AI, Film, and Social Media

AI, Film, and Social Media

Byrichard

I like to experiment with Bard and chatGPT. I like to see what their limits are, but with time and effort I like to get beyond their limits and get them to do what I want, without failing too often.


DJI and other brands have had self-editing options for years now, so the idea that software would edit the footage taken by the brand’s devices is not new. What is new is the desire people have to let AI replace their own creativity, and inspiration, to give the AI’s creative vision rather than their own.


The lazy Editor


Film and television are art forms, as should social media, but the problem with social media is that it is made by amateurs with no background in film or television. They break plenty of rules, which is what creative people are meant to do, but not because they want to go against cultural movements. They break the rules out of ignorance, out of amateurism, and out of laziness. It isn’t that social media has democratised video content, but rather than social media has destroyed film and television. Now we’re stuck with what I like to call User Generated Crap, but we’re also left with YouTube being a shadow of its former self.


In the days when it was going to be sued for unauthorised use of copyrighted material it was interesting, because it was about creative people being creative, before the social frameworks were in place for that creativity to be legal. I filmed the LakeParade more than once, and then spent hours editing my footage. I posted it to YouTube and the sound was removed due to copyright violation.


Today people are doing absolute crap on TikTok with music, and yet it’s legal, because copyright rules have changed, but when it’s too late for conventional editors to bother. If we invest hours filming, and then more hours editing, then YouTube will just mute the videos.


Algorithms and the Feed


I would love to enjoy using YouTube but I don’t. I don’t enjoy YouTube because it’s focused on the lowest common denominator, rather than topics and themes. The videos that are promoted have sensationalist headings, that are clickbait, rather than solid content. The wrong content is being promoted. The wrong things are being valued.


The result is that even without adverts YouTube has become unusable for me. “But you can block and dislike what you don’t like”. Sure, but I’m fighting against a gaggle of people with different audiovisiual values. I will lose.


If I don’t pay for Premium, I need to watch awful ads, but if I pay for Premium I have to sort through a jumble of crap before getting to something interesting. More than once I have spent an hour looking for something to watch, and found nothing.


The Film Industry


Studios Quietly Go on Hiring Spree for AI Specialist Jobs Amid Picket Line Anxiety


Even AI Filmmakers Think Hollywood’s AI Proposal Is Dangerous


Around 2002 I lived in Weymouth and going to the cinema cost 2 GBP so I would go to the cinema, once or twice a week. In the process I saw at least 90 films, but in that same process I learned of the formulas the US film industry use, and I have never enjoyed American films since. The problem with the US film industry is that it’s based on formulas, rather than humanity. It’s based on set plot lines, where names and locations are changed, but the story is the same.


As I said a few years ago, I prefer to watch television series, to films, because television series are still creative. Each television series is different from the other, so we still want to know what happens. With films I lose interest within ten to fifteen minutes. if not sooner. I love the film medium, but I hate what Hollywood produces.


More CGI Than Story


One of the weaknesses of almost new hollywood films is that they forget that they are a story telling medium. They forget that we go to the cinema to be told a story, not to see computer graphics. As I have said more than once, if I want to see computer graphics I can watch gamers play GTA V and other games on YouTube. If I watch films it’s because I want to be told a story that has depth and value.


BrotherHood – A Korean Film


One of the films that most impressed me when I was going to the cinema two or more times a week was Brotherhood because it had a real story, about real people in a real situation where we felt real emotions about the situation. Of course I mean a genuine story, rather than real. It’s a fictional film on what could have been real. It’s a powerful film, without too much CG, just good story telling.


AI and Special Effects


In one of the articles I shared I read about how they want AI to replace all extras. In the other article they show how kitsch is simplified by AI. In the scenarios described by those articles AI would be used to replace humans by AI, replace locations by AI, and replace everything else. Just one actor, acting by himself, surrounded by virtual people.


AI, Media Asset Management and Restoration


I do think that AI has a place in film, for media asset management, for film restoration and for tasks that are time consuming and boring for humans, but good for machines. I enjoy Media Asset management but I believe that as a person works through digital assets machine learning tools should pay attention and learn from humans. Rather than transcribing by hand, AI can transcribe and then humans double check the accuracy of what was transcribed, as with Project Gutenberg.


And Finally


From factories to film sets, AI has a simple goal: Making things cheaper


Although the title of the article quoted about is to make things cheaper, it isn’t. It’s about cutting corners to maximise profit. It isn’t about making films cheaper to see at the cinema. It isn’t about making films more cost effective. It’s about not paying human beings because AI is “good enough”. It’s about dehumanising the film industry and making it even more uninteresting than it is. If you replace humans with AI, then you lose that humanity, that makes humans relevant.


if you over-use CG and forget about story, then you might as well be making computer games rather than films, because, at the end, a lot of modern films are just computer games, that you watch as films.


I lost interest in Hollywood decades ago, so AI doesn’t change the unlikeliness of me watching Hollywood films. It just confirms the reasons for which I lost interest in the first place. The story being told isn’t interesting, and AI driven CG are a distraction, rather than justified.


Nanook Of The North
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Nanook Of The North

Byrichard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkW14Lu1IBo


Two days ago I watched Nanook of the North, a documentary about an Inuit man and his family. This isn’t a documentary in the conventional sense. This documentary dates back to 1922 when the Documentary film was a brand new genre. This is one of the first documentaries, if not the first. I read about it for years, until, when I was watching Northern Exposure I did a search and came across the documentary on Filmin.


No Voice Over


The documentary has no voice over because it’s a silent film. You get intertitles instead that explain what you’re seeing. For many decades the documentary genre existed hand in hand with anthropolgy, the idea that the documentary could be used to document old ways of life, fascets of life and more. Nanook of the North was an early experiment


The Setback


At first Robert Flaherty filmed when he had time during an expedition. He would take the free time he had to document the lives of the Inuit. Eventually, the rushes burned due to a fire. He had shot 70,000 feet of film, almost twelve hours of 35 mm film. Hee was left with just the edit print. He showed it around before deciding that he didn’t like it, so he reshot Nanook of the North. (source: A New History of Documentary film, Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A. McLane, p12, 2005)


The content


Nanook of the north is a series of static shots that show an inuit family living their lives. We see them at a trading post, discovering the gramophone tasting it and more. We read about the children enjoying some sweets, to excess, and then taking castor oil, and smiling. We also see a seal hunt, a walrus hunt and the trapping of a fox, among other scenes. We see some traditional forms of doing these various activities.


At the start of the documentary there is an amusing moment where the Kayak comes to shore, and you see the entire family climb out of it, including a dog.


If not for Nannok of the North then such a scene would be read or heard about, but never seen.


The Interior Igloo scene


Nanook of the North did some controversy because it was seen as setup, as not really illustrating inuit life, especially the igloo scene. It’s interessting to see how clear ice was used as a window, with the adding of a block of snow as a reflector to get more light inside. I mention this because at least two or three times we see scenes that are supposed to happen within the iglood.


Due to how cramped an igloo is, and due to the lack of light, and film stock of the time, it would have been impossible to film within the igloo, so they faked it, outdoors. It illustrates the morning ritual. At one point we read, and see, the wife chewing a shoe, to defrost it in the morning, due to the cold night freezing it over. If the Igloo scene had not been faked outdoors, then the interior layout of an igloo would have been lost. By taking a small liberty we preserve history.


Watchability


Although the film is 101 years old, at the time of the writing of this post it is still easy to watch today, and it is pleasant. It shows various moments of inuit life, without being boring. At moments it even feels more like a home video than a documentary. I found myself thinking that anyone with a family could watch it and enjoy it. It has survived the test of time.


The Man With the Movie Camera


For historical context, the Man with the Movie Camera would be shot seven years later, in 1929.


The Digital Age


One of the luxuries of the Digital Age is that many of these films have been digitised, and in so doing they have been made easier to access. When I was reading about these documentaries I had to imagine them. I had to rely on frames of the film and descriptions. Now with a quick Google or other search we can find and watch these documentaries. They may be old, and they may be part of history, but students of the genre don’t need to search through university libraries to find VHS copies of old films like I did. Within seconds you can find content that took me years, or even decades to find. Nanook of the North is a key film, so to understand documentary we must watch it.

Netflix – Browse By Language
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Netflix – Browse By Language

Byrichard

Recently Netflix added a Browse by Language option which means that you can browse for content by original language. Yesterday I saw that I can browse for content in French, Italian, Polish,, Korean, German and many more languages. I could list more but that’s dull. Instead I want to focus on the opportunities it opens up. 



With YouTube, Apple Films and other platforms you can search for films but they are either in French, German or Italian in Switzerland and it’s hard to find content that is in its original language. 


For English speaking YouTube creators they always say with “frogspawn VPN you can pretend you’re in country A to watch content from there” etc. This does appeal to me in rare situations. What appeals more is the freedom to search for French, Italian or Korean content. By watching a film made in French, Italian, Korean or any other language you are entering a different culture. 


One of my favourite films, when I watched 90 films in the span of 9 months or so was that I saw films I would not otherwise see. Brotherhood, the Korean film is excellent. I also really enjoyed Hong Kong martial arts films. 


It is for this reason that last night I watched the King’s Affection, episode 1.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4zM7jHdVFc


With Netflix and Amazon Prime it is was to get stuck watching US and UK content without thinking of watching content in other languages. Netflix has now made it possible to explore the world of film and television, on an international, cross-cultural scale. You have thirty two languages to choose from. Now you see why I didn’t list them all earlier. 


Last night Netflix removed Young Sheldon from Netflix Switzerland so I was angry. I cancelled my subscription until I noticed the browse by language feature, and then Netflix became as rich and diverse as a film festival. By selecting Russian, Romanian, Telugu or another language you travel through space and time to other cultures, other values, and different ways of seeing the world. 


I had skimmed over Netflix France and noticed that they had a lot of extreme sports content. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_86DhJsW2w


And Finally


Film and Television is a great way to discover new languages, new cultures, and new ways of seeing the world. By making Netflix more international they are helping to bring more people into contact with more cultures. This is good. 

Day 33 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – A video walk
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Day 33 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – A video walk

Byrichard

Today I went on a video walk with the DJI OSMO pocket three or whichever number it has and I took a series of frames. Before going for my daily walk I searched through the Vision Du Réel virtual Film Festival list of films and I found “The Bridge“. It’s available for all to watch during the festival. I didn’t watch it in full but from what I saw it’s a series of shots in the style of Dziga Vertov’s Man With the Movie Camera.


This inspired me to get out and go for a walk and try an experiment of my own. It’s nine minutes of footage of a village during lockdown in Switzerland. You can hear birds cheeping, banging of some kind or other, people playing in the distance and more. You can also see the occasional car, pedestrian or cyclist. If ever you wanted to go and get B-roll for a post-apocalyptic film it would be now.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsYjDnzj0EM
A few minutes of footage for a small village in Switzerland during self-isolation.


The footage was quickly edited using DaVinci resolve and I simply removed the chrominance. It would take seconds to prepare the version with normal colours. This is as an hommage to the vision Du Réel documentary.


Interdependence – An environmental film in eleven parts

Byrichard

Last night I went to see Interdependence, an environmental film in eleven parts. It is a collection of short films that explore environmental themes around the topics of air, water, and earth.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSKBBztInug


When I watched one part it reminded me of , a french film from 1953. It looks at a dystopian vision of the future where people go to the zoo to see animals on screens and inflatable balloons serve as sea mammals. At one point everyone puts on a gas mask because of the pollution.


The theme of polluted air is in two other short films. Olmo, is about a grandfather who told his son about a tree he planted as a child. At the end of this segment, we see him go up to it. The notion of planting a tree as a child and going to see it as an adult is a good one.


Megha’s Divorce also explores the theme of air pollution but this time in Italy. A city is so polluted that a woman wants to divorce her husband, so that she may take her son to a city that is less polluted. In conclusion, the judge states that they have a six-month suspension of divorce, so that people may stop polluting as much, and see if things improve.


I often hear that we should replace the car with buses and public transport but this is a flawed solution. A better solution is for people to walk if it is within walking distance, or take a bike if it is not. Too often the conversation focuses on one machine being replaced by another. The conversation does not see the opportunity presented by our own legs, for walking and cycling.


Although it wasn’t the aim I liked The Hungry Seagull for the way shots were framed. I liked the shot where we are behind a seagull chick, looking out to sea. In Natural History documentaries by the BBC, the voice-over usually tells us this. For once we see it, feeling empathy for the seagull waiting to feed.


Qurut explores the notion that if we are not careful we will find that ingredients are missing for specific recipes. When I listened to this podcast episode it spoke about replacing animal meat with lab-grown meat and two themes came to mind. The first one is related to jobs. How many jobs, traditions, and species of cattle would be lost if we stopped the raising of cattle. How would the production of milk for cheese, milk and ice cream change? Simultaneously how would the rural landscape of so many nations change if we stopped eating specific animals?


When a species that was bred by man is no longer needed it dies out, as various breeds of cattle did, after either the First or Second World War as they shifted from using animals to do work to using machines.


At the end of the screening someone when people were speaking after the film someone asked “How can we get more people to see this film?” and my first thought was that it would be easy to share this on YouTube but another way to share these films would be as video podcasts. Each podcast could include a panel discussion to discuss the themes explored by each individual film. School children, University students and people with an interest in the topics could watch each episode and develop their understanding of each theme.


Imagine for example that Olmo is combined with a discussion about Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees, imagine that A Sunny day is used to discuss plastic pollution and extinction. Imagine that Qurut is used to discuss sustainability.


The film has been out for about three months, screened at various film festivals and events. Interviews and television appearances are here.

Arrest – Screened at the Black Movie film Festival

Byrichard

Yesterday I went to see Arrest – screened at the Black Movie film festival. It’s an independent film festival taking place in Geneva at the moment. I’m a volunteer at the event and in exchange for standing at the door and checking tickets, I get to see any film that still has space.


The provisional title of this film was 1983 and because I walked in a few minutes into the film I missed the beginning. The entire film takes place in a prison cell and looks at how two characters were interrogated. It looks at the dynamic between both characters.


While watching this film it reminded me of The Gulag Archipelago because it gives a glimpse into life under Nicolae Ceau?escu.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDdcAcJS3ZY


And the making of in Romanian


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ4rMERebgo

Magnetic – Geneva premiere

Byrichard

Yesterday I went to Magnetic’s Geneva Premiere and I really enjoyed some segments of the film and found that others were less interesting. Keep in mind though, that this film is two hours long and that this increase and decrease in interest is normal. 



What made this screening special is that many of the people that we saw in the film were present at the event. Before the film started they were presented to us individually, said a few words and then one person won some skis and another won for tickets to a ski resort. 



The sports covered in this Nuit De La Glisse event were skiing, snowboarding mountain biking, e-mountain biking, speed flying, kite surfing, wind surfing and surfing. These sequences were shot in Hawaii, Tahiti, Spain, Portugal, Pakistan, France, Switzerland and one or two other countries. I don’t remember seeing that Portugal had some of the most consistently big waves. It would be impressive to see those waves in person. They can be up to 27 metres and more. Tahiti is a good place for riding barrel waves. 


It’s interesting to see a sequence with an e-mountain bike because the sport is still so new. It does make biking in the mountains seem more interesting, if it about more than riding on hiking trails or going down dedicated tracks. The biking sequences were fun. They might have changed how I feel about the growing popularity of mountain bikes in the mountains. The film has achieved something. 


Speed flying was filmed with a 360 camera and the image was stabilised so that the image was level but the flyer was moving from side to side as well as up and down. It was interesting to see how good this image quality was. I also like the use of the drone to film a variety of shots. Drones, when used correctly, provide the camera operator with the opportunity to get close to the subject without the use of a telephoto lens. This means that you preserve depth of field. This was used effectively in some of the mountain sequences, the surfing sequences and others. It made me want to get out and film with a selection of cameras. 

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On Film and Television

Byrichard

I like that I can watch days of television series and that I can’t spend 90 minutes watching films. Television series are about people, places and situations and the characters are realistic. In contrast films are superficial, shallow and too full of special effects for a story to be told. The cinema loses out because it is too superficial, too pretentious without offering something contrast at the end of the donated time.

We do donate time to the media we appreciate and gain from.

Saw The Film Shooter And Really Enjoyed it

Byrichard

Last night I was feeling good about how my dissertation was going so I got my shoes on and walked to the cinema, feeling good about what I had achieved in the day. I went from my dissertation being a collection of words on the computer to it being printed out for visual inspection.

What I found as I looked through the thousands of words I have written is that I am quite happy with the way it’s going and thought that I’m going to meet the target date for the handing in earl, if everything goes well from here on.

When I went to see Shooter I really enjoyed the film. I often find that I prefer war films to other genres because although the story format is always the same the way the story is more engaging than many of the other styles of films. It’s great fun to watch explosions, to watch works of great precision.

I also approve of the choice of women selected for the film. It’s a nice distraction from what I’ve spent most of my time looking at recently. i.e. words on a screen.

I’d recommend people to see it.