Public Service
From a piece of candy to a salute, a veteran's memories meet today's landscapes.
01 / Background
A veteran's-wish project by Baidu and the content creator Pen Warriors: the wishes a veteran shared during a home visit were turned, with AI, into images of him stepping into landscapes across the country. Two things were needed: still photos for the visit and a vertical story video. The images had to carry a sense of the era, and the mood had to move from the weight of memory to the joy of seeing the country today.
The final story is a conversation across time between the veteran and his younger self, so the wish comes true for one and the same person. The film cuts from a memorial hall display case into a trench, where a piece of milk candy and the reaction to its sweetness link the two eras; then scenes of travel today answer what the young man hoped for. At the end, the two versions of him salute one after the other, and every landscape centers on this one man.
02 / Creative Highlights
The old man walks toward the memorial hall with his back to the camera and stops at a display case, then the film cuts to his younger self in a trench. The visit first establishes where he is today, then his face and uniform carry the frame back to the past, so the battlefield emerges from his memory rather than being dropped in as a separate segment.
The camera moves in on a palm, the wrapper and a white milk candy; the young soldier unwraps it, tastes it, and his expression visibly changes. The candy doesn't upstage the people; it simply turns care into a small gesture. The wrapper and the tasting reaction were both specially refined.
A two-shot in the trench, with the young man on the left and the old man on the right, then close-ups of each cut back and forth as they talk. The script makes it clear they are the same person at different ages: today's self answers the questions of his younger self, and their relationship is obvious at a glance.
The Oriental Pearl Tower, Hukou Waterfall, the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Guilin, Changsha, the Yalu River and the Great Wall appear one after another, with the old man walking among tourists, waving and smiling. After the travel segment, the film cuts back to close-ups of the young man and the old man saluting; the same salute links the joy of seeing today with the gravity of memory.
03 / Scene Breakdown
The veteran walks into the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea Memorial and stops at a display case. The scene shifts back to a trench, where today's veteran hands a milk candy to his younger self.
The veteran walks toward the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea Memorial with his back to the camera, and the image dissolves into the exhibition hall: he raises his hand and looks at a display case as children in red scarves file past, while a voice off-screen says, “This is the uniform of a Volunteers soldier.”
Clutching a frosted potato and holding his rifle, the young soldier hears something and looks up: “Who's there?” In the next shot, a deeply wrinkled hand holds out two milk candies wrapped in white paper: “Have one of these.”
The young soldier unwraps the candy and puts it in his mouth, and his eyes light up: “It's... sweet?” The whole segment shows only his hands and the reaction on his face.
In the trench, the young soldier and the veteran stand face to face. Viewers quickly understand that this is one man at two ages.
A medium two-shot, with the young man on the left and the old man on the right. The young man leans in to ask, and the camera cuts to a close-up of the old man, who smiles and answers, “I am.”
A close-up of the young man, his eyes full of hope. The old man answers, “We won. We drove the invaders back,” and with that line the image dissolves into today's Shanghai.
Before the line “We defended the new China” is even finished, the veteran is already walking through today's cities and sights: tourists come and go as he waves, smiles and salutes.
On the bank of the Huangpu River, the veteran smiles and waves beneath the Oriental Pearl Tower; then he stands at the railing by Hukou Waterfall as the camera circles behind him to watch the Yellow River rush down.
He walks across the busy plaza in front of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, then along the riverbank in Guilin, waving at the camera in the sunshine.
Fireworks go off at night over Changsha's Wuyi business district as the veteran smiles in the crowd; then, by the Yalu River, he salutes beside a stone marker carved with “China–DPRK Border River,” with the bridge across the river behind him.
The last stop is the Great Wall. After he waves, the image dissolves back to the trench, where the two versions of him salute one after the other.
Tourists stroll along the wall in twos and threes as the veteran rests a hand on the battlements, turns and waves at the camera, smiling so broadly his eyes crinkle.
The Great Wall dissolves into a close-up of the young soldier saluting in the trench, then cuts to the veteran saluting. The same gesture carries today's journey back to those years.
04 / Storyboards & Final Frames
In the order of the finished film: the memorial hall, the milk candy in the trench, and travel photos from seven sites. For the conversation in the trench and the salute at two ages, see the film clips above.
Shot 1.1
The veteran stands with his back to the camera on the plaza in front of the memorial, among visiting tourists. First we establish where he is today, then move into memory.
Shot 2.1
The camera cuts back to the trench: his younger self, face covered in dust, holds a frozen potato in one hand and a rifle in the other. Following historical records, his chest badge reads “Chinese People's Volunteers” in traditional Chinese characters.
Shot 2.2
The veteran opens his hand to show two milk candies wrapped in white paper; the wrappers are clean, with no brand on them.
Shot 2.3
The young soldier holds the candy in both hands and looks down at it, about to unwrap it and take a taste.
Shot 3.1
On the plaza by the Huangpu River, with the Oriental Pearl Tower and the Lujiazui skyline behind him, the veteran raises his hand in salute. This is the delivered travel photo; in the video, he smiles and waves here.
Shot 3.2
The veteran stands at the railing on the viewing platform as tourists behind him hold up their phones to photograph the waterfall.
Shot 3.3
The plaza in front of the National Palace Museum in Taipei is crowded with tourists, and the veteran strides forward among them.
Shot 3.4
On the Li River in the early morning, the veteran stands on a pebble beach with Elephant Trunk Hill behind him.
Shot 3.5
The mall signs are lit and the street is packed with people as the veteran stands smiling at the front of the crowd.
Shot 3.6
Beside the stone marker reading “China–DPRK Border River · Yalu River,” the veteran faces the camera and salutes, with the iron bridge across the river behind him.
Shot 3.7
The veteran stands with a hand on the battlements as the wall winds up the mountain behind him and tourists walk past.
05 / Script Excerpts
06 / Results
We delivered travel stills of the veteran at 9 sites and a roughly 44-second 9:16 vertical story film. The story film was made for the veteran himself to watch; this page shows its conversation across ages, the travels around the country and the closing salute.
Case Study
Some veterans have long carried one wish: to see what the country they once defended looks like today.
Baidu teamed up with Pen Warriors, a content creator focused on veterans, to make veterans' wishes come true: the creator visits veterans at home, hears their wishes, and AI turns those wishes into images they can see.
The project came to us through a longtime client at Baidu. In just a few days, we had to deliver two things: travel photos of the veteran at sights across China, and a 44-second vertical story film.
01
The client's brief was straightforward: photos of the veteran traveling around the country, with a sense of the era, and ideally a bit of dialogue and story.
The travel photos were the most urgent; the client wanted them finalized and printed that same day. We chose 9 places in total: the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, the Great Wall in Beijing, the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Changsha's Wuyi business district, Yangshuo in Guilin, Hukou Waterfall on the Yellow River, plus the Yalu River in Dandong and the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea Memorial, both tied to the Korean War, and the veteran's hometown.
Several colleagues split up the work and sent the client one site at a time for approval, refining each image as soon as it was approved. Every image came in two versions: one with the “Baidu AI-generated” label for the client to use directly, and one without, kept for making the video later.
02
These photos were for the veteran himself to see, so the sights couldn't look like AI's imagination. For every site, we started from a real photo as the base, ideally one that already had tourists in it, so there was a reference for how tall the old man should stand and how far he should be from the railing.
For the tourists around him, the prompts specifically called for modern, fashionable clothing. Without that, AI easily turns the whole image into something from the 1980s, when the point of these photos is to show today.
The same went for poses. The first few were stiff, formal “tourist photos” of him standing upright. We changed them to walking in the crowd, leaning on a railing to watch the waterfall, and waving at the camera, like an old man really out traveling.
03
The client's original idea included a scene of the veteran reuniting with a comrade-in-arms. But we didn't have a photo of a single one of his comrades.
This film was for the veteran himself to watch. Inventing someone he didn't know and calling him his comrade would actually be disrespectful to him.
So the script was changed to the veteran talking with his younger self: today's veteran returns to the trench to answer the questions his younger self cared about most: “Are you from the new China?” “Did we win?”
Both wear the same uniform, chest badge and shoulder bag, and the young version's face was built from the veteran's features. Viewers need no explanation to see that this is the same man.
The young man on the left and the old man on the right; the young man asks, “Grandpa, are you from the new China?” and the old man smiles: “I am.”
04
To connect the two eras, we didn't have the old man give a speech; we had him hand over a milk candy.
Back then, soldiers at the front rarely got candy, let alone anything as sweet as what we have today. The young soldier had been clutching a frosted, frozen potato; he takes the candy, tastes it, and pauses before saying, “It's... sweet?”
The client didn't want any brand on the candy, so we cropped out the wrapper, repainted it locally and changed it to clean white paper. After regenerating the video, we deliberately tuned the tasting expression to show surprise and delight: that taste of sweetness is the softest emotional moment in the film.
He unwraps the candy and puts it in his mouth, and the young soldier's eyes light up.
05
Audiences for veteran stories look closely; not a single wrong character on the uniform is acceptable.
The client reminded us that the chest badge had to match historical records. Using one clear reference image as the standard, we changed the badge in every image to read “Chinese People's Volunteers” in traditional Chinese characters. We cropped out that small area of the badge and repainted it locally, refined the light and shadow in Photoshop, and then regenerated the video from the corrected image.
In video generation, small text in full-body wide shots tends to blur, so for shots where the text needed to be legible, we used medium shots and close-ups whenever possible. In the closing salute close-ups of both ages, the characters on the badge are perfectly clear.
The young soldier and the veteran salute one after the other, with “Chinese People's Volunteers” in traditional Chinese characters on their badges.
06
From receiving the brief to delivering the final version took about a week: the travel photos were rushed out to meet a same-day print deadline, and the story film went through several rounds of revisions, adding more tourists and happier expressions and fleshing out the waves and salutes.
This project made us even surer of one thing: when making a wish-come-true film for a real person, the technology is the easy part. The hard part is being clear about who the film is for, which images will feel warm and familiar to him, and which setups would make him uncomfortable.
A milk candy, a salute, and a smiling face on today's streets: that is what we wanted to give the veteran.
FAQ
Before production, we lock in the character references: the veteran's own appearance, plus a young version built from his features. Front, side and back standing reference images are fixed, and the uniform, chest badge, belt and shoulder bag all follow that set. Every travel photo and video shot after that uses the same references, so the character doesn't drift.
For every site, we start from a real photo as the base, preferably one that already has tourists in it, to align the person's height and position. The prompts spell out the modern clothing of the tourists around him, and the base photos avoid signs with small text where possible, so the text doesn't get garbled after generation. After compositing, we adjust light and shadow in Photoshop so the old man's lighting matches the setting.
For this project, the travel stills were rushed to meet the client's same-day print deadline. The story film's full first cut came out the next day, went through several rounds of revisions based on client feedback, and the final version was delivered on February 11, about a week in all.
Yes. We used one clear reference image as the sole standard, cropped out the badge area and repainted it locally, then refined it in Photoshop. In this film, the badges were all changed to “Chinese People's Volunteers” in traditional Chinese characters before the video was regenerated. Small text blurs easily in wide shots, so for shots where the text needs to be legible, we use medium shots and close-ups whenever possible.
Approach
We first made still images of the character and each location; once the character's look, the uniform and badge, the belt and the sites were locked, they carried over into the video. When generating images, we paid particular attention to where he stands, his height in proportion to the surroundings, and the light, so the old man fits naturally into each setting.
Post-production refinement covered both small props and emotional gestures: the milk candy got clean white wrapping, and the surprised, delighted expression when he tastes it was specially refined; the text on the uniform and the character's face were checked in every storyboard shot. The film alternates between close-ups of the character and medium travel shots, keeping him recognizable as the same man while unfolding his wish step by step.
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