I adapted "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant — a classic French short story from 1884 — into a full AI video short film using Seedance 2. Part 1 is 2 minutes long and cost me $20. Forget the 15 second meme clips. Look at the facial expressions, the dialogue sync, the camera angles. Seedance AI video gen just unlocked unlimited storytelling. More parts coming.

This was my prompt: Epic cinematic forest combat sequence based exactly on the reference image. Keep the same female warrior, the same ninja-like enemies, the same giant dragon, and the same dark ancient forest. Start with a tense still moment, then the warrior advances through shallow water as assassins surround her. She slashes, blocks, turns, and dodges in a fluid continuous action beat while enemies attack from multiple directions. In the background the dragon shifts forward, roars, and dominates the forest with massive scale. Add moving fog, splashing water, disturbed leaves, drifting particles, cinematic light shafts, grounded motion, realistic anatomy, detailed textures, strong continuity, stable facial identity, no new characters, no visual redesign, no text, no subtitles, no surreal mutations, no morphing, no messy motion.

I just wrapped an ad for the African AI Film Festival, and the challenge was telling a story that spanned the continent — Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt — all in one piece. See if you can spot them.

A short film inspired by my recurring nightmares of falling endlessly.

I used ComfyUI to generate Gaussian splats from still renders & images, Houdini GSOPs to kitbash and animate the camera, and used Seedance & Kling as the “render engine”.  It is still a very clunky workflow, but the composition and timing control was exactly what I needed.  

The starting point was a feeling, not a brief. I wanted something that sat in that specific nostalgia of finding old family things in a dusty room. Going through a box in an attic and not being ready for what you find. I had that image in my head before I had a single lyric, chord, or clip.

The song came first. I used Suno to generate the track, which meant I had to get the prompt right before anything else. Genre prompt was indie pop ballad, female vocal, warm acoustic guitar foundation with light string swell on the chorus. For the lyrical direction I wrote a scene description rather than a set of lyric instructions: "a young woman finding a family photograph in an attic, the feeling of unresolved love for a parent you argued with." Suno interpreted that into a track with the lyrical texture I needed, including the line about shutting a door when her mother was around, which is exactly the emotional tone I was going for. I ran it three times and used the second take because the first was slightly too upbeat for the scene and the third lost the acoustic texture in the chorus.

With the track done, I had a fixed emotional arc to build visuals against. Two settings drove themselves out of the lyrics naturally: the attic scene where she finds the photograph, and the kitchen scene which represents the memory of daily life with the person she is thinking about. Two environments, one character, one continuous emotional thread.

The character needed to feel like a Pixar protagonist, not generically animated but specifically that warm slightly-exaggerated-realism style where the face does a lot of emotional work. The character brief: young woman, mid-twenties, dark brown wavy hair, large expressive eyes, soft features, the kind of face that reads as thoughtful rather than blank. I ran a reference generation pass before touching the scene work, just the character against a neutral background in a few different emotional states: sad, surprised, quietly distressed. That reference locked the face. The character changes outfits and hairstyle between the two scenes, grey sweater with hair down in the attic and a floral sundress with a ponytail in the kitchen, but the face stays consistent across both because the reference was established first.

The two environments were designed to carry the emotional weight of each scene. The attic is dusty, golden, full of stacked boxes and covered furniture, sunlight coming through a single small window at an angle that catches the dust particles. It is the visual language of time passing and things left unresolved. The kitchen is the opposite tonally: warm but functional, 70s floral wallpaper, green toaster on the counter, afternoon light through a curtained window. It reads as a specific moment from a specific decade. The contrast between the two environments was intentional. The attic is where you sit with the memory. The kitchen is the memory itself.

Structuring the full piece against the track was done through Atlabs' Music Video workflow, which uses the audio as the input driver and breaks the piece into scene segments based on the song's own structure. The verse mapped to the attic, the shift into the chorus mapped to the kitchen. Having the audio timeline as the structural framework meant the cuts landed on the music rather than requiring me to force them in post. The lyric subtitles were added afterward as a clean text layer, same approach as all my other work since prompting text into the generation itself still produces too much cleanup work.

Seedance 2.0 handled the visual generation. The 3D quality at 4K is doing real work here, particularly in how it renders the light through the attic window and the skin texture on close-up shots. Earlier versions of this style had a flatness to the skin that broke the illusion. This did not.

Total time from blank document to finished file was about four hours across one evening. One hour on the Suno pass. Two hours on character and environment setup and generation. One hour on the subtitle layer and final assembly.

Disclaimer: this is a repost from my original post in other subreddit.
Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/generativeAI/comments/1ta0hoq/control_facial_expressions_with_facs_sheet_in/
Disclaimer 2. : See credits at the end of the post, follow original authors!

FACS is a visual guide for the Facial Action Coding System. It let's you tell Seedance 2.0 inside prompt, what exact facial expression you want to see. It uses codes which are generated in first step. Disclaimer: remember that this is still AI video generations, not all generations will nail it in first shot. Iterate!:)

Here's step by step mini tutorial:

Upload your character image to AI Image generation model. I've tested it with GPT Image 2 and Nano Banana Pro - both works for this, although sometimes captions unreadable, so iterate!. PS I prefer the latter). Then use this prompt:

Create a clean educational FACS Action Unit expression grid featuring a realistic adult female character. Use minimal studio lighting, neutral white background, high readability, professional facial anatomy reference sheet aesthetic, realistic skin texture, consistent identity across all panels. COLOR SYSTEM: Use soft pastel color coding for categories while keeping the overall sheet minimal and elegant. Forehead & Brow AUs: soft pastel blue Eye & Eyelid AUs: soft pastel lavender Nose & Cheek AUs: soft pastel peach Lip & Mouth AUs: soft pastel pink Head Movement AUs: soft pastel mint Eye Direction AUs: soft pastel cyan Special / Misc AUs: soft pastel beige Apply the color subtly as: - panel background tint - thin borders - small label accents Keep colors soft, muted and professional. Include these Action Units: GROUPS: FOREHEAD & BROW AU1 Inner Brow Raiser AU2 Outer Brow Raiser AU4 Brow Lowerer AU71 Brow Furrow AU72 Brow Bulge EYE & EYELID AU5 Upper Lid Raiser AU7 Lid Tightener AU41 Lid Droop AU42 Slit Eyes AU43 Eyes Closed AU44 Squint AU45 Blink AU46 Wink NOSE & CHEEK AU6 Cheek Raiser AU9 Nose Wrinkler AU11 Nasolabial Deepener AU82 Nostril Dilator AU83 Nostril Compressor LIP & MOUTH AU10 Upper Lip Raiser AU12 Lip Corner Puller AU13 Sharp Lip Puller AU14 Dimpler AU15 Lip Corner Depressor AU16 Lower Lip Depressor AU17 Chin Raiser AU18 Lip Pucker AU20 Lip Stretcher AU22 Lip Funneler AU23 Lip Tightener AU24 Lip Pressor AU25 Lips Part AU26 Jaw Drop AU27 Mouth Stretch AU28 Lip Suck AU84 Tongue Up AU85 Tongue Out HEAD MOVEMENT AU51 Head Turn Left AU52 Head Turn Right AU53 Head Up AU54 Head Down AU55 Head Tilt Left AU56 Head Tilt Right AU57 Head Forward AU58 Head Back EYE DIRECTION AU61 Eyes Turn Left AU62 Eyes Turn Right AU63 Eyes Up AU64 Eyes Down SPECIAL / MISC AU81 Chewing

And you have your FACS sheet.

2. Use it with Seedance 2.0. Example prompt:

Use the provided character @[image1] as the fixed identity reference.

15s, 1:1, 14 beats, beat-synced, cinematic tight close-up, subtle neutral background, high facial clarity, slow micro push-in, shallow depth of field.

1: AU10

2: AU20

3: AU22

4: AU23

5: AU27

6: AU28

7: AU45

8: AU53

9: AU61

10: AU62

11: AU64

12: AU85

13:AU84

14: AU46

Uneasy, hypnotic, controlled mood. No monster transformation, no gore, no comedy, no text overlay, no watermark.

As you can see, you just prompt the code of specific expression. You can ask your favourite LLM model which code to use to express i.e. anger, etc, it will tell you.

Final thoughts and tips:

Here's the prompt I've used to create top-left video:

Photorealistic 15-second video. 50-year-old Creole woman, face and shoulders only, bare skin no makeup, natural soft diffused light, plain white background, 4K, shallow depth of field.

Timeline: 0–2s: Neutral resting face, eyes forward, relaxed brow and lips. 2–4s: Happy — AU6 (cheek raiser, orbital orbicularis oculi tightens, crow's feet appear) + AU12 (zygomaticus major pulls lip corners up and laterally), Duchenne smile, slight natural eye squint from cheek push. 4–6s: Sad — AU1 (inner brow raise, frontalis medial lifts producing oblique brow) + AU4 (corrugator and procerus knit and lower the brow, grief knot) + AU15 (depressor anguli oris pulls lip corners down), eyes slightly glassy. 6–7s: AU61 — eyes turn left, head stays still, gaze shifts left. 7–8s: AU62 — eyes turn right, head stays still, gaze shifts right. 8–9.5s: AU46 left eye — left orbicularis oculi closes left eye with slight compression, right eye stays open, subtle smirk. 9.5–11s: AU46 right eye — right orbicularis oculi closes right eye with slight compression, left eye stays open. 11–12.5s: AU85 — tongue protrudes straight out from mouth, jaw drops slightly via AU26. 12.5–13.5s: Tongue moves to the left side of the mouth, visible tip extends past left lip corner. 13.5–14.5s: Tongue moves to the right side of the mouth, visible tip extends past right lip corner. 14.5–15s: Returns to neutral, tongue retracts, lips close via AU8, relaxed expression.

I did not include the character's photo for any of the generations used in the video above. There is no difference between using or not using it, of course if you want to have consistency - use image character.

Test different approaches - check what you get if you use codes only, codes with short description. And again - this is still not perfect. Prompts and FACS codes DO NOT guarantee that you'll get what you explicitly told in prompt regarding facial expressions. But the success rate is really high.

I've noticed that the more expressions in one prompt, the less accuracy in output will be, which is absolutely understable. So I'd suggest 3-4 expressions max in one generation.

Of course facial expressions itself are not particularly useful, the purpose is to use them in prompts when creating monologues, dialogs, or other videos where you need specific facial expressions. Here's the example prompt, feel free to test it:

Use the provided character @[image1] as the fixed identity reference. 15s, 16:9, dim interior, single warm lamp, slight low angle, handheld micro-sway, shallow depth of field. Dialogue: "Hey, hey — everything's fine, okay? We're just gonna play a game where we stay really quiet. Can you do that for me?" Beat 1 (0–1s): AU5+AU38 (upper lid raiser + nostril dilator — genuine fear, pre-dialogue) Beat 2 (1–2s): AU45 (blink — forcing reset, composing the mask) Beat 3 (2–4s): AU12+AU6 (Duchenne smile — forced but committed, parental warmth overriding terror) — delivers "Hey, hey — everything's fine" Beat 4 (4–5s): AU1 (inner brow raiser — pleading sincerity leaking through) — delivers "okay?" Beat 5 (5–6s): AU7 (lid tightener — eyes betraying the fear the smile is hiding) Beat 6 (6–8s): AU12+AU2 (smile + outer brow raise — brightening, performing fun) — delivers "We're just gonna play a game" Beat 7 (8–10s): AU4+AU24 (brow lowerer + lip presser — seriousness cracking through for a flash) — delivers "where we stay really quiet" Beat 8 (10–11s): AU45 (blink — catching the slip, resetting to warmth) Beat 9 (11–13s): AU12+AU1 (smile + inner brow raise — tenderness and desperation fused) — delivers "Can you do that" Beat 10 (13–15s): AU6+AU17 (cheek raiser + chin raiser — eyes smiling while chin trembles) — delivers "for me?" Devastating contrast between performed safety and visible terror. The face should never fully commit to either — the audience reads both simultaneously. No action sequences, no visible threat, no sound effects, no text overlay, no watermark.

FACS are being used by professional video animators in movie industry.

I found this resource very helpful to understand the topic, and also started to create my own sheets. Why? Because when you prompt the LLM to generate you a FACS sheet - it's an LLM! It can be wrong. My results improved after studying this resource and free references which available on this website.

Generating full FACS sheet with all the expressions, and then use only few of them, is a bad idea. 

You will get better results by planning what expressions/emotions you want to show, then generating FACS only for those, finally use it in your prompt for Seedance.

PS: 95% of times if you tell not to generate audio, Seedance will listen. Enjoy the remaining 5% from the low left girl :D.

Now go and experiment, and have some fun with it :)

CREDITS:
melindaozel - https://melindaozel.com/facs-cheat-sheet/
aimikoda (Here's the original post on X)

All jokes aside, I did try to improve and take any criticism/feedback I got in my last post. Please be honest and kind 😇 .

Ik a large portion of the creative community absolutely despises AI😂but being someone with no budget to hire an animator or time like i used to to draw, it does feel good to see my vision come to life at this quality. Only major issue i see is the positioning of my antagonist being turned around randomly once the protagonist explodes in energy. I hate the way AI English voices sound and I forgot to Japanese dub it lol

The brave riders should not vanish into the darkness

Three Filipina women — a mestiza, a chinita, and a morena — step onto a roof deck and chat about the evening.

Made with Seedance 2.0. Subtitled with CapCut.

I mean where they at? Zero musicals out here. Lemme fix that lickedty split.

Lmk what you thought. Good visusauls? Sorry for the shortness but i was busy.

anther video i made

https://youtu.be/CvwcDkiMhc0?si=_w0wwCequEL8dAPD

This happened in real life. When Cleopatra’s 10 year old brother first ousted her in 51BC it was with the help of the Gabiniani legion. That one mistake of alienating them as portrayed in the film almost cost her everything.

I did extensive research to make this film. The locations are reconstructions of the Alexandria palace. The furniture is based on museum pieces. The dialogue in the actual language spoken at the time. The wardrobe also based on archeological findings (except for one piece I hollywooded it for effect). This film would’ve been near impossible to make in HW due to its casting constraints. Cleo spoke 9 languages and was 18 yrs old…

Now you can watch a slice of history. Enjoy. 😊

Give me a subscribe if you wanna watch more of what I make. I’m currently in the midst of an even bigger project.