It’s Time to Talk About GROK Imagine: Part Two

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

Today you are going to become Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, or simple George Méliès, the French magician turned filmmaker who gave the world “A Trip to The Moon,” complete with rocket-induced black eye. Of course if we think rockets, we think Rocketman, formally known as Elon Musk who bought Twitter, dubbed it X, and is now giving away for free an opportunity to try out his text-to-video via prompt application called GROK Imagine.

Remember in Part One how we compared GROK Imagine, the text-to-video maker on the X platform, in its infancy days like early filmmaking, with the Birth of a Notion theme, riffing off DW Griffith “Birth of a Nation” from 1915? Well, here we are 110 years later once again at the dawn of a new era in content creation.

But first, let’s just relax and recall Aristotle, the master of Western Storytelling, and his ancient words of wisdom. (There is point, this isn’t just a fancy education flex, trust me.) Written in 350 B.C.E “Nicomachean Ethics” by Aristotle, excerpted here from a translation by W. D. Ross, spelled out the following: “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. [we] become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”

For today, in “It’s Time to Talk About GROK Imagine: Part Two” this means, we’re going to invoke Nike’s slogan and “Just Do It.”

Yes, you may feel lost and afraid even with the bright light of Aristotle shining from the distant ancestral storytelling past, but you must be brave. Because after you read this, you will be able to make a movie from words, shoved right down the throat of this technology in what is known as a “prompt.” Think of the prompt as a mind seed, if you like, as you inject your ideas into the virtual machinery.

Okay, as mentioned, let’s just do it …simply learn these lists before we “promptly’ take flight. It’s okay to fail, flail and break a few things, including your virtual pencils as you become an expert at making tiny movies for free.

GROK Charts and More GROK

Charts Probably the biggest hurdle to using a text-to-video application like GROK Imagine is fear; that or not knowing where to start. And that would be on x.com, sign in, and go to Post, see Grok Icon that looks like it was torn straight out of the Hunger Games Mockingjay logo, and click it. If you long click it, you can make a Grok Imagine video.

If you download the GROK application off Apple store, Google Play or elsewhere, then you can upload family, photos, crime scenes, cereal boxes, any kind of image (real or fictional) for Grok to chew on.

This is where specificity and detail rule the day. It will either animate a photo of the three bears to chase Goldilocks, or it will take your idea and make it into the machine’s approximation of your idea for you.

Specificity and Detail? T

hese two factors, as well as some film-making, scene structure, design, camera framing, plus vfx or virtual special effect tips as listed below will help greatly in mastering your own Trip to the Noon, or Moon, but not in June, hopefully, too cliche.

Here are a few prompt-examples to give you a feel for the use of words to make a moving picture, to essentially direct with verbs and adjectives... A few prompts to start you off: “make an ad for Budweiser using talking salamis in lederhosen twerking to a polka band” or “enchanted super hot manic pixie dream girl waves at me from Home Depot parking lot” or “six red horses trample a lush green field of white-streaked-violet Parrot and Lorenzo tulips in Holland chased by angry 1600’s villagers in heavy clogs with pitchforks."

Study The Star System Before Going to the Moon  Screenmancer Staff Generated[

Screenmancer Staff Generated Screenmancer Staff Screenmancer Staff Generated

Feel free to print and compile a little booklet before you dive into Grok on X.

If you’re still feeling shy about using GROK Imagine, after all that?

Just Copy/Paste This Example:


Parisian café dawn, two steampunk goggled elephants drop sugarcubes in a samovar, while wearing vintage embroidered saddles and head-dress harnesses, as bells on their outfits jingle in grainy film from 1800’s. (Alternate: add “make black and white film” or any other tint.)

This ends Part Two of Two, stay tuned to for more tutorials… as needed.

# # #