We’ve noticed a recent YouTube trend of producing trailers for shows and movies as if they were produced in the 1950s, even when they weren’t. The results are impressive and, as you might expect, leverage AI generation tools. While we enjoy watching them, we were especially interested in [Patrick Gibney’s] peek behind the curtain of how he makes them, as you can see below. If you want to see an example of the result first, check out the second video, showing a 1950s-era The Matrix.

Of course, you could do some of it yourself, but if you want the full AI experience, [Patrick] suggests using ChatGPT to produce a script, though he admits that if he did that, he would tweak the results. Other AI tools create the pictures used and the announcer-style narration. Another tool produces cinematographic shots that include the motion of the “actors” and other things in the scene. More tools create the background music.

Once you have all that, it is straightforward to edit it together as a video. If you want to try your hand, many of the tools have some free tier, although you might not be able to do everything you want in one shot with free tools. [Patrick] reports he spends about $70 a month to get full access to the tools he uses, but he also mentions some other alternatives.

You have to wonder how long it will be before you can just get an AI filmmaker tool that does the whole thing in one swoop. However, doing it in pieces like this does give you a bit more control. In particular, we were interested that some of the “secret sauce” was using negative prompts to prevent certain behaviors in certain tools.

We were hoping [Patrick] would send up Star Trek, but for that, we had to check out [Rafa Reels]. Of course, you don’t have to limit yourself to the 1950s. For example, [Patrick] also wondered what it would be like if Star Wars were made in the 1990s with [Sir Sean Connery] as [Obi Wan]. Thanks to him, you don’t have to wonder.