# Twenty-Four Wishes per Second: extended case study [Project brief](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents/twenty-four-wishes.md) These are first-party portfolio claims, not independent verification. Null or missing fields mean not published. A preview clip is not the complete film. Images and videos have not been transcribed. Reference works are influences, not projects or credits by Arantxa. Case-study extracts follow source text order and may retain presentation fragments; use the project brief for factual lookup. Editorial draft appendices are excluded. ## film [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-film) ## Film premise [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-film-statement) A DIRECTOR WITH NOTHING TO SAY falls into a zoetrope and spends A HUNDRED YEARS OF CINEMA looking for the reason she started. Nine minutes, ZOETROPE TO AI, generated shot by shot and sewn together by hand. TWENTY-FOUR FRAMES A SECOND, twenty-four wishes. ## twenty four wishes [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-twenty-four-wishes) “Forget wishes, tell your story.” In the script from the first draft. TWENTY-FOUR WISHES A SECOND TWENTY-FOUR FRAMES. TWENTY-FOUR WISHES. Cinema runs at twenty-four frames a second. The frames were never the hard part. The hard part is wanting to tell something. Halfway through, the Tin Man tells her: forget wishes, tell your story. The line was in the script from the first draft and nobody paid it any attention. When we went looking for a title, we found it was already written inside the film. The thesis was there before we knew it was the thesis. ## chain [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-chain) 1834 2026 Every stage in this chain was, in its day, the new tool that was going to kill cinema. The zoetrope is from 1834. It is the first machine that made a drawing move. Starting there and ending in AI is not decoration, it is the argument. Zoetrope A sequence of drawings, a turning drum. Movement begins in the gaps between still images. Lumière A camera pointed at the world and left running. Cinema before anyone knew what it was for. Méliès The camera becomes a stage for impossible things. A cut can turn an ordinary room into a dream. Disney Drawings gain weight, rhythm and personality. Every movement becomes a performance. Technicolor Colour becomes a world of its own. The image can feel as vivid as the story it tells. 2001 A Space Odyssey. Scale, silence and a frame that asks you to look longer, leaving room for mystery. Twin Peaks A familiar world made strange. Atmosphere becomes part of the story. Tangerine A whole feature shot on a phone. A different kind of access to the moving image. AI A shot begins with words. Choosing what it means, and where it belongs, is still direction. ## by hand [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-by-hand) WHAT WAS DONE BY HAND, THAT YOU WILL ASSUME THE MACHINE DID Models make shots. They don't make films. Everything in between is the work. ## design [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-design) Nothing here was found. Every object in every frame was designed, named and approved before a shot existed, and most were redesigned two or three times after that. CHARACTERS Design Texture Eighteen characters, designed and named before a single shot was generated. Aaliyah first, because nine minutes only hold if she stays the same person: braided pigtails, coral puffer, the gap in her teeth, written the same way in every prompt. Everything is clay and has to look like clay, so a shot that came back smooth was generated again. ART DIRECTION Design In film We chose the posters one by one, seventy percent of them directed by women, and rebuilt the bookshelf as a real cinema bibliography, spine by spine. Nobody pauses the film to read a shelf. But that is the difference between a room that belongs to someone and a set that was assembled. TITLES AND CAMERA Design In film A model does not understand “orbit around her”. It understands what has to leave the frame, and in what order, so the move was built in 3D first and handed over as reference. The credits were blocked out the same way, then set by hand, letter by letter. Hierarchy, spacing and timing are not decisions a tool makes for you. A MODEL WILL GIVE YOU A SHELF FULL OF BOOKS. Deciding which books they are IS STILL DIRECTION. ## space [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-space) The space A model can give you the shot. It cannot give you the space. In this outtake, faces distort and a character appears twice. We mapped the Red Room so characters and cameras stayed in the right place. A · Arrival Everyone placed before a single shot exists: Aaliyah arriving, Laura on the floor, Cooper, the Dwarf, the Giant, the camera facing the curtains. B · The recorder The camera moves in on Cooper. Every other mark holds, so the room stays the same room. C · The set, reveal The pull back that reveals the Red Room is a set, with Lynch at the monitor. A model will not invent this: it has to be decided. D · The set, break The cast steps off set and Laura stays on the floor. Continuity of a space nobody generated in one piece. E · The prophecy Back in the Red Room, regrouped, Cooper furthest from camera. Same room, new blocking. What worked was cutting the sequence first, as if the space were right, and then generating the shots that cut asked for. The other way round doesn't work. ## direction [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-direction) PROMPT PERFORMANCE There is nobody to give the note to. you give it to the text, and the text carries everything a direction would. Describing an emotion gets you a neutral face. The note has to go into the text, because there is nobody to give it to. THE FRUSTRATION Design In film Nothing to say, and a client who wants it tomorrow. That had to land in four seconds with no line explaining it. “Frustrated” gets you a neutral face, so the note went in as an action: hammer the keyboard, annoyed, while carrying on with something else. The body does the work the adjective could not. AALIYAH AND JUDY Design In film Judy is the one who will not let go. She hugs Aaliyah goodbye, lifts the lighter from her pocket while she does it, and ends up flat on the road lighting up with it. None of that is in the dialogue. So the note is not “warm” or “sly”. It is what she wants from the other and what she is keeping to herself. An emotion is too broad; a relationship gives the movement something to answer to. THE RECEPTION Design In film The camera finds the floor first: rows of stools, and a chain on every ankle. She says nothing about it. The next shot is her face working out what she is looking at. Anger written as “angry” comes back as a scowl. What works is giving her something to receive, and letting the cut decide how long she has to take it in. Nobody can be given a note. There is no actor to talk to between takes, no one to pull aside and tell what the scene is really about. So the note goes into the text. Where each character is coming from, what they want, what they are hiding. Written down, before anything is generated, in the same words every time. Do that and the performance shows up on its own: how close they stand, who leans, who breaks the hug first. Skip it and you get very good-looking people feeling nothing. ## sewn together [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-sewn-together) Sewn together Each shot is generated on its own. We corrected the details by hand to keep the film consistent from one frame to the next. The Emerald City The figures the model put at the gate, against the shot that ended up in the film. The poppy field The overhead the model produced, against the shot that ended up in the film. The director’s badge The badge on his lapel came back reading D55. Nobody stops the film to read it, and it is wrong in every take until it is fixed. The phone screen The interface on the phone came back in an invented language. It was rebuilt by hand, button by button. The buns and the laptop Two things wrong in the same take. Her hair came back as loose curls instead of the two clay buns, and she was given a laptop with its own dark keyboard when she works at an Apple display with a separate white one, as she does in every other shot in the room. We made this with MITO AI. Make something of your own. The Emerald City Aaliyah Character sheet. The canon every later step refers back to. Judy Character sheet. Period gingham against Aaliyah's puffer. The scene before The same set with the figures already in it, and they do not hold up. The pose Rebuilt from the two character sheets, in the position the wide shot needs. Zoomed in Enlarged, the two of them come apart. Everything after this exists to fix it. The empty set The same frame with both of them taken out, so the set survives on its own. The image The empty set and the good pose, back in as reference. Keep the set identical, place them far off, let the green bounce on them. In film The shot as it plays in the film. The poppy field Aaliyah Character sheet. The same canon as every other shot. Judy Character sheet. The scene before The overhead of the path, with the two of them already walking it. Zoomed in Enlarged, the two of them are a smear. At this size the model stops holding faces. The pose Rebuilt close, from behind, with the arm over the shoulder the shot needs. The image The same overhead, with the good pose dropped back into it far away. In film The shot as it plays in the film. ## cut [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-cut) THE CUT THE FILM WAS FOUND IN THE EDIT, NOT IN THE SHOTS. The opening was built twice. First as a wide of her room, then as a run of details: the fan, the posters, the window, the cereal, the ashtray. Both were wrong. Objects tell you what someone likes. They do not tell you what is wrong with her. So the client goes first. The call, the deadline, the seventh round of revisions, and only after that the room — fewer things, and only the ones carrying the state she is in. Most of what we generated for that opening is not in the film. Sequences that added nothing were cut, keeping the film under ten minutes. Olmo designed the sound. The edit decides when it enters: room tone and keys first, music only when needed. Credits and grain were finished by hand. We also cut a line explaining the trick. It made the machine sound like the filmmaker. Leaving it unsaid gave the ending more room. NOTHING HERE was decided by the tool. THE FILM IS THE CUT. ## cost [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-cost) 9:12 The longest thing we've made 300 Bad versions of one shot before the good one 720 1080 4k Shots redone twice as the resolution arrived The time didn't go into generating. Generating is fast; that was never the problem. It went to three places, none of them the one people imagine. Continuity. The bag, the coffee maker, the clips, the reel. Sewing together a film generated in pieces that don't know each other. Resolution. Much of the film was generated at 720p, because that was what existed when we started. Then 1080 arrived, then 4K, and shots had to be redone twice. Upscaling saves nothing: on a wide shot full of detail it invents what it cannot see. Iteration. On one shot, three hundred bad versions before the good one. That is not a figure of speech. Multiply it by every shot in nine minutes and there is the time. THESE TOOLS ARE VERY GOOD at doing what you ask them badly. A BEAUTIFUL SHOT, IMMEDIATELY. What they don't give you is THE JUDGEMENT: whether that shot goes before or after, WHETHER IT'S SURPLUS, whether she was carrying the bag, WHERE THE LIGHT FALLS. All of that is still DIRECTING, THE SAME JOB it always was. What has changed is where the bottleneck is. It used to be budget and access. Now it's knowing what you want to say, and nobody has made that cheaper. ## references [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-references) References What each world borrows Coraline The texture Kubo and the Two Strings Made by hand Lumière The opening Méliès The trip to the moon The Wizard of Oz Technicolor Twin Peaks The red room Tangerine The alley 2001 The apes LAIKA Clay you can see the hands in Her room The posters, chosen one by one. ## team [Source section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-team) Twenty-Four Wishes per Second The good decisions in this film came out of meetings, not out of one head. DIRECTION Arantxa Barcia SCRIPT, EDIT Adriana Arratia CHARACTER DESIGN Josefa Toro SOUND DESIGN Olmo Sebastián PRODUCTION, GENERATION Beatriz Pinto Ferreira MOTION Macarena Rico PRODUCTION COMPANY MITO Films We made this with MITO AI. Make something of your own. Try MITO AI