An AI-driven movie festival that has highlighted the new dimensions of AIs in narrative development has uncovered the good and the bad aspects of this new technology, as well as the pros and cons. AI-driven video generation-based Runway AI, one of the startups in the first place, founded the event, which got more than 3000 short films for the screen. This huge pool of 10 creative projects was selected, and each project showed the use of the filmmakers’ imagination to create stories in visually stunning worlds with the use of AI tools.
Innovation and diverse styles
As co-founder and chief technology officer at Runway, Anastasis Germanidis emphasized the fact that some of them have a variety of entries and diversity, challenging the notion that AI movies have only a single style. The short films, he added, are different individually depending on their approaches. Characters like mud people and giant grandmothers are the most featured in these movies, which makes us see the world of storytelling through the lens of generative AI.
The last 50 years in filmmaking techniques have brought significant improvements, while today, AI offers a unique approach that makes everyone who wants to create a movie a creator. Contrary to the generally known situation in the filmmaking industry, where people with a big budget or a large crew can achieve the desired effects, AI gives the opportunity to directors without substantial budgets or extensive equipment to shoot videos, turn photos into paintings, or to create habitats in not real universe with software only.
Emerging capabilities and challenges
A winner of one of the awards was Leo Cannone, who employed Midjourney to create many images. Leo continued to make changes where necessary before he finally animated them using Runway. However, he mentioned the drawbacks of AI technologies, such as the fact that they cannot be used properly for creating natural dialogue or human-like characters. His short film, which is about the lives of grandmothers after their deaths, uses the same method to create an aesthetic that would fit these limitations.
On the same note, Matamala took into consideration that AI is still imperfect; however, artists and content creators have a leeway to create stories out of the box with their creative minds. Matamala says that Runway has a ‘General World Models’ AI system, which generates models simulating real-life situations by learning how events/actions develop in the future. The great thing about this is that it brings a new dimension to filmmaking, but the photorealistic human characters are still a challenge.
The two co-creators of Runway who entered the study-related disciplines at New York University are primarily aimed at uniting programming and creative purposes through a common language. The sisters consider these organizations their idols, striving to develop a program that works for artists in the near future.
The other award-winning filmmaker at the festival, Carlo De Togni, feels that AI is a great chance for emerging filmmakers to disturb Hollywood’s traditional production model. Artists who are on a budget of between $30 and $50 per month will become members where AI can be leveraged through affordable subscription services. Budget constraints obviously become a significant barrier to realizing production visions. Yet, this is what artists do; they come up with new stories without large budgets, she affirmed. He predicts that indie productions will soon be at par with the output of Hollywood, thus providing a level playing field for them to compete directly.
A new era of storytelling
Although AI films at this stage have little maturity and manual input from critics is still needed to make them look appropriate, the potential of this sort of creative endeavor is evident. This festival is a milestone in the development of AI filmmaking; it shows that the future of anyone who has a computer and knows how to use it can make exceptionally visually appealing movies.
There are still some issues that need to be resolved; however, directors utilize the latest discoveries to improve their films and employ new narration techniques. Fundamentally, the festival projects to human beings the possible world where AI’s very fast development could be a step towards the new age in cinema that will allow independent interactors to invent unbelievable words and provide their content to the whole world.
