All The Fun Of The Despair [AI Art Generation]

Working with an art generation AI, at least one that is freely available on Google Play Store but in crippleware form, is strangely like rubbing a lamp and coming face to face with a genie who informs you in booming, mystical voice "You may have five wishes per day. To unlock unlimited wishes, subscribe to Genie Pro. Also some categories of wish may require in-app payments."

The striking and not-at-all-contrived similarites do not end there. As with making wishes for genies, at least in my experience, when making up prompts for art AIs the wording matters - and it's hard to know what words or phrases will make a difference, let alone what will lead to a result close to your actual wish. As with genies, always assume that the art AI wil interpret your wish in the most unhelpful way possible, so try not to give wiggle room. You could of course experiment with hundreds of alternative phrases but then you would need to pay the subscription fees or risk running out of wishes too quickly.

"Artists staring sadly into the abyss"

Sci-Fi Gene (with minor assistance from Wonder AI), 2022

Digital

On the other hand, if you are willing to perservere, then at least sometimes your wishes really can come true. At least if your wishes are to see medieval cities made out of cheese.

"Busy medieval city made of cheese"

Sci-Fi Gene (with minor assistance from Wonder AI), 2022

Digital

I asked Wonder AI to come up with posters for some of my films, using the titles as prompts and the Cinematic AI. The results are... interesting.

"Last Zombie Standing" - does indeed feature one standing zombie and has created a decently creepy atmosphere, or at least has bunged some gaslamps around the place. Other zombies are present but one is sitting on a ledge and one is leaning on a wall so neither are technically standing. Wonder AI has delivered on the brief and I would have been happy to use this poster.

"We Can Get You Some Really Cheap Gear" is not at first glance a film about camera equipment at all - it's a lighthearted (but adult) LEGO-animated comedy about a top-secret experimental drug that allows a failing writer to access 1% of his brain.

But AI is more powerful and more insightful than you might think. Wonder AI has correctly deduced that my film is in fact a sharp and unapologetic satirical deconstruction of the entire film industry, taking particular aim at the two most over-used cinematic techniques of all - foreshadowing and the focus pull. As an auteur it's nice to be understood once in a while.

Meanwhile my over-long title has nothing at all to do with drugs: it's a reference to the regular and highly delusional claim made by Kino London club organizers that they could, through their extensive industry contacts, score cheap equipment for filmmakers. And indeed, were you to take them up on their offer you could well end up with something like the device featured in the poster.

"Steampunk Girl" while I cannot fault Len Peralta's original artwork for John Anealio's song, which appears in the final reveal at the end of my lyric video, this image comes a close second. I was particularly impressed to see that Wonder AI has perfectly captured the steampunk vibe without hypersexualizing the image, and without resorting to the most obvious genre tropes: no brass goggles, and not a single cogwheel. What happened to Steampunk Girl's left arm is a question to be answered in the prequel.

You can watch all three films on my Short Films page here.

Now We Are Six

David Novan, Joshua Westbury, Brandon Butterworth and Molly Brown. Photograph by Michael To

The Sci-Fi Gene blog has made it to exactly six years today, and I have been making short films for almost six years. Saturday's screening of Last Zombie Standing at Croydon International Film Festival was a chance to reflect. This is one of my favourite projects from the last six years and I'm proud of what we achieved in that 48 hour period.

Croydon was also a chance to look forward and be inspired: the films on show were diverse but all packed with originality. The prizes were all well deserved - you can find out more about them on the festival website www.croydoniff.com Hard to pick favourites but I particularly enjoyed the winning animation Mend and Make Do by Bexi Bush, Katie Garrett's experimental film combining poetry and dance, and The Cleaners, a mockumentary about the hard-working staff responsible for keeping the ocean floor tidy.

Meanwhile the story goes on - work continues on Reply To All and on the Broken Bird music video. I'm considering projects for next year, possibly including a 3D film, and I enjoyed connecting with filmmakers and film enthusiasts at Croydon - who knows where those connections will lead?

Last Zombie Standing [posters]

I'm looking forward to being part of Croydon International Film Festival on the 25th October. You can now check out the full programme and find out more about this event on the extremely friendly festival website. Meanwhile here are two alternative Last Zombie Standing movie posters for your enjoyment.

"Last Zombie Standing" Screening: Croydon International Film Festival

Zombie rights minidoc "Last Zombie Standing," originally shot in Croydon back in 2009, returns to the scene of the crime for the 2014 Croydon International Film Festival on 25th October.

Runaway Success

Last Zombie Standing was screened at Ye Olde Rose & Crown on Friday for Walthamstow Short Film Club's Halloween Night. The film was given a warm welcome and we were in good company: seventeen other great films were on the programme including, my favourite, this lesson in how to make an action movie:

and a new edit of this film written and directed by Last Zombie Standing writer Molly Brown.

A gauntlet was also thrown down at the event which I may not be able to resist: more on that story later.

"Last Zombie Standing" Screening: Walthamstow Short Film Club

I am pleased to announce that Last Zombie Standing will be screened at Walthamstow Short Film Club's Hallowe'en event on 28th October, at Ye Old Rose And Crown, Walthamstow. For details see the Facebook event page.

Last Zombie Standing

Two films released onto YouTube in a week, and both have been a long time in production. Here's the final cut of Last Zombie Standing, my entry with Team Special Circumstances in the Movieum Zombie Film Competition 2009. Watch in HQ here or on the YouTube channel. I held off releasing this so that the screenwriter and I could re-edit and put together this shorter cut with completed effects scenes (a slightly longer version was entered in the competition.) I had great fun making this film - enjoy!

How to get ahead in CGI

We used this scene in Last Zombie Standing but during the 48 hour period I only managed a low resolution fluid sim. Here's what it should have looked like:

As I'm trying to get faster at these techniques, I always look at what the time constraints were for any particular shot. For this one they included researching tutorials and examples (this can often be the most time consuming part!), finding a decent freeware spine model; fine-tuning the position of the alpha mask; trying out different variations of the fluid flow; baking at a half-decent fluid resolution. Rendering was surprisingly quick but there aren't many objects in the scene apart from the spine and the fluid mesh.

For any composite effect to work you need to have some kind of interaction between the live action and virtual elements. Examples include lighting, shadows, foreground objects, reflections or physical interactions - in this shot the fluid is partially obstructed by some of the leaves on the ground.

Killing The Dead

Here's the winning zombie film, Killing The Dead produced by team Bad Gas.



The Zombie Film Challenge website has links to this film and the winners of previous 24 and 48 hour challenges, as well as several of Johnnie Oddball's excellent articles on how to be a director: in retrospect I'm sure our team would have fared better if I'd invested in a baseball cap...

Last Zombie Standing is currently back in post-production for an unnecessary and highly indulgent Director's Cut - watch this space.

[update 8.11.09: embedded video is now the YouTube version]

Zombie Film Challenge

I attended the Zombie Film Challenge screening on Halloween along with three other members of Special Circumstances. Apart from the (compulsory) zombies themselves a number of trends were seen in many of the films, including the District 9 effect: documentary/mockumentary style used left right and centre, whether in the brief or not, and in addition to our film two others took up the zombie rights cause with gusto. There were several cats - directors of zombie films are also unafraid to work with animals - and I'm clearly not the only person with a love of dodgy decapitation effects.

A Night At The Movieum [photo: Brandon Butterworth] Zombie make-overs [photo: Brandon Butterworth]

Congratulations to the makers of the winning entry, Killing The Dead. I can't tell you much about the team - they didn't make it to the screening - but their film hit all the right notes for me and was well produced while still clearly a low-budget amateur effort.

I'm happy with our mockumentary entry, Last Zombie Standing, and I think it made the grade and went down OK with the audience - although, having seen it on the big screen I have a number of minor changes I'd like to make, so watch this space.

Director, DOP, Screenwriter and Composer

[photos: Molly Brown, Brandon Butterworth, Sci-Fi Gene]

Unfortunately Sci-Fi Gene has had a significant data loss and I will be taking the next few days to get back on top of things. I'll be back soon with news of some future zombie-free projects, and links to some of the zombie films when they go up. Normal service will resume shortly...

Completion Certificate of the Dead [photo: Brandon Butterworth]

Zombie alert

Zombies are the new robots. It's official - while we and other teams have been making zombie movies all over London, across the world people have either been participating in major zombie gatherings or in reconstructions of Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

Over the weekend we've been shooting and editing our Zombie Challenge film, the zombie mockumentary "Last Zombie Standing." As I was both directing and doing a zombie cameo I didn't get a chance to take any production stills - these are all taken by other team members.

Zombie high noon [photo: Molly Brown]

When zombies attack [photo: James Silverston]

When zombies defend [photo: Brandon Butterworth]

Zombie!

Insert amusing zombie leg caption here [photo: Brandon Butterworth]

Zombies Actually [photo: Brandon Butterworth]

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are undead [photo: Brandon Butterworth]