Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival
At a conference on film and artificial intelligence over the weekend in Bokyun, South Korea, it was hard to tell whether the new technology was being embraced, normalized or underestimated.
Bokewon, an upscale city on the outskirts of Seoul, has long harbored the aspirations of both the high-tech and cultural industries. The city turned a WWII bunker into a digital art hub and boasts a comic book museum, a Webtoon Convergence Center and two film festivals, as well as a philharmonic orchestra founded in the analog era.
This year, its long-running Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan) launched a competition for AI-produced short films, co-hosted a conference on the topic and ran a hands-on AI workshop. Embracing AI felt like a brave response to every adult film festival's fear of being stale.
The impressive lineup of speakers at the Bucheon Conference includes: Caleb Ward, CEO of Curious Ridge; directors Dave Clark, Kwon Hansel and Piotr Winiewicz; Lee Seungmo, professor of film at the Korean Academy of Film Arts; and Margarita Grubina and Anna Balkh of voice cloning company Respecher.
Maciej Zemojcjin was on hand to explain how he created the “Murals” art installation, displayed at the Art Bunker, which featured some of Banksy's endangered or previously destroyed works created in Ukraine. Saved the
After last year's strike by writers and actors over the potential threat of AI in Hollywood and the fact that AI has already been used in commercially released Korean feature films such as “Wonderland” and “Queen of Tears,” T Being used in V shows. Welcome. (The recently released “Wonderland” feature film, directed by Kim Tae-yong, used voice cloning to include actor Gong Yoo's dialogue during principal photography four years earlier. (Not recorded. Another actor, Lee Eul, who died two years ago in Tvn's “Queen of Tears” series, had generative AI to face actor Kim Ji-won in the snowy forest.)
Stan-Christine Salver, Strategic Advisor, Head of KeynesNext and CEO of StoryTech, led the discussion and analysis. He described the current “poly-crisis” in media and entertainment as one where the industry is shifting from an era of producers and single creators to one of consumer-centric creation – with AI accelerating and empowering consumers. Is.
Unity, Unreal, Ableton and platforms like Substack, Patreon and YouTube already allow creators to create, distribute and monetize outside of the traditional studio or broadcaster context.
Korea offers one of the best examples of how new tools can overtake traditional media. The globally successful Netflix show “Squid Game” was watched by 142 million people, Salveer said. YouTube creator Mr. Best's “Squid Game in Real Life” has been viewed by more than 628 million users. In addition to his financial loss, Mr. Best's prize was a deal with Amazon Prime Video.
Salvoir also explained two different approaches to emerging AI in the entertainment industry. An American approach that prioritizes experimentation and where controversies like OpenAI's clash with Scarlett Johansson over an artificial voice will be explored in court. The European Union, on the other hand, says that safety is paramount and that regulation should come before industry use.
Salveer envisions an AI-driven future as one in which everything that can be automated will be automated. Like lemmings munching on the foundation of a house, AI is starting with the simpler things and what's close at hand, like design and subtitling. Over a long period of time, perhaps 10 years from now, IP-generated content will have pushed traditional creators. “Cinema produced by the author will still exist, but it can be local and place. Like opera,” he said.
Using a clip called “And I Didn't Say Anything”, Respecher's Grubina reveals the possibility of human redundancy as an imminent possibility. From very small samples, such as a still photo or video clip, it is already possible to clone a new facial voice, matching the facial movements to the voices and the voice in a new accent or language. It is possible to speak – perhaps an original pattern the speaker does not know. The kit can be used for animation, customization, scaling, ADR, dubbing and localization.
Speaking about the “voice marketplace”, Grobina also addressed the need for permissions and the ethical use of voices, such as avoiding sexual or political discourse. Abuses of voice and image cloning have already occurred in the real world, such as the recent case of a Ukrainian woman who discovered her digital likeness was being used to broadcast pro-Russian propaganda in Chinese to an online audience in China. being used.
Winiewicz unveiled a few clips from his feature-length film “About a Hero,” which is expected to premiere at one of the fall festivals this year. Among the hybrid project's themes are AI itself, the work of legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog, and the history of 19th-century man Caspar Hauser, who had no experience of language until the age of 16, but once he integrated into society. And when he started learning, he got surprising results. . Herzog previously created “The Enigma of Kasper Hauser” and recently released a defiant statement suggesting that it would take hundreds of years before AI could make its own film.
Winiewicz says “About a Hero” wasn't meant to challenge Herzog's words, but rather to play with some of the concepts of AI, such as getting results that serve as input. Depends on the material used.
BiFan Festival Director Shin Chul embraces the challenges of the AI-powered, user-generated era. Shin said that filmmaking will not be a battle for cash, it will just be one of creative challenges.
This gave AI the material to come up with both the poster for the festival and its trailer. The poster is a colorful hybrid of previous BiFan posters. The short film asks the question “AI, who are you?” The uncomfortable response: “I'm just your mirror.”