"Brave Love" - only a little use of AI

  "Brave Love" release! USD 2.99 to rent on Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bravelove

There is only a little use of AI in "Brave Love".

“Brave Love” effects were mostly done by 2024 when I started AI trials. My biggest need is green screen "keying" and “rotoscoping”. I have been unable to get a good and useful AI keying result from my trials so far. The keying we see in “Brave Love” is all human-driving of “traditional” algorithm-based video editing packages.

Another need is background crowds. My AI trials failed until the end of 2024 when I had a small success. This is 7 seconds of a partly-AI composite running 01m 45s to 01m 52s. I wanted to show the 1930s rise of extremist mob rule in the imaginary city-state of Lagado.

This clip includes a lot of redrawing from me. The AI spider was so bad I was inspired to get back to basics and get outside with a camera to photograph a real spider to work from. The crowd and its animation comes from 2 different AIs. One for generating stills - "Microsoft Azure Dall-E". And another for animating those stills - "RunwayML".

"Brave Love" has other part-AI elements.

• Audio enhancement - about 5 seconds of audio recovery and repair.
• Audio enhancement of 2 songs. These are my recordings of a human singer with studio-style enhancement from a web service described as AI.
• Some background still images

My general impression of AI - over hyped, disappointing, with some limited niche usefulness. AI may produce eye candy one-off images and video but my experience is that I could not get it to play nice with other elements as part of a creative whole. AI is however rapidly improving and I may give it a different future report.

Movie Review - An Irish Goodbye

In planning the online release of movie "Brave Love", I have been watching and supporting other online rentals to see how it is done. Here is an excellent example.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/anirishgoodbye

"An Irish Goodbye" (23 min) has a slow paced start, but stay with it because it packs in as much  storytelling and insight as many features. James Martin, an actor with Downs Syndrome, provides a star performance as a Downs Syndrome man, Lorcan, who reacts to the death of his mother with a creativity and emotional intelligence which surprises and surpasses those around him. The best part of this is that Downs Syndrome is not a big thing here. Rather the warm, funny and relatable Lorcan just happens to have Downs Syndrome as a part of his character.

"An Irish Goodbye" is a well deserved Oscar and Bafta winner of best short film.