Original universe · in development · 2026
Exu Ganhou um Galo
A crossroads, a ritual mark and a debt paid.
A crossroads, a ritual mark and a debt paid.
A film about the sacred as power and as beauty. Script, images and scenes built with generative AI; edited between AI and After Effects.
Not as illustrated folklore, but as what it is: fire, earth, cowrie shells, a crossroads. A man draws a ritual mark, makes a request and pays what he promised. The whole story fits into three gestures.
One rule of light holds the film together: a scene is lit only by what burns inside it — the match, the ember of the pipe. Anything that isn't fire is darkness. That decides palette, contrast, and what the viewer is allowed to see.
Benício is generated once, from several angles, and becomes the reference for every scene that follows. Without this step, each shot gives you a different man — the most common mistake in AI filmmaking, and the easiest one to avoid.
Every key frame is directed as a still: the match, the ritual mark, the open crossroads, the shells falling, the rooster on the ground, the departure. In order, the plates are the storyboard itself — the film already reads here.
Each plate becomes a shot, and the cut is decided in the edit: the weight of the shells hitting the ground, the rooster arriving exactly on the turn. AI generated the shots. The rhythm is an editing decision.
What AI didn't do: decide that the opening scene would end with nothing but the glow of a lit pipe. Decide the weight of the shells hitting the ground. Decide that the rooster lands on the cut.