International Courant
Generally, an interview topic surprises you with one thing you did not see coming in any respect. “This movie is among the first movies to include a completely AI-generated sequence,” Florian Frerichs (The Final Supper), director and co-writer of Traumnovelle, a brand new adaptation of the Arthur Schnitzler novella that impressed Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Broad Shut , talked about throughout our Zoom chat.
Nikolai Kinski, the star of the movie, about an higher middle-class couple that will get drawn right into a secret world of erotic fantasy, which opens the thirty first Oldenburg Movie Competition on Wednesday, wasn’t absolutely ready for the revelation both. “What do you imply?” hey ask
“I believe it is one of many first movies that did it,” Frerichs explains, sharing that AI was used for a dream sequence within the film when the protagonist Jakob, performed by Kinski, finds out from his associate Amelia, portrayed by Laurine Value, about her goals. “We’ve got this animation factor occurring there.”
Now Frerichs has everybody’s full consideration. “This was one thing very distinctive and really new as a result of within the guide, this dream sequence could be very surrealistic,” he highlights. “It might have been very tough to shoot. Truly, it was additionally by no means filmed in any of the opposite movies” primarily based on the novella.
“With the use and the assistance of AI and my two associates, Sven and Victor, who dealt with the entire operation, we truly gave this dream sequence a face,” Frerichs provides. “Whether or not you prefer it or not, it has been achieved with the assistance of AI.”
So how was the expertise working with AI, and what have been the challenges? “It was a number of work by our group that we put into this AI. It is not identical to we advised the AI, ‘do that and that,’ after which it got here out. It took, truly, six months of analysis and of attempting,” the director explains. “It was a number of trial and error, of prompting — after which additionally studying the craft of damaging prompting, which is much more essential: telling it what to not do as a substitute of telling it what to do. So it was a really, very distinctive expertise in post-production to present beginning to this dream sequence, which in any other case we couldn’t have filmed on such a shoestring finances.”
Kinski is now extra-excited to observe the ultimate model of the film. “I have not seen the final model (with the AI sequence) so I am fairly curious to see it,” he shares.
The actor calls the prospect of “AI and human interplay fascinating,” including: “I believe it is just the start of a wild new period.”
Does AI scare or fear Frerichs? “Our machine dreamed up this dream sequence for our movie with a lot of work that we put into it,” he tells THR. “So, I haven’t got the concern that any animators or so will lose their jobs. My expertise with the AI was that it is a software, and it’s essential to put a lot of creativity into it to get one thing out of it.” Concludes the filmmaker: “That is why I can proudly say that now we have an AI sequence in there which elevates the entire sequence and movie.”
