I have some pretty exciting news regarding the process of creating music videos. Last night and today, I created my first customized music video for my song Does a Sorceress Make Love? It was a straightforward, but involved process.

First, I used Claude Fable 5 to help me create an outline and prompts for the video. This required me to provide my lyrics with a time-index for each line. Claude then created a series of very detailed prompts for each shot and its motion. The full video script outlined 34 clips of 8–10 seconds each, which I adjusted for time and placement as needed.

Then, using Runway via its Agent 2.0, I designed my leading character, Hedra, and generated all 34 clips from the prompts. I initially wanted to use an adorable model from Pexels who appears in many of my videos, but for this test exercise I went with the character Runway designed to my specs. She still doesn't look exactly as I intend, so version 2 of the video will address and fix that.

Finally, I used Kdenlive on Linux Mint 22.3 — a free video editor, and it worked great! Very intuitive for the most part. It let me insert my song's WAV, place each video clip against it, add lyric titles synced to each line, and render the full music video to an HD mp4 to upload to YouTube with my other videos.

I'm not ready to share this first video prototype yet — plus the song itself needs some more work. But hopefully soon!

I'm super pleased with the process and the results for a first attempt. This will let me tailor videos specifically to my songs going forward, rather than turning songs over to a Fiverr videographer and ending up with videos that don't quite fit the story line. So yeah — tons of potential here, finally... and it will only get better.

I'm still working on new original songs and playing with the new video technologies that are out now and emerging. I'm also finding lots of new indy pop-rock music to enjoy, too, which I will share soon.

As a followup to my previous post about using Claude Fable 5, Runway Agent 2, and Kdenlive on Linux Mint 22.3 to implement some of the amazing new possibilities for music video creation: I've built a character, the sorceress Hedra, and scripted her into video clip segments for a new music video. An early prototype is below (unlisted link, forum only).

First, AI was not used in my song's composition, recording, or production in any way. I see using AI strictly as a tool for making music videos for my original songs. Songwriting itself is a very personal and emotional enjoyment for me that I can't imagine turning over to AI.

What's wrong with my video prototype?: I prompted Runway Agent 2 to create my sorceress character, Hedra, at age 31, with specific qualities and characteristics that I described. She looks closer to early 40s to me, plus the software inexplicably aged her further as the video went on. She's also supposed to be petite. All of that is correctable with more detailed scripting. I'll also fix the "double moons" and the wrong moon phase. Version 2 of my video will have the correct Hedra, more realistic backgrounds, more realism, and so on. Also, the song itself isn't finalized. There are issues left to address, but it's getting there, and the process is paving the way for easier and better mixing down the road.

Cost?: This one ran about $400. Version 2 will likely be closer to $600-$750. Still, it's a good deal in my opinion. The control and creative aspects are much better than paying a videographer on Fiverr, which is how most of my previous nine music videos were made. A few were done by a very talented friend in Oz, using her own amazing and artistic skills.

No doubt, music video creation with AI is here now, and will become better and better over time. I look forward to finishing this one with version 2 soon, and then writing, recording, and producing new songs and creating fresh, customized music videos to fit my songs going forward.

For music videos, we're only limited by our own imagination now, and by how carefully we script the scenes and characters we want. Really cool!

Test — Does a Sorceress Make Love (demo)

Version 2 of the Hedra character and video are here!

As I previously mentioned, I used Runway Agent 2 to recreate the character Hedra who appears in my music video and plays the central role of a dark enchantress in a fictional horror novel I'm writing. It took considerable effort to generate the correct head and body of Hedra to match her persona I've created for her. Based on her new design, I created v2 of the music video for my song demo, Does a Sorceress Make Love?, which I am also still working on.

Test — Does a Sorceress Make Love? (unlisted demo)

The AI video creation process and tools still have a long way to go, but they're making good progress.

In my novel, Hedra is an immortal, omnipotent being in human form. She's the most powerful being on Earth, with unlimited power, but virtually no one knows what she really is. She's empowered by the Greek Goddess of Strife and Discord, Eris.

Hedra Denise Williamson


Hedra Denise Williamson

I'm working on new content to support my forthcoming fictional horror novel, as well as my song, Does a Sorceress Make Love? With the image of Hedra below, I may include the quoted words from William Congreve's 1697 play The Mourning Bride:

   ▌ Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
   ▌ Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

Greetings, everyone! Regarding online sound engineers, I've found several sites that offer professional mixing and mastering services. Two that really stood out to me are airgigs.com and soundbetter.com.

I posted requests on both sites for professional mixing and mastering of my new demo, Does a Sorceress Make Love?, and so far I've received 20+ responses within 24 hours. I believe I've found one sound engineer I'd like to work with.

I'm excited about this because I believe I write really good songs, but my mixing and mastering skills are modest by comparison.

Beyond that, I'm still working on my fictional thriller/horror novel, as well as new songs for it. Lots of fun when my business permits me the time!