Phil Langer: Icarus Rising, Slophunters and AI Films With No Start Frames

A fashion shoot with animal heads.

Chris first found Phil through the Hybrid Portraits, years ago in AI terms. It started when Midjourney V4 came out. Phil read that the models could do a fashion model or an animal, but not a model with an animal head. He tried it anyway, and one image came back as a true human and animal blend. He kept developing it, and the Instagram account he started for the portraits blew up.

V4 was also his moment as an advertising creative. His agency was pitching a scene of people at computers with Iron Man style HUD graphics floating round their heads. A team of designers working from stock photography in Photoshop never got it to look right. He tried Midjourney instead.

“Within like four hours I kind of finished this presentation. That was when I realised this is going to be huge.”

Phil Langer▶ 3:42

He still has a soft spot for Midjourney. Most of the field has moved to precise models like Nano Banana, he says, but if you crank up the stylise or variation settings Midjourney still gives you the weird, random looks you want when you are developing a location or a character. Chris added the explanation he had been given: Midjourney is still a diffusion model, while the precise ones are autoregressive.

R&D you can post.

▶ Watch The Rooms in the Back

The first films were Seedance 2.0 tests from the spring, each starring Phil himself in a bathrobe. The Rooms in the Back rode the Backrooms trend. What he was really testing was multi-shot: several camera angles from one prompt, the feature he says changed AI filmmaking.

“The second one was that whole multi-shot feature that kind of changed the whole AI video filmmaking industry.”

Phil Langer▶ 9:17

The Backrooms setting was a deliberate cheat. The space is so abstract that it doesn't matter what it looks like from shot to shot. With one character sheet the hero stayed consistent, even if he doesn't look exactly like Phil, and the whole film took about three hours.

▶ Watch Mayhem

Mayhem was the first of what he calls the bathrobe trilogy, and a test of a different limit. With 15 seconds per clip, how do you get from one set to the next? So he jumps through a window, falls through the floor into a garage, and keeps going. According to its YouTube description it took one character reference image, eight prompts and eight 15-second clips.

Chris said that if it came on TV he'd be asking what film it was from, not whether it was AI. Phil's point was how the work gets made now: in traditional film you shoot and then edit what you have. Here the script grows during the edit.

“Now you can develop the script or the idea while you're editing this film.”

Phil Langer▶ 19:45

It started with a single thought about running across rooftops in New York while the world falls apart. Every scene after that was a train of thought: generate the next jump, and if it doesn't work, try something else. Asked by California Girl whether these are real dreams, he admitted he does have a lot of apocalyptic ones.

Ants, not ninjas.

Seedance 2.0 was the first model that could really do fight scenes, and every test online was ninjas or robots. Phil wanted a fight without either, so he shrank himself to the size of an ant.

▶ Watch Antland

It also shows the limits of 2.0. Scale kept drifting, with the spider too small in one shot and huge in the next, and the grass changing size. The fix he learnt was to upload location references that show the model exactly how big things are. Danny in the chat thought it could be an ad for Raid.

Andrew asked how detailed the fight prompts are. Fairly specific, Phil said, but he works with an assistant like Claude to fill in the details. He writes the beats in plain words: the ant comes from the right, I jump up, do a spin kick and punch. The assistant adds where everything lands and how fast. Then he watches the result and adjusts, for example asking for more speed or for him to scream in rage.

“You get 15 seconds sequence with several edits, and then you just pick whatever works best and you just stitch it together.”

Phil Langer▶ 26:41

He averages about three tweaks a shot. And like Kavan the Kid and Marco before him, he finds the epic fights the easy part.

“The big epic fight scenes, they're so much easier and so much quicker than a dialogue scene with two people sitting in a room.”

Phil Langer▶ 26:56

The same old panic.

The hate comments started with the Hybrid Portraits and never stopped. Phil understands where some of it comes from. VFX and special effects people have been hit hard, the way the models were trained is questionable, and he isn't happy giving his money to billionaires. If a properly sourced model that paid artists existed, he says, he would switch instantly, even if it cost more. Nothing like that can compete yet.

▶ Watch Slophunters: The History of "That's Not Real Art"

The name comes from a group of men on LinkedIn who hunted down every piece he posted, always the same guy saying here we go again, another slop. The film went down well on LinkedIn, with few negative comments. Some people asked why he was mocking people losing their jobs. His answer: it isn't about them, it's about people who reject any new form of media.

That is the joke of the film: the same fight, every few decades. Phil pointed to Kraftwerk, whose electronic music was rejected because it let people make music without traditional training, and to an old German poster against recorded music replacing live players at the cinema. Chris added the campaign against canned music. The arguments, Phil said, came back 100 years later almost word for word.

From Avatar to the hybrid world.

Icarus Rising was Phil's big Seedance 2.5 showcase. The myth had fascinated him since he was a child, and it suited the tools: most of it takes place in the labyrinth, so the backgrounds can be abstract and consistency is less of a problem.

His first characters were plain humans, and they felt uninspired. The next version had big eyes and green skin.

“And then I was like, this is just Avatar. I'm recreating Avatar here.”

Phil Langer▶ 38:48

Then he remembered he already had a cast. Years of Hybrid Portraits had given him a whole world of animal characters, and the tools had never been good enough to tell a story with them. Icarus Rising is the first film set in that world.

▶ Watch Icarus Rising

Glenn called it one of the most engaging pieces he had seen, and California Girl loved the ears reacting to the characters' emotions. The hosts loved the shot where the camera finds the pair flying over the waves. That was all in the prompt: start far away, zoom in and search for them.

“I'm still blown away by, you have this idea and Seedance pops it out and it works.”

Phil Langer▶ 50:50

Credits, sheets and human ears.

Jeremy on LinkedIn asked how anyone can afford a film like this. Phil joked that he is just a super rich guy, then explained. The popularity of the Hybrid Portraits got him into creator partner programmes early, including Runway's, and he had been sitting on about 800,000 credits. He decided to go all in.

“I think I used 250,000 credits or 300,000. It would have been around $4,000, I think, if I would have paid for this.”

Phil Langer▶ 52:14

It is all Seedance 2.5, generated inside Runway, with a little done in Dreamina.

Santiago asked whether 2.5 still needs complex character sheets. Phil goes back and forth. A detailed sheet runs to about 15 images, with the main views plus close-ups of the hands and the back. A simple one is just the face from the front and the body from front and back, which lets the face fill more of the image. The extra detail earns its place on the shots you didn't plan for.

“It's good to have these extra details because sometimes you have a shot where the character turns around and you didn't think of it.”

Phil Langer▶ 53:19

One fight he never fully won was ears. The models keep adding human ears when an animal character turns round. Look closely and you'll spot a few.

“I did it so often that sometimes I'm like, forget it. I just leave it in.”

Phil Langer▶ 54:19

720p, Topaz and ten images.

There was never meant to be a sequel. When Icarus Rising played on a cinema screen at the AI filmmakers meetup in Berlin, people kept asking what happened next, so he started working out what Daedalus would do. To get it onto that screen, he upscaled it.

“They were generated in 720p only, but then with Topaz I cranked it up to 4K, and it looks really good.”

Phil Langer▶ 55:49

Topaz doesn't invent new detail, he says, it sharpens and enlarges. But generating at 1080p would have taken the film to about $10,000. Chris raised Dreamina's planned 480p preview, and Phil called Seedance's preview mode huge for advertising, where specific shots used to be slot-machine work.

Then the detail that defines the film. Icarus Rising was the first time Phil worked without start frames at all.

“It was also the first film I did without start frames. The entire film is just reference images.”

Phil Langer▶ 57:25

Every character has a reference sheet and every location two or three images, about ten in all. That doesn't mean fewer sheets per character: Icarus has one with wings, one without and one with the backpack, or he loses his wings when he shouldn't. Each location sheet has to cover every angle the camera might take.

Chris put it in context: Seedance 2 only came out in February, and a ten-minute film from ten images is the change of the year. Phil traced his own first jolt to Sora's multi-shot, and to a flicker of humour in what it made from a photo of himself. That made him wonder how long it will be until models are creative and funny enough to make things alone. Seedance is already at 30 seconds a generation, he said, and he expects five minutes one day, and personalised shows.

“You create your own Netflix show where you just type it in, and then you have an episode of Breaking Bad, but you're the bad guy.”

Phil Langer▶ 1:02:08

A little bit Batman.

Phil gave the show an unreleased two-minute scene from the Icarus Rising sequel. It comes near the start: Daedalus goes after the king who set up the labyrinth, and the way he gets in is, in Phil's words, a little bit Batman.

The hosts loved the slow motion and the sweep with the wings instead of the feet. The wing fighting was inspired by the winged X-Men character in the third X-Men film, and the slow motion and the superhero landing were both written into the prompt. California Girl asked whether the black wings were a clue. They are: he is sneaking in to reach the king, so the white wings had to go.

The scene was still a rough cut with no final sound design, which led to the sound question from dadguyd in the chat. Phil's music comes from royalty-free libraries such as Artlist and Pixabay, often from a composer whose drones he loves. He wants atmosphere more than tunes, so he isn't tied to beats when he builds the story. He has tried Suno and was never really happy with it. Seedance's own sound effects are good, but always need more on top.

“I think sound is like 40% of that finished product.”

Phil Langer▶ 1:07:40

Danny asked why animals. Phil matches each animal to the character: the gods are panthers and wolves, and the king will be a big, menacing boar. He likes cat-like figures for their long, thin limbs. The plan is a whole hybrid universe, with ideas like Dante's Inferno and Robin Hood, each told in its own distinct style.

Tension that doesn't let go.

Darkness Wakes Below the Deep was made in Kling 3.0, and the 4K version arrived just after he finished. Does he hold ideas back for the next model? He used to, then decided he had to get things out. The same thing happens in advertising, where a new model lands a week after you deliver.

Horror isn't normally his genre. He likes the classics like The Shining and The Sixth Sense rather than gore. The film was a test of a specific AI problem: AI video tends to come in ups and downs, and he wanted tension that holds all the way through.

Chris praised how recognisable Phil's work is. Phil said it is deliberate, and the reason he is happy to make a fool of himself in a bathrobe.

“You have to create your own language, your own style, your own look. It's very easy to get into this and create content, but it's very hard to stand out.”

Phil Langer▶ 1:16:22

Advertising helps, he said, because ads have to work in a short time, and every piece needs a story and an idea, not just visual quality. He also described Berlin's AI filmmaker meetup, which started about three years ago as five nerds in a café and now has to rent a cinema.

▶ Watch Darkness Wakes Below the Deep

The story grew as the generations came in, with Event Horizon as the only fixed idea: someone finds an abandoned station and goes inside. Chris called the drones and reverbs Phil's signature sound. Phil explained they also do a job.

“A drone layer above it all. I mean, it's probably standard filmmaking. It kind of covers it all.”

Phil Langer▶ 1:27:07

Simple solutions, complex problems.

Chris saved the most personal film for last. Phil is from East Berlin, and The Blue Piper is about the rise of the far-right AfD in the east of Germany, where it has done especially well in recent local elections. He listed reasons people give, like the way reunification was handled, and said none of them is an excuse for voting for the extreme right.

The film turns the party into a mythical piper luring people from their sleep. It is blue because blue is the AfD's colour. Any resemblance between the main character and a certain politician, he added, is a coincidence.

▶ Watch The Blue Piper

This time the music was Suno. He couldn't find an eerie enough track for the piper, so he made one. The conversation turned to how extremism spreads online. Phil follows a few right-wing accounts to keep an eye on them, and one or two clicks later the algorithm decides that is who he is.

“It's always simple solution for very complex problems.”

Phil Langer▶ 1:37:04

The most talented part-timer.

Is all this part-time? Sort of. Phil works a four-day week in advertising and makes films on Fridays, weekends and evenings. At the agency he is the AI expert, teaching the creative departments what is and isn't possible and developing concepts with clients. The films are how he keeps up.

“If you wait a week, then you're missing all these models, and you kind of have to know what's possible.”

Phil Langer▶ 1:39:44

He asked people to follow him on YouTube as theBytePit, which he is trying to grow, and on Instagram as theBytePit and the Hybrid Portraits. Chris called it one of his favourite Creator Sessions so far, and floated a future group session with every AI creator in Berlin.