[Inside Track] Secret. Safe. Repeat.

My beautiful maddening attempt to make AI feel something.

Back in the end of March, right before I came back up to New York to be with Cat while she films the show Dexter, I recorded a few track demo videos in my Florida living room. During the sessions, I finished writing a song I’d started in January called “Secret Safe,” that revolves around noticing a few habits and rituals of a neighbor (and piecing together a larger story). Playing around with some AI filmmaking tools up here, I decided to go down the well and produce an animated video to bring the story to life.

From the demo performance to render, the video took just over three weeks to produce, but the story was a few moons in the making. Down in Florida, I live in an apartment complex very much like the one in the track, where I have some (delightfully) quirky neighbors. I amalgamated a few stories and observations I’ve gleaned over the last year, and rolled them into a single character named Courtney, a woman in her late-20s from Ocala, FL, who lives with 2 dogs, a large pink neon sign in her living room, and a quiet life.