new creative possibilities, proving that the right tools can finally make ambitious AI storytelling achievable.
