Times Diary
小時日記
Overview
In the diary of childhood, the significant historical juncture of 2008 has been transformed into trivialities of daily life, and the shimmering memories are filled with indescribable sorrow.
China | 2024 | 4min | AIGC | Color | Digital
Credits
- Director: Yufong Bai
- Producer: Junhan Guo
- AIGC Production: Bowen Liu, Tian Lan
- Voice Cast: Yufong Bai, Junshuo Jiang, Junqi Guo
- Sound Recording: Yancheng Zhou
- Mixing: Yue Zhang
- Original Music: Jingxuan Zhang, Yichao Guo
- Special Thanks: Bohan Li, Kaiteng Lin, Yuchun Han
- Supervising Instructors: Yinan Zhou, Yue Zhang, Yunpeng Cui
Trailer
Stills
Screenings / Awards
[Aniwow!2024] China (Beijing) International Student Animation Festival - Best AI-Generated Work Award
Beijing International Film Festival 2025: ASUS e-Create Public Welfare Film Unit - AIGC Exploration Honor
the 1st Arts and Artificial Intelligence Awards (Beijing) - Best Narrative Film Award
the 14th Academy Awards of Chinese Collegial Association for Visual Art (CCAVA) - Second Prize
the 10th China-EU Youth Film Festival [Official Selection]
MUST Chinese Youth Film Festival 2024 [Official Selection]
* Jingyu Zhang is Professor in the Directing Department, School of Theatre, Film and Television, Communication University of China; Fan Yang is a master’s student in the same department.
Comments
In the process of media assemblage, artists can reconstruct “found footage” from various media platforms and historical periods by emulating the visual characteristics specific to different media formats. Through reassembly and collage, they achieve new artistic effects. For instance, Times Diary (2024), a short film by Yufong Bai from the School of Animation and Digital Arts at the Communication University of China, repurposes original static images such as Olympic news footage and old childhood photographs. These materials are transformed into dynamic video using generative AI technologies, piecing together a boy’s childhood diary and presenting his memories of 2008 from a personal perspective. The diary content features an animated, hand-drawn texture, while the visualization of fading childhood memories is rendered through AI modeling, enhanced by dynamic particle effects created in TouchDesigner.
“Found footage” serves as an expansive historical archive composed of materials with diverse media textures. When the unpredictability of AI-generated content intersects with the layered sensibilities of such imagery, the memory archive gains a complex spatiotemporal textuality, opening up greater imaginative possibilities for the audience.
— Jingyu Zhang*, Fan Yang, 2025. The Art of Assembly: ‘Combinatorial’ Creative Thinking in AI-Generated Moving Image Art. Journal of Film Studies. 7(01), pp.26–34.