AI continues to cartwheel through the arts, breaking crockery, toppling pay rates and forcing reevaluations of fundamental epistemological, ontological, and teleological truths.
Processes that began slowly with the invention of photography continue to pick up speed and today hurtle forward at a pace that leaves no time for thoughtful assimilation.
AI enables us to plunder the work of previous generations of artists. Their artistic accomplishments can be purloined, cannibalized, deconstructed and seamlessly reassembled with no talent other than the ability to type on a keyboard. Look at how the following YouTuber can remove Cary Grant from the classic movie Charade and substitute himself as Audrey Hepburn's romantic co-star:
Charade and other accomplished original films may someday be buried beneath a sea of fan variations.
Another example: a different Youtuber easily resurrects dead movie stars such as Paul Newman, Marlon Brando or Rock Hudson and makes them actors in a new movie about the Justice League:
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| Paul Newman as Green Lantern |
Just as inferior voices can be corrected and enhanced with AutoTune, inferior pictures can be corrected and enhanced with algorithmic technologies. The need for skill, creativity and imagination have diminished as technology provides a colorable substitute.
All of which brings me to the new Fantastic Four movie, scheduled to be released on July 25:
Last week I saw an advance screening of the film, which is based upon the 1968 Galactus Trilogy (in Fantastic Four #48 - 50). Marvel Studios employed thousands of people, hundreds of millions of dollars, and the latest software to enhance and embellish Jack Kirby's 12 cent comic book. They did everything technology could do to improve the original story.
The movie was bigger and noisier, sure, with plenty of attention-grabbing special effects, but as a work of art it couldn't compare with the power and quality of Kirby's comic book.
Kirby's dramatic staging has been replaced by faster pacing-- about the speed you'd expect from a video game. His costumes have been updated, for the worse. The complexity of his content has been replaced by bland platitudes about the importance of family.
The movie is entertaining, but with all of its advantages it feels artistically inferior to the hand drawn comic book. So for those who say that traditional art forms can be replaced in all meaningful respects by new technologies, I say:
Not yet.
Is it just me or is that movie poster dreadful graphic design. The centered guy holds the eye for a moment, then the details disintegrate. It starts with the double "4" at the top. Not exactly Bob Peak.
ReplyDeleteNot Bob Peak indeed. Nowhere will you see posters liked his glorious "Camelot" or even the posters of Saul Bass.
DeleteThe thing that jumped out at me was how wrong the heads seem for the bodies, especially the Human Torch. It looks as if the heads were cut out and pasted onto preexisting bodies, the way cheap movie posters did it in the 80s.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure those heads were transplanted. As AI gets better, such surgery will become less detectable.
DeleteWelcome back! Where have you been?
ReplyDeleteI've been off working on a study for the National Academy of Sciences. Priorities shifted for a while.
DeleteMy observation is that the more technology is available, the weaker the stories that are told. “Flight of the Phoenix” was so economical in its use of resources, but unmatched in its storytelling.
ReplyDeleteAI will certainly create impressive scenes. But that's more for show.
Michael Roemer
My rule is that for every $1,000,000 spent on special effects, 1% of the story goes away. But it's a general rule, and there are exceptions.
DeleteTechnology cannot make the innate meaningfulness of the world more meaningful, only more comfortable, exciting and easy. But that aint the same thing as meaningful. So it goes with art or entertainment.
ReplyDeletechris bennett-- Does the audience notice the difference? Has our thirst for "meaning" diminished as our comfort increases?
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteTo me, most AI visuals have the same bland, overly airbrushed look—like what you see on modern smart TVs. A lot of TVs now come with a video effect called “motion smoothing” or “motion interpolation” that makes movies look weirdly unnatural, almost like a soap opera. I can’t convince any of my younger friends or relatives of this. To them, it “looks fine.”
DeleteAnonymous, perhaps the reason many younger people think this stuff "looks fine" is because they are not sufficiently familiar with a grounding comparison. When you taste a fish caught hours ago that morning you realise what is lacking in its shrink-wrapped supermarket cousin.
DeleteDavid Apatoff - I just read my reply to you and realised an error (correction here in bold) it should tread:
DeleteI believe the audience does notice the difference, unconsciously. It seems to me obvious that increase in depression and despair, particularly in the young, is proportional to the exponential increase of the technological and ideological fruits of the enlightenment in the recent decades.
That certainly seems to be the way the work is shaping up. People rely more and more heavily on the new digital crutches. Does it need to be that way? That may depend on the artist; it will require quite a substantial talent to hold their own against such powerful temptations.
ReplyDeleteWith all the money and talent at their disposal I am astonished that Marvel chose to publish a Fantastic 4 poster that looks exactly like a marker comp from the 70s, cranked out as a rush job for an end-of-day presentation at a cut-rate agency.
ReplyDeleteI think Jack Kirby would throw up seeing that poster - I could .
ReplyDeleteAl McLuckie
I think the lion’s share of the wonderment of Kirby’s work emanates from the original Mesoamerican sci-fi pop-art glyph language he invented. Which merges and matches perfectly with the wild content of his religio-cosmic fantasies.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that Kirby’s one-off aesthetic jam can be converted into naturalism in the first place is bizarre. That his sprawling dream-mythos might be conjured into realistic being via sterile discrete means and by committee, sans Kirby, is yet another layer of muddle.
The art department working on this movie did fine work, though. To my mind, anyway. They delivered lots of eye candy; a credible cool-cat 1960s retrofuturist vibe. They not only did their research but synthesized it into some beautiful and fun objects and environments. As only the best concept artists can.
But still, it’s all disintegrated when placed into the frame; a spectacle of discrete creative snacks. Not so much Art as A La Carte.
The discreteness of special effects grafted into photography is simply a problem. Always has been. It was realized by painters hundreds of years ago that if you made everything discrete in your picture, the air and atmosphere would dissipate. You would be left with the feeling of suffocation; an unlivable barren vacuum chamber of an environment. The air in a picture - and various aesthetic atmospheres generally - is an illusion created between the elements. Not by them.
Unity is also always a problem. Nothing can be flown in to an integrated work of art. Properly, every element is merged with the whole, and emerges from it. Detail precipitates out from the design, not the reverse. There’s no integrity found in the air-dropping of elements into the war zone, as special effects must be delivered.
So our bombastic tentpole movies simply present a reliquary of the cinematic trick work of our age. Along with our cultural concerns condensed and converted into a series of heartfelt billboards ticking off the bullet points of the emotional beat sheet on the way to the next explosion. The narratives are secondary. Artfulness a distant third.
No one's ever called me an optimist, but I am less pessimistic. Bad art is bad art, whether or not done with the use of machinery--and it is, always has been and presumably will always be most art. Ted Sturgeon had it pegged: 90% of everything is crud.
ReplyDeleteNew tech opens up possibilities. It does not preclude the old ways, and can only displace them on its merits. I've been reading lately of the scorn heaped on the so-called "books" printed on paper using moveable type instead of being written by hand on parchment. (Still looking for someone to denounce modern 19th Century artists for buying paints instead of mixing their own pigments. You know it has to have been said.) At it's best, CGI can do things which can't be done with "practical effects" or can do them cheaper, giving us films we might not have had otherwise. Yes, it can be abused. So can word-processing--and carbon paper.
As for stealing from the greats, AI is only following a well-trodden path. Are we prepared to denounce Shakespeare for stealing "Pyramus and Thysbe?" Or Marlow for appropriating the English Faust Book? The measure of a great artist is that he has exceeded his inspiration, not that he had none.
New people in old movies? Not yet. Probably not while I'm able to appreciate it. (I'm 72.) Will it be abused? Certainly. Try to name anything which has never been abused. Does it have potential for good? Very much so, I think. Or am I the only one ever to watch "The Conqueror" and wish the leads were differently cast? To wish William Powell and his crew had starred in all the Phylo Vance mysteries?
Old people in new movies? I hope so. Think what could be done with Errol Flynn in the days of the super-hero movie!
Don't denounce the new tools. Denounce the poor workmen. They'd have done even worse with the old tools. And denounce the culture. There were I think five people with writing credit on The Fantastic Four, not counting producer, director, Stan Lee of Jack Kirby. Anyone who imagines great stories are told by committees is in for a rough awakening.
And never forget your Kipling. "There are nine and forty ways of reciting tribal lays, and every single one of them is right."
The ease of use of A.I. image and music generation devalues anything made by it. People actually want to be wowed by the unique vision and skill of an artist. Scarcity value plays a part here. The more people use A.I. the more the results will be greeted with apathy or contempt.
ReplyDeleteThe backlash against A.I. is strong already. See the use of the term ‘A.I. slop’ in the comments of any short video on youtube which is obviously A.I. made.
AdamB and Al McLuckie-- I sympathize. I think that, just as the art directors for the movie tapped Jack KIrby's talent, they also tapped the 1960s ethos for a the retro style of the poster. It's more about nostalgia than originality.
ReplyDeleteKev Ferrara-- you've obviously seen the movie, which is good. I agree that there were some good spots in the art direction but did it bother you that Galactus was dressed in what appeared to be clanking iron armor? For me, that seemed to take Kirby's original insight in the wrong direction.
ReplyDeleteDAVID: "I agree that there were some good spots in the art direction but did it bother you that Galactus was dressed in what appeared to be clanking iron armor? For me, that seemed to take Kirby's original insight in the wrong direction.
DeleteWhen Orson Welles was directing Citizen Kane, for every bit of trick work (aka special effects) that was brought to him, he went into mud turtle mode; he told the art department no, no, and no, again and again, like a stubborn mule, until they finally came to him with something that did not seem wrong, fake and silly.
It's a very common failure in hyperbolic tentpole movies that the aesthetic on screen is that of the art department/concept art team, rather than the director. Whose fault is that? I'd say the director's. Or maybe the producer's.
Incidentally, the only Marvel movies I like are the first Iron Man (Favreau dir.) and first Captain America (Johnston dir.) No superhero rallies. No galactic-peril. Lots of practical effects. Mostly tasteful, rigorously-hidden use of cgi.
Robert Piepenbrink-- You make some good points, but if AI increases the number of working "artists" by a factor of a thousand and decreases the wages for art by 75%, at some point the math becomes inescapable, doesn't it? Is good taste strong enough and widespread enough to stand up against the great actuarial table?
ReplyDeleteMy Kipling is the Road Song of the Bandar Log:
By the rubbish in our wake
And the noble noise we make
Be sure, be sure, we're going to do
some splendid things!
Hmm. I would have to ask what prophet has predicted that 1,000-fold increase in the profession, and the sudden drop in wages--and what said prophet's track record is. Stripping down Cuneiform and Hieroglyphics to a 20-odd character alphabet vastly increased the number of persons able to write. So did public schools. But I don't believe either event is commonly associated with a sharp decline in the number or quality of stories, though secretaries now needed additional skills: just knowing how to write was too easy. Peak word rate for writers seems to have coincided with peak literacy in the West--around the time of Kipling, Conan Doyle and Stevenson--not when it was harder to find someone who knew how to write. (I have no way to assess artists' wages: was there a sharp drop-off associated with Durer's woodcuts, pre-made commercial paints or the ability to produce relatively inexpensive color plates?)
DeleteYes, changing tech can be rough on a profession. Good commercial photography probably wiped out a lot of painters doing family portraits for the middle classes, and I suspect good recorded music has been rough on local musicians. Looked at the other way, more people than ever could preserve an image of their loved ones, and I suspect the quality of music at local dance halls improved substantially. Pay at the top may actually have increased with the ability to reproduce images. But entry into the professions became more difficult.
But this case feels more like the introduction of the Alphabet: we've reduced the entry cost, letting more people than ever produce images quickly and good-quality moving pictures at a fraction of the old cost. Yes, a lot of the production will be forgettable if not worthless. But we already have good work which couldn't be done as well without CGI. (kev ferrara, think of all those "pre-serum Steve" shots in Captain America. ALL CGI work.) I'll be very surprised if ten years pass without some genius kid producing a first-rate work of film-making on a shoestring budget--a theme the studios wouldn't touch, or a kid who wasn't part of the system, or both--because the actual cost of making a movie will be down to something he can borrow from friends and family.
I've seen modern Hollywood. We badly need that kid.
Fascinating perspective! Technology certainly expands possibilities, but as you point out, it often struggles to replicate the soul and intentionality behind traditional art forms. Tools like AI can amplify creativity, yet true artistry still seems rooted in human vision and nuance.
ReplyDeleteIt's clear to me, though Marvel denies it, that the entire look of this film was lifted entirely from Midjourney.
ReplyDeleteWhen they were starting production, there were a lot of AI pictures trending that reimagined various popular characters in "lost" 1960s films. Absolutely everything about the movie looks like it was lifted directly from those images.
I've spent some time going through the credits of the film. There are around 15 matte painters with production art or painting credits. For a film with such an opinionated look, one would expect many paintings to have been made. Yet not a single one of them has posted any production art on their socials, even now that the film is released. Very unusual. Usually, artists are allowed to post some approved paintings once the film is released.
Also curious, and perhaps even more telling, none of the concept artists listed in the credits for the movie reference Fantastic Four on their portfolios, Twitter, etc. Are they embarrassed? Wouldn't they want to advertise their work on such a big movie?
Now that you mention it, I’ve seen those 60’s retro AI 60’s shorts and you might be right. A lot of the new movie posters seem to be AI as well. I have seen the future and it is here.
ReplyDeleteMarvel PR vehemently denied using AI in the movie posters. In which case, it was an odd choice to feature a model that only had three fingers:
Deletehttps://uploads.dailydot.com/2025/02/fantastic_four_trailer_cooked_tweet.jpg
The film just came out. There are NDA's involved, presumably. Nonetheless... assumed to be via a hack, there's a tranche of concept work from the film by one of the production artists, Mushk Rizvi, available online. Took me seconds to find via search. Other leading names that come up are real concept artists: Ryan Meinerding, Charlie Wen for two. They weren't hired to input text prompts into MidJourney, I can tell you that.
ReplyDelete1960s retrofuturism has been around since the 1960s. Namecheck: Niemeyer and Saarinen, and movies like Fantastic Voyage and Logan's Run. Syd Mead more recently.
Retro color aesthetics have been around too: The entire first half of Scorcese's Aviator (2004)was done with a vintage 2-color technicolor look. There's a 2-color poster by Matt Needle for Aviator that might be an influence, even on the italic FF logo/typography.
The ugly FF crowd poster is not a big mystery. It's basic photo bashing. Including repeating a lady or two in the crowd. (Integrity never forgets. A lack of integrity never remembers.) They might have cribbed the four fingered man in that poster from an AI source. Who knows? Or it's just a peculiarity of the way the flag was held, as someone demonstrated elsewhere. What difference does it make? Photography has never had any integrity as an art form. The poster isn't art. It's a photo-composite advertisement done by a computer jockey. Probably farmed out; way out. (You wouldn't believe how low on the artistic totem pole these photoshop movie jobs can end up when they are farmed out.)
"Other leading names that come up are real concept artists: Ryan Meinerding, Charlie Wen for two. They weren't hired to input text prompts into MidJourney, I can tell you that."
DeleteNo, I wouldn't think so. Even with heavy AI use, you will still need humans to clean it up, etc. Charlie Wen didn't work on the film, but yes, Meinerding did, and he has released several 3D sculpts/renderings he did for the movie.
But We don't need to speculate about whether Disney is using AI at all. Bob Iger back in March told shareholders "[AI is] already enabling our company to be more efficient. [...] We believe in the power and the value and the importance of human creativity, and we also appreciate from over 100 years of experience that technology is an invaluable tool for artists, whether they’re filmmakers or Imagineers"
There was also leaks from last winter that Disney was courting some AI video and image vendors, including Runway, the AI that Netflix and others now use for their concept art and post production workflows.
As for 1960s retrofuturism, visually Fantastic Four has a lot more in common with the AI images than Niemeyer or Saarine.
Richard,
DeleteYour contention was that the entire look of the film was lifted from MidJourney. We don't have any proof of that proposition. We do, however, have proof that a bunch of concept artists worked on the film. Which concretely tells against your proposition.
A second (implied) contention is that AI was used extensively in the making of the film. We don't have any proof of that as yet, either. Your main argument along this line is a decontextualized statement by Bob Iger (there are lots of business application of AI that he may be talking about) and the bad poster (The necessity of AI's involvement, I believe, I debunked previously.)
Robert Piepenbrink wrote: "I would have to ask what prophet has predicted that 1,000-fold increase in the profession, and the sudden drop in wages--and what said prophet's track record is."
ReplyDeleteI concede that my number may vary, possibly from 995 to 1005. My source was a college reunion where an audience of around 1,000 middle aged alumni-- accountants, store managers, auto mechanics-- with no artistic talent took a 90 minute seminar on how to make pictures with Midjourney and left excited because now they could make realistic, professional looking pictures of anything they wanted.
Milling around outside after the seminar, you could hear snippets of conversations such as, "I never had any fine motor skills, I couldn't even draw a circle. But now I can make real pictures just like an artist. I could even go into business making holiday cards and calendars." Or, "I was going to hire an artist to create a logo for my company but now I can do it myself." Or " Those artists aren't such hot shit anymore." I guarantee you, versions of that seminar have been taking place all around the world. And if you object that the art produced by those audiences won't ever be as good as art produced by a talented artist, I agree completely but that's irrelevant to my point.
As for the drop in wages, this summer I've heard from half a dozen well known, extremely talented artists-- illustrators whose names you'd recognize-- who've told me that their work has dropped off significantly this year. There is no consensus on why this is, or how long it will last, but the unspoken Voldemort-- AI-- seems to be a prime candidate.
“Progress? You don’t have to like it, but you sure as hell can’t stop it. Just ask John Henry.”
DeleteA thousand people is not a thousand-fold. and all those people had other careers, which I doubt they'll abandon. What you may see is better non-professional work. I paint a lot of miniatures. I'm not a professional, but new tools and techniques have raised the level of amateur work quite a bit over the past 50 years--possibly to a higher level than professional work c. 1968.
DeleteAnd you may see professionals willing to integrate new tools produce more and better than ever before. I am long-term optimistic about art, but tools come and go. AI is a tool--a way of creating images. It has no more vision--no more inspiration or imagination--than a paint brush. If we can't provide those--well did anyone here read Boule's Planet of the Apes instead of just watching the movie(s)? In the book, the apes take over because men stop innovating. If it's just a matter of copying what's already been done, the advantage lies with the apes. In that sense, I know a number of clean-shaven and articulate apes. They worry me a lot more than AI.
I understand the demand of waiting to bring comic books "to life" by having live actors portray two-dimensional comic books, but I think that what's lost is the interaction between imagination and the printed page. That's why a Kirby drawing is something that you can keep going back to, and it doesn't feel dated at all.
ReplyDeleteIt's a tough one that has been going on since Superman was "given life". Personally, I'd be happy with an big screen animated version of the comics.
When Pixar came out, my first though was "Richard Corben has to get in on this!"
Can you imagine Pixar's version of Corben's "Bloodstar"?
It's nice to dream
Kev Ferrara wrote: "When Orson Welles was directing Citizen Kane, for every bit of trick work (aka special effects) that was brought to him, he went into mud turtle mode; he told the art department no, no, and no, again and again, like a stubborn mule, until they finally came to him with something that did not seem wrong, fake and silly."
ReplyDeleteI was struck by Roger Ebert's detailed, excellent commentary on "Citizen Kane" which came out in connection with its re-release. Ebert claims that the film
"likely contains as many, if not more, special effects shots than Star Wars." While this claim is debated, it highlights the innovative and often invisible special effects used in "Citizen Kane" to achieve its unique visual style.
Ebert explained that despite being made in 1941, Citizen Kane contained a vast array of special effects, many of which are not immediately obvious to the viewer. This contrasts with the more overt and showy special effects often seen in modern films like "Star Wars". The film's special effects were largely used to create depth and scale, particularly through techniques like deep focus cinematography and miniature work:
Deep Focus:
This technique, perfected by cinematographer Gregg Toland, allowed for both the foreground and background to be in sharp focus, creating a sense of depth and realism that was unusual for the time.
Miniatures and Matte Paintings:
These were used to create expansive sets and locations, such as the model of Susan Alexander's opera stage or the matte painting of Xanadu.
Invisible Wipes:
The film seamlessly transitions between scenes using wipes that are often hidden within the action, such as the table splitting in the scene in Kane's childhood home.
Chroma Key:
Although relatively few, "Citizen Kane" also utilized chroma key (also known as blue or green screen) for some effects, such as the scene where Kane is speaking at a political rally.
Ebert's commentary highlights how these special effects, though often invisible, contribute to the film's overall impact and artistry. He also points out that the film's special effects are not meant to be flashy or distracting, but rather to serve the story and enhance the realism of the world created on screen.
Funny how visual effects have gotten more sophisticated, yet somehow more obvious. Maybe it's because audiences today know too much…we’ve seen behind the curtain. Harryhausen’s skeletons might not wow anyone now, but when I was a kid, they were pure magic.
DeleteMaybe it's because audiences today know too much…we’ve seen behind the curtain.
DeleteI'm not too sure about that Movieac. The special effects in Star Wars seemed obvious to me even when it first came out, whereas 2OO1 A Space Odyssey felt both real and poetic at the same time. That said, most of today's special effects are conspicuous because they look improbable, which cannot be said of earlier films such as Forbidden Planet, Alien or even Star Wars.
On Harryhausen, like you, as a kid I was utterly enthralled, mesmerised, thrilled and haunted by the giant bronze statue coming to life in Jason and the Argonauts. Thing is, I still am. The magic is somehow bound up with seeing inert matter brought to life - much like seeing the time-lapse footage of a bud opening into a flower.
The folly of CGI/AI is a belief that techno autists can regenerate the world piecemeal in all its variance, beauty, and grit in a hard drive. The end result is always a model of the world, not the world; slick and elided, with not just digital lubricity problems, but failures of imagination galore, at every scale.
DeleteWhen placed into a photo, the disunity between the lossy slick computer modeling and profuse reality - profuse even in the drib compositions of its drab - hollows out everything.
The effects of the initial Star Wars were full of grit and appreciation, even when they made themselves evident. There was no digital fantasy studio to numb the struggle of creation.
Wesley Tilford said something like that about the number of special effects in Citizen Kane. Wells had no choice because he had such a small budget. Marvel did it because they have such a small imagination. https://fromthevaults.substack.com/p/the-special-effects-in-citizen-kane
ReplyDeleteMovieac wrote: “Progress? You don’t have to like it, but you sure as hell can’t stop it. Just ask John Henry.”
ReplyDeleteYes, or you might ask King Canute how he fared at ordering the tide not to come in. The only part of your comment I'd question is the term "progress." Progress in technology can sometimes mean regress in moral, spiritual or aesthetic categories. (And sometimes motion is just "process" rather than "progress.")
AI unquestionably represents progress in some aspects of art, but it seems to be a setback in others. Whether you find it a net benefit depends on your priorities.
“Progress in technology can sometimes mean regress in moral, spiritual or aesthetic categories. (And sometimes motion is just "process" rather than "progress.")”
ReplyDeleteOh, I completely agree…just meant to say that AI, even in its infancy, has become so widespread there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle… or, maybe more fittingly, closing Pandora’s box.
" Those artists aren't such hot shit anymore."
ReplyDeleteThis quote is so on-the-nose it seems made up.
Imagine this: David Apatoff never came back from his long hiatus. This site? It’s all AI now. The articles — AI-generated. The comments — AI. The commenters — all AI. I’m AI. You’re AI. We’re all AI.
ReplyDelete“You’re next... you’re next…”
“ The only part of your comment I'd question is the term "progress." Progress in technology can sometimes mean regress in moral, spiritual or aesthetic categories.”
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to imagine what could possibly be a regression from where cinema is today.
If nothing else, AI will open the floodgates to new studios. To high school kids with an idea and a three fifty in AI tokens. Maybe one of them will find a way out of this boring soulless dead end, and destroy the Disney/Universal/A24s of the world.
Surely we’ve already hit entertainments rock bottom, and anything to shake the market loose is worth while.
Even without AI, a kid with an idea already has a smart phone with a high-end video camera, video editing software (many options) and the ability to send his movie or serial out into the world with the push of a button. It's true that he can't make a AAA blockbuster with CGI special effects, but limitations have long been the wellspring of creativity. Some of today's celebrated directors, like Christopher Nolan, first made something compelling on a shoestring budget. The capability of AI to generate not only audiovisuals but ideas and scripts in endless variations is bound to result in the atrophy of creativity, not in its blossoming. Raise a generation or two on this technology, then take it away and you will be left with people who don't have the first idea about how to craft an engaging story in any medium. AI is not another tool for creators, but rather a replacement for them.
Delete“ you will be left with people who don't have the first idea about how to craft an engaging story in any medium”
DeleteThat’s already the situation we have now.
All of the save the cat, the beat sheets and turns, the characterization techniques, the log line maximization, the genre tropes and genre splicing, have left us with a soulless dead art form. If Nolan was ever any good, it wasn’t because of craft.
A child winging it with AI has a considerably better chance than anyone currently indoctrinated into modern narrative theory/craft to produce anything worth watching. Whatever is stopping a child today from becoming film’s Proust or Conrad, it’s not anything that Christopher Nolan knows about.
You may have a point about Nolan; I'm not actually a fan of his, nor have I seen more than a few of his films, but I think it is fair to characterize him as a celebrated director, notwithstanding what that says about popular tastes. My point is that he made his first feature film on a budget of less than $4,000, and this opened the door for him to acquire more substantial funding for his subsequent films.
ReplyDeleteA good storyteller can keep his audience enraptured with nothing more than words spoken or printed in black ink on paper. The minimalistic approach is often more effective because, as a broken line in a drawing delights the viewer who makes the implied connection, so what is only written or heard conjures images in the mind of the reader or listener. This is interactive, engaging; it satisfies in a way that the overly explicit images of modern CGI extravaganzas can not. It is true that AI will allow people of little means to be more explicit, but is this a good thing?
The kids in my life don't care a whit about the blockbuster movies or what's on Netflix. They are into manga and some of them even read novels. What they do stream is more likely to be of Korean origin than western.
Anyway, there's nothing stopping a young upstart from learning the craft of cinema from the greats of the past; they have easier access to films of any time and place than any prior generation.
“ This is interactive, engaging; it satisfies in a way that the overly explicit images of modern CGI extravaganzas can not.”
DeleteAgreed. But I expect that AI will create such an oversaturation of those sorts of things that their vapidness will become too obvious.
Look at what it’s done to glossy anime girl pinups on Instagram, etc. The entire genre has all but died over night. AI made them so common, that the bottom fell out on that eyeball market.
In my area of govtech, the ease with which AI generates fluffy marketing slop has lead not to a lowering of the quality of copy, but a marked increase in quality, as now companies have to set themselves apart with something much more concrete.
“It is true that AI will allow people of little means to be more explicit, but is this a good thing?”
DeleteYou haven’t convinced me that it’s not.
Like every other tool of its kind, I believe that creative and dynamic individuals will find ways to leverage it to reach even greater heights. The lazy and weak will use it to cut corners and produce garbage.
I’m not worried about what the losers will do with AI. They were losers before, they will be losers after.
Wow! Some comments have really made my head explode. But, in the end, I'm going with a personal one, from my 19-year-old daughter, a video game animation student, who, after seeing a project we had to do with AI due to lack of time and budget (what a great excuse from now on!): "This isn't art!" And if she didn't slam the door in my face, it's because the doors in my house are sliding.
ReplyDeleteKev Ferrara and Robert Piepenbrink, regarding the response of a broad amateur audience to being newly gifted with the magic power to make representational images:
ReplyDeleteKev wrote:" Those artists aren't such hot shit anymore." This quote is so on-the-nose it seems made up.
I tip my hat to your excellent, attentive ear. That sentence was my synthesis of 3 or 4 lines I heard in the crowd. The actual quotes were closer to, "Who would pay a million bucks for a Warhol painting anymore?" or "Now anyone can be an artist."
But in response to Robert and Kev, who both have the refined sensibilities to distinguish AI images from great art, or shaven apes from authentic artists, I think you're underestimating the historical synergy between economics and art. Social wealth, leisure time and great art have often marched in lockstep. Economic rewards have often incentivized artists. (Look how many artists rushed to the field of illustration in the first half of the 20th century when illustration was one of the best paid careers in the country.)
The economics of AI become especially relevant to the quality and quantity of art that is created when you consider the purposes for which art has been created after capitalism replaced kings and popes as the primary patron of the arts. Art that is created to sell cornflakes, or even books and magazines, has a different dynamic than art intended to attract people to show up for church with fear and awe in their hearts.
If 90% of the audience for creative products can't tell, or doesn't care much about, the difference between art and AI slop, that fact will surely reroute a substantial percentage of the funds currently going to talented artists. If corporate sponsors can achieve the same result (attract eyeballs) with a lower priced process, what incentive would they have to pay more in order to subsidize artists who take longer to create images and who are more disputatious by their nature? Many of those artists were already underpaid and malnourished as a result of trends that began in the 1970s.
Albert Campillo Lastra-- It is a fine and wonderful thing to be an art student, and have the luxury of telling the truth: "This isn't art!" How do you think your daughter is likely to respond when she is out of school, paying her rent, and the client tells her she needs to use AI due to lack of time and budget? She may tell her client, "This isn't art" but the client may respond, "Whether it's art or not, it will get me the result I need with the budget I have available."
ReplyDeleteJust a couple of days after I posted the comment above (about the negative reactions to A.I. generated images), musician Nick Cave posted the following video on his youtube channel:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/XnDm9w2F3KE
It's by his friend Andrew Dominik, director of 'the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford' (2007) and 'Blonde' (2022). If you haven't yet witnessed the overwhelmingly negative reaction to A.I. ‘film’, have a look through the comments, and remember these are mainly from his fanbase, and followers of his youtube channel.