Concept I will develop into treatment:

An infatuated teenage boy decides to ask out a beautiful girl in his class who he has been pining over for months but saddens when he discovers that she is moving overseas to study abroad, only to discover whilst creepily peering through her front living rooms window one night that she is actually part of a set of identical triplets, and the boy forgets all about the girl he was ‘obsessed’ with.

[Concept sentence 1]

Character: Infatuated teenage boy.

Goal: Ask out the beautiful girl he is pining over.

Obstacle: Discovers she is moving overseas.

Twist: Reveals that she is an identical triplet, and the boy is a creep who is only cares about exterior beauty.

~

A quiet, young girl’s ballet themed birthday party is threatened when nobody shows up which causes an outrage in her loud, overbearing parents who by messaging all the parents of the invited children, discover their daughter had uninvited all her peers so that instead she could sneak away to football tryouts that her parents had banned her from attending.

[Concept Sentence 2]

Character: A quiet, young girl.

Goal: To have a ballet themed birthday party.

Obstacle: Nobody turns up to her party.

Twist: She uninvited her peers because she wanted to go to football tryouts.

Reflection:

I started off imagining my film would be of the innocent romance genre, but with further thinking and concept sentence development, I have decided to make my film start off as a romance, which quickly turns to slightly sinister and eery undertones, which allows me to address themes that will help create depth for my concept. My idea tackle’s themes like the male gaze, and the masculine ideals of what a perfect woman is. This is seen through an innocent high school crush, which turns into an obsessive relationship when the boy realises there are two more girls who look identical to his first crush whom he doesn’t have to care about anymore. This ending demonstrates that his crush was merely a physical attraction based on superficiality and lust.

Writing my concept sentence was not a terribly difficult task as initially, I worked backwards to create my concept, where I started with a twist that I thought would be something slightly absurd that I could start with and work off. I truly think the twist is one of the most important factors of a short film, so I prefer to start here with a strange turn of events, then formulate my characters, their goal, and of course the obstacle that leads to the twist.

After completion of my film, I would hope that my concept sentence is strong enough to create a suspenseful, and intriguing description of what my film will contain. I think that when promoting the film and gaining awareness of the film, I would focus on misleading the audience with depicting the film as a dramatic romance genre and adding one small reveal or hint that something is off about the story to gain curiosity and anticipation from audiences.

After reading through the sentences of people in the class, it is very clear to me that the best concepts for short films are the shortest and simplest concept sentences. I feel that mine is not perfectly concise, but I am overall confident with my concept in turning it into a treatment. One concept sentence that stood out to me was by Tu Phi Ho, about a girl stuck in a forest which made for a very interesting short. I think it has very strong unity of space within the forest location and has a good unity of conflict as there is just one strong conflict that the protagonist must deal with and doesn’t become overcomplicated. A way to improve the sentence is to work on the unity of time, as being stuck in a forest for ‘months’ would be difficult to portray in a short film and might require smaller subplots and act turns to fill in the spaces.

Wednesday this week was our studio’s exhibition! I absolutely loved getting to go around the room and immerse myself in the amazing final Assignments of my class. We set up the room so that everybody had a little station with a TV and headphones so that we could really enjoy experiencing the projects. All of them were amazing, I don’t think I could pick a favourite or even a couple favourites! A few of the projects that really wowed me included one where the group had made an entire website that included different tabs you could click on and explore finding news reports, dark web vibe content, an art exhibition, and a dating site! It was all very creative and a very entertaining way of utilising AI! Another was a radio station surround sound experience where you put on headphones and were suddenly driving in a car listening to the radio station! This was also a very clever way of incorporating AI through the sounds that made the experience feel freakishly realistic!! All the projects were very impressive.

It was also a funny experience to walk around the room, while also keeping an eye on my groups own project, and see the reactions of people who were seeing it for the first time. Ally and I had a lot of people telling us they enjoyed ours which was lovely to hear after being slightly nervous about having myself being watched on a TV dancing to an 80s style song dressed in full 80s pop star clothes! People found it fascinating how we had utilised AI to create our song lyrics and music together, where we then learnt the lyrics to create our music video. Some people mentioned how real and authentic the interview felt as well! We also incorporated a few AI visuals such as dancing robots on 80s televisions for added effect which people seemed to love as well!

Overall, I think Ally and I (and AI), produced a great project that was entertaining and showcased how we collaborated with AI to bring to life an 80s pop stars single! I had a lot of fun at the exhibition and over the semester in this class! I am very glad I did this class as it has given me a new perspective on the capabilities of what people can do when they are openminded to some input from artificial intelligence!

This week is the week Ally and I pretty much finished off our final assignment including the editing together of our project, as well as any final touches and making sure we have covered all of the criteria in terms of pre-production documents that are required. On Monday we decided to edit together as we were both free and available the whole day. We got together and began putting the clips together and inserting our AI footage as well as our own original footage. This process was really fun as we saw it all come together. The videos weren’t looking like terrible, awkward videos of myself lip-syncing and dancing to nothing anymore, and began looking like a proper music video with everything coming together nicely. We have slight troubles sometimes when we were trying to line up my lip-syncing to the music, but we continues to rearrange and eventually we ended up with a video we are very happy with and proud of! We also combined this music video with our already edited interview segment to form our whole video assignment, and we can’t wait to share it with everybody at the exhibition!

For the remainder of the week, Ally and I have been finalising and tidying up documents for pre and post production, as well as putting all our AI footage into the AI commons. We have signed our permission documents and now are beginning to work on our final studio reflections. I will discuss my experiences in that reflection but I thought in this I would include that this studio has been quite enjoyable considering it was not in my preferences and I never thought I would do an AI studio. I have enjoyed the people I have worked with as well as my teacher Daniel Binns! It has been a highly enjoyable, interactive studio that I think everybody would have taken a lot away from it!

This week Ally and I wanted to crack down and do our music video which we ended up filming on Monday! We spent half the day and a lot of the night (as we needed dark lighting) filming our video and editing the previously shot interview segment. In editing we added a grainy, retro, MTV-like effect to match the vibe of the 80s which required watching a few Youtube video tutorials. We also generated AI vide imagery which would be for parts of the music video, however after filming our music video, we are unsure that we will need the AI footage, as we have filmed a lot of media ourselves. This is an undecided decision that we will make our minds up about during the editing of the music video. While filming, we used many, cool practical effects that I think will make the final product look so much more interesting. We had a disco ball prop, we used a bright light to cast shadows on the walls, and we utilised the TV as a sort of fake green screen background! We also used a smoke machine which added a grungy feel to the whole thing. I am very excited for the editing of this music video, I think we have a lot of footage to work with, and make it look epic!

In class on Wednesday we just discussed our assignments as a group and I found it interesting to see where everybody is at with their assignments. Dan ran us through some extra little post-production tips and answered some of our questions about editing on Premiere Pro. I am not super experienced using it, but I do find that the Youtube tutorials are very specific and highly helpful 99% of the time, which is great! As of now, Ally and I need to edit our music video, and then the main part of our assignment will be complete.

This week Dan got out camera equipment such as the camera, tripods, and sound equipment to give us a refresher on how to utilise these things before we go off and film our Assignments! I found this very helpful as even though I did not use any of this equipment to film, as I have access to other equipment, I had forgotten a lot about how these little gadgets work. Dan also gave us a rundown of what we should include when making any visual media which was also refreshing before we got stuck into filming!

This week Ally and I filmed half of our Assignment which was the interview segment between our pop star and interviewer. We did not prepare by practicing our lines which we discovered was our biggest struggle throughout the process as we could not get through a whole take without forgetting lines! Eventually, we finally got it good enough at least to be edited together in a way that flows. Using the camera and setting up our ‘MTV’ set was so much fun. I think we really accomplished setting up the retro mood for our video, and this will be enhanced in post production with editing!

As we had hoped to get our whole shoot done this week which unfortunately didn’t happen, we have planned to film our actual music video sometime next week. Although it is a slight set back, we have prepared well and am confident that we have plenty of time to do it!

This week I was absent for classes but made sure I kept up with this week’s work and class discussions by listening to the recording on Wednesdays class. On Monday we had Assignment 3 presentations which I was disappointed I missed. I recorded my presentation, where I discussed my experiences using AI in my assignments over the semester. I discussed the positives and negatives of my experiences, which helped me find my key idea for the semester and Assignment 2. Over the semester I have found that my attitude towards AI has from the start been negative and I have never associated it with being an art form. My key idea was the thought of if I do not like AI and can not call it art, is this bias, and can it be changed by combining something I love with the AI so that I can perceive it from more of an artistic lens? I found a few really interesting articles over the weeks which I included in my presentation as I found they made me think about AI in our lives in a different way. One of them explained the bias that humans have against AI, and we disregard anything as soon as we know where it came from, even if we actually do like the art.

I also spoke about Assignment 4 which I will be completing with Ally. We have decided to make a new wave 80s style music video, which is us combining something we love and do appreciate with AI, combining AI footage with original footage. We have already generated an AI song using Audio which turned out exactly how we wanted it! We plan to shoot part of the music video soon, while also filming an interview segment with the “artist” using dialogue or a script that was also generated by AI. We prompted the 80s style language, to which we were very successful as it picked up 80s slang and lingo that will really enhance the effect of our interview. Our planning has been very successful so far, we are on the right track, and very excited to put together this project with the help of AI.

I managed to listen to the guest speaker on Wednesday from the recording on the lesson plan, and found it very interesting to here Professor McCosker talk about AI in his life, and how it has wiggled its way into industries. I also appreciated hearing the class talk about what they struggled with during completing past assignments. It was interesting to see that everybody had fairly similar issues with AI, where the AI could not generate exactly what the person wanted many times. I can definitely relate to that in my experience, but that was where I started using the generated media I had generated for different scenes, depending on where they fit the most. I found this helped with matching facial emotions of the AI people with how I wanted them to feel. This saved a lot of time as I was not having to regenerate every single shot.

I am going to be honest, the reading this week ‘Algorithms as Figures’ (Cellard L 2022) meant very little to me, and thus, I did not retain much of the information from the reading. It is a topic I had not much knowledge on, and something I am very uninterested in such as the idea that algorithms are more than just technical artefacts, but can be seen as procedures and actions integrating humans and machines. However, the reading titled ‘Knitting Algorithmic Assemblages’ (Neck K 2022) somewhat covered similar topics in a far more interesting way that I could connect to more. Also, my class was lucky enough to have the author of this reading come in to talk about her work and research further! ‘Knitting Algorithmic Assemblages’ explained the complexities of machine and human intelligences through the metaphor of ‘knitting’, specifically the patterns and repetition of the fabric weaving in and out of each other to create something new. Through actual knitting with yarn, as well as knitting as a metaphor, Geck (2022) explores how we co-create with AI and machines to make new ideas.

On Wednesday we began discussing our ideas for Assignment 4 which we will be sort of pitching next week as Assignment 3. I will be collaborating with Ally as we both have similar mindsets and thoughts about AI which we both discovered were rather negative assumptions. We thought this would be fun to lean into by working on a project that incorporates something we love with AI, which might increase our enjoyment and excitement when working with AI. We have decided to make an MTV style interview set in the 80s where AI exists, and then make a new wave 80s music video combining our own original footage as well as AI footage. We thought this would be interesting because when we watched a few 80s music videos, we discovered they were weird, uncanny-valley, and uncomfortable to watch the same way watching AI videos is. They both evoke similar feelings which we thought could be cool to combine the two. Our own footage for the music video will feature imagery that we have created in an AI-style way, almost replicating AI imagery or how it makes people feel when they watch it. I am very excited to work on this project, and think we will be able to create an uncomfortable but enjoyable music video.

Geck, K 2022, ‘Knitting Algorithmic Assemblages’, TEXTILE, accessed 14 September 2024.

This week on Monday our class was lucky enough to visit the ‘This Hideous Replica’ exhibition at the RMIT gallery which featured an array of pieces that either were made by AI, talk about AI, or use AI in some way to create the piece.

A piece that caught my eye was called Debris Faculty by PlastiCorpUs, and featured an array of photographs lying in a scattered arrangement on a long table. At first I didn’t realise it, but as I walked along the table and looked at the photos, I realised that the photos all had another photo lying or placed right next to the other, and that they were of the same thing, but taken from another angle, or inverted. I was quite confused on the meaning of this but after thinking for a while, I thought that I did not need to know a definitive answer, and that artwork is designed to speak to each individual person who comes across it, differently. What I felt from looking at this artwork was that it was showing me what humans are capable of and what AI is not. And that is the idea that humans can actually see things and produce an image of that one same exact thing at any moment in time, from any angle they want, and it will always be that one physical, real thing. Whereas, AI will produce an image of one thing, but will never really be able to produce that same image ever again because it is not real. If we ask to generate something but from a different angle, it may be able to generate something that appears like the original image, but it is a completely different image, and will never be the exact same. Even if it is in the slightest coding difference, it will still never be able to capture a real moment as humans can do.

Another piece I quite liked was something I didn’t want to look at originally but as I was leaving, thought I might as well take a quick look. It was called Printed Bound Publication by Sean Dockray and consisted of a row of books lying on a shelf. The one I am discussing was called ‘Seeing Like A Computer’. It was a simple book with one image on every page, and on the other side, would be a 1-6 line caption that AI had generated for the image. For example, there was one of a group of teenagers chattering happily outside with each other, and the caption next to it was “4 people, people sitting and outdoor”. Every page was the same, a beautiful image of people living their lives, and a caption, “2 people, indoor”, or “1 person”. Flipping through the pages I started to feel sad. I felt sad that there were these beautiful moments captured of life and happiness or sadness, real emotions that were labelled so plainly. Of course, a more advanced AI will be able to come up with far more detailed descriptions of images, however it still feels off to me as an AI will see an image and can only describe what it sees physically. It can not read emotions or imagine a situation as humans can.

I enjoyed going to see this exhibition, and highly recommend checking it out! I think I learnt a lot, even if it was not what a piece was trying to tell me, I think it is the purpose of any art to make a person think and connect with something in a unique or individual way. That is how art continues to be created.

This week we wrapped up and finalised our second assignments. My finished piece was a children’s fictional tale called ‘The Moonflower’s Choice’ which I am very happy with how turned out. It is a simple story but has a deeper message towards the very end of the film, with an ambiguous choice that is unresolved or up to the audience to decide what happens. What was interesting to me and my thought process throughout the creation of this story was the idea of this even being allowed to be called a real ‘story’. With AI being capable of doing creative tasks such as writing stories and generating art, there is a big debate in the world about whether or not it should be allowed to be called ‘art’. Ervik (2023) stated that “Humans at once see something as depicted and as a depiction” (Ervik 2023 p44), and discusses what he calls a “dual frame mind”, which is the human’s ability to both identify what something is trying to be, and what it actually is, such as AI generating a depiction of an apple, where it is not a real photo or drawing of an apple, just a depiction. Ervik (2023) goes on to explain that humans have the ability to see “through and at images” (Ervik 2023 p44), which is another reference to how we have this sense in ourselves that we can’t really explain but tells us something is fake or inauthentic. This is similar to the saying ‘uncanny valley’ which describes the weird, creepy feeling we get when we see a robotic or mechanical or fake person where they resemble one but we know that something is not quite right about it. This feeling I found was evoked in me when I was generating my data and images, which made me somewhat uneasy seeing my characters that did not have a real persona, name, or character. It did feel like just a depiction of something I was trying to convey, not something I had actually made.

This week in class we had a Prompt Battle using Runway. In teams, we were required to respond to a prompt given to us, to prompt something into Runway and try to generate something as accurate to the given prompt as possible. This was quite difficult as most of our generated media were quite similar to other teams. It was hard to think outside of the box creatively while also being simple enough for the AI to understand and accurately produce something that we wanted.

Overall, I had a fun time and discovered how difficult it is to work with AI in a competitive way, which is something I had never done before. The added pressure of the competition meant more stressful prompting which made me realise how difficult and frustrating it can be when it does not generate what you are wanting.