# Arantxa Barcia ARANTXA BARCIA directs and designs for screen. Over the past TWELVE YEARS she has moved between MOTION, IDENTITY AND ART DIRECTION, building visual systems for CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS, RECORD LABELS and independent studios in Europe and the US. Her work sits where EDITORIAL RIGOUR meets the moving image: TYPE THAT HOLDS ITS GROUND, movement that earns its place. She works from SAN FRANCISCO. [Visual home](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/) · [Navigation](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) Only published text and media links are included. Missing categories, credits and descriptions are not inferred. This text does not describe unseen video contents. # Twenty-Four Wishes per Second [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) Category: Fiction Caption: SHORT FILM · SAN FRANCISCO 2026 [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/4NA-1.png) ## film [View section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-film) Twenty-Four Wishes per Second SHORT FILM DIRECTED BY ARANTXA BARCIA SAN FRANCISCO · 2026 Generated shot by shot, graded and sewn by hand Format: DIGITAL / 16:9 Type: SHORT FILM Production: MITO Films Platform: MITO AI CRAFT HISTORY, ZOETROPE TO AI with Adriana Arratia, script and edit ×9 STAGES GENERATION, WORST SHOT Seedance, Grok, Nano Banana ×300 TAKES GRADE DaVinci Resolve, hand-built LUTs ×3 LOOKS CONTINUITY AND RETOUCH Photoshop, After Effects ×11 FIXES THE ROOM posters and bookshelf, Josefa Toro ×35 TITLES RESOLUTION, 720P TO 1080P ×2 PASSES FINAL RUNTIME 9'12" www.arantxabarcia.com 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 [View 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 [View 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. 1834 · Zoetrope A sequence of drawings, a turning drum. Movement begins in the gaps between still images. 1895 · Lumière A camera pointed at the world and left running. Cinema before anyone knew what it was for. 1902 · Méliès The camera becomes a stage for impossible things. A cut can turn an ordinary room into a dream. 1930s · Disney Drawings gain weight, rhythm and personality. Every movement becomes a performance. 1939 · Technicolor Colour becomes a world of its own. The image can feel as vivid as the story it tells. 1968 · 2001 A Space Odyssey. Scale, silence and a frame that asks you to look longer, leaving room for mystery. 1990 · Twin Peaks A familiar world made strange. Atmosphere becomes part of the story. 2015 · Tangerine A whole feature shot on a phone. A different kind of access to the moving image. 2026 · AI A shot begins with words. Choosing what it means, and where it belongs, is still direction. ## by hand [View 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 [View section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-design) Nothing in this film was found. Every object in every frame was designed, named and approved before a single shot was generated, and most of them were redesigned two or three times after that. SCENE CHARACTERS 01 Design In film Characters We designed Aaliyah before anything else existed, because nine minutes only hold together if she stays the same person. Braided pigtails, coral puffer jacket, the gap in her front teeth: written the same way in every prompt, never paraphrased. Everything is clay and has to look like clay, so when a shot came back smooth, or the gap closed, we generated it again. SCENE ART DIRECTION 02 SCENE TITLES AND CAMERA 03 A MODEL WILL GIVE YOU A SHELF FULL OF BOOKS. Deciding which books they are IS STILL DIRECTION. Art direction (editorial draft) A room becomes somebody's room through what they keep in it. We chose the posters one by one, seventy percent of them films directed by women, and rebuilt the bookshelf as a real cinema bibliography, spine by spine. Nobody will pause the film to read the shelves. But that is the difference between a room that belongs to someone and a set that was assembled. Titles and camera (editorial draft) A model does not understand “orbit around her”. It understands what has to leave the frame, and in what order, so we built the move in 3D first and handed it over as reference. The title was animated by hand, letter by letter. Hierarchy, spacing and timing are not decisions a tool makes for you. Credits (editorial draft) [Arantxa: describe how the credits were designed and brought into the film.] ## space [View 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. A model gives you beautiful shots, but it doesn't know where anything is. The whole Red Room sequence didn't add up. The director was at the video village in one shot and standing on set in the next, without having moved. The eye peered through the wall instead of the window. The curtains were on the wrong side. All of that you have to decide yourself and then force, shot by shot, because nobody will solve it for you. Schematic A A · Arrival Schematic B B · The recorder Schematic C C · The set, reveal Schematic D D · The set, break Schematic E E · The prophecy 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 [View 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. What works is subtext: where each character is coming from, what they want, what they are hiding. SCENE THE FRUSTRATION 01 Design In film The frustration The film opens on someone who has nothing to say and a client who wants it by tomorrow, and that had to land in about four seconds without a line explaining it. Describing an emotion doesn't work. "Frustrated" gets you a neutral face. What works is giving her something physical to do that only a frustrated person would do: hammering the keyboard, the cigarette already lit next to the cereal, the two-finger gesture at a screen that has already hung up. The other half of it is what she is not doing. No sigh, no head in hands, no looking at camera for sympathy. She is annoyed the way people are actually annoyed at work, which is quietly and while doing something else. SCENE AALIYAH AND JUDY 02 SCENE THE RECEPTION 03 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. Aaliyah and Judy (editorial draft) Judy is the one who will not let go. She hugs Aaliyah goodbye and lifts the lighter from her pocket while she does it, smiles about it, and ends up flat on the yellow brick road lighting up with it. None of that is in the dialogue: it is in what her hands are doing. So the note goes in before generating, and it is not “warm” or “sly”. It is where each of them is coming from, what they want from the other and what they are keeping to themselves. An emotion on its own is too broad; a relationship gives the movement something to respond to. The reception (editorial draft) Aaliyah walks into the animation studio and the camera finds the floor first: rows of stools, and a chain on every ankle. She does not say anything 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: the shot before decides the performance, and the cut decides how long she has to let it land. ## sewn together [View section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-sewn-together) Sewn together 01.0 Every shot is generated on its own. The model doesn't know what happened in the one before. So the whole film has to be sewn together, shot by shot. This is what eats the time, and what nobody imagines. What we fixed 01.1 Detail · The bag The bag She carries it in some shots and not in others. We removed it from almost all of them. 01.2 Detail · The coffee maker The coffee maker Changed model between one shot and the next. 01.4 Detail · The film reel The film reel Perforations on both sides in some shots, on one side in others. A real reel has them on one. 01.5 Detail · The buns The buns Hair texture in some shots, clay in others. 01.6 Detail · The signs The signs One read "tan boss" instead of "the boss". The director's ID badge read "D55". 02.0 Some of it doesn't go away. Regenerating a shot gives you a different shot, not a corrected one, so these stayed in the film. What regenerating won't fix 02.1 Detail · The doll The doll Lying at the back of a shot, looking like a dead Barbie, with no business being there. 02.2 Detail · The ghosts The ghosts Two characters drinking coffee, brighter and less saturated than the background, pasted on the scene. 02.3 Detail · The hands The hands Extra fingers. 02.4 Detail · The bookshelf The bookshelf The titles came out deformed. We wrote thirty-five fictional books on film and technology and set them by hand, so the shelf would say something about her too. 02.5 Detail · The phone The phone The buttons on her screen when her mother calls, in an invented language. Rebuilt. ## cut [View section](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/twenty-four-wishes#case-cut) THE CUT THE FILM WAS FOUND IN THE EDIT, NOT IN THE SHOTS. We replaced the opening wide shot with details of her room: the fan, posters, window, cereal and ashtray. The boss's voice arrives before his face, and hers comes last. Sequences that added nothing were cut, keeping the film under ten minutes. Three looks were graded by hand in DaVinci. Skin saturation at 0.15 made the Red Room feel lit, not filtered. Detail · The fan Detail · The posters Detail · The window Detail · The cereal Detail · The spray cans Detail · The cameras THE CUT / CONT'D The sound was designed by Olmo, but how it enters is an editing decision: the opening has no music, only room tone and keys. Music arrives when it has to, not underneath everything. The end credits were set one by one: hierarchy, sizes, letterspacing. No tool decides any of that. And over everything, grain, by hand. The reference was analogue. Without grain you don't believe any of it. The hardest call was how much of the trick to show. There was a shot where she said it out loud, something like "I can do whatever I want with this". We cut it: too obvious, and it made it sound like the machine does the work, which is the opposite of what the film says. Cutting it is more elegant. It also makes the film more ambiguous about something I am sure of. I still don't know if that was judgement or if I was afraid to say it. NOTHING HERE was decided by the tool. THE FILM IS THE CUT. ## cost [View 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 Shots redone when 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. A good part of the film was generated at 720p, because that was what existed when we started. Then 1080 arrived and shots had to be redone. Upscaling saves nothing: when a frame holds a lot of information, a wide shot of a room full of things, the upscaler invents and comes out worse than the original. 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 [View 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 [View 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 Made with MITO AI TRY IT # FIRST DAY ON SET [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/first-day-on-set) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/7EN-4.png) Further project details are not published yet. # MILKMAN [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/milkman) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/73F-4.jpg) Further project details are not published yet. # ZARA "LE DINER" [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/zara-le-diner) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) Caption: CAMPAIGN FILM · PARIS 2025 [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/7N0-0.jpg) Further project details are not published yet. # WILLY ECHEVARRIA [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/willy-echevarria) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/6YJ-4.jpg) Further project details are not published yet. # REAL MADRID [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/real-madrid) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/73G-4.jpg) Further project details are not published yet. # LE FLEUR 1 [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/le-fleur-1) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) Caption: MUSIC VIDEO · TYLER, THE CREATOR 2023 [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/7N3-0.jpg) Further project details are not published yet. # MITO [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/mito) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/7EQ-4.jpg) Further project details are not published yet. # LA ROJA [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/la-roja) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/7DY-4.jpg) Further project details are not published yet. # LAGAAM [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/lagaam) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/6YK-4.jpg) Further project details are not published yet. # DELLAFUENTE [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/dellafuente) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) Caption: TOUR IDENTITY AND STAGE VISUALS · 2024 [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/7N6-0.jpg) Further project details are not published yet. # W MARKETPLACE [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/w-marketplace) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/7DZ-4.jpg) Further project details are not published yet. # MITO REEL [Visual project](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/work/mito-reel) · [All projects](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/agents) [Poster](https://www.arantxabarcia.com/media/7ER-4.jpg) Further project details are not published yet.