43 Minutes in Three Weeks: Afro Futcha on Building an AI Film in Public

Thirty seconds that became 43 minutes.

On the weekly show we had already seen Diane's work almost every week: The Three Pigs preview in May, Beans on Toast, made in four hours for the Director's Cup Gen Jam, in July, and in August part three of a film she was building one minute at a time, which topped the audience vote with nine straight 1s. That film is where the session started.

The weeks before had been workshops. One, called Day Job, ran from 10am to 8pm, with Diane feeding the room and handing out credits, and ended with 23 or 24 finished films. All that time helping other people build left her itching to make something with Seedance 2.5, which had just come out. So she started 6 Minutes.

“It's a project that started off with like 30 seconds of a clip that ultimately became 43 minutes of a film. It's the longest AI film I've ever done.”

Afro Futcha▶ 4:13

She didn't know the story when she started. She built it as she went, posting every other day, and watched people come back to rewatch the whole thing each time a piece was added. Sound design was part of the challenge, and she is still working on it, but the hardest part was keeping a story tight in the wild.

“I'm still a student myself.”

Afro Futcha▶ 7:17

A lot of her followers are learning too, so she showed the process as she went. And nobody guessed the ending, which she says is her favourite part.

Web design, radio and the beatmaking housewife.

Andrew asked his usual question: where did it all begin? Not in film. Diane's background is web design, which she did for about 15 years. Before that she was a radio DJ on three stations, including New Wave Station, run by Marc Mac of 4hero, and Brixton Radio. On another she got to interview Teena Marie. Before that, a council job.

“AI to me is just another medium for me to be creative.”

Afro Futcha▶ 9:31

Underneath all of it was music production. Her family are heavily into music, and people used to know her as the beatmaking housewife. Give her a sewing machine, a DAW or an AI model, she says, and she will make something with it.

“Getting into this has now made me think, damn, I wish I went to film school.”

Afro Futcha▶ 9:38

She is learning filmmaking backwards: making the films while studying editing, sound design and story at the same time.

Four hours, or one night.

Chris said what a lot of creators think: the speed Diane works at, in competitions and Gen Jams, is intimidating. Is there anything people can learn from it? She was clear it isn't a hack for everyone. It's how her brain works.

“If I'm only given a very short time span to do something, then I automatically cut all of that out. Then it's just about working, working, working.”

Afro Futcha▶ 13:41

She is ADHD and autistic, and the ADHD side wins. On a long project she can't hold on to the excitement, and she starts to overthink and doubt herself. Machine Cinema's Gen Jams, where you get four hours to make a film, showed her the alternative. There is no time to mull over which story to tell.

6 Minutes ran on the same rule, with a deadline every morning. Wake up, think about the story, write it, generate, edit, and post by the next morning, whatever state it was in.

“It was just like, no, put it out and then move on to the next.”

Afro Futcha▶ 15:24

It is also what she teaches. People in her workshops get stuck in their heads and forget they are just playing with a bit of tech. The hosts' phrase for it was bring back silly. When the conversation turned to Parkinson's law, that work expands to fill the time you give it, and the 80/20 rule, Diane said she had been teaching both without knowing what they were called.

“That's how I was able to get a 43 minute film done within 3 weeks, because I was like, forget about all that, just put it down on the timeline. We'll work it out in the mix.”

Afro Futcha▶ 17:50

A story about her son.

Quiet Please was made during Diane's time with Nura Studios, a company she worked with from January to about July. It is about her son. He is autistic and has ADHD, and his autism wins. He is sensitive to sound, as Diane was as a child, when even a flushing toilet was too loud. At school he wouldn't eat in the canteen because he couldn't bear the sound of people eating. Lunchtime was his favourite time anyway, because he could walk round the playground on his own, in the quiet.

“I don't see stories about that. I don't see stories of little brown boys having issues with sound or neurological issues.”

Afro Futcha▶ 20:14

The film has no dialogue at all. You feel his tension in the canteen and his calm on his own through sound alone. People have messaged her to say it made them cry, which she says is exactly what she aims for.

It got made because of a good boss. Isabelle asked Diane to talk through several ideas, saw her face light up at this one, and told her that was the story to work on. Diane thinks that is what is missing from a lot of creative work: finding out what the individual creator is passionate about.

“I am at my best when you just say, Diane, I leave it in your hands.”

Afro Futcha▶ 23:13

Three images, one film.

Chris said that from the very first second he felt what it was like to be in that school canteen, and the piano in the outro got to everyone. His wish afterwards was for more personal, emotional storytelling like this, and less sci-fi and horror. Andrew thought the cartoon style helped: not being photoreal let the story land.

Mary Unfiltered asked in the chat what the film had taught her about AI filmmaking. The answer was technical. Diane had Seedance 2.0 early, before most people, and noticed it could hold a style and a look consistent across a 10 or 15-second generation like nothing else at the time.

“Why don't I use the video as my image generator, and I can just say cut to this scene, cut to this scene, cut to this scene.”

Afro Futcha▶ 35:29

Realistically, the whole film came from one image, and only three were made in total. Chris pointed out that Marco Magario, watching in the chat, had made his film from four images the week before. Multi-shot generation changed everything, the hosts agreed, especially for anyone who didn't want to build a full bank of first and last frames.

Not a 90-second woman.

Diane added one more thing about the storytelling. When she started at the studio, they wanted 90-second clips. She didn't.

“I'm not a 90 second woman. I'm so sorry, but I like to take my time.”

Afro Futcha▶ 38:08

Her boss worried people would stop watching after 30 seconds. Diane's argument was that if the story is right, people stay. After Quiet Please, the studio started working towards longer films.

“If we can watch Game of Thrones in a weekend, you can watch Quiet Please for six minutes.”

Afro Futcha▶ 38:51

Andrew had made the same point earlier about attention spans. Attention isn't shrinking. It is just harder to earn at the start, and once you have it, people binge.

Hugging one minute, cussing the next.

Diane calls this one client work very loosely. She heard the song, couldn't stop playing it for weeks, and messaged the artist, DPROSPER, co-founder of the New York platform Soul In The Horn, offering to make a video. He said yes. She made it in about two days, unpaid. The beat is by Grammy-nominated producer King Michael Coy.

▶ Watch The Truth About Love

Mary asked why the visuals felt so dreamy against such a painful subject. Contrast, Diane said, is important in any film, and she often pairs something deep with a vibrant look. It isn't a rule she follows. It has to click, and she can't fully explain why it does.

“It's just spiritual almost. It just feels like, yeah, that's the right tone.”

Afro Futcha▶ 47:35

The look itself wasn't new. She had been working on that style in Midjourney for a long time, which answered Danny Ratcliff's question in the chat. Her first idea was a man walking down the street with the story happening around him. Then she thought it would be funnier to show random couples all over each other one minute and cussing each other out the next, because that is what love is: breaking up and making up.

One phone call, one song, one day.

Silly Me is Diane's own song. A new version of Suno had just come out, and she is a soul head, into the music of the 70s and 80s, so a lot of her music leans that way. The video was almost an afterthought.

“It took me about 3 hours to do this video. And the reason why it took me three hours was because I just wanted people to listen to my music.”

Afro Futcha▶ 50:33

▶ Watch Silly Me

Chris saw some Wes Anderson in the pinks and the palette, and Andrew was reminded of Pleasantville. Danny asked why she always casts herself. Diane loves 1940s and 1950s swing dresses, and there was a time she wore one everywhere. She loves the Stepford wife look, she said, just not the lifestyle.

The song came from a real call. A man she had been in love with, who didn't love her back, rang to ask how she was, and all her anger vanished the moment she heard his voice. Oh, silly me, here I go again.

“So he called me, I wrote the song, I did the video, and then I put it out.”

Afro Futcha▶ 57:31

Casting herself isn't always easy. Models often turn her into a Latina woman. But she went to drama school and wanted to be an actress until she was about 17 or 18, so seeing herself on screen means something. The video was made with Seedance 2.5, and that speed is what she loves about AI: capturing a feeling before it fades.

The film that got her out of bed.

What Do I Know was Diane's first client music video, made in 2024. She got into AI in 2022 while grieving her close friend Ty, the rapper, who died during Covid.

“One of the things that actually got me out of bed was Midjourney.”

Afro Futcha▶ 1:02:03

By the end of 2024 a friend was telling her to stop hiding and put some work out. Then her ex-partner asked her to make a video for a song he had made with Ty. It meant recreating Ty as a cartoon character and listening to the track on repeat, which was a lot. She put it out with no idea where it would go, and it won first place in the music video category at Project Odyssey. She had made at least two music videos before, and thinks this one won because of the story, told in the lyrics and in the pictures at the same time.

▶ Watch What Do I Know (Artcha ft. Ty)

Chris was glad they had watched it after the newer work, because it showed how far the tools have come. As 404 Films pointed out in the chat, this was before Nano Banana and before Seedance. It is also, Chris said, around when Diane first landed on the show's radar. He and Andrew met much of the community in Midjourney audio rooms, so hearing that Midjourney got her out of bed hit home.

Asked whether web design helps her think about visual flow, Diane said she is still working that out. Most of what she does comes from intuition.

“A lot of what I feel like I do is very much based on my intuition. Does this feel right to me? And if I don't get that visceral feeling, then I'm not going to mess with it.”

Afro Futcha▶ 1:10:24

Why is that man following you?

With time running out, Chris offered a choice between Give It to Me, Warm Coat and 6 Minutes. Diane chose 6 Minutes, the newest.

It began as a 30-second clip of her walking into a nightclub, finding her partner dancing with someone else, walking out, and a man following her. She posted it with no plans and went to a talk. When she came home her messages were full of people asking what was going on and why that man was following her. So she asked them one question.

“If I do another 30 seconds, should I move it forward in time or should I go back in time? And they said, go forward in time.”

Afro Futcha▶ 1:13:16

Having him attack her felt too clichéd, so the next part opened with people being interviewed about her going missing. From there the 30-second pieces became two or three-minute pieces, and eventually a 43-minute film. If you like Murder, She Wrote or Columbo, it is in the same vein, and set in 1985, one of her favourite periods.

Chris compared it to world models where the audience steers the story. Diane went for Black Mirror's Bandersnatch, with one difference: there, the paths were already made.

“This is taking it to the next level. We don't know what's coming next, and I don't know what's coming next.”

Afro Futcha▶ 1:15:28

The hosts brought up Dubplate Drama, the Channel 4 series where viewers voted on what happened next, and R. Kelly's cliffhanger songs. The hosts thought it was the kind of story the BBC would pick up. Diane laughed off the idea of being called the first to do it, in case someone had done it before.

Nothing looks plastic any more.

▶ Watch 6 Minutes

We watched the opening: Alexia Smith, a dancer and actress, last seen leaving Sam's bar in upper Manhattan, and Detective Rogers questioning a battered man who says he banged his head on the bathroom cabinet. Chris stopped it there. Straight after the 2024 video, he said, the jump was obvious: the wounds and the faces don't look plastic any more, they look like real people.

The full film is already out on her YouTube channel. Diane was in the final edit, grading and fixing the sound where it dipped in and out, swapping music that didn't fit, and going back over scenes where faces had drifted.

“When you watch it from beginning to end, your idea of who you think done it totally changes, and then your idea of what six minutes means also changes.”

Afro Futcha▶ 1:25:43

She also made a three-minute blooper reel, to humanise characters from such an intense film.

Back for a second session.

Five films in, there was no time for the rest, so Chris invited Diane back for a second session. Give It to Me and Warm Coat are still waiting. His takeaway from the session: if your story needs to be longer than the client wants, push back.

Next for Diane was Shake Film Festival in La Ciotat, France, where Chris was hosting, then TED AI in Vienna in October. Last year the organisers hired a 100-year-old cinema for her to talk about her journey into AI. This year they invited her back to host their first AI horror competition, at an event where Geoffrey Hinton was speaking.

“They invited me back this year to host their first ever AI horror competition.”

Afro Futcha▶ 1:31:35