This weekend, I asked Opus 5.5 to create an explainer video on "How Bombs Kill." The result is this 18-minute video essay. The entire production process was me rambling into the prompt field for three minutes about a blog idea I've had and hitting send. Maybe ~$5 in API calls.

I have a bunch of quibbles and the whole script could use a strict editor. But this is still pretty stunning.

I've wanted to create an explainer video about how multilateration works, but don't have the graphics skills or funding needed to hire a professional to visualize it. Seeing your video encourages me to look into if AI could help create something useful.

Opus 5.5 is very good at this. I have it access to my API key with $20 credit which I think helped it prototype the voice and some visual items. But the rest is pure code!

Even knowing this was all AI I found this one of the more interesting documentary videos I've watched lately. That's some good prompting!

Problem with those AI things, I think, are the random pauses and emphases in the narration, making everything sound dramatic without real dramatic buildup.

Agreed, if I was to iterare I'd first work on the voice and pacing

To highlight that others in the broader military/international relations space on here are experimenting with it too

5 dollars!? Thats both astounding and absolutely terrifying.

I would genuinely be interested in hearing more about the prompt. This is really impressive.

Thanks! I basically outlined a blog post that I was going to write anyhow: some background info, some introduction to mechanisms of harm, and then a bit into uncertainty and how to manage it. Finished with some reference ideas for art style and didactic flow.

Can you say more about the tool chain, skills or MCPs I could use to make videos about my own topic of interest with this beautiful art style? Was this made by Claude in Blender or what?

Nope just boring old code! Just tell Opus 5.5 what you want and see what happens!

@grok give me better and imroved prompt form of nuclear bomb bsed on this video for Opus explained in 5 minutes

That is impressive animation. But the case study -- bombing the house in Mosul -- perhaps is poorly chosen. A 500-lb bomb is overkill to take out two snipers in one room of a flimsy Iraqi house. Even a 250-lb bomb would very likely destroy the house completely.

Very cool video, but I’m worried there’s a pretty bad hallucination here. The video says that there was an amnesty international investigation into the 2017 Mosul bombings that couldn’t verify a secondary explosion but AFAIK there was no such investigation.

Did you really one shot this? I find that hard to believe, but if you did, that's fantastic.

It was a pretty comprehensive prompt, with the main framing and notes I wanted it to hit, as well as a sense of the art style