26 July,2024 09:02 AM IST | Mumbai | Priyanka Sharma
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These days, screenwriter-director Vivek Anchalia is deeply impressed by his assistant. His latest assistant is easily among the most efficient ones he has worked with. "If you ask my assistant how it's done, he probably wouldn't know, but if you tell him how to do it, he will do it very efficiently. That's AI for you," he grins.
That isn't the only addition to Anchalia's life in the past few months. His assistant also introduced him to Aisha Bose. The pretty, wide-eyed woman is Anchalia's figment of imagination, a fictional character created from scratch by AI. The director had her designed especially to front his upcoming music video, Cheater saiyaan. But there is more to Aisha than just being a model - the AI-generated character has her own Instagram account. Hit her up on the photo-sharing app, and chances are she'll follow you. "She features in my next music video. Soon, she will begin promoting the song on her Instagram account," the director tells us.
Anchalia's first brush with AI happened about eight months ago, when he was looking to create a deck to pitch a romantic film that he wanted to make. "I needed a deck to show my vision [to prospective producers]. A deck that I wanted would have taken a lot of expertise and money to make. I had been figuring out how to do it, and then I stumbled upon AI. It didn't take me too long to learn its basics. I prepared the deck in 16 hours, which otherwise would have taken at least three weeks to do even if I had given it to an agency. I got a good response to it." The director worked extensively on the AI software, Midjourney. He recalls that while the tool had a problem in creating consistent characters initially, now it's much improved.
So, in January, when he decided to make a music video for a song that he had created with composers Daniel B George and Pratijyoti Ghosh, Anchalia knew an AI-generated video was the best option. It was a complex task at hand, but was achieved in four days. "You need moving people, lip-syncing, consistent characters, and a story. I started working on it. Now, we are ready with almost two music videos, which we'll release next month. We used six to seven AI platforms - Midjourney, Runway, LumaLabs for animation, and D-ID for lip-sync. If you have a vision and you know what you want out of it, these AI tools can help you achieve it quickly and in an economical way."
The more specific the prompt, the better the imagery, the director says. "It takes time to figure the platforms out. It's a lot of trial and error in the beginning because as you are learning the software, the software is also learning. It's text-to-speech or audio-to-speech, where you put the audio and it will give you a lip-sync video of either the avatar they have or the one you have created. The more detailed the prompt is, the better it is. For instance, if I want to see a young man in his 20s walking in front of the Taj Mahal, then when I am prompting, I should focus on what the subject is, what his surroundings are, and explain the kind of lighting I want. You can even go down to the lens choice if you have that understanding, say, shot by Kodak or Canon. Then, the tool gives you that kind of imagery. It looks at images already produced by those cameras that are available online, and then tries to produce a similar result."
To him, AI platforms are particularly excellent for beginners in the business of movies. Not to mention that cost- and time-saving are two of their biggest advantages. "It's a great tool for a lot of new artistes, who don't have money and want to put their [work] out. New singers and musicians have talent, but it's difficult to get money to get these things produced. So, this is a way of expressing yourself. In my case, I would have to spend R6-7 crore to make that video [if not for AI]. It also saved me time."
There is a growing concern about some human jobs being taken over by AI. But Anchalia has a different view. He believes the technology advancement is only a way of the less privileged trying to break into the system. "I am torn between the two worlds because I also understand that it is snatching some [roles] that humans have been doing. On the other hand, 80 to 85 per cent of people in the industry don't have access to anything. [It is democratising creativity] the way YouTube democratised the whole market for filmmakers. When too many people are kept out of the system, then a parallel system comes up, which will help people express themselves." The director, in fact, is considering creating more AI-centric jobs for humans. "I want to hire people to operate these AI platforms because after a point, that also becomes a job."
What is it? Director Vivek Anchalia designed a special AI-generated character, Aisha Bose, for his upcoming music video, Cheater saiyaan.
How it works? He employed AI tools Midjourney and Runway to create the character, while LumaLabs was used to achieve movement and animation in the music videos, and D-ID for lip-syncing.
Who it affects/benefits? Anchalia believes it is a great tool for new artistes, who don't have big bucks to shell out, and want to showcase their work. These software help budding artistes express themselves.
