My Short Film Just Got Accepted into the Future Vision XPRIZE — Here’s How I Made It Combining AI and Professional Editing
The Future Vision XPRIZE is one of the most ambitious creative competitions in the world — a global challenge calling for short films about the future of humanity, backed by Google, Salesforce, Range and the XPRIZE Foundation. Grand prize: $2.5 million production investment. The kind of thing you read about, think “that’s for someone else,” close the tab, and never think about again.
Except I didn’t close the tab.
I’ve spent over twenty years in digital design, motion graphics and video production. What I’ve never done is make my own film. A real one. One that comes entirely from me. So I decided to enter. Alone. With a limited budget and a combination of professional tools I already know and AI tools I was still learning. My film — Under The Same Sky — is officially accepted and under review. The Top 25 finalists are announced between August 25 and September 1.
This is how I made it.
If you like it and you want to support it, LIKE IT here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06HWhayMbqM
The Idea
I wanted to make a film about communication — not technology for its own sake, but about what it has always been for: helping people feel close to each other across distance. My family is on the other side of the Atlantic. This isn’t abstract to me. It’s personal.
The film tells two parallel stories that merge into one. The first follows a man across six decades, seen always through the screens he watches along the way — a 1950s living room TV, a drive-in cinema, a grunge concert, a cyber café, a park bench with a sleeping newborn. The second is an animated film playing on every one of those screens across every era — a father in black and white, a boy in color on a basketball court, asking a question at the drive-in that echoes across fifty years: “Dad… what was it like before?”
The two stories converge at a basketball court under a night sky. And from there the film moves into the future — rockets rising, a son now an astronaut on the moon, a holographic call so clear that the distance between Earth and the lunar surface simply disappears.
“The future is exactly what we made it.”
The Tools
Claude was my creative partner for the script, the story structure, and all the XPRIZE written submission materials — logline, synopsis, personal statement and an 11-page treatment. Not writing it for me. Working through it with me.
Adobe Firefly generated all the visual reference images, scene by scene. The animated sequences required a very specific aesthetic — 65% photorealistic, 35% Makoto Shinkai anime influence — and maintaining that consistency across six decades of different screen technologies was one of the trickiest parts of the whole project.
Kling 3.0 generated the raw video footage for every scene — from the 1950s living room to the lunar base. But generating footage is only half the work. Every clip was then imported into Adobe Premiere Pro, where the real editing happened — building the rhythm between scenes, timing the voice-off against the visuals, making the transitions between decades feel like time actually passing.
Adobe After Effects handled all the compositing — getting the animated split-screen content to feel genuinely displayed on each screen technology across six decades, building the HUD elements inside the astronaut’s helmet visor, and creating the holographic call effect that makes the moon sequence work visually. Adobe Photoshop was the foundation for all graphic work throughout the project.
ElevenLabs handled all voice performance. Three voice profiles, carefully directed, with a specific audio treatment for the moon call sequence that makes it sound like a perfect near-future holographic transmission.
Suno composed the score — two separate pieces covering six decades of musical history, from 1950s rock and roll through 1980s synthesizer to 1990s grunge to a final NASA documentary orchestral finale.
What Happens Now
The film is submitted and accepted. The Top 25 announcement comes between August 25 and September 1. I genuinely don’t know what will happen.
What I do know is that I made something real — a three-minute film about distance, connection, and what it means to feel close to the people you love when geography has made closeness complicated. I made it alone, combining AI tools with professional editing and post-production, with a story I’ve been carrying for a long time.
Watch it on the Aztec Dragon Studio YouTube channel. And if it moves you, share it.
Carlos Villarreal Ortiz is a Senior Art Director and Creative Strategist based in Barcelona. carlosvillarreal.es
