AI Storytelling: From Book Trailer to a Haunted Chateau

I wanted to create a trailer for my new book Future Proof: The Intersection of Bitcoin and Longevity that would showcase its core ideas while also using the very technology I write about. AI gave me a way to bring those ideas to life on screen and draw people into the book. Curiosity. Adaptability. Proactive learning. Embracing new technology. The tools are new but the work is timeless.

I crafted it using a hybrid of:

• My own footage from my travels

• AI-generated video clips

• My still images, brought to life with AI

• Pro-level editing in After Effects and Premiere Pro (I do this for a living)

Bringing images to life that I took a decade ago was wild.

Watch the official Future Proof book trailer below:

Prompting AI itself is an art form. It is trial and error, testing, reworking, and starting over. AI is the new Wild West. Models continuously change and update, and you have to adapt as you go. Just because it is AI does not mean it is easy. There is still an incredible amount of craft that goes into creation: learning how to prompt, directing, producing, editing, sound design, color, mixing, and graphics.

After that project, I brought the Jordan Winery chateau to life for their private Halloween party. The theme was The Great Gatsby for the 100 year anniversary of the book. Big props to them for going out on a limb and letting me create something new and unique.

I had this great darker footage from filming their Haunted Chateau Halloween party last year, which gave the project a better feel, helped match what I was looking for, and gave me more to play with since most shots of the chateau inside and out were well lit. They also provided images from previous Halloween parties, which helped me get a sense of how the lighting might look and how the design could take shape.

For example, what started as a simple idea, “A large party, Great Gatsby style, on the front lawn of the chateau,” turned into a 700 word prompt that I refined again and again until I got it right. I used photos and video stills as a base and spent time in Photoshop editing and combining images to get them exactly how I needed for prompting. From there, I built the entire invitation video with AI (Google’s Veo 3). The result was glamour with a haunted twist.

Here’s the Great Gatsby Halloween invitation video for Jordan Winery:

The AI video is far from perfect, but it reminds me of the transition from analog to digital. Like the early days of digital effects and animation, the limits are unbound and untested. Imagine where we will be a year from now.

These projects remind me of what I wrote about in Future Proof. Technology changes fast, but the mindset is the same. Stay curious. Stay adaptable. Keep learning.

Creation is now unlimited.

P.S. World, I’m available to make AI videos.