# The music video

Period: 2022 – now · Era: 2022 · The Dawn

Make the song first, map the beats, and cut picture to the music.

Music videos were AI film's natural home from the start: Magdalena Bay's Dreamcatching (2022) ran live footage of the duo through VQGAN+CLIP, and the melting, dreamlike look suited a song better than a story. When Suno and Udio arrived in 2024, the order flipped for many makers: the song came first, often generated too, and the picture was cut to it. Hybrid shoots brought the form back to performers, from the Rolling Stones to virtual-production music videos.

## How it worked

1. **Start with the track,** licensed, your own, or generated with lyrics written alongside a language model.
2. **Map the beats and sections** before generating, so each verse and chorus gets its own look.
3. **Generate per section,** with the visual motif held by references across the whole video.
4. **Cut to the beat,** and use morphs and transitions where a song allows what a narrative would not.
5. **Or shoot the performer** and generate the world around them.

## Why it mattered

A song gives AI video what it lacks: structure, rhythm and permission to be strange. It is the form where generated images first felt intended.

## Tools of the era

- VQGAN+CLIP (2021): https://github.com/nerdyrodent/VQGAN-CLIP
- Deforum (2022): https://github.com/deforum-art/deforum-stable-diffusion
- Suno v3 (2024): https://suno.com
- Udio (2024): https://www.udio.com
- Runway Aleph (2025): https://runway.com/research/introducing-runway-aleph

## Example videos and posts

- A hybrid AI and virtual production music video, full breakdown · ZULUxR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEW_Loxo474
- In The Stars · The Rolling Stones, dir. Francois Rousselet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT5LwwEHgnc
- In The Stars: behind the scenes · The Rolling Stones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS4-6Dip9KM

## On the timeline

- [Dreamcatching](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/magdalena-bay-dreamcatching) (2022-03-03)
- [Sleepwalkers (80's Italo Disco Music Video)](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/sleepwalkers-italo-disco) (2025-04-30)

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Source: https://aifilmhistory.org/workflows/music-video