Camerimage: “The time to be afraid of AI was two years ago”

IBC

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The festival of cinematography remains political with the rise of AI and gender equality bubbling beneath the surface.

Having been overshadowed by charges of a lack of female representation and disrespect to female filmmakers last year, this year’s Camerimage sets the record straight. The award of the Golden Frog to a female directed, female photographed film about heroic female hospital workers by a female jury chief (New Zealand DP Niki Caro) was a pointed riposte to (continuing) rumbles about lack of female representation in the industry and at this festival in particular.

German cinematographer Judith Kaufman was a worthy winner for Late Shift directed by Petra Volpe and Switzerland’s entry to the Oscars. From 13 nominations for the Award, she was one of three women.

Kaufman (who accepted via video message) said: “I am aware of the intense discussions surrounding Camerimage of the dissatisfaction that, over the years, so few female cinematographers have been represented there. Talent has never been limited by gender. Only opportunity has. I accept this award with deep gratitude, but also with the hope that it becomes unremarkable for women to be here. My work is one voice among many. There are countless women emerging mid-career and long overlooked whose visions are changing film in extraordinary ways.”

She continued, “I especially want to encourage young female DOPs to keep moving forward with curiosity and open eyes, to keep fighting for our visibility, but also to trust. It is truly the most beautiful profession there is.”

The creep of AI

Director of photography luminaries including Dion Beebe (Chicago), Ed Lachman (The Limey), Phedon Papamichael (A Complete Unknown), Mandy Walker (Elvis), Bruno Delbonnel (Amélie), Ellen Kuras (Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind) and Autumn Durald Arkapaw (Sinners) rub shoulders with film students at the Camerimage festival.

While the focus of seminars and screenings including Oscar contenders Sentimental Value, Hamnet and Anemone remains grounded in traditional skills there’s no escaping the creep of artificial intelligence.

Michael Goi, ASC, ISC (Avatar: The Last Airbender) exhorted peers to take a lead. “The time to be afraid of AI was two years ago,” he said. “We're way past that. Now is the time to get involved in AI and guide it toward where it needs to go - because if we don’t it's going to go down a path that is potentially destructive and not beneficial to people.”

He countered the idea that AI can be used to produce a polished, coherent film from a simple command.

“Sure, you can get lucky with a single prompt that delivers an amazing result but AI is not going to make a mediocre filmmaker a great filmmaker. There's no way it can, because if you happen to hit the slot machine of success with an image that it spits out, you cannot repeat that in order to build a career.”

Importantly, Goi did not dismiss AI filmmakers as charlatans but as potential collaborators. Of AI filmmaker Ellenor Argyropoulos, with whom he shared a panel session, Goi said: “Ellenor and I come from two completely different spectrums. I love everything being done in the camera and Eleanor works with a computer but the bottom line is that we are both obsessed with visual storytelling and character building within world’s we create.”

He stressed, “If you are have an intensely creative vision then you have to decide if AI is actually the right tool for you to accomplish it.”

Argyropoulos drew attention to the need to work with multiple AI generators to achieve the output you want. She advised using a platform like Freepik which aggregates several leading AI tools including Runway, Kling and Google Imagen in one place because no single application will deliver what you want.

“I wrote a prompt about a little homeless girl and a couple of the GenAI technologies wouldn't touch it because it was a child,” she explained. “It was red flagged by Google VEO. So we had to change the little girl into an old woman which means you are rewriting the script to accommodate what the AI will do. OpenAI’s Sora won’t permit the use of image to video of a real person. It only works text to video. Strong censorship is a great thing for society of course, but for a filmmaker it means you are limited. You have to know which model does what and move your work between them to achieve what you want.”

Polish filmmaker Jarosław Żamojda is in production with a team of 12 on an 80-minute AI generated film and showed some raw clips from the work in progress.

“I feel that the absolutely most important thing are the decisions you have to make about how you want to use this tool to tell your story,” he said. “We know how to convey emotion and a narrative but with AI those possibilities are even greater.”

The downside, he said, was AI’s inability to convey emotion like an actor. “We are all used to writing a script that relies heavily on actors transferring emotions to the viewer but
AI cannot do this. It lacks subtlety.”

Martynian Rozwadowski, Head of Technology at Warsaw based digital production company Veles Productions demonstrated how they had recently used Marble, an AI tool for creating 3D worlds to generate gaussian splats (3D photoreal objects and scenes) from a text prompt. It was he believed a world first. Veles had used the technique with Unreal Engine and Veles’ virtual production stage to create a pop video for Polish singer Naczzos.

AI is also a tool within DI grading suites but the contribution of colourists to storytelling is arguably stronger than ever as far as cinematographers are concerned.

“So often the work of the colourist is thought of in terms of making pleasing pictures, but it really is about visual storytelling,” said Wolfgang Lempp, joint MD, FilmLight, introducing the fifth annual FilmLight Colour Awards at the festival. “That’s why I'm not concerned about the impact of AI on colourists. Yes, the tools will change. More automation will change the focus of the work but I don't see any technology on horizon that creates the connection between pleasing pictures and visual storytelling. That remains an essentially human task that is in common with that of the cinematographer.”

Máté Ternyik won the top theatrical prize at the Colour Awards for his work on The Brutalist (which controversially used AI to finesse actor pronunciation) leading a feature competition that included grades by Damien Vandercruyssen on Mickey 17, Adam Glasman on Nosferatu, Kostas Theodosiou on Sinners and Gareth Spensley on The Phoenician Scheme. 

Ronald Víctor García, the veteran cinematographer who shot the pilot for Twin Peaks (1989) and the feature Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), attended as part of a retrospective of the work of David Lynch. During his presentation he criticised modern TV shows which he said, “All look the same” blaming AI and VFX. He said, “I’m here at Camerimage to watch foreign films, not Hollywood films, because I’m interested in what the cinematographers are doing. I think the creativity comes out of having not enough equipment and not enough time and having to find a solution.”

Polish DPs on show

Several of the features screening in competition for the festival’s main prize featured the work of Polish cinematographers. Dariusz Wolski, ASC the Polish DP who has made several films with Ridley Scott including Prometheus and Napoleon shared perspectives on shooting Nuremberg the historical drama about the post-WW2 Nazi war criminal trials.

“Evil is fascinating,” Wolski said. “I grew up in Poland with communist propaganda and then lived in the US. Americans have a totally different perspective on WW2 than Poles. We were the victims not the victors. There are a few Polish movies about WW2 which are considerably more powerful than any that Americans have ever made.”

In Nuremburg, Russell Crowe gives a seductive performance as Hermann Göring. “Photographically it was not easy for me to photography two people in a room and to come up with some consistent ideas. It is not about making precious pretty pictures. It is intended to be rough and this makes it more believable.”

It took more than three weather seasons and 86 locations plus 250 actors, 5000+ extras and a 600 strong crew to make Polish language period biopic Chopin, a Sonata in Paris (Chopin, Chopin!) winner of the Bronze Golden Frog.  

“We have references in music, painting and literature but we obviously don't have documentary footage and there are only two photographs of Chopin in existence, so this allows for a certain freedom,” reflected Michał Sobociński PSC. “It means we can afford to create a world from scratch. I’d almost compare it to creating a fantasy world which is often the privilege of science fiction filmmakers, but it still has to be believable. So, our Paris is lit by oil lamps and candles that deliver a texture to the picture.”

Łukasz Żal, the twice Academy Award nominated Polish DP (Ida, The Zone of Interest) was behind the lens for awards season favourite Hamnet. Noting that his entire crew was also Polish and that director Chloé Zhao was born in China, Żal also noted that he was influenced by Russian, Chinese and French new wave films for this historical drama about William Shakespeare.

He said, “I visited the UK dozens of times with Chloé during prep to scout locations and it was only by spending time in the forest and rural towns (principally of Hertfordshire) that we were able to come up with the cinematic language to tell this story.”

Tech on display

Elsewhere at Camerimage, cinematographer James Medcraft was demonstrating the Cyclops, a head-mounted POV rig which he invented. It was shown on the Sony stand with an Extension system Mini for the Venice but would also work with Sony FX3 and RED cameras. Medcraft designed everything apart from the motors with 3D printed parts that can be custom made for the operator – or actor.

Tom Holland wore one on the current Marvel production of Spider-Man: Brand New Day while DoPs might wear it to capture authentic POV perspectives. “If I were the operator then I would work with the actor to understand the actions and motivation sentiment of the movement,” Medcraft explained. “It's even possible to drive a car or bike wearing the helmet (on a closed set) for authentic driving POV or hands free ‘oners’.”

Nikon displayed the Nikon ZR, the brand's first dedicated Z CINEMA body-co-developed with RED. In a related seminar Nikon fielded none other than Ed Lachman, ASC the distinguished DP who has worked with Robert Altman, Bernado Bertolucci, Paul Schrader, Nic Roeg and Dennis Hopper. Beyond the specs of the Nikon (internal 6K R3D NE RAW-recording) it seems compact mirrorless cameras like the ZR are now used as B- and C-cameras on large narrative films and as primary cameras in documentary work.