AI Discoveries – Part 3

In the director’s wise and ancient words from the early 70s, when he was a film and photography student in New York, I can say that Jac is tripping out with AI, discovering its possibilities, its drawbacks, its false promises, and the real advances of that fairly new technology that, apparently, is growing, improving and unleashing the unknown on us.

It takes one prompt (description) and one picture, or no picture at all, to create anything, anything at all. It doesn’t mean that what is created fulfills the creator’s wishes, but it is done, like the picture below, of Jac taking pictures somewhere in Upstate New York, very close to where Woodstock took place and where he enjoyed a couple of years in a Hippie commune. Yes. That’s right.

Jac used a still photograph he has of those days long gone, the one that opens this particular AI interpretation of that moment, and AI did the rest. It even made the flash work. Funny?

Cruxlover24 It would be impossible to replace Amy, Danielle and Mila’s suffering with AI. Their performance is always amazing.

Nothing and no one can replace Amy, or Dani, or Mila, or Ligia, or Simonne, or Bea… or Camille… All of them are amazing, daring, beautiful, courageous, extremely talented actresses and more than that. We don’t believe that AI can replace a person, no matter what. What it can do, however, is to help create scenes that are very difficult under normal circumstances.

From the times of early cinema, when rotoscoping was used in animation and even live action movies, a technique where a live-action film was projected onto a glass panel to then work on tracing the figures onto paper, allowing animators to capture the subtle, complex motions of real life that were difficult to draw from scratch. 

Max Fleischer patented the process in 1915 to create his character Koko the Clown, whose lifelike movements were first traced from footage of his brother in a clown suit. That’s 1915!

Technology has advanced a lot, but the basic purpose remains the same, to create impossible scenes, like King Kong (1933) up on the Empire State building, or the amazing scenes in 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968), like the close up of the spaceship flying over the camera lens in all its awesome greatness, just to name a couple of movies spread over decades from each other that invented, created, imagined visual effects that made history and pushed the art of filmmaking way ahead.

In our case we see AI as an instrument, one more instrument, to use at its best to produce our movies and create some stunning scenes, if at all possible. Film technology was and is expensive and time consuming, Max Fleischer had to work on each individual frame to create the sequence of his animated characters dancing. That’s time consuming, of course. And he needed the equipment, huge, difficult to work with equipment. Cameras were really big and moving those monstrosities and then setting them up was a lot of work in itself. And not to mention the film stock and lab work. Tremendously expensive.

Creativity has no limits when you use what you have at your disposal, if you can afford it or risk it, whether that’s in the dawn of cinematography, early 1900s, or now, way into the new millennium with technologies that are beyond of what we could even dream about in the 20s, or 30s or 60s or 90s …

The difference is that AI and all the new era technologies and instruments are more democratic now.

I guess it is similar to how things were when it was costly to print a book. Not all writers had the possibility of someone taking their hand written manuscripts to turn them into a big book, but then fancy photocopy machines appeared and one could make dozens, hundreds, of copies of a typewritten manuscript and sell it in the streets of New York.

With AI anyone can write and publish a book these days. And what is worse, anyone can ask AI to write the book… and AI will write it!

Creativity dies there.

But, AI is also a tool that can be used for creative work and it can help create stunning scenes. But, in our case, it will not replace the people in those scenes. Maybe it helps in a couple of shots, but that is all. Sure, you can make an entire movie with AI, but the characters you might be able to create do not act well, they can’t, and never will.

wanttoknowmor So when are you going to film the scenes that require you to be outside? From previous posts, you run out of weather to do it by January. You can do AI and studio scenes anytime.

I don’t want to give any information that it is not completely under my latitude of knowledge of the things that are happening. What I can attest to is that if Jac had planned to work on the exterior scenes in the last few weeks, between October and now, the end of November, it would’ve been a major bust. It was raining a lot and it was really cold for most of the time. One comment often said by people was it looks like February. That was Jac’s more often used phrase.

We suspect there’s a complete change in the patterns of the weather because of the effects of climate change. We should make a documentary about it … for NatGeo … hmmm… Maybe we can get a couple of hundred thousand dollars for it… hmmm. Jac was playing with AI one night in Word, he typed “proposal for ecological documentary in Madidi. Then he hit the AI button that now appears on word documents, five seconds later he had the entire, many pages proposal. He was in awe.

Going back to the weather issue. This week there was less rain, a little less. Lots of thunder and the skies showing heavy, dark clouds but less rain. Maybe it will get better next week but the way the dark clouds are looming in La Paz right now I doubt it… oops, it’s raining again.

This kind of weather is what we would expect in January, but it is here now. Does it mean that the next couple of months are going to be dry? Or are they going to be even worse?

Jac doesn’t want to bet on it, either way. He prefers to plan the work around or within this new reality.

The exterior scenes the Crucified Four needs are mostly in the market and during the crucifixions. Everything else are interiors, including all the tortures the four protagonists go through before they are taken away to be nailed up.

The idea is to shoot all the crucifixion scenes at the location in two days for each of the movies. The shooting will begin with the women picking up their crosses, that scene will be different for each of the victims. Two of them will be nailed to the crossbar before they begin their walk. In the case of the Warrior, she’ll be further punish after her nailing and before she starts walking, carrying her heavy burden.

After the nailing sequence is complete, the production will move to the via crucis of the victim. The walk won’t be as long as in Seditiosa, but long enough. Some will trip, some will fall, some will be dragged at times, until the poor suffering woman arrives to the place of her execution.

Then the production will move to the crucifixion where the condemned will suffer more torture for the most part of that seriously nasty sequence.

The production of those sequences will concentrate on one crucifixion victim at a time, not two, not three, not four… Just ONE! It will take at least a day and a half for each, including evenings.

There are only two cases where there’s a lot of Make-Up work to cover the actresses tattoos for their crucifixion in the nude scenes.

There’s always the possibility that a lot can be done with Green Screen, like the picture here, where Ligia carries her Patibulum in front of the Green Screen and Jac set up the scene with an interesting background. It was only a test, no make up involved, no blood, no soldier whipping her as she walks. Just her, the Patibulum and the Green Screen. The result wasn’t bad at all. In the video she walks towards the soldiers, turns around and walks again. The video is very atmospheric and Jac just might try to shoot a scene with actors and mix them up with AI generated backgrounds with soldiers and people. Maybe.

But if if Jac decides to go to the location for all the crucifixion scenes he says that, since he doesn’t need a bunch of actors to play the extras and groups of soldiers, he can do what he did for Dead But Dreaming. A small group of cast and crew would go to the location for two three day weekends and stay in the location to work on the difficult scenes, on each individual crucifixion day and night. It might be possible to do two crucifixions each weekend. Ligia and Mila on the first weekend, only Mila has Tattoo work to be done, Dani and Simonne in the second and only Dani needs to cover her tattoos.

The weather would not be a problem, even if it rains. The wet ground and sometimes the rain, can be used for dramatic purposes. And since the cast and crew would be lodged at the location, there’s no need to cancel the production if the rain is too hard, they can all sit and wait for it to pass. Something like what happened when he was directing Justine. The team was at the location, all built, when it began to rain. It was December. The team waited for an hour, the rain stopped and the production resumed.

Jac is considering that possibility and he’s going to have some talks with the owners of the location to set up the dates. But before closing a deal, he’s working on the possible interiors, the AI/Green Screen shooting, which will be most of the interiors, like the Palace, the Temple, the Dungeons, etc. And some possible exteriors with AI.

It is evident for us that the many exterior scenes like the market and even the crucifixion shots that need to show a lot will be done with Green Screen and AI. And that’s what Jac is working on now.

I have a funny example. A shot of Dani, which was done a couple of weeks ago in front of the Green Screen, and a shot of Ligia, also in front of a Green Screen, but shot last week, both placed over a market background. One of many Jac created for this purpose.

In the test scene, Dani is talking to Jac, in close up, talking to the camera, with the busy market behind her. Ligia walks into the frame, behind Dani, she walks past her, turns around and walks back to where she came from.

Dani’s shot was not intended for a scene like this, Jac was shooting to get still images for AI tests. He was moving the camera to get good angles of Dani dressed as the Warrior. During the shooting Dani was moving to pose, asking questions and so on. The intention Jac had when he combined those separate shots to make them part of the market scene works very nicely.

Also, when are the 3 Crux Bound films that have been in post-production since early this year going to be released?

I’m not privy to that information, that is totally in Jac’s hands. I won’t be giving any dates on new releases unless I’m given that information. The work is going on, that’s all I can say. People ask about other productions that have not yet been release to the public, for many reasons, and I prefer to wait until the work is done, whatever that work is, post production, production, distribution negotiations, etc. I will release that information when I get it.

What I can say is that The Via Crucis of Mila is in our Streaming Channel now!

Cruxlover24 I really hope they are working in them, otherwise looks like promises that will never be true!

We are working in many productions, they are not promises, sometimes we fundraise and we commit to a project when those funds are raised. But still, that’s not a promise. A production company will produce as long as some conditions are met. A good story, the funds to make it, the cast and the crew commitment to work in the film, the locations available and arranged and the time necessary to make it when everyone can commit and so on.

Even multimillion dollar films have issues with the timeline of their productions and the release of those films.

We make a couple of films a year, sometimes more than two, and we release one or two films a year, sometimes even three. That’s a good record as far as film production companies go.

If we produced a movie and it’s in post, that film will be released when it’s done. If we didn’t produced a movie, even if we talked about it as a possible film, then maybe we’ll never make it, or we might make it at some other time, but if that’s the case, we don’t say we’ll release that film. Jac has a few ideas he was planning to produced, decades ago, and he might just do a couple of those.

There can be a plan to produce a film that is on hold for many reasons, but if the conditions to produce it are found, then it will be done and it will be released, but the timing for that is not something that can be predicted. A film takes at least a year from the moment the script is written to the time the film is released. That is if all the conditions are met. It’s not always like that. Some films can take longer for many, many reasons.

One thing is certain, we will be releasing all the films that were produced and are in post production, but this is not a promise, it’s just a fact. The timing is a whole different story. It’s different with each production.

One film that is having some good attention is CruXtreme I – The Playroom. This film is in our streaming channel.

And that’s it for now.

You can stream our films, the channel is growing a lot, I know that as I type this The Via Crucis of Jane 1 is being set up there: https://stream.redfeline.com

You can also buy them at https://movies.redfeline.com

Or get the DVD by mail at https://dvds.redfeline.com