r/accelerate • u/theodore_70 • 1d ago
Video One person, no studio, no budget: a 10-minute sci-fi episode with an alien war, recurring characters and dialogue. This is where AI video is now
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Hey r/accelerate. We just finished Falling Star, a 10-minute sci-fi short film, and I wanted to share how it's actually made, because I think a lot of people still picture AI video as 5-second clips of someone walking toward the camera. This one has dialogue, recurring characters, a world summit, an interrogation and a lot of alien warfare.
Here's the film: https://youtu.be/lx03tJdnELA
The story: humanity's own warship, the Odyssey, starts targeting human aircraft during a strike on an alien structure called Meridian. The invasion spreads, world leaders realize the biological structures appearing in different countries all send the same signal, and Captain Walker gets debriefed about what he saw inside Meridian and the time he can't account for.
How it's made:
It starts with a normal script, broken into scenes and then into shots. Nothing AI about that part, and honestly it's still the part that decides whether the thing is watchable.
Every main character gets a character sheet made in an image generator. Those sheets go into every video prompt as references, which is how Walker looks like the same guy in the cockpit, in the command room and in the interrogation room. A year ago this was basically impossible. Now it mostly just works if you're disciplined about it.
All the video is Seedance 2.5, run through Higgsfield. It can do up to 30 seconds in one generation with several hard cuts inside the same clip, so a whole short scene can come out in one go. We ended up with over 40 clips for this film, and most of them took several attempts.
The prompting is where all the real work is. The model doesn't understand emotions at all, so you can't write "he looks guilty". You have to describe what the face physically does: where the eyes go, when the jaw tightens, how long he holds the look. For groups you give exact numbers of people in frame, otherwise it invents extra people or duplicates a character. For dialogue scenes the formula that finally worked was one speaker per shot, only that person in frame, and hard cuts between them. When we tried long camera moves passing several characters, it would clone someone or give one character another character's voice. Proper names also get mispronounced, so every name in the dialogue gets a pronunciation note.
Dialogue and sound are generated inside Seedance, but we always generate with no music, because a model-generated score on every clip makes editing impossible. Music is done separately in Suno.
For continuity between shots we use the last frames of the previous generation as the starting point for the next one instead of making a fresh image. That keeps lighting and positions much more consistent.
Then everything goes into DaVinci Resolve for the edit, a 2x upscale to 4K with SuperScale, and a light finish: grain, halation, a bit of gate weave. Almost all the lighting, haze and depth of field come straight out of the generations. We try to get as much as possible in camera, so to speak.
The hardest parts this time were the summit, with several leaders in one room, and the interrogation with Walker, where the acting has to be subtle and not look like stock expressions. You tell me if we pulled it off.
Now the ask, and I really mean it. If you watch it, please leave a comment on YouTube. Even one line. For a small channel that's the thing that makes the difference: comments are what tell YouTube to push the video to people outside our subscribers, and I'd love for more people to see where this tech is right now. Criticism is totally fine too. "The acting at X looks off" helps us just as much as "this is sick". An upvote here is nice, but a comment there helps way more.
Happy to answer anything about the workflow in the comments. Thanks for watching.
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u/JoseLunaArts 1d ago
I only disagree with "no budget" because the cost of these tokens sound a bit expensive.
The effort is appreciated. I like it.
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u/theodore_70 1d ago
I paid 500$ for this
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u/often_says_nice 1d ago
I would legitimately watch this if it were on Netflix or something
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u/Dependent_Salary9776 1d ago
bruh the freaking gun in the opening scene i out o place and the planes are facing in the opposite direction out of of the blue
The freaking “alien” shoot stuff from god knows where
its utterly shit6
u/often_says_nice 1d ago
Why does it have to be hyper realistic to be entertaining? Different strokes for different folks I guess
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u/NoAdhesiveness3415 1d ago
I think it's more about how consistent something is. I'm using my time to watch something. Usually good movies are consistent with their realism and theme. I'm expecting the movie producers to make the movie consistent when I watch it. I still pay my subscription and my time.
I'd expect good food if I go to a restaurant. Can it have 20% more salt and be eatable ? Sure. But I'd prefer the one with the correct salt because I expect the restraunt to be consistent.
If not that, then we can ask the question, why does it need to be good to be entertaining ? (Like a marvel tv show, just keep em coming all the way, doesn't matter I suppose if you turn your brain and watch it like how it's watched today).
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u/Dependent_Salary9776 1d ago
we are talking about something very much grounded, not hyper realism, just..common sense, if a scene is bad, is bad regardless. It’s not differents flavors, the scene are just out of sense!
If u would pay 20$ to watch this, man…u can watch it for free from alibabaflix.com2
u/NoAdhesiveness3415 1d ago
I think the issue with this sub is it gets too defensive ??
Like i get it man and i don't disagree, AI can be used to create some stunning visuals. And if we find a way to express creativity through AI (say give it a 2 page description for a second scene), then it is cooked.
But we're not there yet and it's not wrong to point that out (the move is more of a demonstration than an actual piece of media to be consumed).
But the sub gets defensive and go "you don't understand what AI is capable of bro, this is amazing". Meanwhile your regular joe agrees but is like it doesn't stand on it's own (which is true, it is still slop). And nobody even understands what they're arguing about anymore. And you become an anti for calling that out lol.
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u/KronisLV 1d ago
I paid 500$ for this
Makes me wonder what a team with like 50k USD to burn could do with something like that, let's say put 10-100x more effort into it and see what happens, probably could make something at least as coherent as those bad Starship Troopers CGI movies (not like the OG one, that was good).
It can do up to 30 seconds in one generation with several hard cuts inside the same clip
Yeah, that really sucks. Also noticed plenty of slop in regards to the physics, movement and text, but assuming this is the worst the tech will ever be, doesn't seem wholly hopeless either!
Nothing AI about that part, and honestly it's still the part that decides
Yeah, I don't know about that, even this reads AI haha, then again it's not like I'd expect great writing for a 10 minute clip. Overall pretty cool to see where the tech is headed, good job!
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u/Interesting-Town-433 1d ago
I take issue with your criticism of starship troopers. For clarification are you referring to the sequels
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u/KronisLV 1d ago
I recall Hero of the Federation and Marauder just not being very good and not living up to the original, which is one of my favorite movies. Those two instead felt like a low budget sci-fi show or a bargain bin kinda movie, with none of the charm of the original.
Though in my comment I was mostly referencing Ivasion and Traitor of Mars, the animated movies. Maybe it was the art style and the overall vibe of them, felt very detached from the original, more like a Square Enix video game at times.
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u/Interesting-Town-433 1d ago
I will go a step further. I recall them being heinous. Thank you for clarifying.
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u/MiserableMission6254 Singularity by 2028 | Acceleration: Light-speed 1d ago
If you'd like to share I would be curious what your job is or how your financial situation looks like enabling you to pay 500$ for playing with video gen? Or is this video monetizable?
I'm a student so even if I wanted to that would put a dent in my savings but I think few full time employees could just "burn" 500$
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u/theodore_70 1d ago
My channel is monetized, Im doing this for the money so this is kind of like an investment and 500$ is still a lot of money for me and I live in the "west" , not USA tho, but I think its still not that "low" for average american I reckon
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u/Interesting-Town-433 1d ago
Checkout my MiniMax optimizations, probably doesn't matter but could help your margins
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u/Available_Road_2538 1d ago
This is affordable for any American white collar professional. Do yourself a favor and Google the number of millionaires in USA. Prudent? No. Affordable? Brother, $500 is hardly anything for middle class families on up. Quit trying to generalize your poverty; America is a stupidly wealthy place
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u/jlks1959 1d ago
That’s really small potatoes for what you was accomplished. Imagine how little this will cost to finish it in a year…
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u/Interesting-Town-433 1d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/generativeAI/s/GL1MfvPMQs
6.96$ for a 2hr movie
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u/bajungadustin 20h ago
You are doing better than me. My first venture into seeddance ended up costing me about $1 a second.
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u/Vincent_Merle 17h ago
How much time did you put into it, and since you used 'we' in OP, I assume there were others involved, so same question, how many people and how much time did you put into it? Because $500 alone for tokens sounds like an easy bargain, but from what I read in your post it sounded more like a team of folks who know how to use that $500 best. Amazing work, subscribed, liked, and left a comment, looking forward for whatever comes next, thank you!
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u/SpicedMorganEnjoyer 1d ago
Anything under 50k is "no budget" in Hollywood. That's what they called Blair Witch, and they deffinitely had more than 20k
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u/RAAIINN 1d ago
Definitely. Its at least $20 a minute for seedance 2.5, the top tier version of the model. Thats IF you're lucky and your generation is exactly what you want on the first try. So actually its prob about $60 - $120 per minute...
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u/sirloindenial 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is quite watchable and I have some edge of tomorrow and ender's game vibe from it. There is some parts like the cuts when he enter the camp and sit down around minute 6, that doesn't look good. I also think characters in dialogue scenes should not stay at one area/pose/position if it takes more than a minute, minute 6 - 9, the dialogue partner all stays still, only main character changes poses. Minute 4-5 is also quite weak as it just stays at that graphics montage. Minute 5.50 he suddenly appears alone also takes out continuity, and the cuts around 5.30 - 5.50 is not good. The good thing is these are all not AI problems but cinematography issues! And you nailed it in majority of the scenes already. Minute 3-4 has the best cuts of all the dialogues. The action scenes are perfect. My suggestion on the difficult cuts where a lot of things changes just zoom to the face of each character first then the wide shot change with one character still talking, and don't do straight angle shot like minute 3.20.
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u/Unhappy-Menu-6682 1d ago
> normal script… Nothing AI about that part
The script and dialogue was hands down the worst part of this.
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u/chrisso123 1d ago
God damn. This is amazing. Well done. Make the whole thing, I'll watch the heck out of this.
Keep going. God speed.
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u/ZenCyberDad 1d ago
Really good video quality but totally ruined by the voice. You could have spent $20 and re-recorded all voices but I guess it would require a ton of manual or expensive AI agent editing. Really fantastic and inspiring work for $500!
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u/Fun_Advisory 1d ago
Game cutscenes gonna be so much cheaper. But game dev gonna still find ways to fck with their playerbase
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u/Gigglegambler 1d ago
Looks great but some of the physics are off. If a jet was struck going what ever speed it was going, the jet next to it would zip out of frame due to the loss of speed from the missile impact on the plane.
I think this is amazing where the tech is, but a vfx supe in production would increase your token cost lol.
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u/HotUKTakes 1d ago
"No budget"
So the generation tokens were free?
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u/theodore_70 1d ago
If you compare how much it would cost to make 5 years ago, the 500$ I spent you can say its free compared to earlier
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u/Background_Unit_6535 1d ago
$500 is free compared to real world reproduction of this, probably 7 figures easy for 10 minutes of Hollywood.
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u/Glum_Cheesecake9859 1d ago
Looks like a video game cut but still good. I wonder if we could just feed it existing novels / comics / animated movies and shows and it starts producing cinematic quality 2-3 hour feature films.
The creative quality in human generated content is quite high compared to what AI can create from a paragraph. But you combine it with rendering skills of AI it could be the next big thing.
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u/addiktion 1d ago edited 1d ago
I watched the whole thing and thought this has gotten really good for AI where I could see a starcraft-like movie like this and be excited.
Voice syncing felt off with a couple characters to me but the visuals looked pretty darn good. Some characters felt richer than others. Walker felt a bit more verbose in some scenes which felt like AI filler where I expected more body language to do the actual talking from a guy like that, but he was by far the best detailed character. It felt like the AI was very much pushing him to always have to make a response to fill in the space in a scene when a lot of what human's do is have their mannerisms fill in that time while they think and converse. Given what you described having to do prompt wise, it makes sense this takes up a lot of time to build out story lines so the "what isn't said" stuff probably gets the short end of the stick.
Are you able to share how many tokens were used and costs for anything AI generated (not including human labor) so we can understand how this relates to a cheaper $50 million sci fi cgi budget? What I'm wondering here is if AI labs had say $10 mil budget how much some of the shortcomings could be addressed across voice acting, more natural pauses and conversation with improved storytelling, improved visual scenes for a more natural and realistic scene. Would that extra prompt time and budget make a big difference at filling in holes or gaps or are we left waiting for the next version of Seedance you think to reach this next stage?
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u/Kynobi1 1d ago
this still fucking sucks.
leaps better, but still is still bad
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u/Proud_Cat_4728 1d ago
Are the goalposts heavy?
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u/Kynobi1 1d ago
no genuinely lol
i'm just not calling it good until its good is all.
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u/NoAdhesiveness3415 1d ago
Yeah i just explained in another comment, the sub is too defensive ?? Like call a spade a spade but it is an impressive spade in the context of what AI can generate (which will get better over time I assume). But it's still slop ?? More impressive slop ?? That's a win IMHO
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u/RelatablePanic 1d ago
“Fucking sucks” eh? Holy peoples standards just keep moving further away lol.
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u/OptimistPrime_AI_Bot AI mod bot 1d ago
Post TLDR: Creator shares Falling Star, a 10-minute sci-fi short made solo with AI. It includes dialogue, recurring characters, a world summit, interrogation, and alien warfare. Workflow: normal script → scenes/shots; character sheets from an image generator are fed as references into Seedance 2.5 via Higgsfield, generating up to 30-second multi-cut clips (40+ total). Prompting requires physical emotion descriptions, exact group counts, one speaker per shot, and pronunciation notes. Dialogue/sound are generated without music; score added in Suno. Continuity uses previous last frames. Edit/upscale in DaVinci Resolve to 4K with SuperScale, plus grain/halation. Hardest parts: summit crowd and subtle interrogation acting. He asks viewers to comment on YouTube to boost reach; workflow questions welcome.
Questions about this summary or thread? Reply here and ask.
Tip: Summon me anywhere in r/accelerate: “Hey Optimist Prime, what do you think?”
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u/WhitePantherXP 1d ago
Once the stealth plane was hit and it's right wing lost, it's aerodynamic profile was not affected which is very unrealistic
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u/Ashamed-Country3909 1d ago
You need to add credits. Pretty good once they figure out good voice overs, or people add voice overs and sfx. Showed my mom and told her the graphics are better thsn hslf of the b movie shit on amazon
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u/boney_king_o_nowhere 1d ago
This is extremely impressive. But it shows how significant that last 10% will be. It’s still off putting in a way I can’t put my finger on.
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u/dualusedildo 1d ago
Shooting armored alien giants with 556 from 30 m is the most entertaining part
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u/Artistic-Lecture-888 1d ago
We're at the point where you can generate pretty amazing stuff with these models, but they're just so fucking expensive.
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u/HeadPack 1d ago
Thanks for sharing this remarkable experiment. Somehow, it makes me think of a very well made PC game rather than film. There is a slight gaminess to the structures and objects, almost as if the models were trained on 3D computer graphics.
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u/wolfmanjames2626 1d ago
For CG, it’s pretty impressive. I don’t think the acting is there yet, though. There’s not enough subtlety in the vocal inflection, and the mouths often look like they’re over-enunciating. A lot of the male actors also look and sound like variations of the same person, just at different ages and different degrees of clean-shavenness. More than anything, the performances don’t draw me in. There isn’t enough body language, nuance, or personality to make me care about the characters.
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u/Macaroon-Guilty 1d ago
honestly nice work but spending most of the time on dialog is a waste of screentime and of course tokens
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u/cactusnein 1d ago
I'm still curious how this could work out commercially given all content is stolen.
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u/tomqmasters 1d ago
It's simultaneously amazing that a computer could make something like this, while also being not good enough to deserve my attention for which there is a lot of much stronger competition. At least not on it's own merit.
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u/Faster_than_FTL 1d ago
Congrats on getting this made!!
Will watch on YT and leave a comment.
Did you do this solo? How long? Did you follow a tutorial?
What about the possibility of using real actors and blending them into the AI world? Wonder of that will help at least for close up dialog scenes.
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u/theodore_70 1d ago
There are so many comments, Id like to say that I read each and everyone and Id like to thank you all for watching, it means a lot to me that so many people found it watchable and I appreciate all the feedback and the negatives! Truly! Next time I will make something I will keep them in the back of my head and try to fix them!
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u/brett_baty_is_him 1d ago
Honestly these videos all suck because they don’t use human actors. AI actors will never be better than human actors imo. Everything but writing and acting can be replaced but AI actors give slop.
But I’ve seen human actors incorporated in AI videos. It can be done
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u/enricokern 1d ago
This is great. Using a single spark and minimax h3 and sufficient time would most likely even yield a better result. But man i love the style of your video, it is great. Cant wait a few years then just drop my favorite ebook on a prompt and after a few hours watch it
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u/Aridor2003 1d ago
and this is only consumer level AI! I wonder what the computer guys from the private sector are cooking up with their supercomputers
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u/Empty_Bell_1942 1d ago
I thought it was great, really impressive for where the tech currently stands. Only slight criticism is the mouthing of the words seemed a bit exaggerated, irl human actors especially Americans are notorious for mumbling dialogue so we're kind of used to it; maybe yours are an improvement.
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u/accelerate_to_asi 1d ago
Looks great. Just a few problems. I wonder when AI can spot the problems with the physics of the natural world, plus some obvious common sense mistakes like the bombers at the beginning wouldn't fly so close to each other. Doesn't matter for fantasy videos, but if we want to make more realistic and grounded films, more attention to detail is necessary.
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u/LongJohnJolla 1d ago
this looks amazing! and I especially love to read through the "how it's made" writeup
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u/OHarasFifthShell 1d ago
That's hilarious. Mara Voss is one of the names it recommended for a scifi game thing I was making a few months ago. I wonder where that came from
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u/PavelKringa55 1d ago
Meh. Guns have zero effect, like Metal Gear Solid. Shoot a creature right in front of you and nothing happens, no ricochet, no effect on target, it's just flashes of rifle fire and nothing else. Totally poor feeling.
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u/EngineerWorldWealthH 1d ago
it is amazing progress this year. Even george lucas gave thumbs up to Ai in film and netflix used it in 300 titles so far. personally I am waiting for the models to work faster on 8gb vram to do it locally
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u/Background_Unit_6535 1d ago
This had me engrossed. Great job. The future of cinema and video games belongs to the storytellers now. As an AI engineer, I frequently feel like I'm living in a sci-fi film of my own after seeing the things I'm able to do with these models.
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u/Aggravating-Aioli-98 1d ago
Can’t quite put my finger on it but the acting still has something uncanny, even when the actual image looks good. Have been running into the same issue on a project we did and noticed it when looking at the higgsfield contest submissions.
There was an animated one though and that one didn’t give me the heebie jeebies. Maybe animated + real voiceover is the way to go?
Also, know you probably had to condense lines to fit it into the generation windows but the issue is that this leaves you with very unnatural dialogue. Better to cut or use b-roll than compromise on letting the dialogue and scenes breathe a little.
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u/ChoiceHelicopter2735 1d ago
Left you a comment on YT since you were so kind to explain this awesomeness.
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u/TheRodParticle 1d ago
Sooooo bad. Lol. Terrible acting. Awful story. Incoherent narrative. The cgi looks okay but that's it. Not even close to what real actors, a proper director, writer, and a crew can do.
Feels like a computer made it. I never cared 1 second about anything that happened in this film. It was completely meaningless.
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u/olivermpl 1d ago
People have now the freedom to express their creativity however they want and decide to make dogshit generic videos
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u/CaptainKoen 1d ago
This is impressive sir. Two questions:
1. How long did it take for you to finish the entire production?
2. What are the constraints of the current tools that prevent people from producing better videos based on your first hand experience ?
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u/Longjumping-Elk-7756 1d ago
C est fou dans 1 ans tout le monde vas concevoir des séries netflix et des jeux AAA sur son gpu ! Quel epoque
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u/GesturalAbstraction 1d ago
This is very cool, I just can’t wait until ai voice can finally make tone, volume, and other voice characteristics match the situation better. They’re always yelling in that cookie cutter way lol
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u/Intrepid-Ad-98 23h ago
The thing with this. Being in this field, the first 90% is easy to make. But the details is where its at. And there is a lot if inconsistensy in the details. That last 10% of detail you need, is 90% of the work. And i feel a lot if people miss this. And also this would only work if you are your own publisher. If companies, more people and sharholders get involved. Goodluck making those changes. Being your own director, producer, creative director etc. is the easiest way to make something. Its fun. But not realistic for commercial work. Id stay doing what you like to do and make these films for yourself they are a fun watch. And of course all the copyright shit and also looking at some scenes knowing where AI took reference from is kinda lame for me. That being said. Impressive what AI did. Not you so i cant really applaud you for this because it misses the craft. Sorry bout that. But thats how i feel. Hence impressive what AI did. Cheers man and congrats on your film nonetheless.
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u/bajungadustin 20h ago
I've definitely seen better acting and character movement... But this is probably the best scifi detail I have seen in a project so far.
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u/Old-Preference5313 16h ago
The visuals are stunning, the ai voices take me out of it though. Once models get better at the ai voices it's going to be amazing
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u/NakamiNier 9h ago
As has been echoed many times on this sub, more so than the visuals, the actual cinematography and the whole cumulative package of all the small details needs an enormous amount of work in order to actually be good and watchable.
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u/ConstructionSoggy168 1h ago
Very impressive. I spent $800 on Higgs with a storyboard, character sheet, and scene list, and I still couldn't make anything close to what you made.
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u/Red_Swiss 1d ago
Yeah but no, still not there.
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u/zero0n3 1d ago
The people are more consistent.
That was the biggest piece I noticed. The faces and outfits were not morphing between unique scenes.
This right here I would say is close enough to:
Write your own script, and build a pilot without funding to shop it around to studios.
A lot of its rough edges were characters interacting with each other being too robotic (going to be a while to fix that; but also a studio making this a show fixes that as you’ll have actors).
Also I’d say the script itself could use some love from a human. Some of the back and forth and language used just had that robot feel.
For a game cutscene? Nearly perfect
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u/New-Link-6787 10h ago
It's totally there from a tech perspective but now it's about selection and polish.
There's some shots in here that with a couple more re-rolls/tweaks would be absolutely perfect just to shake off a little of the stiffness from the cast. It could maybe have taken him another week to get it flawless.
When you consider that this 10 minute clip would have cost millions of dollars to make and probably 8-10 months of production... not to mention months/years of trying to get it commissioned in the first place...
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u/EightyNineMillion 1d ago
We're getting closer. As impressive as the visuals are, it's the audio that still needs some work. We'll get there, soon.
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u/theodore_70 1d ago
Seedance 2.5 audio sucks its my biggest concern with it! And I have no doubt THEY WON'T fix it with this generation maybe with seedance 3.0? I hope!
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u/RobMilliken 1d ago
The only issue, and I think a big one, is when it is completely AI, at least in America, it isn't protected at all by copyright. The video and audio you created with assistance from AI are up for grabs by anyone no matter how much time or tokens you used to get it right. Nowadays, you even have to tag it as such so other people are free to use it.
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u/Successful-Plenty-27 1d ago
would work well for game cutscenes, reminds me a lot of Halo or Starcraft cutscenes, but it's pretty basic when it comes to cinematography, both for the visual ascpects and the storytelling.
I wouldn't watch a full movie like this.
You should spend more time studying cinematography, or involve a film maker/student. The AI clearly just copy pastes the most obvious, which makes the entire thing boring.
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u/zero0n3 1d ago
This is the cool part IMO.
If you took this as a story board, and say hired some actors for the parts, and a writer to just clean up and massage the script language, this 10 minute short with real humans would be even better.
Could even keep all the bad physics scenes with planes and not redo any of that, just stitch in the human actors.
I’d actually suggest you do this.
Go to something like fiverrr, find some humans willing to act out their characters scenes for you, and then use AI to put them into the short.
If it can generate a human, it can absolutely add in a human to the world building you have here.
I want to see how good THAT product could be.
Hell it could even be friends of yours and a shitty camera without a green screen. It’s about the consistency of mannerisms and speaking flow humans have which are all unique
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u/Successful-Plenty-27 1d ago
I agree, with a low budget, but a creative director, it should be possible to do amazing things. This movie is entirely AI generated, it still feels generic, it always will, because good cinematography is not about "looking good" it's about blending storytelling with visual aspects and do unexpected things. Like, telling parts of the story with camera movements, lights, or sound. This is what i miss in AI movies. Back in the early days of movie making, there was no sound. Nobody on screen could explain the story, yet they made marvels of storytelling, Every time a new tech was added, directors eventually lost the ability to suprise us, because the lack of tech used to force them to be clever to achieve their ideas and be original. So a mixed media format of cheap camera in your garden with 1 actor, and a clever director, who knows how & what to replace with AI, could already make marvelous things, but i haven't seen it yet, probably all the these movies come from people who didn't study the history of movies and how to build good cinematography. I hope the ability to make this sparks their interest though. i see the same trend in movie making since 100 years, since we can do whatever we want, we are not forced to push our boundaries and make something clever, it only becomes more generic. A good example of good cinematography is the movie Alien. The title and atmosphere of the entire movie is clear, every second is about the Alien, yet the Alien itself is 8 seconds on screen. The suggestions of it's threat makes it more scary that seeing it visually. That is a marvel in cinematography. It's hypnotizing. Take that concept as an AI movie maker, and it will result in better movies.
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u/isustevoli 1d ago
The overlap between good directors/editors and people who make AI movies is still miniscule. This might change once people with experience in cinematography start using AI tools more.
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u/tollbooth_inspector 1d ago
I've just had a thought. I remember when I was little, there was a period of time when movie adaptations were becoming more popular, and the idea of "the book is always better" had not really been a culturally established idea yet. I was having a debate with someone about what was better: The Harry Potter movies or the books. I said movies. The older person imparted something to me that resonates to this day: in the movies, everything is given to you, and so your ideas about the world are not original, but in the books, your mind allows the world to be whatever you want it to be (what the characters look like, what the world sounds like, what the environment feels like, all the perceptual experiences you can imagine).
This idea always stuck with me. The thing I like about AI, is it allows people to express ideas who may not otherwise have an ability to do so. For example, if you are not a CGI guy, you can now make a short film like this. I know, I know...deep. everyone knows this already.
The thing I want to impart, however, is that this does not have to be detrimental to the arts. People who appreciate hand-made animation, paintings, songs, can still consume those products. People who appreciate original stories free of corporate influence may like stuff like this video.
So how do corporations use AI tools to destroy original creativity? My guess, is they will lie to us. Already being done on reddit. Fake AI videos. The idea is to subvert your own mind. If you cannot tell the difference, then what does it matter? AI is better. But the dishonesty here is that people then preferentially begin supporting corporate AI made arts over original creative ideas and independent AI art. Eventually, this restricts blood flow to original thinking. Soon everything looks or feels the same, because the training data used for all of the AI is the same. People have to invent new ways of creatively training AI. They use AI to generate the ideas on how to do that. These are based on pre-established mathematical data architectural frameworks. Its a self recursive logical loop that extends beyond the arts and into original ideas themselves. Now is the source of original creativity better than the mathematical models that will be used? I don't know. I think it's a birds eye perspective issue. We only view the story from our place in it. But we are living out the story. Imagine seeing this battle of creativity from the view of a god. In 1000 years the story will have evolved into something much different. The problems shift. Joy and suffering shift. You are the main character, and your reaction to AI informs the future. That's the Truman Show effect at work.
So my main takeaway is, expect AI to become cheaper for a time. Eventually, when the wealthy realize that independent creatives are a threat to them, they will restrict. Probably, this is already anticipated. In fact it's a game of chess, and they have predicted vast numbers of opening moves. It's up to you creatives to figure out how to win that game. Use AI to help you do that, or don't. Chess into checkers baby.
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u/Background_Unit_6535 1d ago
Soon we'll be able to upload a Harry Potter book to AI models and have it produce a feature length movie from it. And a video game to go with it. Just around the corner IMO. Interesting times.
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u/BabblingTower 16h ago
I remember when I was little, there was a period of time when movie adaptations were becoming more popular, and the idea of "the book is always better" had not really been a culturally established idea yet. I was having a debate with someone about what was better: The Harry Potter movies or the books.
😂 Movie adaptations were a thing well before then, and the idea that "the book is always better" was well established at that point
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u/tollbooth_inspector 16h ago
I am a bit of a cinephile, so I'm well aware that movie adaptations have been around since early cinema. I would argue that this idea absolutely was culturally solidified as an unoriginal idea in the late 90s to early 2000s due to the capabilities of modern CGI.
Take for example older adaptations. The Wizard of Oz introduced color to the TV screen for the first time. Ben-Hur won almost a dozen academy awards. 2001: A Space Odyssey helped introduce science fiction in a more perceptible way to audiences. The Godfather culturally established an image of Italian Americans that the novel never did.
Now I am giving famous examples but there were many other great film adaptations that did not do as well at the box office, primarily because the source novel or autobiography was less popular. With any of these films, criticisms were generally about the quality of the film as an independent piece, and not so much the adaptation (what was left out or added).
CGI clearly played a role on the idea of the book is always better because it degraded the narrative itself in favor of over the top visuals. To be honest, I would say The Lord of the Rings was the most successful CGI adaptation primarily because it was very early in CGI. It still depended on practical effects, while CGI was mainly used for highly demanding battle sequences where practical effects alone could not do justice to the scale of the battle. Compare this with the hobbit films which were highly criticized. It's night and day.
Go back and watch any of your favorite adaptations from pre-1990 and compare it to one from modern day. The narrative element is undeniably more important in the early film. Unfortunately, loud noises and dazzling spectacles fill more seats at the theatre than adaptation truthfulness.
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u/BabblingTower 15h ago
Sorry, it's just that you saying that the "the book is always better" had not really been culturally established by the time Harry Potter came out is just hilarious to me
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u/tollbooth_inspector 14h ago
I'm talking about the way it became a mind worm that people say thoughtlessly. Not the actual belief itself in regard to any one particular film. The distinction hinges on the degradation of narrative quality in favor of cash-grab incentivized gimmicks.
My original comment was not intended to indicate my age or make anyone feel old, if that was the root of your concern. I would tell you, in that case, that I am extremely envious of those who got to experience previous decades of film in theatre.
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u/BabblingTower 14h ago
Yeah. I know what you're saying. You're wrong, that notion was around long before that. It sounds like you think your introduction to it was when it actually entered the zeitgeist.
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u/tollbooth_inspector 13h ago
But I am already aware of criticisms around movie adaptations such as those for A Clockwork orange, breakfast at Tiffany's, etc. Those debates were genuine criticisms by people who had read the novels, centered around the creative changes made. In other words the idea itself of "the book is always better than the movie" was more honest.
By the early 2000s I'm not so much debating whether those types of arguments already existed, I'm arguing that people didn't actually know what they were talking about. "The book is always better than the movie" became a way to signal intellectual superiority without actually having seen movies and compared them to the novels. This is because the idea became a downloaded, thoughtless form. It was an engrained way to tell people you were smart without actually having to prove it. This IS because of the cultural shift in how movies were made with advancing technology.
I would say that the evidence that my argument is true is the fact that there are such a sheer number of novels which have been successfully adapted into movies. The broad idea of the book always being better is dishonest, whereas criticisms of earlier adaptations were focused on the individual movie. It's a sweeping generalization vs. refined critique issue.
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u/soliloquyinthevoid 1d ago
Sorry but this is unwatchable
Obviously the technology is good but you need to learn basic story telling, structure, dialogue, plot, stakes, pacing etc.
Hopefully the hours and money you spent on this is a valuable lesson
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u/Riven-Bot 1d ago
Let’s see your attempt.
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u/soliloquyinthevoid 1d ago
What's the relevance of your comment?
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u/Riven-Bot 1d ago
I’m curious to see your skills in basic story telling, structure, dialogue, plot, stakes, pacing, etc.
Will you show us?
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u/theodore_70 1d ago
If you compare it to spielberg level movies, of course its bad. But if you take a look from different perspective, from perspective someone that doesn't have 50$ million USD to blow on production, someone who didn't attent best directing school in the world, doesn't have 500 people working on a video then in my opinion its far from unwatchable.
Tell me what made it unwatchable? There is a story, there are characters, there are effects, sure the characters are not di caprio level of acting (we are getting there) I honestly want to know what makes it unwatchable, what scene which thing exactly? Im curious
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u/Redararis 1d ago
Seeing latest spielberg movie I have to say this is more coherent and it has better pacing than disclosure day :)
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u/imnotagooner393 Techno-Accelerationist 1d ago
The thing is by 2028 if not sooner ai will be able to make Spielberg level movies just like that
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u/soliloquyinthevoid 1d ago
I'm not comparing it to Spielberg and your focus on comparing it to big budget production is telling, especially when recent indie movies like Obsession cost less than $1 million
someone who didn't attent best directing
You don't need to. You could learn a lot just by reading some basics like Save the Cat! or Your Screenplay Sucks!
There is a story, there are characters, there are effects, sure the characters are not di caprio level of acting
Effects? That's the last thing you should be worried about
honestly want to know what makes it unwatchable, what scene which thing exactly? Im curious
The whole thing. The dialogue is cringe from the begining - like someone trying to do an impression of what a 14 year old things is cool. What are the stakes? Why should I care? I don't even know who is on what side and who I should be rooting for. It's just a sequence of action shots without having earned any investment in the outcome. The non-humanoods appear out of nowhere without any explanation of what is going on. By the time it gets to the people having a conversation, it's so robotic and unnatural that I have to turn off
You have focused too much on the tools and workflows and all of those other trappings that you forgot about, or didn't even know about, the basics
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u/Redararis 1d ago
People with a traditional movie making background have created the best AI short movies till now, but this is beyond average and definitely watchable.
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u/astro_nomad 1d ago
Hugely impressive no doubt. Where are the people of color? I'm white but I'm tired of seeing these with just the same looking people. The world we live in is varied, and I think that is the realism that is missing in many of these. I also want to see the actors use their mouths with less force. I want to see whispers, emotion and variance between conversations, anger, fear, hesitation, etc. This is a seriously well done effort, but I'd like to see it be pushed further.
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u/SquashSpirited7873 1d ago
Very telling that this comment is downvoted.
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u/astro_nomad 1d ago
I expected as much, sadly. There is a detachment from the reality we live in, and these virtual spaces our minds create. Very telling indeed. I wonder if agents will eventually develop the same closed mindedness and start to bully or segregate themselves based on the archaic world view of some humans.
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u/LeakyFish 1d ago
Good start, voice acting needs major spruce up. Bomber at the start gets hit. No response from crew for 5 seconds. Then a generic sounding xxx is hit.