For this music video, I tried changing the way I worked. I asked the Codex and ChatGPT apps to carry much of the process forward—from reading the lyrics and music to building an artboard, a moodboard, an animatic, and images for individual cuts. I wanted to see what kind of piece might emerge if I respected the AI’s suggestions and decisions as much as possible.
Listen to “クロウ” and read the lyrics on the Japanese song page
A 2-step swing with a rock edge
The sound was shaped around UK garage rock and a 2-step swing. The idea pairs clipped, syncopated drums and garage-derived percussion with jagged, overdriven guitar stabs and an elastic sub-bass. That gives the song a tight pulse with a slightly abrasive edge—something that can hold both the crow’s defiance and its instinct to protect someone.
The verses keep their tension restrained, then the chorus opens into a more explosive, singalong lift. That contrast became one of the song’s structural anchors. The video follows it by holding on negative space and stillness early on, then widening the direction, depth, and scale of the cuts when the chorus arrives. Instead of turning the groove into constant visual jitter, I tried to preserve the feeling of holding back, then stepping forward.
Finding the story inside the lyrics
‘クロウ’ begins from the point of view of a crow the city treats as a nuisance. Still, when it hears breaking glass or someone crying out, it is the one that goes to help—even if it is disliked. It does not act for applause; it heads toward someone who is waiting.
For the video, I gave that first-person voice to Kurose Rei and a single crow. At first they seem apart. Then they notice the same danger and move in parallel. Rather than illustrating every lyric line, I used their shift—from being watched and judged to choosing to go toward someone—as the thread connecting the video.
Setting visual rules before making the cuts
Alongside the character sheet, I prepared a moodboard for the emotional movement, light, and palette, and an artboard to establish rules that could carry from shot to shot. The city is built from white and pale sky blue, with Rei and the crow set apart in black and small touches of cobalt. Red is reserved for moments of danger; most of the frame leaves room for sky and concrete.
The first artboard was not right: the crow’s blue was too strong, and a night panel could be read as a story about holding an injured bird. I set that version aside and revised the direction, keeping blue to small reflections and centering the dark silhouettes against broad city shapes. Following AI’s lead did not mean using the first output untouched. I still checked whether an image might tell a different story than the one I intended.
Turning the storyboard into something we could watch
I arranged scenes around the lyrics and the musical changes, then joined the storyboard stills to the track as an animatic. Reviewing that rough film showed where the story needed more visual information. I expanded the coverage and checked the pacing again, growing the base plan of 39 shots into 67 candidate images. The goal was to see how the pictures breathed between musical phrases.
For the chorus, the plan was not simply to add effects or lines, but to create release through camera distance, direction, and depth. A breaking pane becomes the cue for Rei to run, with the crow flying a little ahead. The rescue itself is suggested through a reaching hand and a change in light rather than shown as a grand, fully explained victory.
Unseen work, and a sky that opens
After the rescue, the story does not turn into applause. In the second verse, the crow insists—almost defensively—that the rubbish area is clean because of its work. The song holds on to the bitterness of labor that keeps a city going and then goes unnoticed. The video pauses on the quiet after a place has been put in order; Rei and the crow do not wait for thanks. They turn toward the next distant sign of trouble.
Near the end, they sense danger once more. The blue-black city gives way to the broad light of morning. The ending is not “they were finally recognized,” but simply that they keep going toward someone. As the frame opens into blue and white, their dark silhouettes carry the aftertaste of the song into the sky.
What became visible when I let AI lead
I wanted to find out what kind of visual flow AI would build if I did not get too far ahead of it at every step. Of course, I still reviewed the results and revisited places that no longer matched the intent. But carrying the lyric reading, visual rules, storyboard, and cut images through one connected process gave me a sense of each decision being handed on to the next stage.
Some suggestions I would not have chosen on my own led naturally to the next scene. That was the interesting part of this experiment. I would like to try again and see how far I can follow AI’s ideas before making a different choice myself.
UK garage / rock / garage-houseクロウOpen the song page for audio, lyrics, and notes.Explore this song →Thank you for reading.
← Back to the journal