Inside the AI Cabin

How Cramer Built a Zombie Narrative for SolidWorks in Just Two Weeks

When SolidWorks reached out with a simple request, “Could you enhance our annual Halloween simulation demo with some visuals?” They expected stock imagery and light embellishments. What they got instead was a fully realized, AI–driven short film: an atmospheric, cinematic zombie narrative that blended horror aesthetics with engineering simulation data. With this creative vision came an ambitious deadline of  just over two weeks.

For Cramer’s team, this wasn’t just a seasonal creative lift. It was a proof point for what the next era of AI–assisted production can look like — when guided by experienced filmmakers, editors, designers, and storytellers.

A Modest Ask Sparks a Bigger Idea

The request began with an email from SolidWorks about a Halloween-themed simulation. Historically, these demos would showcase engineering questions with a playful twist — How long can a beer stay cold next to a grill? or Can you design a dragon-proof shield? 

This year’s concept: a zombie proof cabin. The client suggested stock photography, but Cramer proposed something else entirely. Creative Director Scott Palmer had an idea, “I think we can do something better. We can do something with AI — something animated.” 

With less than two weeks on the clock, the project shifted from a simple enhancement to a ground up AI film production sprint. 

Why This Project Became a Turning Point

Scott is a lifelong fan of both SolidWorks and the zombie genre. But until recently, AI video tools hadn’t excited him. “Honestly, I got a little bored with it,” he said. “When anyone can make something cool, it’s like, what’s next?” 

What changed was an industrywide breakthrough: AI systems could finally maintain narrative visual consistency. 

That opened the door to real storytelling — not just disconnected clips. 

Cramer had already transformed its Edit 3 space into the AI Creator Lab, experimenting with next generation tools. For this project, the team relied on: 

  • Google Veo 3 for image generation 
  • Flow for video clip creation and scene continuity 
  • Topaz Video AI for 4K upscaling and noise cleanup 
  • 11 Labs for dialogue and narration 
  • Avid for final editing, compositing, pacing, and polish 

While these tools are powerful, they are far from effortless. “AI is like a runaway car,” Scott joked. “You’re either jumping out or grabbing the wheel. We choose to take the wheel.” 

The Human Side of AI Production

Despite the allure of pushbutton generation, this project was anything but automated. It required the eye and discipline of a full creative team: 

  • Scott Palmer – Creative director and visual architect 
  • Tyler Cerequeira– Producer 
  • Kevin Johnson – Editor and compositor 
  • Brian Iacobucci– Sound design and dialogue engineering 
  • Jeremy Riederer– Additional sound design and music creation 

Hundreds of AI clips were generated, but many were unusable. Between props vanished between frames, Clothing shifting unnaturally, and in one case, the main character suddenly operated CAD software with two computer mice.Funny but we knew the SolidWorks engineers woudl flag that immediately. 

From there, the clips had to be rebuilt from scratch. This is where the craft mattered; AI produced the raw material, but filmmaking expertise shaped it into a coherent, emotionally legible narrative. 

Crafting the Story: Two Designers, One Cabin

SolidWorks Provided a Basic Narrative Prompt: A CAD designer is infected by a rogue AI virus. Another designer — a meticulous doomsday prepper — retreats into a fortified cabin engineered to survive a zombie onslaught. One wants in. One must keep the cabin sealed. 

Scott took the idea and evolved it, drawing on a lifetime of genre references — Creepy Magazine, Tales from the Crypt, Dawn of the Dead— blending horror tropes with engineering detail. 

The result was a stylized universe where CAD simulations and AI-generated characters coexist in a gritty, graphic novel-like atmosphere. Flow’s new scene building tools allowed the team to stitch shots together with continuity — something impossible just a year ago. 

“This is where I stopped being bored,”  Scott said. “This is stuff we can actually sell to our clients now.” 

The Sound of a Story Coming Alive 

 Brian Iacobucci sampled the best AI-produced takes, then recreated them in his own voice. Using synthesis tools, he designed a rich, cinematic narrator voice that matched the AI timing exactly. 

Meanwhile, the score moved away from standard cinematic tracks. Jeremy built a distorted, grungy sound world inspired by Black Sabbath, filled with guitar feedback and unsettling textures. The audio became as much a character as the visuals. 

The Final Assembly: AI + Human Craft

Once the visual selects were upscaled and stabilized, editor Kevin Johnson composited SolidWorks’ CAD software captures directly into the AI-generated environments — a seamless integration of synthetic imagery and real engineering data. 

Brand elements were layered manually, ensuring accuracy where AI couldn’t be trusted. 

In the end, between our adoption of several new AI-powered technologies, an ambitious creative vision, and a team that always delivers, we were able to provide our client with a stylized, atmospheric, Halloween-ready microfilm — created faster than traditional pipelines would allow, without sacrificing cinematic ambition. 

 

This cut survived the edit apocalypse. See what made it out alive.

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