After losing her mother, grandmother and uncle within a relatively short period, Melanie Nox turned to filmmaking as a way to process her grief. Cempasúchil became her way of celebrating their lives and keeping their memory close.
She wanted the film to hold both the beauty and the unsettling side of loss. That intention shaped its world, from an affectionate dance between Lucía and her grandmother to the nightmare that follows.
Melanie brought that established visual world into the all-new PAI, Utopai Studios’ filmmaking platform, halfway through production. She directed its Production Agent to generate and revise footage around the story she wanted to tell.
Her process gives us a concrete example of production intelligence: using a project’s references and creative context to support the next decision, with the filmmaker directing the work.
In Cempasúchil, Lucía returns to her family’s old home after her grandmother’s death and discovers her spirit caught between the living and the dead. Memories and dreams draw her toward an encounter with her own grief.
For Melanie, the Día de Muertos imagery came from her own life and culture. She combined that familiar imagery with Mexican surrealism, old family memories and an eerie, stop-motion-inspired look.
“Día de Muertos has always been part of my life and culture, so the imagery came from something deeply familiar to me. I also lost my mom, my grandmother, and my uncle within a relatively short period of time, and making this film became a way for me to process that grief through art. I wanted to create something that could hold both the beauty and the unsettling side of loss, while honoring the people I love and the connection that remains with us after they’re gone. In a way, Cempasúchil became my own way of celebrating their lives and keeping their memory close.” - Melanie Nox
Melanie developed the story, characters, visual language and keyframes herself. She used Midjourney and Nano Banana for character designs, environments and visual references, and Dreamina to create the first half of the film, including video generation.
About halfway through production, she moved to PAI. She supplied those existing assets through its conversational workflow, directing the Production Agent to create shots, extract keyframes and revise videos.
She reviewed the results, gave specific notes and generated alternatives until she had material she could use in her edit. The references gave each new instruction a visual starting point.
The ballroom dream begins with Lucía and Young Abuela dancing the Jarabe Tapatío. Melanie supplied their character sheets, a starting two-shot and a ballroom reference with a checkerboard floor, chandeliers, candles, cempasúchil flowers and papel picado.
Her initial 30-second version moved into Catrina and the masked figures by the midpoint. So she gave the joyful passage its own 18-second clip.
Her direction described particular steps, skirt movements, exchanged smiles and close point-of-view turns from each woman. She kept the light warm and the fabric and puppet textures tangible. The scene needed to hold that tenderness before the scare.
When the masked creatures appeared, the earlier ballroom result felt too steady and distant. Melanie wanted the fear to build as though Lucía were trapped among them.
Working from the ballroom reference and the creatures’ character sheets, she directed low Dutch angles, views through a mezcal glass and between candles, and fast cuts as the figures approached the lens. A further lighting pass called for deep purple shadows and red light, while retaining the action and cuts.
The change had a specific purpose: bring the encounter into Lucía’s point of view and connect it to the dream’s wider lighting shift.
In the garden, Abuelita appears, says “Ayúdame” and disappears. Melanie had created the original clip outside PAI. It already had the performance and timing she wanted, but the grandmother looked too solid against the foliage.
She brought the clip into PAI with a reference for Abuelita’s ghostly appearance. Her instructions specified the elements to preserve: the face, dress, camera angle, mouth movement, spoken line and disappearance.
The requested revision was focused: a soft glow around the white hair, pale light in the face and slight translucency at the dress’s edges. Melanie says the change brought Abuelita into the film’s ghostly visual language without remaking the performance.
For Melanie, the conversational workflow reduced the repeated work of bringing characters, environments and keyframes back into each generation. She could describe a change in relation to the scene she was already developing.
Across the PAI portion of production, she reports approximately 36 hours of work over seven days, generating 70 video drafts and considering 28 usable. Those figures include iterations and alternatives; they describe the work in PAI, rather than the film’s total production time or final shot count.
Melanie handled writing, directing, visual development, AI direction, editing and sound design. Ofi Erez contributed sound design and handled mixing and mastering. Melanie selected the footage and shaped the pacing of the finished film.
“PAI gave me a way to communicate my visual ideas directly and turn them into moving images without getting lost in the technical process. I was still the director, the tool helped me get the images in my head onto the screen.” - Melanie Nox
If you’re revising a scene, knowing what to keep matters as much as knowing what to change. Melanie’s notes made that distinction concrete: let the dance stay joyful longer, bring the creatures closer, change the ghost’s appearance while protecting the performance.
At Utopai, we’re building production intelligence infrastructure to help filmmakers carry their creative decisions through production. Cempasúchil shows why that matters in practice: each new pass needs to build on the characters, references and intentions already established.
Melanie’s advice starts there, too. Develop strong character designs, environments and keyframes, then use them as the foundation for the footage you direct.
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