Midjourney Video ~ Why care?

Large creamy alien jellyfish highly-translucent and spikes, in a transparent cocoon, detailed pores and bumps and folds textures. Alien escapes from a bubbling cocoon leaving fluid-like formations.

I've talked about Midjourney a few times on this blog over the past couple of years. Honestly, I'm generally a fan, though sometimes it feels like a bit of a creative casino—fun but unpredictable. If I had to describe Midjourney to someone new, I'd say it's like buying a sketchbook but finding out the brushes inside have been dipped in paint by countless others. It might sound weird, but that's pretty much how it felt to me until recently.

One thing that's been bugging me lately is Midjourney’s updated user agreements. Basically, if they lose their current lawsuit with Disney over intellectual property (IP) issues, users could end up being on the hook for IP violations. That’s concerning, especially since a lot of generated content probably overlaps with existing IP (though that's just my speculation—I don't have access to their training data).

Despite these concerns, this year I've decided to get more strategic about Midjourney. I realized that to stand out in the gen-AI scene, I needed to lean into my strengths: lighting, visual effects, and photography. Speaking of photography—I’ve been deeply involved with film photography for about five years now. (If you're curious, here's my photography site: joseph-omar.format.com).

So, I had this idea to use my film photography archive to train Midjourney personally. This custom data set is only accessible through my account, not publicly shared, and it really helped me carve out a unique space creatively.

I've played around with Midjourney since its launch about five years ago, mostly casually and without sharing much beyond this blog. But fast-forward to now—June 2025—and things have gotten a lot more interesting. After building an archive of concept art based on my own photos, Midjourney dropped a new video feature. It's as easy as hitting a button labeled "fast" or "slow" video and crafting prompts. Sure, I'd love more detailed controls, but honestly, the prompts give you enough room to play.

The biggest game-changer, though, came two days ago. I found out Midjourney's video feature uses color science from high-end cinema cameras—like the ARRI ALEXA—which are way beyond my budget. This discovery was thanks to an eye-opening article on PetaPixel (check it out here). By adding filenames from these pro cameras into my Midjourney prompts, the results instantly improved.

So if you’re using Midjourney, definitely try this out—just slap a professional camera's filename at the start of your prompt and watch how much better your visuals become.