The Frost

Survivors in a frozen world follow a mysterious signal up a mountain in Antarctica. The complete 23-minute cut premiered in September 2024, but its real significance is that the first half is a fossil of a moment that lasted about a year.

Part One went out in June 2023 as a 12-minute short, made without a video model because there wasn't one worth using. Josh Rubin generated every shot as a DALL-E 2 still and animated the stills with D-ID. By Part Two the tools had changed, and the film wears it: Part One is uncanny, Part Two photorealistic, with JeffSynthesized joining for continuity. Back to back, it's a clean before-and-after of prompting stills into motion versus generating motion outright.