Generative Filmmaking is ushering us into an era where a feature film or TV pilot can be produced by a team of 1 to 5 individuals. Just as traditional major studios are ailing and in consolidation mode, ai has emerged on the scene as a completely disruptive force to be used by the people, able to allow more creators to visualize larger stories at a much smaller budget and crew size.
As the tools evolve, the desire for good stories and dazzling visuals will remain. Content that cuts through the static and makes you feel something.
Original stories that require critical thought from viewers and lead them on a journey.
Fake movie trailers, visual spectacles (what we might label as experimental film) and music videos might be considered the low hanging fruit of early days generative filmmaking-- they don't require much continuity, dialogue or individual scene pacing.
I'd like to see the best creators using these tools to begin to tell stories that feature dialogue and continuous characters, really constructing scenes that have a beginning, middle and end within a story that has a beginning, middle and end... letting each scene play out with the pacing of a film or TV episode.
That part of the process ain't as easy.
Creators are waiting for the lip sync to improve, but we'll be there soon enough. And great voice acting (with talented human actors) will elevate these scenes immensely.
Traditional filmmakers -- talented directors and writers of film and TV -- are looking at most of what's coming out now in the ai world and thinking: "Sure, they can make a few good looking shots, but can they actually tell a longer format story?"
There's an immense ocean of difficulty between those two achievements.
We're obviously at a very 'visual-heavy' moment with what this new technology is allowing people to create in their computers on a shoe-string budget, and that's fine. It's dazzling and empowering and nothing to be taken for granted.
But when these creators are put to the test and tasked with creating an emotionally powerful scene that involves dialogue, acting, scene editing and pacing... all of that needing to fit into the larger context of a story with continuity and sympathetic characters... well, there is the real challenge.
That's where good screenwriting comes into play. Many ai creators probably want to take this next step into longer format right now... but they're missing that most crucial element: a superb script.
A compelling screenplay can take years to conceptualize, write and revise. Today's ai visual artists may have ideas and concepts they've been toying around with in their head for years... but translating those ideas into well-structured, compelling films filled with dozens of scenes and believable dialogue is not an easy task.
Short films, which we are seeing many of, are a unique beast of a challenge within themselves. Well-made narrative shorts such as THE MYTH (ones that don't rely on experimental structures) are, in this humble human's opinion, the true showcases of this new medium's capabilities for future storytelling.
THE MYTH contains great scene pacing, with an original concept that's fun and well-executed. Hats off to that team for making it in 48 hours. But the film is 2 minutes long... and when we begin to see 20-minute-long or 60-minute-long content that maintains this level of narrative quality throughout (which will most definitely need to include at least some dialogue and character interaction), that's where the true storytelling magic begins to happen.
Whether the visual style of those stories is animation, anime, hyper-realistic or abstract, viewers will still be thinking about one thing: do I care what happens next?
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