Conversation winds down, the wine is almost finished.
After a silence, the man says he wants to play a game.
Does AI dream of writing screenplays?
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Tired of off-kilter AI like Cleverbot, we wanted to use more robust tech in our work.
In our experience, previous iterations of AI got sidetracked, were easily confused and had no meaningful memory.
you might tell Cleverbot your name, but the program might forget within four inputs.
Sometimes it forgets immediately.
We wanted to find something with the ability to be self-referential.
We needed something with the capacity for memory.
In looking for a better solution, we stumbled over Shortly AI.
The program adapts itself to your work.
That means if youre writing a Western, itll bring in the cowboys.
If youre writing a space adventure, it will maintain the atmosphere.
If youre writing a horror story, it will do its best to scare you.
Impressed, we quickly tried branching out.
Could it create song lyrics?
So what about a film script?
To our delight, it could.
We generated a few and decided wed pick one to make.
Building a script
The input for Date Night was as follows:
INT.
BENNY: I wanna play a lil game.
Its a lil crazy, its a lil fun, but itll blow your fucking mind.
We generated three variations of the script.
In the version we ended up filming, Benny hypnotizes Julia and proceeds to dance on the table.
When he leaps off, he has control of her body and keeps her from moving.
She escapes by slapping him and mutters, I felt weird.
At this point, the AI struggled to stay on track.
Toward the films end, they even talk about the movie itself, referring to prior, fictional events.
Remind me, whats it about?
Benny asks, referencing the very movie hes in.
He hypnotizes her, Julia says.
At times, the AI even made typos.
For example, when Benny should say Just now, it wrote, Nust now.
That gave a touch of realism to the proceedings.
Satisfied with the AIs work, we set out to put our messy, frantic script on screen.
We want our films to capture both the surprising achievements and shortcomings of the collaboration.
Date Night was a great case study in both.
The limitations of artificial intelligence restrict it from doing every element of the filmmaking process.
For example,GPT-3cant develop its own shot list or wield a camera to shoot the project.
Currently, a human is necessary to bring a piece to life onscreen.
We believe this will be the future of technological creativity in film for some time.
When a writer is struggling, they can use AI to further their scripts.
The screenwriter will still have to provide the initial input and then decide which ideas are good and bad.
As such, our first and foremost rule is that we take the scripts seriously.
From the cinematography to the directing, to the acting, we hope to tackle the projects earnestly.
For this specific film, we tapped our friend Henry Chastain as cinematographer.
Hes skilled at emulating the styles of movies.
We also chose to shoot using objective camera angles.
We wanted the camera to look in on the characters as if the lens was truly observing real people.
John Cassavettes A Woman Under the Influence was our visual reference.
Although they can both be comedic, both their acting styles are grounded in drama.
Both actors are particularly talented at portraying real people.
This was vital for the seriousness of the project.
We held a Zoom rehearsal before shooting to discuss the material.
We didnt want the performances to be tongue-in-cheek.
Within a few takes, however, wed found the characters.
Benny seemed genuinely convinced by his power, terrifying Julia.
Shooting the film
For the actual shoot, we had Henry on camera and ourselves on sound.
It was a small-scale crew with everyone taking various roles.
Owen put his all into the performance.
He finished each take on the table panting, hands on his knees.
The AI wouldve appreciated his dedication.
But even artificial assistance cant stop human error.
With other videos slated for earlier release dates, we pushed Date Night aside.
We had the footage categorized and didnt realize that wed failed to back up the audio.
Two months later, when editing began, the audio SD card had been wiped.
Luckily, Henrys camera picked up source audio, but it wasnt perfect.
We landed on a hybrid approach, a melodramatic combination that was part romance and part horror.
Release
With Date Night finished, the time had come to release it.
For us, producing high-quality work always comes first.
Viewership metrics are somewhat out of our control, but we can own the quality of our material.
But we do have a release strategy that starts with consistency.
AI: Coming soon to a theatre near you?
Though weve made movies together for many years, we never anticipated our third collaborator would be an AI.
That focus allowed us to be ready when this opportunity presented itself.
Presenting a cohesive vision will allow people to see the potential here.
Now, we want to take this same script and pass it on.
We wonder how another filmmaker might interpret it.
Imagine that the actors are middle-aged and nearing the end of a strained marriage.
Or that the only background noise is a record player just off the needle.
The lights could be low, or the table could be in the center of a cluttered restaurant.
The characters could be drunk or maybe on their first date.
Any of these changes would result in a totally different experience for the viewer.
All of these things will be swayed by the directors interpretation of the script.
so that bring a machine-written script to life, artificial intelligence must work in tandem with a living person.
Right now, AI can provide the script.
We can probably train it to produce a shot-list or even musical accompaniment.
For now, at least.
