AI Filmmakers Say Humans Need to Be Involved in Productions: ‘We Should Unplug Tilly Norwood’

The rise of AI in Hollywood has led to many questions, chief among them how much the technology can — or should — be integrated into productions. According to writer/director and AI creator Eliza McNitt, humans need to stay on-camera. And there’s a certain artificial construct she wants to see less of. “Humans are at the heart of the story, and the actors you see in the film are all human,” she said at TheWrap’s The Future of Filmmaking panel at the publication’s business conference, TheGrill. “I feel very strongly that we should unplug Tilly Norwood.” McNitt stressed the importance of humans in the process, a sentiment shared by by her co-panelists at TheGrill business conference, a duo of creatives who are also working in the emerging field of AI in film. Jason Zada, the founder and chief creative officer of Secret Level (a self-proclaimed “entertainment studio powered by AI”) and Ori Winokur, Head of Music & Entertainment Partnerships at Artlist, which provides AI tools for creators. During the panel, McNitt touted her AI-assisted short film, “Ancestra,” showing a trailer to the crowd. The filmmaker, who previously helmed the three-part virtual reality experience “SPHERES” (produced by Darren Aronofsky and starring Millie Bobby Brown and Jessica Chastain), spoke about the difficulty of adding a newborn baby to the short, saying that the options were to “get really lucky on set” or “a CG baby, or you can have a doll.” Or she could turn to the emerging technology. McNitt shared how she worked with Google by feeding her own baby photos into artificial intelligence to create a digital infant — one that looks like her — to insert into the scenes. “We did a bunch of tests where I was just laying on couch holding air, and a day later the team came back to me with this image of a baby in my arms,” McNitt said. “It wasn’t just a baby: It was me. That was the moment that we were like, ‘Holy s–t, this is going to work.’” Despite this digital advancement, McNitt stressed the importance of having humans around for the key steps in the development process — eliminating “actors” like Tilly Norwood and instead turning to AI for pre- and post-production. “Now we have this opportunity to really map out the project in pre-production. As a director, these tools allow me to communicate so much more clearly with my crew being able to communicate my vision with proof of concepts and visuals that I would never have been able to make that quickly beforehand,” she said. “I, of course, still work with human storyboard artists and being able to then take that and create an edit before we even shoot ht movie is so helpful for people to see what your attention is. I think in that respect, it just allowed me to really plan so much better and be able to communicate with my team.” Zada spoke about the company’s upcoming film “Terrarium,” which combines human actors shooting in sparse locations with generated environments meant to heighten the visual scope. “It’s a hybrid movie, so we shot live-action SAG actors, and we used a bunch of different processes in order to do what you saw there,” Zada said after showing a clip. “Actors were just standing still on a very simple white cyc, and all of a sudden I could move a camera around them and relight them and different stuff.” Winokur said that, amid everything else he’s learned through working with AI, his biggest takeaway was the need for collaboration and humanity that remains with this emerging technology. “The most important thing in the process is still the human in the loop and the person directing. You have to have a director with a vision,” Winokur said. “You have to have an amazing team of artists working with the technology. And not only that AI doesn’t make the filmmaking process a one-man show, it’s actually creating new forms of collaboration.”