Warhammer 40,000 Pitch Trailer
A fan trailer that introduces Warhammer 40,000 to people who have never heard of it, made in one day.
The brief
Explain Warhammer 40,000 in under 2 minutes to someone who has never heard of it. It has no plot. It tours the world: a dead god on a golden throne, his armies, and every enemy at the gates. It was made for a Higgsfield community stream.
The rules I set: every still new, nothing reused from my library. A 21:9 frame, wider than my usual 16:9. The narration never speaks to the audience, and its closing line is the only one quoted from Games Workshop.
Each beat got a still before anything moved. Seedance 2.5 animated the stills from timed motion prompts, ElevenLabs voiced the narration and made the score, and a pipeline I wrote placed every shot against the narration in DaVinci Resolve. I reviewed every take, sent the weak ones back and finished the cut by hand.
How one beat was made
Shot 35, from the script to the cut. It started as a wide fight and ended as two close-ups.
Narration, line 14
“There are no allies. There is no mercy. There is no peace.”
Shot list, shot 35: Space Marine vs Ork melee, close. Motion: clash.
Script
The script is 15 lines of narration and a list of 39 shots.
This line had three shots. The first was a Space Marine and an Ork, locked in melee.
Still
Shot 35 got two stills from Higgsfield Cinema Studio, at 21:9. I picked this one.
First take
Seedance 2.5 animated the still from a motion prompt with its beats timed in seconds. I sent the take back.
The chainsword is not moving, but the bigger issue is that the scene is boring. We should do a close-up of the Marine helmet, then the Ork, showing intense expression in the face.
New stills
Two new stills, with two takes each. The Marine’s helmet, then the Ork’s face, the blades still grinding between them.
Retakes
I sent the first pass back with two notes: the helmet is sealed, so no breath from the grille, and the Ork gets one big slow-motion roar.
The second pass of each was kept.
In the film
At 1:34, the helmet, then the roar, under “There are no allies. There is no mercy.”
The wide fight never made the cut.
Anatomy of a shot
Most motion prompts give their beats in seconds. Move along the timeline to compare a take with its prompt.
The prompt
Lines of emerald-green light ignite and race down the black pyramid's face from its peak to its base, cascading from 0.5s to 3.5s; green lightning crackles around the peak; green light rays sweep across the dead land; the camera holds, pushing in very slightly.
The still shows the pyramid already lit. Seedance started it dark and lit it on the prompt’s timing, from the peak down.
The cut keeps the first 3.4 seconds, the whole cascade.
In the film at 1:16, written for “Ancient tomb worlds wake, and the Necrons march again beneath dead suns.”
The prompt
The helmet sits in near darkness, the red eye-lenses dark at 0s; from 0.8s to 2.0s the lenses ignite, glowing brighter until they burn a fierce red that lights the edges of the faceplate; the glow holds to the end; the camera pushes in very slowly on the lenses; the helmet itself never moves.
Here the still won. It has the lenses lit, so the take opens lit and the dark first second never happens. The glow still builds as the prompt asks.
In the film at 0:38, written for “His Angels of Death are warriors forged from his own blood, clad in ceramite, made for nothing but war.”
All 116 stills
Every still made for the trailer, in shot order. 44 of them were animated. Select one to see it, and its takes if it was animated.
What it took
- Script
- 15 lines of narration and a list of 39 shots.
- Stills
- 116 from Higgsfield Cinema Studio at 21:9, with two or more for 37 of the 39 shots.
- Motion
- 60 Seedance 2.5 takes from 44 of the stills: 38 in the first pass, then 22 retakes.
- The cut
- 35 shots in 1:49, every one a Seedance take.
- Versions
- 17 timelines in DaVinci Resolve across five narrator voices, laid out by a pipeline I wrote and finished by hand.
- Sound
- Narration and score made with ElevenLabs.
- Time
- One day, from the script draft to the exported master, on September 25, 2026.
Credits
- Made as
- Fan film for a Higgsfield community stream
- Role
- Director, Writer, Editor, Sound design
- Year
- 2026
- Length
- 1:49, 21:9
- Tools
- Higgsfield Cinema Studio, Seedance 2.5, ElevenLabs, DaVinci Resolve, Python
Unofficial fan film made for a Higgsfield community stream. Warhammer 40,000 is a trademark of Games Workshop Ltd, which has not endorsed this work. The narration voice and the score are AI-generated.