31/07/2025
A great new animated film from Ash Johann Curry-Machado!
First Second tells the story of two solitary figures—one aboard a never-stopping train, the other waiting endlessly at a forgotten desert station—whose worlds collide when the impossible happens: the train stops. In the wreckage of silence, they draw from one another the first moment of change, the first second of time that truly matters.
There were no actors, no location shoots, no traditional crew. Every frame, every voice, every moment of this film was created using artificial intelligence. The original story was mine, but the screenplay was written in collaboration with ChatGPT, through a process that felt less like issuing commands and more like rehearsing with an extraordinarily attentive creative partner. Line by line, scene by scene, I tested images, rhythms, and emotions—refining structure, tone, and pacing with an immediacy that felt uncanny. The voices—interior, intimate, drifting like memory—were generated with ElevenLabs, exploring what a synthetic internal monologue might feel like. The performances aren’t human in the traditional sense, but they capture something strange and affecting: a voice caught between memory and invention. The visuals, from the eternal train to the silent desert station, were conjured frame by frame through Sora, prompting surreal, painterly environments that helped me understand how metaphor could become mise-en-scène. These tools weren’t shortcuts. They were sketchbooks, collaborators, provocateurs. They allowed me to think cinematically without ever picking up a camera.
First Second tells the story of two solitary figures—one aboard a never-stopping train, the other waiting endlessly at a forgotten desert station—whose world...
