Artificial intelligence‘s use in movie-making is exploding. And a young film festival, now in its junior 12 months, is showcasing what this technology can do on screen today.
The annual AI Film Festival, organized by Runway, an organization that makes a speciality of AI-generated video, kicked off in Latest York Thursday night with ten short movies from all over the world making their debut on the large screen.
“Three years ago, this was such a crazy idea,” Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela told the gang. “Today, thousands and thousands of persons are making billions of videos using tools we only dreamed of.”
The film festival itself has grown significantly since its 2023 debut. About 300 people submitted movies when it first began, Valenzuela said, in comparison with about 6,000 submissions received this 12 months.
The one-and-a-half-hour lineup stretched across a spread of creative styles and impressive themes, with Jacob Alder’s “ Total Pixel Space ” taking home the festival’s top prize. The 9-minute and 28-second film questions what number of possible images — real or not — exist within the digital space, and uses math to calculate a colossal number. A surprising series of images, starting from the familiar life moments to those who completely bend reality, gives viewers a glimpse of what’s on the market.
Meanwhile, Andrew Salter’s “Jailbird,” which snagged second place, chronicles a chicken’s journey — from the bird’s perspective — to a human prison in the UK to participate in a joint-rehabilitation program. And “One,” a futuristic story by Ricardo Villavicencio and Edward Saatchi about interplanetary travel, followed in third place.
The ten movies shown were finalists chosen from 1000’s submitted to Runway’s AI Film Festival this 12 months. The shorts can even be shown at screenings held in Los Angeles and Paris next week.
How AI is used and executed is an element judges evaluate when determining festival winners. But not every film entered was made entirely using AI. While submission criteria require each movie to incorporate the usage of AI-generated video, there’s no set threshold, meaning some movies can take a more “mixed media” approach, resembling combining live shots of actors or real-life images and sounds with AI-generated elements.
“We’re attempting to encourage people to explore and experiment with it,” Valenzuela said in an interview prior to Thursday’s screening.
Making a coherent film using generative AI is not any easy feat. It might take an extended list of directions and diverse, detailed prompts to get even a brief scene to make sense and look consistent.
Still, the scope of what this sort of technology can do has grown significantly since Runway’s first AI Film Festival in 2023 — and Valenzuela says that’s reflected in today’s submissions. While there are still limits, AI-generated video is becoming increasingly more life-like and realistic.
Runway encourages the usage of its own AI tools for movies entered into its festival, but creators are also allowed to show to other resources and tools as they put together the movies — and across the industry, tools that use AI to create videos spanning from text, image and/or audio prompts have rapidly improved over recent years, while becoming increasingly available.
“The way in which (this technology) has lived inside film and media culture, and popular culture, has really accelerated,” said Joshua Glick, an associate professor of film and electronic arts at Bard College.
He adds that Runway’s film fest, which is amongst a handful of showcases geared toward spotlighting AI’s creative capabilities, arrives as firms on this space are looking for heightened “legitimacy and recognition” for the tools they’re creating, with the aim of cementing partnerships in Hollywood in consequence.
AI’s presence in Hollywood is already far-reaching, and maybe more expansive than many moviegoers realize. Beyond “headline-grabbing” (and at times controversial) applications that big-budget movies have done to “de-age” actors or create eye-catching stunts, Glick notes, this technology is commonly incorporated in an array of post-production editing, digital touch-ups, and extra behind-the-scenes work like sorting footage.
Industry executives repeatedly point to how AI can improve efficiency within the movie-making process, allowing creatives to perform a task that after took hours, for instance, in a matter of minutes, and foster further innovation.
Still, AI’s rapid growth and adoption have also heightened anxieties across the burgeoning technology, notably its implications for staff.
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — which represents behind-the-scenes entertainment staff within the U.S. and Canada — has “long embraced recent technologies that enhance storytelling,” Vanessa Holtgrewe, IATSE’s international vp, said in an emailed statement. “But we’ve also been clear: AI must not be used to undermine staff’ rights or livelihoods.”
IATSE and other unions have continued to meet with major studios and establish provisions in efforts to supply guardrails around the usage of AI. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has also been vocal about AI protections for its members, a key sticking point in recent labor actions.
For Runway’s AI Film Festival, Valenzuela hopes screening movies that incorporate AI-generated video can showcase what’s possible — and the way he says this technology may help, not hurt, creatives within the work they do today.
“It’s natural to fear change … (But) it’s necessary to know what you’ll be able to do with it,” Valenzuela said. Even filmmaking, he adds, was born “due to scientific breakthroughs that on the time were very uncomfortable for many individuals.”
Artificial intelligence‘s use in movie-making is exploding. And a young film festival, now in its junior 12 months, is showcasing what this technology can do on screen today.
The annual AI Film Festival, organized by Runway, an organization that makes a speciality of AI-generated video, kicked off in Latest York Thursday night with ten short movies from all over the world making their debut on the large screen.
“Three years ago, this was such a crazy idea,” Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela told the gang. “Today, thousands and thousands of persons are making billions of videos using tools we only dreamed of.”
The film festival itself has grown significantly since its 2023 debut. About 300 people submitted movies when it first began, Valenzuela said, in comparison with about 6,000 submissions received this 12 months.
The one-and-a-half-hour lineup stretched across a spread of creative styles and impressive themes, with Jacob Alder’s “ Total Pixel Space ” taking home the festival’s top prize. The 9-minute and 28-second film questions what number of possible images — real or not — exist within the digital space, and uses math to calculate a colossal number. A surprising series of images, starting from the familiar life moments to those who completely bend reality, gives viewers a glimpse of what’s on the market.
Meanwhile, Andrew Salter’s “Jailbird,” which snagged second place, chronicles a chicken’s journey — from the bird’s perspective — to a human prison in the UK to participate in a joint-rehabilitation program. And “One,” a futuristic story by Ricardo Villavicencio and Edward Saatchi about interplanetary travel, followed in third place.
The ten movies shown were finalists chosen from 1000’s submitted to Runway’s AI Film Festival this 12 months. The shorts can even be shown at screenings held in Los Angeles and Paris next week.
How AI is used and executed is an element judges evaluate when determining festival winners. But not every film entered was made entirely using AI. While submission criteria require each movie to incorporate the usage of AI-generated video, there’s no set threshold, meaning some movies can take a more “mixed media” approach, resembling combining live shots of actors or real-life images and sounds with AI-generated elements.
“We’re attempting to encourage people to explore and experiment with it,” Valenzuela said in an interview prior to Thursday’s screening.
Making a coherent film using generative AI is not any easy feat. It might take an extended list of directions and diverse, detailed prompts to get even a brief scene to make sense and look consistent.
Still, the scope of what this sort of technology can do has grown significantly since Runway’s first AI Film Festival in 2023 — and Valenzuela says that’s reflected in today’s submissions. While there are still limits, AI-generated video is becoming increasingly more life-like and realistic.
Runway encourages the usage of its own AI tools for movies entered into its festival, but creators are also allowed to show to other resources and tools as they put together the movies — and across the industry, tools that use AI to create videos spanning from text, image and/or audio prompts have rapidly improved over recent years, while becoming increasingly available.
“The way in which (this technology) has lived inside film and media culture, and popular culture, has really accelerated,” said Joshua Glick, an associate professor of film and electronic arts at Bard College.
He adds that Runway’s film fest, which is amongst a handful of showcases geared toward spotlighting AI’s creative capabilities, arrives as firms on this space are looking for heightened “legitimacy and recognition” for the tools they’re creating, with the aim of cementing partnerships in Hollywood in consequence.
AI’s presence in Hollywood is already far-reaching, and maybe more expansive than many moviegoers realize. Beyond “headline-grabbing” (and at times controversial) applications that big-budget movies have done to “de-age” actors or create eye-catching stunts, Glick notes, this technology is commonly incorporated in an array of post-production editing, digital touch-ups, and extra behind-the-scenes work like sorting footage.
Industry executives repeatedly point to how AI can improve efficiency within the movie-making process, allowing creatives to perform a task that after took hours, for instance, in a matter of minutes, and foster further innovation.
Still, AI’s rapid growth and adoption have also heightened anxieties across the burgeoning technology, notably its implications for staff.
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — which represents behind-the-scenes entertainment staff within the U.S. and Canada — has “long embraced recent technologies that enhance storytelling,” Vanessa Holtgrewe, IATSE’s international vp, said in an emailed statement. “But we’ve also been clear: AI must not be used to undermine staff’ rights or livelihoods.”
IATSE and other unions have continued to meet with major studios and establish provisions in efforts to supply guardrails around the usage of AI. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has also been vocal about AI protections for its members, a key sticking point in recent labor actions.
For Runway’s AI Film Festival, Valenzuela hopes screening movies that incorporate AI-generated video can showcase what’s possible — and the way he says this technology may help, not hurt, creatives within the work they do today.
“It’s natural to fear change … (But) it’s necessary to know what you’ll be able to do with it,” Valenzuela said. Even filmmaking, he adds, was born “due to scientific breakthroughs that on the time were very uncomfortable for many individuals.”
