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Like it or not, we are potentially only months away from the
first AI-generated feature film, and Jason Zada of Secret Level could be the
one to deliver it.
Towards the end of 2024, a film called The Heist, clocking
in at less than two minutes long, re-ignited debate about the potency of AI in
Hollywood.
It was created in just a few days with visuals entirely
generated via text-to-video in Google’s Veo 2 platform. Although music and
sound design were added, the imagery was raw out of the AI with no colour
correction or polish. It is that which impressed many viewers who called it the
best AI-generated video yet.
A week later, the same studio followed up with another short
test called ‘Fade Out’ that also went viral. It focuses on an ageing rock
star’s final years and includes cinematic details – camera moves, lighting,
textures and emotion – to craft a story, not just a montage.
As the punchline to The Heist has it:
‘Looks like we got ourselves a new king of video.’
Jason Zada, the filmmaker behind both projects, thinks we
will see feature-length AI movies this year.
“Very soon we're going to start seeing a bunch of them,” he
says. “More substantial budgets and resources are being allocated toward
generative AI projects.”
The real question, he adds, is are we ready? “I don't think
audiences want an AI film. They want a good film, and if it happens to be done
in AI, that's cool.”
Zada is a seasoned filmmaker who has been creating with
interactive formats since programming his Commodore 64 as a kid in the 1980s.
He co-founded interactive advertising agency Evolution Bureau in 2000 to create
web-based ‘advertainment’, selling the company to media conglomerate Omnicom
eight years later for a reported $18m. In 2011 he won an Emmy for creating
Facebook app ‘Take This Lollipop’, which has been seen by over 100 million
people and directed 2016 horror film The Forest, which grossed
almost $41m globally.
Last year he set up Secret Level which has quickly been
recognised as a leader among a new wave of AI-focused studios – Asteria and the
Russo Brothers’ AGBO being others.
To officially launch Secret Level, Zada created the short
Dream With Us, which combined live-action, AI, VFX, and animation. The film was
completed in just under two weeks, with live-action shot on a small green
screen soundstage and a fully generative AI pipeline.
“Basically, this was the lightbulb moment,” Zada says. “We
had created something that would have taken months and would have been very
expensive — and we did it in a fraction of the time. This pipeline is now at
the core of every project we do.”
Pre- is the new post
The film and TV industry has been predicting the collapse of
the linear processes of pre-production, production and post for a while and
Zada believes AI may finally trigger it.
“We've been talking to a lot of Hollywood Studios and the
main thing I explain to them and to any director that we work with is that
you're able to see the final frame of what you're ultimately going to produce
very, very early on. That is extremely empowering for making bold choices about
set pieces or about monster creation. It really does get to the point where you
can see exactly what it's going to look like in previz. That’s never been
possible before.”
He continues: “The visual fidelity of AI is insane. Since
you can previz everything with AI and sometimes it looks so good that you are
basically able to look at a final frame but extremely early on, it changes your
whole mindset about how to approach production.”
To date, Secret Level has been producing mostly short-form
content for commercials and pop promos. This included the generative AI
reimagining of Coca-Cola’s The Holidays Are Coming TV commercial from 1995
which launched last November. AI helped storyboard 34 shots and develop 45
unique versions of the campaign tailored for local markets.
“While some responses were polarising, the campaign became
one of the most talked-about AI projects of the year. It demonstrated that we
could use AI to iterate faster than ever, but it was really our team’s artistic
decisions that helped shape every frame.”
A trailer for The Wood Fuzzles, handmade-style
characters in a whimsical forest setting, gained significant attention online
and became the first project under Secret Level Originals.
“We’re now actively developing it into a full children’s TV
show,” Zada says. “Never in a million years did I think I'd be head of a
studio.”
Power to the people
Secret Level is closing its first round of financing and
Zada and colleagues, including VP, Content & Production Monica Monique,
have a decision to make.
“Do we want to be a real studio where we make decisions on
what content gets funded, but do so from a development standpoint?” he says.
“In other words, let's prove if a concept has an audience first before it gets
greenlit. In that small way, we should be able to produce some interesting
ideas from a very diverse group of storytellers.”
He goes on to note that this upends the traditional
hierarchy where only a small group of executives at a handful of studios had
the power to vote or veto ideas that made it to screen.
“It’s like when VHS arrived. Suddenly, you could have your
film on a shelf next to Star Wars in a mom and pop store anywhere in the world.
To me, that's where we're at with AI. We’re on the verge of shifting the
creative and commissioning power of content away from just a few people at
studio level. There's going to be so many other people who make those decisions
to bring in new voices and new stories.”
Back to his rhetorical question about whether the public
wants an AI feature, even though the technology might soon make it possible.
“There's going to be a lot of AI-generated content out there
which is why sifting through the good stuff and finding the people who are
really good at creating in AI will be key,” he says. “Curators and tastemakers
are going to dominate the future. There are already many AI studios and many AI
platforms. I like to compare Secret Level to [film producer/distributor] A24
where quality and taste are defining qualities.”
Use prompts to communicate your vision
Zada continues: “A lot of people think AI is more
complicated than it is. The way I've been trying to break it down simply is to
think about what happens on set now. A director talks to their DoP about what
they want. Can you light it like this? Can we colour like that? The DP will
talk to their Gaffer about bringing those idea to life. The more I broke it
down, the more I started to realise that every single time I'm on set, I'm
still having to communicate a sometimes very long series of words that are in fact
text prompts. Prompting a computer is not that different. As with anything,
there will be people who are really good at this and others that are mediocre
and not so good.”
Rather than reducing artistic roles, Zada thinks AI will be
additive to total production jobs. “It's just going to be different. There are
going to be things that we shoot physically and things that we don't shoot in
future. For example, do we need to go out and spend four days capturing a car
driving down a road when we could easily create it in AI and it looks the
same?”
Combating the haters
Along with other filmmakers using AI, Zada has been
criticised mostly by people alarmed at what they perceive to be the unethical
abuse of computers to create content at the expense of human jobs. Reaction to
his work has been particularly extreme. He even had death threats after
releasing The Heist.
“I tend to ignore the trolls on X. On LinkedIn at least
you're in a semi-professional environment. I try to always approach it from the
standpoint of understanding that hate drives a lot of people. People are just
very mean spirited. Even when I publish tests and I’m playing around with
technology and just wondering if I could visually tell a story this way, there
is a lot of hate.
He adds: “There's a lot of people not working right now in
Hollywood but I can tell you it's not because of AI. It’s because of Covid, the
fall in the advertising market, the impact of the streamers and the strikes.”
Zada says his daughter is studying 3D animation at college
and she’s asked him whether she will end up having a job at all. “Yes,
absolutely she will. I tell her, AI does all the things you don't want to do.
Do you want to rig a 3D model? No, you want somebody else to do that.”
Gavin Whelan, a CG artist based in LA, commented on LinkedIn
after seeing The Wood Fuzzles: ‘More pretty pictures created
completely inauthentically, stolen from actual talented people. Toddlers will
love this, but won't be able to tell it took zero artistic talent to create.
The creator will likely make a lot of money on Youtube, they just won't have
any soul left.’
Australian news site @ScreenBrief wrote on X about The
Heist: ‘It’s uncanny to see something steal from so many different
great directors and just blatantly destroy the soul of the art you love. It
turns homage into insult by making it baseless theft. Disgusting.’
Zada responds: “I understand that a lot of traditional animation people are very threatened. AI could potentially upend what they do, but you can't ignore it. You can embrace it in whatever way you want to or not at all. I'm just saying it's a train that's moving down the tracks and you're either on the train or you're not.”
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