“About a Hero” Piotr Winiewicz’s About a Hero is as mindbogglingly advanced as its eye-catching logline is easy: “A murder mystery – unwittingly starring Werner Herzog.” More exactly, the Polish filmmaker’s doc is definitely an adaptation of a script through which the aforementioned cinematic maverick travels to the fictional Getunkirchenburg to analyze the unusual dying of an area manufacturing facility employee named Dorem Clery. Even stranger, that screenplay was written by “Kaspar” (as in Kaspar Hauser), an AI educated on the Herzog oeuvre.
With a glance impressed by the work of German photographer Thomas Demand, the movie, shot principally throughout northern Germany, additionally options “real” sit-down interviews with scientists, philosophers and artists; together with AI-generated visuals and a Herzog voiceover (artificially created by machine studying fashions naturally). There’s even a deep faux Herzog, albeit one which registers as extra creepy than actual. (Though maybe that makes it further Herzogian.)
So to study all about this meditation on “originality, authenticity, immortality and soul in the age of AI,” Filmmaker reached out to the Copenhagen-based director (and artist and manufacturing designer) simply after the movie’s debut because the opening night time choice at this yr’s IDFA (November 14-24).
Filmmaker: You’ve stated that “the film consisted of two phases, a research phase, and a classical film production phase.” Could you focus on this a bit? How did this elaborate course of really work?
Winiewicz: I’d say that the primary part may very well be virtually thought of a analysis and improvement interval. The thought and motivation for the challenge was clear, however the query was: What is feasible? Especially since we began in 2018 when AI instruments weren’t commercially obtainable. So we would have liked to create these instruments, experiment with them, see what’s doable and the way “convincing” the consequence may be in an effort to create a bit that may work on a cinema display and never solely as a web-based gimmick. During this part — and really all the next manufacturing phases ‚ we extensively mentioned the authorized, moral and ethical tasks that include this follow. Setting up boundaries to make sure that we work with respect.
Whereas the precise manufacturing was extra of a “regular” movie set. We had a complete manufacturing crew, actors, areas, and so on.
Filmmaker: I learn that your staff “created a set of dogmas regarding human-machine collaborations that we used as principles to follow during the production of the film…And then we broke them.” What had been these dogmas that you simply broke, and why?
Winiewicz: We created a algorithm to determine a framework for our manufacturing. For instance, the script was edited from a mass of textual content that “the machine” produced. When we began engaged on the challenge the know-how was very completely different from ChatGPT. You couldn’t merely ask it to write down a script. Instead we had been flooded with a sea of textual content that needed to be formatted into script kind whereas staying true to its story, and distinctive but in addition contradictory qualities (together with the idiotic, poor writings).
We purposely created the principles for the “real” and “fake” components of the movie just for these guidelines to be damaged in some unspecified time in the future, so that you’d doubt each component of the movie.
Filmmaker: Interestingly, along with Herzog you’ve cited the Orson Welles mind-bender F for Fake as a touchstone. How precisely did that movie affect your method?
Winiewicz: The affect was in each content material and kind. F for Fake is about trickery, forgery, fakes, and the topic of the movie is expressed in an authentic approach. It’s a movie inside a movie, inside a movie. It pretends to be clear however it’s not; it makes use of methods and extra methods to blur the strains between actuality and fiction. Then finally asks, Does this distinction even matter?
Filmmaker: Though Herzog gave the challenge his blessing, he was additionally fairly skeptical of the endeavor. So did the ultimate reduce change his thoughts in any respect? Does he see it as validation that “a computer will not create a film as good as [his] in 4,500 years”?
Winiewicz: I don’t suppose the movie ever aimed to alter his thoughts. There is a sure irony to that opening quote. The thought was by no means to problem Werner. (And I feel it could be idiotic to attempt, particularly for a first-time function movie.) The quote somewhat stands symbolically for our inherent human feeling of superiority over know-how — and the way this sense of superiority displays our deeply rooted technophobia. Because the movie just isn’t about AI, not about Werner Herzog, and by no means aimed to embrace AI know-how. It is somewhat a meditation on our advanced relation to know-how. Technology that we create, use in even essentially the most intimate facets of our lives, and but we worry and despise it.
Filmmaker: Have you realized any massive classes, about AI and filmmaking — and maybe humanity — by means of making About a Hero? Are you alarmed and/or reassured regarding the know-how to come back?
Winiewicz: The movie business is an business in spite of everything, so I’m positive it is going to adapt know-how that may make issues quicker, cheaper and extra environment friendly. I suppose the script for our movie will reassure screenwriters that they will sleep effectively at night time and never have to fret for his or her jobs. Even although the script and a few explicit strains had been intriguing, they had been a product of somewhat primitive instruments. New instruments are a lot better at writing, however additionally they turn out to be more and more predictable too. For folks anxious that AI will carry a tsunami of generic content material – effectively, folks didn’t want AI to create a mass of generic content material.
In common I’d be extra involved about this identical know-how being utilized in a contemporary warfare context, and the results of that.
