This week, the second annual AI Film Festival (AIFF) concluded in New York, following last week's Los Angeles premiere, which I attended. The 90-minute program began with a panel discussion moderated by magazine editor Dana Harris-Bridson. indie wire, featured insights from filmmakers Joel Kwahara and Paul Trillo, musician Claire Evans, and Cristóbal Valenzuela, CEO and co-founder of Runway, which organized the festival. Topics included ethics, the fear of turnover, the nature of media evolution, and more, providing a thoughtful introduction to the program for the 10 finalists.
Since its inception, AIFF has aimed to explore the intersection of AI and film. At the first festival in 2023, he received 300 submissions, but this year's submissions have soared to more than 2,500 for him, showing solid growth in interest in film AI. Works are 1-10 minutes long and must incorporate AI at any stage of creation, including Trillo, Valenzuela, Evans, Bryn Mooser (Documentary+), Richard Kerris (Nvidia), and several others.
There are also real prizes. The grand prize winner will receive a prize of $15,000 and he will receive 1,000,000 runway credits. Gold earns him $10,000 and Silver earns him $5,000. They each get 500,000 credits.
This year's Grand Prix went to Daniel Antebi's “Get Me Out.” The film is an inspiring story that exemplifies how AI can enhance the visual and emotional depth of film narratives. Unsurprisingly, Antebi is a skilled director. His short film “A DIOS” won his Ignite Fellowship at Sundance in 2019. Another short film, “SOFT,” premiered at the 2020 SXSW Film Festival. Antebi was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's “25 Newcomers in Independent Film of 2020”. His debut film GOD'S TIME premiered at Tribeca in 2022, won a Special Jury Award, and is currently in theatrical release on Hulu.
Founded in 2018 by Cristobal Valenzuela, Anastasis Germanidis, and Alejandro Matamara-Ortiz, Runway has quickly risen to become a leader in AI-driven creative tools. The company's growth was fueled by a massive $141 million funding round in June 2023 led by major companies such as Google and Nvidia, bringing the total investment to $237 million.
Valenzuela's vision for the future of AI in video generation is ambitious. “Video generation is only a transitional step towards developing world models that can generate entire visual environments,” he says Valenzuela. This change aims to democratize and accelerate the creative process, fundamentally changing the way art is produced and consumed.
“We measure time in weeks and months. Beyond that, it's hard to predict,” Valenzuela said of the future of Gen AI filmmaking. “But we see that model scaling is the most important effort to improve fidelity and control. Within five years, we'll see that the language and experience of games may be similar but different.” I believe there will be a real-time simulator where you can create entire worlds in a way.”
My personal view is that AIFF is great for the growing community of artists and filmmakers attracted to Cinematic AI. but. The early days of technology meant that artists were constrained in many ways. They can use any AI tools they like, but they can only create short video clips. Character continuity and lip syncing are also an issue. The film was ambitious, but artistic and often indecipherable. At times, I felt like I was back at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1981. There, graduate students were scrubbing the emulsion on his 16mm film.
The AI still feels almost hallucinatory, and feels oddly familiar, like I've seen it somewhere before. Sometimes it can have a positive effect. Some of the best recent film AI work, such as Paul Trillo's Sora-inspired music video “The Hardest Part,” released on the day of the festival, shows screenwriters and directors the new world of filmmaking on the horizon. I am. A level playing field with movie studios. On the other hand, what people want will never change: great stories and characters. AI must be invisible.