СТАНА

The Direction

СТАНА comes from Bulgarian folklore. A creature that visits people in the night and takes them. I wanted to work with folk horror and really test what I could build in terms of atmosphere and scene composition with AI. The Balkans, the mountains, that specific kind of dread that lives in old stories.

The Process

Detailed prompts, my own sketches and visual references. I worked some scenes in Photoshop before moving to video generation because control matters more to me than speed. Every shot has to mean something. Not look good, mean something. A frame is always in service of the narrative, never the other way around.

СТАНА was another directing exercise as much as a technical one. Keeping everything consistent across a folk horror environment pushed me to refine the workflow further, to get closer to putting on screen exactly what I have in my head.

The Result

One of the most complete pieces in terms of visual world building. The detailed pre-production process became a standard part of how I approach every project after it.