The craft, code and controlled chaos of Chris Boyle

Most people wouldn’t describe the first ten years running a highly regarded production company as just “beavering away and making wacky shit”, but most people aren’t Chris Boyle, and most companies aren’t Private Island.

Trading on an ethos of “give us your money and don’t be a pain” (immortalised in its Instagram bio), PI, as the cool kids call it, has been steered by Boyle and Co-Founder/Producer Helen Power since 2015, following a stint directing in-house cinematics for Call of Duty [Boyle] and working in commercials [Power].

We wanted to build something small, where we could make work we enjoyed and take on only the projects we wanted.

“On paper [our relationship is] divided as executive producer and director, but any good producer-director partnership is far more complicated than that,” says Boyle. “I rely on Helen’s creative opinion, and we run the business together, so it’s very much a unit. It really came out of freedom. We’d both been freelance for a long time, with little control over what came in. We wanted to build something small, where we could make work we enjoyed and take on only the projects we wanted.”

Above: Boyle's bizarre short Synthetic Summer, showcasing Private Island’s early experiments with generative video.

Designed as a one-stop shop covering “cel animation, sometimes full CG, often live-action”, the company didn’t want to be confined by project scale. Instead, it approached post-production the same way it approached production: “Find the best DP, the right collaborators, and form a team around that.”

“When we pitch,” Boyle continues, “it starts with boards, then a 2D animatic, then pre-vis, so you’re in the edit from the beginning. Keeping everything under one roof means no gear-changes between production and post.”

Someone in the States said Private Island has good ‘fuck-you energy’, and we liked that idea.

Earning a reputation as no-nonsense problem solvers, the company soon began working with brands including Adobe, Bud Light, Ikea, FIFA 22, Alienware, Pokémon, and Nike, impressing creative teams with their collaborative approach and the ability to achieve the (nearly) impossible, always with a distinctive PI flavour.

“Someone in the States said Private Island has good ‘fuck-you energy’, and we liked that idea: a company with personality. Because it’s just us, not a roster of ten directors, we can lean into our own sensibility. A lot of our work is anarchic, so we can do things others couldn’t, because they’d need sign-off. With us, it’s just us.”

Fluent in both pixels and plate shots, PI’s blend of live-action craft and post-production expertise proved to be the perfect training ground for a revolution no one saw coming: generative AI.

Above: The Gillian Wearing installation created using deepfake techniques developed by Private Island.

Me, myself and AI

Never shy to playtest, Boyle has been experimenting with generative tools since 2020, starting with deepfakes. “Wieden+Kennedy came to us with Turner Prize-winning artist Gillian Wearing, and we created deepfake work for her project [Wearing Gillian]. That ended up in MoMA, which really pushed us to take note of the technology.”

The project saw Private Island transform Wearing’s image into a series of deepfaked self-portraits, creating an installation that explored the boundaries between artist and subject. Despite the technology being fairly commonplace now, the effect proved both unsettling and magical to an unsuspecting audience.

Following this, working with rudimentary large language models, the team explored generative de-ageing for a commercial with Uncommon in 2021, then continued their experiments with the early generative image tools that appeared the following year. “We started running them on our own servers and experimenting.

Experiments feed directly into the commercial projects.

“I remember one warped picture of a dog that was terrible, but it still felt like a lightbulb moment, because how it looks today is the worst it will ever be. It was obvious that progress would accelerate.”

Accelerate it did, with 2022 and 2023 opening the floodgates to an influx of AI-built video tests, mostly with harrowing results. PI’s output was no exception, with the early experiment, Synthetic Summer, suddenly blowing up online and even making it to the front page of The New York Times. That, along with follow-up pieces for Instagram, gave the team a reputation as ones to watch in the space.

Success also led to a trilogy of shorts exploring generative technology itself - tackling themes of gender and race bias, commercialism and, in their most recent film Meme, Myself and AI, the nature of creativity. “We’ve just brought that one back from the Venice Film Festival,” Boyle notes.

“We made them partly because it’s fun and partly because it keeps the creative muscle flexed. Those experiments feed directly into the commercial projects.”

Above: The short film Meme Myself and AI, exploring creativity through generative technology.

“No, you’re a sellout...”

Whilst creative experiments might help expand skillsets, they don’t tend to pay the bills. For Private Island, operating within advertising presents its own unique prospects. “Working in commercials is an interesting mix of creativity and commerce,” Boyle explains. “Balancing those is always the challenge. We used to say our motto was ‘No, you’re a sellout’ on our Instagram, which we thought was funny, but then decided was unprofessional...”

What isn’t unprofessional, however, is the team’s collective process with its agency/brand partners. Insisting on strategic investment from the outset – with a shared Dropbox of footage to keep the process flowing – there’s a reason that PI’s work ends up realising ambitious visions.

“Our best work happens when the collaboration with creatives is strong. A lot of our favourite projects start without a finished script - just a conversation with creatives or producers who have a loose idea. Those are great, because everyone gets involved and builds it together.”

Our best work happens when the collaboration with creatives is strong.

Such collaborations have resulted in attention-grabbing and award-winning spots for Original Source and KFC, both of which embrace the slightly odd aesthetic of generative AI as a creative choice, rather than a byproduct.

“We’ve come to treat generative filmmaking as an extension of craft. The creativity doesn’t come from pressing a button; it comes from the intent and control behind it. Once you have that granular control and artists are involved, it becomes genuine filmmaking with real potential.”

Because of this, Boyle and Power staff the company with Flame artists and 3D generalists – “people who already understand those core skills” – in order to manipulate the imagery rather than just employ it. “The fundamentals of lighting, camera movement and composition still matter. As the tools become more powerful, that understanding becomes even more essential.”