Saatchi’s NDS Tests Cannes Audiences

VR may have captured our imaginations at the start of this year, but it seems AI is not far behind with many starting to consider what effect the evolution of technology will have on the future of the industry.

Cannes was a prime place for discussions about the development of AI yet Saatchi & Saatchi were among the few to publilcly put it to use and test its effectiveness.  This year’s New Director’s Showcase featured work from 20 emerging directors including an AI collective. Held just over a week ago on the morning of June 23, the showcase premiered to some 2,300 festival delegates and challenged them to identify which of the films was created by a machine and which were created by humans.

Accidentally commemorating scientist Alan Turing – whose birthday coincided with the NDS premiere – the event was an apt nod to his life’s work and interest in the relationship between AI and creativity. Exploring this idea further, Saatchi & Saatchi together with Team One wanted to see whether machines could actually be conceivably creative by testing whether they'd be able to fool a creative audience. Team One CCO, Chris Graves (CG), and NDS curator/producer and Saatchi & Saatchi’s director of film & content, Andy Gulliman (AG), spoke to shots about setting up a most unusual experiment.

Last year marked the 25^th anniversary reel, why did you decide to include an AI-crafted spot in this year’s showcase and why did you think it was an important issue to address and bring to Cannes?

Chris Graves: Given that last year celebrated a lot of the artists brought forward through the showcase, this year intentionally looked forward to find the next new talent. There was the natural inclination to question what’s next for the world of filmmaking. We began having all these conversations about what defines a filmmaker and so we decided to explore the idea of creating a film further – not just who makes films but how they will be made. We wondered whether with the right technology, machines could conceivably create a [good] film. AI is a huge topic – there’s talk of how it’s going to find its way into lots of different realms and what it would look like. It seemed like a really appropriate year to try it.

Andy Gulliman: This experiment shows the positive side of AI and questions its capabilities through us examining and working with it.

CG: It’s important for artists to get a handle on AI and start to learn how to use it. A lot of the time, technology is used for technology’s sake which can lead to very mechanical executions until you start to play around with it. That’s when the storytelling aspect gets better. We took a quantum leap – past VR – and wondered what’s next…

What was the production process of putting together an AI film?

AG: It was torture.

CG: You have to take a step back. People have a predetermined concept that AI is a big computer brain that will just spit out all this stuff but really AI is no more complicated than Siri on your iPhone. It’s a little engine that thinks and processes information. For this experiment, we used six different types of AI processors as an artistic collective to help make the directorial decisions. We took the narrative of the song lyrics and had them interpreted through [cognitive system] IBM Watson, to analyse their emotional tonality and generate a storyline, which was then created by a chatbot. In combination with all these things, we had to decide which of the AIs would be best to make the decisions, it was a group effort really. The casting was a really unique situation. We attached electroencephalogram (EEG, to record the brain’s activity) on every actor and made them listen to the song and whichever one mapped the closest emotionally to the lead singer, that’s who the AI would cast. The irony is that the AI chose the same actor that we would have instinctively gone with but it uses very different criteria to choose.

What was it like working with an AI directing collective?

CG: Like working with a first time director. We had to surround it with the right production group, technical partners and programmers because it’s never done any of this stuff before and all of its decisions are made by applying neural network art processing. So, the more the machine does, the more it learns. If we’d given it another month, it would’ve got better at making those choices. Having gone through it, it’s a very mechanical process which for me is the main difference right now. It makes decisions on mechanical algorithmic choices as opposed to instinct or eye or inspiration.

AG: For me as a producer, you work out the flow of a production from listening to conversations. Every stage of the process builds the production and that’s is why I was curled up in a ball throughout because it’s a one way conversation. You just have to sit back and wait for something to come – there’s no build up. It’s linear, it’s like ordering something online… It’s bizarre.

CG: Also in this case, no one had the overall vision because each decision was based on the last. It required constant layering; we had to keep feeding the machine data for it to reach the next decision.

How satisfied did you both feel with the end result of the film?

CG: I think it did a great job but it’s got a lot to learn. The experiment was to see whether it lived within the NDS group. There’s some really excellent work in there so I personally don’t think it quite lived up to that.

AG: Because we’ve seen the whole process from the first cuts, I can’t judge it. I was worried that the experiment was obvious but there’s been a lot of people who haven’t been able to point the AI film out.

Why did you decide to commemorate Alan Turing – aka the father of AI – in this way?

AG: We conceived the idea first and then learnt later that the NDS premiere landed on his birthday. In my opinion, a lot of great things have happened through happy accidents – whether it’s on shoot or in the development of the idea. I was worried that this experiment would be a bit too mechanical, but I got my happy accident.

Do you think technology is a valid threat to the industry and creativity?

CG: Right now, it’s not a threat to new directors but it could complement what humans do quite nicely. I think in combination with a human’s eye and instinct, we could see some really interesting advances. I don’t think AI on its own would be much of a threat but I’d be crazy to rule it out completely.

AG: It’s only be a threat if you allow it to be a threat. The point of the exercise is to understand it so that we can see how we want to use it and know how it will support us.