"Just a girl..."

That's something my step-daughter Fletcher says - "I'm just a girl..." With her in mind, I made this video.

The lyrics were free-flowing thoughts - as I considered my kids and their experience stepping into adulthood.

I fed all of my jumble of thoughts into Anthropic's Claude and had it transpose those ideas into lyrics for the song. I used Udio to turn the lyrics into musical verse, and Midjourney to produce the consistent character animations throughout. For simplicity, I used CapCut to assemble the video and sync it with the audio.

Midjourney AI Video (V1)

+ Udio

+ Anthropic's Claude.AI

+ Brian Sykes [human element]

Twenty-Something Reflections

Verse 1:

Got my degree in a picture frame

Thought I'd change the world, thought I'd make my name

Now I'm sitting in this cubicle light

Checking emails that don't matter at midnight

Coffee stains on my business clothes

Wonder if this is how the story goes

'Cause I used to dream in colors bright

Now it's all just black and white

Verse 2:

Clock strikes five but I'm still here

Drowning in deadlines, drowning in fear

That maybe this is all there is

Just paychecks and politics

Remember when I had a plan

To be more than just another hand

In this machine that keeps on turning

While my passion keeps on burning out

Verse 3:

Mirror shows a stranger's face

Lost inside this corporate maze

When did I become so small

When did I stop dreaming at all

Maybe tomorrow I'll find my way

Maybe tomorrow I'll have something to say

That matters more than quarterly reports

That lifts me up, that breaks these walls

Chorus:

But tonight I'm twenty-something and confused

Tonight I'm twenty-something and I'm used

To feeling like I'm running out of time

To make this ordinary life of mine

Into something that would make me proud

Something real, something loud

But for now I'm just another face

In this twenty-something rat race

Outro:

(spoken) Maybe I should buy that van I saw

And go find my twenty-something truth

So, let’s dig into how I created the images in Midjourney

Midjourney

This whole thing started with creating an image of a young woman, sitting in an office chair - and creating a sense of the world zooming past as she sat serenely - distant and disconnected.