Rewinding History: How I Brought 1913’s Transport Festival to Life with AI

Every Thursday at S4E we do an AI video making class with Neil, In the morning we watch videos on YouTube about the latest AI image and video trends and platforms. We use generators such as Freepik, Hailuo, ChatGPT, Gemini and Runway. 

I really enjoy this class and Neil teaches us well. Everyone in the group is making a video based on their interest. I made a video based on my interest, and I decided to make a video on Melbourne’s public transport back in 1913. (Take note some AI platforms may not allow you to generate images of real people, licenced characters or copyrighted designs, but as the designs used here are in the public domain as they ran out of copyright using the life plus 100 years rule) I also thought this was a great idea to bring the past to life! With AI anything is possible, including something like this! 

My inspiration for this video was my friends who make train related videos such as the YouTuber Quinn’s Victorian Trains who goes out filming trains at many locations and edits his videos and posts them on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAs0XMMnJ_OOC0pBtX7UwEA here is a link to his channel, you should watch his channel if you like trains or travel related content. 

I made this video by first using text to image prompts on the mentioned AI platforms such as “Realistic black and white image of Victorian steam Locomotive DD 596 at Albert Park Station in the summer of early 1913” and then from the created images I used those images to create videos, where the AI will actually make a prompt based on your image input but you can change it if you wish. I made a total of 15 scenes, after creating all the videos I used Adobe to put the video together and then put a song behind it, the song chosen was When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam by Irving Berlin who also wrote and performed hits such as Puttin’ On The Ritz, Blue Skies, There’s No Business Like Show Business and even White Christmas. The chosen song is also in the public domain. 

AI generated image of Steam Locomotive V 511 in the Victorian countryside:

Poster for the video:

Watch the video here:

Looking into the future should I create a similar video but it’s 2137 and use hypothetical futuristic trains? or would you like to see a video based on another thing like Minecraft?

Created by David!