Generally, an interview topic surprises you with one thing you didn’t see coming in any respect. “This movie is among the first movies to include a totally 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, mentions 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 totally ready for the revelation both. “What do you imply?” he asks.
“I feel it’s 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 accomplice Amelia, portrayed by Laurine Worth, about her desires. “We’ve got this animation factor happening there.”
Now Frerichs has everybody’s full consideration. “This was one thing very distinctive and really new as a result of within the e-book, this dream sequence may be very surrealistic,” he highlights. “It might have been very laborious to shoot. Truly, it was additionally by no means filmed in any of the opposite movies” based mostly on the novella.
“With the use and the assistance of AI and my two pals, Sven and Victor, who dealt with the entire operation, we really gave this dream sequence a face,” Frerichs provides. “Whether or not you prefer it or not, it’s been achieved with the assistance of AI.”
So how was the expertise working with AI, and what have been the challenges? “It was lots of work by our workforce that we put into this AI. It’s not similar to we informed the AI, ‘do that and that,’ after which It got here out. It took, really, six months of analysis and of making an attempt,” the director explains. “It was lots 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 offer start to this dream sequence, which in any other case we couldn’t have filmed on such a shoestring price range.”
Kinski is now extra-excited to look at the ultimate model of the film. “I haven’t seen the final model [with the AI sequence] so I’m fairly curious to see it,” he shares.
The actor calls the prospect of “AI and human interplay fascinating,” including: “I feel it’s only the start of a wild new period.”
Does AI scare or fear Frerichs? “Our machine dreamt up this dream sequence for our movie with numerous work that we put into it,” he tells THR. “So, I don’t have the worry that any animators or so will lose their jobs. My expertise with the AI was that this can be a software, and it’s essential put numerous creativity into it to get one thing out of it.” Concludes the filmmaker: “That’s why I can proudly say that we’ve got an AI sequence in there which elevates the entire sequence and movie.”