Using AI to Build and Promote Uke Crew

General Description
This will be a series of social media and Youtube posts describing the process I followed to define the Uke Crew Program, decide how it is going to be structured, what components need to be developed for presenting and promoting the various parts of the program, and then actually developing those components.

Stage 1 – What is Uke Crew?
Uke Crew is basically a program that gives grade school age kids the opportunity to be part of a group learning to play the ukulele. As it is being developed the program has several components.
– The local group (Grand River Uke Crew)
– The actual instruction program (Uke Crew Playbook)
– The online version of the Uke Crew Playbook
– The Uke Crew Songbook (both actual and online)

I decided to begin by promoting the “Grand River Uke Crew” first. I would do this by using:
– social media posts
– local signs and posters
– ads in the Woolwich Observer
– other possible places like Bark
– Making connections with other community groups

Stage 2 – Develop Basic Graphic Components
For most of these media I would need unique graphics (logos, poster ideas, photos, etc.) and catchy lines (like “Uke for Kids”, “We Make Music Fun”, “Playing for Fun”). Some of this was done before I began the quest for AI video knowledge. In any case, a fair amount of experimentation went into this process. In the end we had established:
– The general structure of the organization.
– The various parts that would need marketing.
– Basic graphic style
– Characters in this style (kids with ukuleles)
– Basic logo, adaptations of the logo
– Basic tag lines: e.g., “Uke for Kids”, “We Make Music Fun”, “Playing for Fun”, etc.
For much of the work in these areas I assumed I would begin with ChatGPT. This turned out to be pretty much correct.

Stage 3 – Develop Audio Components
Since my initial project was to develop a series of Facebook and Instagram posts, I assumed this would involve creating posts and video reels with songs and music tracks featuring kid songs and ukuleles.
I wanted these tracks to be original to avoid copyright issues so I assumed they would either be played and sung by someone involved with or arranged by Muzictrain – myself, Alice, some kid or kids interested in being featured – or generated by some AI program or programs (which I had not yet figured out.)

So this is where I got into various AI programs where I experimented with creating audio (songs) from lyrics, prompts and, eventually, images.
I provide some details and mention the apps used in a later post.

Stage 4 – Creating a Lip Synched Video
Once I had concepts for posts, graphics, logos and characters for Uke Crew, as well as appropriate music tracks, I had to put these together into videos capable of being used in social media posts.
This involved creating still images and characters from prompts (in Stage 1 above).
It also involved creating short videos using Uke Crew characters and other materials. For my first projects this meant lip synching stills with audio to create short videos.
Finally it involved merging and refining these “finished” components in programs like Resolve and Photoshop.

In future posts I will descrobe how this process went, and which AI programs were used.