When I initially watched this video I was unsure about what the video was or what is was going to be about. I was caught off guard by shift and tone when the screen was dropped and the flashing started. I found that the imagery and the use of audio effects give a tone and instigate a feeling into the viewer. I was interested in how the use of mirroring effect was able to fill and still make an image feel surreal tied with the use of chopped up audio. I think that it has helped me think more about how effects can give tone to montage and how I could use it in my future work.
I believe that these effects were used effectively in the ability to enhance traditional cinema to take it farther then it could have gone into with more traditional tools.
The work I chose for this blog post was “Lake Como Remix”. This work comes from early versions of Google Earth and Google Street View, which were then glitched to create an otherworldly experience of the tunnels in the Lake Como District of Italy.
These glitches cause extreme distortion of your surroundings. You can go through the images presented as the world, allowing you to see beyond it, revealing dark atmospheres and strange shapes and textures. The landscape around you occasionally moves as you do, in a strange manner reminiscent of early AI videos. It gravitates in one direction, which feels incredibly strange to see considering that when you are in Google Earth the only thing “moving” should be you.
These effects challenge your views of the “world” in which these Google applications offer you. It breaks the illusion of a physical space, revealing the artificial nature of it, which at least for me proved to be a little unsettling. I assume that is at least part of the goal for this work, considering the music track that is layered over the video enhances this feeling.
I skimmed over each of the videos, and I also wanted to mention the video “Poof”. I was so surprised when I saw that it was made by AI. It looks so real, I had never seen any AI video like this. Even the different shots showcase continuity in the short film. Before seeing this, I thought AI still had a long way to go before being truly usable in professional cinema. It opened my eyes to how current AI can be seamlessly used as a tool in filmmaking, and it likely already is.
Hi class, today I chose to analyze POOF- AI Short Film.
I enjoyed watching this film but couldn’t shake the suspicion that it was 100% AI-generated. Turns out I was right. I watched the behind-the-scenes video and it turns out the creator used a substantial amount of traditional digital effects to stitch together the AI footage. Fun watch, linked here:
Anyway, the film is about these monsters that work in an office space but they’re all bored out of their minds and end up spontaneously combusting. It’s clear that these clips are AI-generated. you can spot it from a mile away. The animation of the character is odd and the background tends to morph. Having said that, it’s still pretty dam good for AI.
In the case of POOF, the creator mimics a real-life aesthetic and interestingly tries to recreate the special effect of traditional puppetry with the special effect of AI. In this way, the creator is replacing old special effect techniques rather than altering or enhancing them.
It’s hard to say what AI is going to do for the world of cinema. Will it simply replace existing special effects techniques, or create new ones? How will it interact with the world of traditional cinema? Will it add/aid it, or replace it entirely? In my opinion, AI is just another tool, like all the other procedural forms of digital enhancement. Of course, the underlying tech is completely different, however, my point is only that it will afford us the same opportunities to shift the production of cinema to a more digital and individual base environment – one that inherently prioritizes quantity or quality. (If you watch the breakdown video, which I highly recommend you do, you’ll notice he repeats something along the lines of “This isn’t perfect but it works for my purposes”… quantity over quality).
If we track the rise in digital technology in the cinematic field (digital cameras, digital video processing/editing, 3D digital rendering) it’s clear that with it comes an increased rate of content production and at a decreased cost. The creator of POOF was able to cheaply and by himself make something that 10 years ago would have cost at least tens of thousands and required a substantial crew with specialized skills. We also see a shift in the content itself to a more sustainable form of media that can handle a high rate of production (short-form internet content). Will AI take over traditional film production? Maybe for a short time but not in the long run. What’s more likely is that it will harbor a style of media production that is entirely different from the fundamentals of traditional cinema. Long-form narrative content will slowly die out and with it, cinema will go too. Makes me sad to say.
This opening scene from Shameless is both appropriately chaotic yet extremely well-structured and framed to create a sense of continuity. The framing of the scene creates a real sense of both urgency and normalcy, as if this is just a normal happenstance for this family during rent seasons. Visually it’s a family getting ready for the day, shown from many different perspectives and creating a sense of what the house layout is. The different edits around the table, in particular, help create the sense of family dynamics. Especially when they’re passing around the rent box and they’re pitching in their shares, it shows how much each kid makes and/or contributes, which could then directly correlate to how much effort they put into helping keep their family afloat.
I think throughout the opening scene, there are two visual anchors: the mother as she moves around, and the planted table in the dining room. The mother is almost constantly in frame, which makes sense, as she appears to be the main character we’re supposed to be following in the shot, and we help obtain her sense of urgency for the bill, yet care for her kids. The other anchor, the table, gives us a grounded piece halfway through the scene that helps the scene become structured. Chaos still ensues, simply because that’s the nature of a large family dynamic, but by using a large object like a table to center all the chaos around, it helps everything feel controlled and grounded while still giving off it’s own sense of excitement.
I chose to write about the video Yorgo Alexopoulos No Feeling is Final; In Five Chapters, 2010 because I like how the media presentation was made. They may have recorded a video of different landscapes, views, and trees which are broken into pieces of collage. These collages display a view that represents how beautiful nature is in reality. It looks like they put animation in it to make certain shots fade in and fade out. There are even shapes with low opacity that appear in the video to make the animation more appealing. There is a circle that grows bigger and a low-opacity triangle that slides side to side. The appeal of the animation shows how beautiful the world is in general.
Some of these collages have two-dimensional animations in each of them which are not only landscapes and trees, but also shapes in each of the squares. Pencil drawings are also displayed on the video which are how these landscapes or trees would look if they were drawn. The pictures of the natural world may also be put on the computer to use with animating techniques to make it look accurate while animating them.
These animation techniques could be used in cinema for the beginning of the movie or an opening scene. Animation may be used to introduce the production companies of a movie or the intro of it introducing its makers. The movie makers create openings and introductions because they want to introduce the film and whoever made it in an appealing way.
I chose to look at starwarswars.com and the How Not to be Seen videos.
Starwarswars.com was a project I’d heard about before but had never looked into. This project combines the first two trilogies of Star Wars films and plays them simultaneously, one on top of the other. This was done, as Marcus explains in the about section on the website, through an effect that only displays the brightest pixels in each video layer. He says that’s why Hoth from Episode V takes up a large section of the project as the white pixels of the snow are the brightest.
How Not to be Seen was a trip. I was thoroughly confused at first, but as the video continued, I think I got a grasp at the message behind becoming invisible. Pixel manipulation allows for any object, person, place or thing to be changed or altered on screen. Green screen, resolution, image layering, all are methods used to alter what the audience sees.
Tying these examples to the main question for this blog, how is the realism of traditional cinema challenged by techniques such as this? As the audience, we are keen on determining whether something is real or not. Is this scene CGI or is its traditional footage? Pixels determine what’s visible, and what’s not. As creators, we can choose what we want or don’t want to be seen. We can choose what’s real or what’s not real.
The video “POSTHUMAN CINEMA” uses surreal imagery, black and white colors, and dramatic music/dialogue to create an intense dream-like feeling in the viewer. The opening scene shows a woman in the desert floating softly toward the ground in a flowing dress, which sets the tone for the video in a very surreal manner. The video focuses on the people in each shot, all having dramatic poses, expressions, or movements. Each shot has a dark background, with a very cinematic and almost spotlight effect on the subject. Throughout the video, the subjects morph from one pose to the next, as if they are shapeshifting. By using these sorts of techniques, we are unable to predict what might happen next. In traditional films, the audience is normally able to follow along with the plot/scene and have guesses and predictions as to what the possibilities are for the following shot. With AI imagery, there is a constant morphing of the subject that allows the viewer to maintain a constant curiosity about what is to come next which I think is an interesting aspect to AI videos as a whole.
For this post I chose one of the AI created videos, I have a very stubborn view on the topic as I despise all AI used in art. I think the root of my distaste for AI in artistic creations is how fraudulent it feels along with this undertone of disrespect for actual human artists who spend their entire lives curating their style and making art while a computer can make “art” in seconds. The whole concept of it just irks me.
Don’t get me wrong, AI is an amazing tool in so many aspects of life like technology, medical advancements, information systems etc. but it’s a tool I strongly believe should be removed from art.
As for the video I chose “POOF” an AI created short film about muppet looking entities working in an office and exploding from what I’m guessing is the stress of the environment.
This video creates a scene in a world where intelligent life like humans are replaced by puppet creatures and they are placed into a mundane and grey environment like an office. The contrast between the puppets and environment is an interesting piece of the video, I like the idea of putting very child-like puppets that are colorful and textured in a fun way in a drab and flat workplace, it works very well together.
As the video continues on we see a multitude of puppets doing regular office work and over time you can see the puppets starting to shake and get overwhelmed to the point of combusting leaving behind just the fur texture in a pile where they were placed. I think it’s fun to view this as how people, who as they grow with life continue to maintain that ‘child-at-heart’ attitude, and as these people enter the workforce the maturity and drabness of a workplace just overloads them to a point of misery.
For this blog post I decide analyze the ‘Rail road crossing scene’ of Duel (1971)
Match On Action:
As the truck pushes David’s car toward the tracks the editing cuts to wide shots of the truck, car, and train, and close ups of the car being
shoved forward. These cuts match the action to create a intense sense of movement, emphasizing the danger.
Parallel action/ Crosscutting:
The scene cuts between the different threats: the truck pushing David’s car and the speeding train approaching. This use of crosscutting make for a more tense coverage of David’s situation.
Cut in:
There are Cut-in shots to show specific details, such as the trucks front bumper pushing David’s car, the Train speeding past, or David’s hands gripping the steering wheel.
In this video, we see compositing pushed to its limit as six Star Wars movies play at once. The digital effect used in this piece was compositing as the six films were placed in parallel video tracks. They were then “chroma-key’d” to different extents so that parts of five of the movies would remain visible, while one played in the back without any chroma-keying to serve as a background. The result is a mess purely done for experimental and comedic purposes.
When it comes to our own work, we can take influence from this positively by using compositing and chroma-key features to create visual effects (like fire or electricity) without the danger or costs of doing it practically. When it comes to the montage assignment, this type of composting so that multiple scenes or layers can play at once can be effective. Think of training montages in action movies that uses digital effects like these to show multiple scenes at once and give the viewer a sense of time moving fast.
As for this link, we see an AI-generated video of a retro-futuristic carnival made using Runway Gen2. Reading the comments it appears many viewers enjoy the dream-like sense these artificial videos bring, perhaps effects like this can be used for surreal or unusual moments in a sci-fi or horror movie. Unlike many other digital effects, this tool is essentially producing the entire thing for you if you let it. I imagine it takes a lot of time to refine prompts, sift footage, and edit together the best parts, but you’re still limited in the sense that the entire picture is artificial.
Personally, the only benefit I see to using these in a serious project or motion-picture, would be for inspiration, or to make an artistic point/convey something “In-Human” like the idea stated earlier or using its “uncanny” sense as a tool in a horror or psychedellic sequence.