Jacob Smith Sleeping Giants promo2

Project Title: Sleeping Giants

AI-Driven Narrative Film for Painting Series Promotion

Artist / Filmmaker: Jacob Smith

The Brief:
To create a narrative-led short film that extends and promotes my painting series Sleeping Giants, moving beyond conventional documentation into a mood-driven cinematic work. The project also functioned as an experimental test of AI filmmaking, with a specific focus on achieving believable dialogue and narration in a regional Glaswegian accent using ElevenLabs.

The Approach:
I developed an introspective, voice-led screenplay centred on environmental oppression and psychological inertia rather than plot or action. The narration, written in dialect, frames ambition, escape, and stillness as competing survival strategies within an urban landscape. The protagonist’s journey culminates in a dream sequence triggered by an encounter with one of the Sleeping Giants paintings, positioning the artwork as a mental threshold rather than a visual endpoint.

The film was written, directed, and produced entirely by myself using AI tools including VEO 3, Nano Banana, Magnific AI, and ElevenLabs, enabling the creation of atmospherically rich environments and controlled performances that would have been impractical to shoot traditionally.

Outcome:
A short atmospheric film that functions simultaneously as an artwork, a promotional extension of Sleeping Giants, and a practical case study in AI-assisted storytelling. The project demonstrates how emerging AI tools can support authorial voice, regional specificity, and emotional restraint, reframing painting as an internal refuge within an oppressive environment rather than an object of escape.