Made by one person, in one room
The tools
Open and closed
MidJourney is used as a sketchbook, for mood, colour and cinematic tone. Google Nano Banana and GPT Image build the controlled stills: character identity, props, continuity. Those are animated through Seedance and Kling. The edit, grade and finish are done by hand in DaVinci Resolve, with After Effects where a shot needs it.
The workflow moves between closed and open models. Earlier work was built with Stable Diffusion and Flux through ComfyUI, and open models remain part of the process alongside the strongest hosted tools. The choice depends on the shot, the problem and the level of control it needs.
Behind all of it is a background in graphic design, illustration and coding. Photoshop fixes, changes and polishes what a generation gets nearly right. Illustrator draws the instructions the machine needs in order to be consistent. Pen and paper come before either.
The list changes constantly. It changed multiple times inside a single four-minute film.
The music
Music comes first here
The hardest and most important job on any SOWAYBEYOND film is finding the one piece of music that lets the film become what it is, and then trusting it to carry the emotional weight. Everything else is built around it.
The music is written and produced in this room, under the name Zed Parish, across electronic production, guitar and orchestral writing.
La chaleur est restée, the score for Chère Margaux, began as an AI-assisted sketch. It was split into stems, taken into Ableton Live, restructured, re-balanced and produced by hand until it became the piece the film needed.
Drawn to Distance was the first single from Bliss Venin, a character-led cinematic project where music and short films build the same world. No AI was used in the track. It was written, played and produced in this room using a rare limited-edition Billy Duffy signature Gretsch White Falcon, a Roland TR-8S and a Prophet X.
AI is one instrument among the others. Some pieces start with it and keep almost none of it. Some never touch it. That is decided piece by piece rather than set as a rule.
The room
One desk, both jobs
One acoustically treated room in Brighton, UK, where the films and the music are made at the same desk. An SSL control surface built up from modular units, a wall of synthesisers, a 4x12 cabinet, and guitars within reach of the chair.
Darren played guitar in bands through the nineties, including studio work that appeared on a Sham 69 album, as well as touring in support of the band. Electronic music production has been the focus ever since, increasingly alongside orchestral writing and film music. That combination now feeds directly into the cinematic work.