Short Films
Echo Chamber-We Become the Stories We Consume
A Living Portrait by Philip Straub
Gossip. Rumors. Misinformation. We tell ourselves they’re harmless—yet they shape us, twist us, and hollow us out from the inside.
In this Living Portrait, reality fractures like the childhood game of telephone. A single truth becomes unrecognizable as it passes through countless mouths and phones. The Weavers in the film represent that original thread of truth—pure, untouched—before distortion takes hold.
Echo Chamber extends my practice into multimodal storytelling. Every element—visuals, movement, sound, lyrics, and mix—was crafted to embody the collapse of meaning in our digital age.
Created using a hybrid workflow: AI-assisted cinematics, bespoke art direction, layered vocal design, and mythic narrative architecture.
If you’re ready to question what you believe and why you believe it—watch now and share how the story stayed with you.
From Imagination to Motion
Philip Straub creates cinematic short films that begin where his paintings do—on the traditional or digital canvas.
Each piece originates from Philip’s original artwork, evolving from hand-crafted compositions, palettes, and symbolic language shaped over decades of traditional practice. Through a hybrid workflow that blends painting, photography, AI-assisted motion tools, and detailed post-production, Philip transforms still images into living performances—portraits that breathe, unravel, and transform.
His growing body of work, including the Living Portrait Series and narrative shorts like Peel, explores memory, identity, myth, and emotional landscapes through a signature visual style rooted in fine art. The result is a form of cinematic expression where paintings become films, and inner worlds become visible.
PEEL: The Unraveling of Self
PEEL is an emotional short film that explores identity, memory, and the quiet layers we shed as we move through a lifetime. Part of my Living Portrait Series, it blends painterly composition, choreography, and AI-assisted filmmaking into a single cinematic meditation on the human experience.
At its core, PEEL is a story about transformation — the ways in which love, loss, and memory shape who we become. The film follows one woman across the seasons of her life, revealing how the threads that bind us to others illuminate our deepest truths… and how letting go becomes its own form of grace.
Every frame began as a still image — expanded, animated, and reshaped through next-generation creative tools. Those images were crafted like paintings: layered, textured, and emotionally driven. Through motion and light, they evolve into an intimate portrait of a life both fragile and luminous.
PEEL continues my ongoing exploration into immersive emotional storytelling — where art, film, and technology converge to create something both familiar and entirely new.
Lightborne-A living Portrait
Lightborne began as an original painting — reimagined through a fusion of AI-assisted cinematography, digital compositing, and art direction.
This short film is a meditation on transformation — the moment when darkness gives way to light, and we remember our capacity to rise.
Every frame originates from my painting process, reborn through motion, sound, and breath. Part of the Living Portraits series — visual meditations exploring the space between shadow and awakening.
Emergence: Living Portrait
Emergence is part of the Living Portraits series — cinematic interpretations of transformation and the human condition by artist and world-builder Philip Straub.
Each piece begins as an original digital painting, then evolves through AI-assisted filmmaking into motion and emotion — exploring what it means to awaken, to face the storm, and to rise.
The lyrics were written years ago for an acoustic guitar song by Philip Straub, reimagined here as a visual meditation on self-evolution and inner rebirth.
Utherworlds: Origins
Utherworlds is a cinematic origin story that bridges art, emotion, and myth. It follows Lucas Sellers, an artist consumed by loss, who is drawn into a world shaped by the thoughts and emotions of all sentient beings — a realm where beauty and terror intertwine, and every feeling has form.
This short film reimagines the Utherworlds mythology introduced in the illustrated novel, revealing the moment Lucas first crosses into this living landscape of dream and memory. Built through months of visual and emotional experimentation, it blends traditional art direction, worldbuilding, and cutting-edge AI filmmaking into a single creative process.
Each frame began as a painting — expanded, animated, and reshaped through emerging technologies — evolving painterly composition into cinematic motion. The result is both familiar and strange: a meditation on grief, imagination, and the power of creation itself.
Utherworlds is not just a story about entering another world — it’s a reflection on how the worlds within us come alive..