Time Travel via Pixel: Merging VFX and AI to Visualize 1940s Singapore

Introduction: The Filmmaker's Dilemma

Documentary filmmakers have always had a time-travel problem.

When you are telling the story of modern Singapore, you have 4K cameras. When you are telling the story of the last few decades, you have decent archival footage. But what happens when you need to transport the audience back to the 1940s?

You have grainy black-and-white photos, perhaps a few seconds of shaky newsreel, but the feeling of the era. The color, the atmosphere, the quiet moments on a street corner, is often lost to time.

Usually, you have two choices:

1. The "Ken Burns" Effect: Slowly zooming in on a static photograph. (Classic, but lacks immersion).

   
   

2. The Reenactment: Hiring actors and renting period costumes. (Expensive, and often risks breaking the viewer's immersion if it looks too "staged").

   
   

For our recent collaboration with a local production house, Protagonist by M and Channel NewsAsia (CNA) on their series "Through Time," a third option was explored.

We didn't just want to show the 1940s; we wanted to hallucinate it. We used Generative AI Video to breathe life into history.

The "Hybrid" Workflow: AI as the Atmosphere

There is a misconception that AI video is here to replace the cameraman. It’s not. In this project, AI wasn't the main character; it was the set designer and the time machine.

The series explores the hidden history of Singapore's landmarks. Our challenge was to visualize the 1940s, a pivotal, turbulent decade, in scenes where no footage existed. We needed to capture the bustling atmosphere of the ports, the specific texture of the pre-war shophouses, and the mood of a bygone era.

We used cutting-edge GenAI video models to create "atmospheric fillers." We weren't trying to trick the audience into thinking this was real archival footage. We were creating a moving painting.

Why this worked:

• Texture over Truth: We focused on capturing the vibe, the dust motes in the air, the way the 1940s sun hit a colonial facade, the movement of shadows, rather than trying to deepfake a specific historical figure.

  
  

• Seamless Blending: The AI footage was carefully color-graded and grain-matched to sit perfectly alongside real interviews and actual archival photos. It acted as the connective tissue of the story.

The "Uncanny Valley" is a Feature, Not a Bug

In a documentary context, you actually don't want the AI footage to look 100% photorealistic. If it looks too real, you risk misleading the audience.

For Through Time, we leaned into a slightly stylized, dreamlike aesthetic for the AI sequences. This created a subconscious signal to the viewer: "This is a memory. This is a visualization of the past."

It allowed the storytelling to be immersive without sacrificing journalistic integrity. It bridged the gap between a history lesson and a cinematic experience.

3 Lessons for Brands on Using AI Video

If you are a brand or agency looking at the exploding world of AI video (Sora, Runway, Kling, Veo, Seedance), here is what we learned from getting this onto national television:

1. Don't Replace; Augment: Don't use AI to generate a generic CEO talking to the camera. Use it to generate the impossible, the background, the abstract concept, or a historical flashback that would cost a fortune to film practically.

   
   

2. The "Prompt" is Just the Beginning: The raw video out of an AI model is rarely broadcast-ready. It requires a human touch, upscaling, frame interpolation, and professional color grading, to make it sing. The magic is in the post-production.

   
   

3. Speed is the Killer App: We visualized an entire decade of history in days, not months. For brands that need to move at the speed of social media, GenAI video offers a velocity that traditional production can't match.

Conclusion: The Camera Can Now See What Isn't There

The Through Time project proved that Generative AI is ready for prime time. It’s no longer just for weird internet memes; it’s a serious tool for high-end storytelling.

We are moving from an era where we can only film what exists to an era where we can film what we can imagine.

Do you have a story that’s impossible to film? Our Computational Creativity team specializes in using GenAI to visualize the invisible. Let’s build your time machine.