Shofar So Good
I created an alternate reality where Kanye apologizes before Bob Iger.
New Year, Same Covenant
Track 2 of the EP, rendered shot by shot from AI keyframes and cut together with ffmpeg.
- 3:22
- runtime
- 36
- shots + 2 thumbnails
- 1080p24
- 1920×1080
- ~625
- Higgsfield credits
Generated on Higgsfield (Plus plan). Roughly 85% of the spend went to Kling; images were close to free by comparison. A first-pass-only build with no revisions would have run about 470 credits.
Pipeline
- Transcribefaster-whisper (local) turns the track into timed lyrics.
- Shot list36 shots mapped to lyric timestamps, 5–12 s each.
- Character refOne 3-view sheet, reused as image_references on every shot he's in.
- KeyframesOne still per shot, text-to-image with the character ref where needed.
- AnimateEach keyframe becomes the start_image for image-to-video.
- Assembleffmpeg trims each clip to its slot, concats, muxes the MP3, adds titles and fades.
Models
| Stage | Model | Settings | Unit cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Character ref sheet | Nano Banana Pro | 16:9, 2K | ~4 cr |
| Keyframes | Nano Banana Pro | 16:9, 1K, char sheet as reference | 2 cr |
| Keyframe edits | Nano Banana Pro | image-to-image on the existing keyframe | 2 cr |
| Thumbnails | Nano Banana Pro | 16:9, 2K | ~4 cr |
| Video clips | Kling 3.0 | pro, sound off, 16:9, 5–13 s, keyframe as start_image | 14 cr / 8 s |
Considered but not used: Seedance 2.5 (general video), MiniMax H3 (2K keyframes), Wan 2.7 (lip-sync, not needed since there are no on-camera vocals).
Credit tally
| Item | Count | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Character reference sheets | 2 × 2K | ~8 |
| Keyframes, first pass | 36 × 1K | 72 |
| Keyframe retries (face hidden, no menorah, 9-branch hanukkiah) | 9 × 1K | 18 |
| Thumbnails | 2 × 2K | ~8 |
| Video clips, first pass | 33 clips, 223 s | ~390 |
| Video retries (candle, apple, menorah, preset-blocked resubmits) | 12 clips, ~90 s | ~157 |
| Images subtotal | 49 | ~106 |
| Video subtotal | 45 clips, ~313 s | ~547 |
| Total | ~625 |
Things worth knowing next time
- Kling hallucinates physics on small objects.The match extinguishing the candle, the apple sprouting a second stem. The fix was prompting stillness ("hand does not move, camera does the motion") rather than describing the action.
- "Remove X" edits can add more X.Removing the menorah from the dinner table put two more on the sideboard. A second pass describing what the surface should hold ("only a bowl of fruit") worked.
- Higgsfield injects preset recommendations and refuses the job.Some prompts get an "IN THE DARK" suggestion instead of a render. Resubmit with declined_preset_id and it goes through.
- Character consistency held from one ref sheet.A single 3-view sheet stayed on-model across 20+ shots with no LoRA or Soul training.
- Ask Kling for slot length + 1 s.Clips come back about 0.04 s over, so the extra second is trim headroom.
- Whisper hears "shofar" as "show far."Sanity-check any lyric-driven shot list against the actual song.
About This Project
What if Kanye had actually apologized to the Jewish community? The premise was born from a specific news cycle: Bob Iger caught heat for nearly pulling Jimmy Kimmel off the air in a controversial free speech dust-up, and suddenly everyone was talking about who owes whom an apology. Different offense entirely — but it raised the question: if a Disney CEO is being pressured to say sorry for silencing a late-night host, how is the guy who went on a full antisemitic spiral still getting a pass? Six tracks. One fictional redemption arc.
The six tracks on the EP are each thematically tied to major Jewish holidays, with AI-voiced cameos from Pop Smoke, Post Malone, Drake, Future, and Juice WRLD. Lyrics were written with ChatGPT, music was generated in Musicful, and each track was re-rendered in the featured artists’ voices using Jammable. The album art is AI-generated.
Released on Rosh Hashanah 2025 (the Jewish New Year, year 5786) — because timing is everything.
A year later, for Rosh Hashanah 5787, the EP got a follow-up: a full music video for "New Year, Same Covenant," generated shot by shot from AI keyframes on Higgsfield and cut together with ffmpeg. The video and a full production breakdown are below.
