These Filmmakers Tapped AI to Explore the Soul of a Majestic Metropolis

Fusing tech with human memories and emotions to tell the many stories of Dubai

Someone once described living in Dubai as akin to existing inside a Louis Vuitton handbag—a way of conveying the city’s sense of overwhelming, almost aggressive opulence. Someone else once told us that 70 percent of the world’s mechanical cranes were there at any given moment, ceaselessly erecting new structures across the towering metropolis on the Arabian Peninsula.

For us, Dubai has become a mythic place, fueled by imaginative anecdotes. But whereas cities of equally legendary ilk, like Paris, are enriched by history, Dubai is instead characterized by aspiration and wealth. This makes the Emirate fertile ground for technological endeavors. But it also obscures the diversity of the people who call it home and can, to some extent, overwhelm their individual stories.

To lend color and context to the city’s global identity, hybrid production house The Film Craft created “Life In a Day: Redux.” The two-minute video includes skyscraper shots that could be from almost anywhere—but ultimately focuses on subjects conveying tales based on the filmmakers’ unique experiences.

The work is entirely AI-created. But it’s also a vivid composition of hopes, concerns and memories, reminding us that a fusion of tech and human sensibilities will unlock the future.

“We wanted to experiment and show that AI can truly exemplify realism and emotional depth,” says Pablo “Daf” Dachefsky, chief AI artist and creative director on the project. “It’s why more than 10,000 images and hours of footage were generated until we found the best ones. It’s truly a labor of love, and our love letter to Dubai.”

We hung out with the creative team to gain a deeper understanding of how they worked with AI to produce a narrative so personal for a city whose identity seems anything but.

MUSE: Tell us about the purpose of this film and who it is for.

Anwar Al Amin, screenwriter at The Film Craft: “Life in a Day: Redux” is both a celebration of human experience and a statement on how technology can support, rather than replace, human creativity. This film is for the people who make Dubai what it is: the workers, the dreamers, the hustlers. It’s a love letter to the ordinary moments that define the city’s identity. At the same time, it’s an exploration of AI’s role in storytelling.

What programs did you use?

Daf: I always say AI creative production is a mix of techniques and platforms, and not all platforms are the same. You can generate images with many different platforms, but some are better for specific things like humans, elements, landscapes, etc.

After 3 years heavily studying and experimenting with hundreds of platforms, I can say that everyone needs to test and choose what’s best for each project. In this case, some of the AIs we used the most were Stable Diffusion, Flux, Kling, MidJourney, Runway and Hailuo.

Were there any biases or surprising outputs provided by the AI?

Daf: Sometimes challenges come from a gender perspective. But the biggest biases come from possible cultural misunderstanding. As with every creative process, we have to be mind-open to get amazing and surprising results. The way the machine understands and creates sometimes differs from humans, and that is where the magic happens.

Can you give us a sense of the first prompt you tried entering, then tell us how those prompts developed based on the responses you received?

Daf: Literally: “A film still of a very early morning in Dubai, Burj Khalifa, 35mm, drone shot, cool-toned color grading, motion blur, indie, Dubai.”

The first attempt is always to establish the mood, the coloring, the ambience. But it never gives you what you have in mind. After refining five or six times, you can start visualizing the craft and treatment you are looking for across the whole project.

After establishing the treatment, you move to crafting specific sequences and shots. In my humble opinion, prompting has two very different components. The first is more technical—defining the camera, lens, color, texture, lighting, etc. The other is more poetical, where you must inspire the machine to push the boundaries of its capacity.

We already know that realism in AI is totally possible. But we must consider that the machine will craft results which, sometimes, can feel too perfect. The big challenge with AI is not getting realism; it’s humanizing, where we are able to get results as imperfect as real life.

How were you able to “source” memories of longtime residents, as you say in your press materials? What was the nature of the input you plugged into the program?

Daf: It came from our own experiences living in this amazing city. We wanted to show the unseen side of the region and tackle all its misconceptions. The creative process started by just pulling up memories: All those images we have back in our minds from when we first landed here, everything that makes the United Arab Emirates different.

At the beginning, the machine couldn’t generate images for concepts that it didn’t have any content for in its own bank. So, we needed to train it on a cultural level. Every prompt we used had a clear description of the local culture, to let the machine understand each situation. After a few attempts, it started to flow.

When we asked it to create a cafeteria tea-delivery guy, the results were too “American.” After telling the machine about the culture of coffee, and that tea here is very important, and that we all order our “karak” [tea] from the car to continue with our trip—that was when it started to understand the background and the context.

What did you, as creatives, want to accomplish with this project?

Akheel Hassan Bilgrami, creative director and screenwriter: I’ve always believed that tech can be a trusted sidekick for every creative, not something to be afraid of. Our approach was to be honest to our memories and our triumphs. We wanted to show how Dubai has a place for everyone, that it radiates a certain kind of optimism, ambition and goodness in the faces of the people here. We wanted to show this in the most realistic way possible by combining the capabilities of humans and machines.

At the heart of it, our goal was to both show the authentic side of Dubai and the authentic craft of AI.

Is there anything special you learned?

Bilgrami: For one, AI is getting there in terms of realism and speed. However, there are still cultural nuances it doesn’t get right. No matter how many ways we prompted, it couldn’t quite picture the Battoulah (a metallic-looking mask traditionally worn by Emirati women). In addition, we realized it’s key to have a unique perspective on how you see things and how you want to show them, even if you’re using AI. That’s what makes us human at the end of the day.

In the final result, what did you want this work to showcase, and what did you want to avoid?

Al Amin: We wanted to showcase how AI can be used to complement real-life storytelling, not replace it. The goal was to capture the energy of Dubai without losing its soul in automation. We wanted to avoid making something that felt artificial, cold or disconnected from reality.

Have your feelings about AI changed—and if so, how?

Al Amin: I see AI as just another tech accessory, something useful for automation but lacking depth. It can be a powerful collaborator that expands creative possibilities. That said, it’s important to recognize its limitations. AI can mimic, but it cannot originate human emotion or lived experiences.

“Life In a Day: Redux” will appear in various short film festivals over the months to come, traveling, as the creatives say, “as a message of humanity from Dubai to cities around the world.” Their biggest hope, though, is that it will be selected for the Erth Dubai initiative.

CREDITS

Story, Screenplay & Filmcraft: Anwar Al Amin
Creative Direction & AI Art Direction: Pablo “Daf” Dachefsky
Scriptwriting & Creative Direction: Akheel Hassan Bilgrami
AI Video Prompt Artist: Chad Lauffer
Arabic Copycrafter: Muhamad Assaf
Editing and Colour Grading: David F
Music Licensing: Alick Sethi
Producers: Anwar Al Amin, Pablo ‘Daf’ Dachefsky, Akheel Hassan Bilgrami
Produced by: The Film Craft Dubai in collaboration with Daf and CIQ