Let Them Dream Cake // Short Film

In this surreal short, a grown-up Alice orchestrates an opulent tea party where guests indulge in edible florals and sugar-dusted rose petals that transport them into a hallucinatory dreamscape. Life-sized cakes emerge, time warps, and reality gives way to a gluttonous floral fantasia. Inspired by the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland and the decadence of Marie Antoinette, this is a world where beauty intoxicates and indulgence becomes ritual—until the sugar crash brings them back to earth.

This AI-infused film is a hybrid approach building on my live-action footage. The process involves capturing a rich foundational real, cinematic footage as the base to train a model's style off of and to guide the AI to align with the film’s aesthetic. This workflow allows us to seamlessly expand the world and add new shots long after the shoot is wrapped—creating new shots in the dreamlike sequence that feel native to the film’s universe. It’s not just a cost-saving measure, it’s the future of storytelling utilizing entirely new production pipelines that unlock creative freedom at scale, bridging the tactile beauty of live-action with the boundless possibilities of AI.

CREDITS: Director: Kristyna Archer | AI Artist: Kristyna Archer | DP: Carissa Dorson | Gaffer: Alex Chandra | Set Designer: Lee Levy | Wardrobe Stylist: Monica Cargile | Food Stylist: Chantael Yu | Sound Mixer: Joe Mullins | Editor: Kristyna Archer