00:00Entirely Trinidadian and AI-generated, that's a glimpse of the film set to put Trinidad
00:17and Tobago on the map.
00:20Author Varena Bhutto Singh partnered with director Jeanne Benoit to translate her novel
00:24onto the big screen, as the first-ever feature film made with artificial intelligence.
00:30The Circle is loosely based on alliances and kind of those ancient alien conspiracy theories.
00:37So it's based like 13,000 years ago on an advanced ancient civilization, and basically
00:45they are facing a galaxy war, and in the midst of this war, the three of the protagonists,
00:53they actually were called upon to save the world, and while they were doing that, they
00:59discovered a secret.
01:01The use of AI technology reduced production costs while facilitating the creation of the
01:06elaborate sci-fi fantasy world at a high standard for an internationally marketable product.
01:12To the untrained eye, it's becoming a lot harder to decide what is AI and what isn't.
01:19We were now able to have a medium that we could use that would translate all of our
01:24ideas without having to, you know, take it into that higher end of production that is
01:30usually associated with like, you know, multi-million dollar industries.
01:34However the process is much more detailed than some might expect.
01:37What might be a public misconception that, you know, you just kind of type in a text
01:40and then you get a movie, is actually a lot closer to like standard animation, meaning
01:46that the only difference is that instead of frame-by-frame animation, which usually
01:51would encompass doing each movement of every character over the course of 24 frames, now
01:57we have the ability to use base images and then extrapolate the animation off of those.
02:07Taking the film industry by storm, AI has sparked much ethical debate with regard to
02:12likeness of images and sound.
02:14Benoit incorporates his own filmmaking and visual art background to stay true to the
02:18original vision of the film.
02:20Because a lot of people have the misconception that as long as you say AI means that you're
02:24somehow using the models to tap into a bank or archive of images on the internet.
02:29I tend to use image-to-image generation, which means that all of the imagery that you see
02:34that is translated through the AI model is actually all of my original creations that
02:39are then translated into the animation.
02:43AI is not the only contributor to the groundbreaking nature of this film.
02:47Much anticipation is brewing for the Caribbean cultural infusion, non-traditional for a film
02:52of this genre.
02:53Usually we don't really have that mix of ethnicity and environment and storyline all in one.
03:01Usually accustomed to seeing stories of this grandeur told either Eurocentric background
03:10or something like that, but to have a very local and not just local, but a fully regional
03:19view of the Caribbean that we could put forward in this genre of film is something that is
03:26very exciting.
03:27Benoit unleashed his creativity and expertise to bring Verena's diverse characters to life,
03:33donning intricate costumes that express their complexities.
03:36I was very engaged with all of them, which is why character creation came very easy and
03:42natural for me to do because after reading such in-depth descriptions of how all of the
03:47different things, now it's easy for me to just translate those things onto the screen.
03:52He maintains that AI has already begun to expand the film industry.
03:56Its levelling of the playing field should be encouraging to creatives.
03:59It gives us now a starting point to start from a new vantage point and bring this new
04:09conglomeration into the future where we could start modelling these things, getting workshops
04:15out, teaching people how to do them.
04:17The pair remained optimistic, determined to propel the nation into the spotlight and challenge
04:22the industry with this technological achievement in film.
04:25The reason that we took that initiative was because it's never been done before and we
04:31wanted to see if we could be the first people to do it.
04:34The Circle Armour will premiere at Movietown shortly after Carnival.
04:37Meanwhile, the book can be found on Amazon.
04:40Victoria Koilas, TV6 News.
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