The Almaška Church

Overview

An AI-generated historical documentary exploring the extraordinary story of the Almaška Church in Novi Sad, where in 1797 a new church was built around the existing one, which remained in use until it was dismantled from inside and carried out through the front door.

The Almaška Church: Almas church in 1718, drawn as an old engraving with a cart road and villagers

The church front in wooden scaffolding, people in the street

The church in scaffolding beyond gas lamps and passers-by

The church tower in scaffolding under a lightning storm

Two men carrying a table inside the church under repair

Two men carrying a plank table through a ruined interior

Workers lifting a beam over a pile of rubble

Workers carrying a beam out through the church doors over rubble

I developed the piece end-to-end: historical research, narrative structure, script, visual direction, shot design, archival-style reconstruction, voice, sound, video generation, editing, and final delivery.

The production combined Veo 3, Wan 2.2–2.4, ChatGPT, Jellypod, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro and After Effects, using different models according to their strengths. Veo handled atmospheric cinematic shots and controlled camera movement, while different versions of Wan were tested across historical reconstructions, environmental details, and supporting footage. Jellypod was used for narration and audio production.

A major challenge was creating a believable visual history of a place for which almost no moving-image record exists. Rather than treating generated footage as illustration, I approached each sequence as a reconstruction: researching materials, clothing, landscape, religious objects, architecture, weather, and period atmosphere, then directing the models toward a consistent visual world.

Hands laying clay bricks out to dry in rows

A gloved hand setting a stone into mortar on an old wall

A man in a tricorn hat on the misty marsh

A woman in a white hat beside an officer in uniform

A man and a woman in white hats in a sunlit crowd

Women walking a muddy path toward a small chapel

Vestments on pegs, candles and an arched passage

The film deliberately moves between documentary language and something closer to recovered memory: fog, rain, damaged film texture, static compositions, slow camera movement, fragments of icons, wax candles, marshland, bells, and architecture seen through details rather than spectacle.

Families with ox carts in the fog at night

A woman and five girls in headscarves before carts in the fog

The ruined church tower in rain and lightning

A hand cleaning an old icon lying in the mud

An elderly painter at work on a Madonna and Child

A painter’s brush on the Madonna and Child, close up

A candle and a wooden cross on a stone altar in shafts of light

Women in headscarves lighting candles in a dark church

Men in long coats on a misty marsh by the water

Men in tricorn hats and long coats looking across the marsh

Workers hanging the bells inside the tower

Soldiers and oxen hauling the church bells away on a cart

Soldiers loading two bells onto an ox cart

Crows on the church portal under the eye of providence

Every generated shot was selected, rejected, revised, or regenerated based on composition, historical plausibility, continuity, camera behavior, lighting, atmosphere, and its role in the edit. The models produced possibilities; I decided what belonged in the film.

The project represents the kind of AI filmmaking I am most interested in: using rapidly changing generative tools not simply to make images that were previously expensive to produce, but to make stories that would otherwise have no images at all.