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January 25, 2023
Posted January 22, 2023

Filming Under Fire: “Retrograde” and the Realities of War

author
Adrian Pennington


TL;DR

  • The Oscar-nominated filmmaker Matthew Heineman travels to Afghanistan to capture the turmoil as American troops pulled out in August 2021.
  • The original intent of the film was for a holistic look at modern-day military deployment, then pivoted to tell the story of the final acts of the longest war in US history.
  • Heineman and his crew risked their lives to tell the story of the airlift from Kabul and its aftermath as the Taliban took control of the city.


Director Matthew Heineman’s latest documentary captures the final months of the 20-year-long war in Afghanistan. The film begins by covering the story of a group of Green Berets supporting the Afghan National Army. Once they are ordered to pull out, an operation referred to as “retrograde,” Heineman then focuses the film on a young Afghan general, General Sami Sadat, who is desperately fighting to protect his country from a Taliban takeover.

Produced by National Geographic, Retrograde launched at Telluride and was nominated for Best Political Documentary at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards. The film also won the Producing Award at DOC NYC Feature and is on the shortlist for an Oscar nomination. The documentary feature is available for streaming on Disney+.

In military parlance, the term retrograde can mean several things, among them withdrawal from a war zone, but the ambiguity of the title is calculated.

“It’s a historical document of this final chapter in the war in Afghanistan,” the director tells Sophia A. McClennen at Salon. “It’s also an allegorical tale for a dynamic that has happened throughout history and will continue to happen long in the future: going into a country to fight a war, then leaving the country, and the effect that process has on everyone involved.”

READ MORE: “Taking sides is not my job”: “Retrograde” filmmaker Matthew Heineman on documenting a war’s end (Salon)

Heineman is known for his Oscar-nominated doc Cartel Land and his narrative feature A Private War. He has also made docs about ISIS in Syria, the opioid crisis, and human trafficking. Each time, he explains, “I try to take this large complex subject that has already been framed by news headlines and stats and humanize it. I try to put a human face to it. And that’s certainly what I try to do with Retrograde.”

The intimacy and access in Retrograde resulted from a tenacious effort to embed with US Army Special Forces, better known as the Green Berets. The access was enabled by producing partner Caitlin McNally, but even then the process took years to be approved by the Pentagon.

By the time that happened, the United States was preparing to exit Afghanistan. Two months after the film crew landed in Afghanistan, President Biden pulled out the troops.

Heineman didn’t know what to do. “I have no film here,” he related to IndieWire’s Anne Thompson. “We’d been shooting for two months, and there’s no real arc to what’s happening.”

READ MORE: The Documentarian Who Doesn’t Know How to Stop Putting Himself in Danger (IndieWire)

“It wasn’t a fait accompli that the Afghans were going to lose to the Taliban at that point, so there was a sort of blank of where this story was going to go,” he told Stephen Saito at Moveable Feast.

READ MORE: Matthew Heineman on Moving a Conversation Forward with “Retrograde” (Moveable Feast)

The filmmakers decided that Afghan General Sadat could emerge as a central character, and he agreed to cooperate. “We completely pivoted the film to focus on him and look at the end of the war through his eyes,” Heineman told Thompson.

The film vividly conveys the feelings of the Green Berets and their Afghan allies after President Biden’s announcement.

“There’s a scene in the film where they tell their Afghan counterparts that they’re leaving,” Heineman tells Matthew Carey at Deadline. “It’s quite a poignant scene where their faces all say more than words can ever say. That motif of faces was something that was very purposeful in the shooting of the film and the cutting of the film, really holding on faces for a really long time.”

READ MORE: Matthew Heineman Returns To Oscar Race With ‘Retrograde,’ Searing Doc On U.S. Military’s Last Months In Afghanistan, And What Happened Next (Deadline)

He could have created a series: Heineman returned to the editing room with 1,300 hours of footage. Instead, he edited the story to 94 taut minutes.

Speaking again to Salon, he adds, “In interviews, people can lie, either because they’re nervous or they want to spin a narrative. But faces don’t lie. That explains the motif that we developed both in the field and also in the editing room of holding on faces for a really long time.”

Some critics have noted that the film looks slick, with a sheen and a composition that wouldn’t look out of place, in say, Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down.

  • “Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
    “Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
  • “Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
    “Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
  • “Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
    “Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
  • “Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
    “Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
  • “Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP
    “Retrograde” captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Cr: Matthew Heineman/OTP

Variety’s Peter Debruge, for example, notes that Heinman “brings back hi-def vérité footage that looks sharper and more artfully framed than most Hollywood features.”

READ MORE: ‘Retrograde’ Review: Matthew Heineman Risks His Neck to Record America’s Exit From Afghanistan (Variety)

“Am I supposed to not hone my craft and grow as an artist?” Heineman responds to Salon. “To me, the aesthetics are really important. My goal always at every step along the way, is I want you to feel what it’s like to be in the control room as you’re calling in an airstrike or drone strike. I want you to feel like what it’s like to be in a Blackhawk helicopter as rockets are being shot at you. I want you to feel what it’s like to go to the front lines of a war zone as your country is crumbling and there’s a lack of communication and information.”

Heinman put himself in some life threatening situations but denies being an adrenaline junkie. “I’m not drawn to the danger,” he tells IndieWire. “I’m drawn to people who have big stakes. I don’t enjoy being shot at.. I guess I am drawn, but I’m not quite sure exactly why.”

READ IT ON AMPLIFY: Filmmaking Community: How “The Territory” Put Its Subjects Behind the Camera

READ IT ON AMPLIFY: “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed:” Art and Activism (on Both Sides of the Camera)

He recounted the filming of a scene where he’s backseat in a helicopter in a particularly dangerous area. The Taliban began firing. He tells Dano Nissen at The Knockturnal, “When you’re in the helicopter and rockets are being shot at you there is no object button. There is no I want to go home. You are there. You’re in it.”

He continued, “In those situations the only thing I have agency over is my camera. And that is what I choose to focus on. I focus on framing and exposure. I’m mixing sound when I’m filming. Those are things I can control. If I’m going to risk my life to get a scene I’m going to get it right.”

READ MORE: “Retrograde” Director on Filming Under Fire in Afghanistan (The Knockturnal)

Accompanying Heineman were veteran combat cinematographers Timothy Grucza and Olivier Sarbil, supported by field producers and translators, but the scenes depicting the chaotic and hazardous exodus from Kabul airport were shot by just Grucza and Heinman alone.

“Never in my career have I ever felt something as strong as what I felt being at the Abbey Gate as thousands of Afghan civilians were desperately trying to flee, and as 18-year-old Marines, who weren’t even alive during 911, were making these impossible ‘Sophie’s Choice’ decisions on who to let in and who not to,” he relates to Moveable Feast. “The Taliban was watching at gunpoint a hundred yards away, as ISIS was circling around us in suicide vests, waiting to attack, which happened 12 hours later in that very spot. All I could think about was, ‘What have we done here?’ ”

Of course, he could escape with his American passport back home to NYC. He understands the privilege of his circumstance and the responsibility that comes with it.

“On one level, I think the film is a historical record of this turning point in history, but it’s also an attempt to get people to care and feel just a little bit more and understand this conflict in a way they might not have otherwise.”

To Salon, he adds, “I think the film is a living, breathing document of the massive chasm between the ideological reasons for going to war and the reality of those who are actually fighting it in real time.”

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January 31, 2023
Posted January 12, 2023

“Copenhagen Cowboy:” Neon, Neo-Noir, and Nefarious



TL;DR

  • Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Copenhagen Cowboy” for Netflix is noir-thriller drama and the Danish director’s second television series through a streaming platform.
  • The superheroes (and villains) are ultra-stylized and neon-saturated, and the pacing is glacial.
  • Refn wants to maintain his autonomy and independence as a filmmaker, and says the Hollywood system is falling apart desperately.


Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn says that the characters in his new Netflix series, Copenhagen Cowboy, are a “female evolution” of characters from previous projects such as Drive, Valhalla Rising and Only God Forgives.

So, that could only mean one thing: stylized ultra-violence.

“I’ve done films in the past with a certain type of character that was first played by Mads Mikkelsen in Valhalla Rising on one hand and then Ryan Gosling played him as a driver in Drive and then Vithaya [Pansringarm] played him as a lieutenant in Only God Forgives,” Refn explained during the Venice Film Festival premiere of the series, as reported by Diana Lodderhose at Deadline.

Copenhagen Cowboy is his take on a superhero show. He continued, “So, I was working with Robert Wade and Neal Purvis, on a larger female evolution of that character and then suddenly one night, I was like, ‘Maybe I should try to do a version of it as female and not just one but many.’ And that was the kind of aspiration to do it.”

READ MORE: ‘Copenhagen Cowboy’: Nicolas Winding Refn Says Netflix Series Is A “Female Evolution” Of Characters From ‘Valhalla Rising,’ Drive’ And ‘Only God Forgives’ (Deadline)

Dubbed by critics as a neon-noir or acid western, though described by the Danish filmmaker as “poetic neo-noir,” the series, which launched on January 5, revolves around a young heroine called Miu (Angela Bundalovic) on a search for justice after a lifetime of servitude.

“I think that the [superhero] genre, like fairy tales… it’s a reflection of us as a society and it mirrors our desires and it’s our fantasies and it’s everything that’s really interesting because it’s heightened reality,” Refn noted.

It’s not for everyone.

“[Y]our enjoyment of Copenhagen Cowboy will go as far as you can tolerate Refn’s visual aesthetic,” Sean Price writes in his review for The Spool. “The primary colors that paint the entire frame with a neon glow, the pulsing Cliff Martinez score, and of course, the Miami Vice font.”

But even Price acknowledges the show’s vibe is not without its virtues.

“There may not be substance behind the style, but it goes a long way when your style includes Cliff Martinez,” whose score he says “does most of the emotional heavy lifting” for Copenhagen Cowboy.

READ MORE: Nicolas Winding Refn returns to Denmark for a surreal journey of revenge in Copenhagen Cowboy (The Spool)

Fleeing Hollywood for Freedom

The show is shot in Denmark, is produced by his wife Liv Corfixen, and also features his daughters Lola and Lizzielou Corfixen. It’s also a product of the pandemic and streaming’s content creation boom.

Refn told Deadline‘s Crew Call podcast that he pitched the idea to the newly formed Netflix Nordic when he “really didn’t know how the world was going to turn out.” The Netflix Nordic was sold on the idea of a new narrative borne out The Pusher trilogy, and after a five-month stint with an all female writing team, Copenhagen Cowboy was brought to set.

“We had a great crew and, in a way, there is something very easy about working in the Scandinavian model because we are not so many people and I like that kind of smaller components of productions and so forth. It was just very pleasant.”

  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn., courtesy of Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn., courtesy of Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
  • “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
    “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix

In an interview with Anthony D’Alessandro for Deadline, Refn was asked if he ever considered making a mainstream superhero project.

“I’ve always cherished my independence,” he replied. “I think waking up in the morning and going to work and paint the way you want it to look and go home, is still the most satisfying experience ever.

“If you don’t have the power of control at the end of the day or the ability to manipulate into your favor, it is committee. You have to spend your entire day struggling to get a compromise across, then what example am I to my own kids?”

He also added that he thought the studio system is not in good shape, commenting, “Hollywood is very seductive and intoxicating, but it’s also a system that’s falling apart desperately,” Refn said. “And I think they’re doing it to themselves more than anything else.”

Making a Netflix Hit and Surviving for Season 2

A cynic might wonder if Refn’s analysis of Hollywood is in some way influenced by studios that are less apt to write him a blank check for a niche production. The Ringer’s Miles Surrey describes his previous lavish budgets as “a blank check that came out of nowhere and wasn’t necessarily earned.”

Surrey writes, “Whether or not Refn moved to the small screen because he was no longer finding any takers for his feature films, his divisive style is an intriguing fit for the stretched-out length of a TV show.”

But Refn’s Netflix Nordic endeavor seems a bit more right-sized to Surrey. He writes, “Copenhagen Cowboy should be more accessible—and presumably far cheaper to produce—than Refn’s grand Amazon experiment” (meaning his 13-hour Too Old to Die Young).

None of these comments mean that Surrey is panning the show, however. “This is as challenging as television can get, and while it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, there’s no denying that Refn is utterly singular in his image making. To appreciate a Refn project like Copenhagen Cowboy is to accept that, sometimes, style wins out over substance.”

READ MORE: The Singular Nicolas Winding Refn Experience Arrives on Netflix (The Ringer)

But even Netflix and its competitors are getting more ruthless, and it will be interesting to see if the streamer deems the show a success and, therefore, worthy of a second season.

“[T]he way the story leaves off, it’s clear these six chapters have been planned as part of a multi-season arc, should the Netflix gods be feeling generous,” notes The Hollywood Reporter’s Angie Han.

Collider’s Chase Hutchinson is a fan of the unconventional series, who never the less isn’t holding out a lot of hope for continuing Miu’s storyline: “[T]he series is, to be frank, rather unlikely to find the broadest of audiences which is crucial in a ruthless streaming world ruled increasingly by metrics. Still, no matter what happens in the future, the mere presence of such a show is worth celebrating.”

For Refn’s part, it’s clear he hasn’t gone all-in on a streaming-centric model. He told reporters, “I don’t think theatrical [cinema] will ever go away. I think theatrical will always exist, but it needs to be challenged in order to become better, more sufficient and more meaningful.”

  • On the set of “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
    On the set of “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
  • On the set of “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix
    On the set of “Copenhagen Cowboy,” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Cr: Christian Geisnaes/Netflix

READ MORE: Nicolas Winding Refn On Saddling Up Netflix Noir Series ‘Copenhagen Cowboy’ & How “Theatrical Will Always Exist” But Hollywood System Is “Falling Apart” (Deadline)

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January 31, 2023
Posted January 11, 2023

“It’s Like Doing Four Movies in Two Years:” Editing and Post on “Andor”



TL;DR

  • Disney+ series “Andor” goes back five years from the events of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” following the journey of Rebellion hero Cassian Andor.
  • Series creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy and his editor brother, John Gilroy, discuss the intensity of the work involved and how naive they were going in.
  • Editor John Gilroy recounts how the show wasn’t relatable in size to any other medium, film or linear television, describing it as “like doing four movies in two years.”


Currently streaming on Disney+, Andor is a much more substantial series with genuine emotional depth — so it may not appeal to all Star Wars fans.

2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story made the mildly devoted Star Wars fan take another look at the universe. Making two seasons of an episodic filling out the prequel story promised more of the same devotion and the vital backstory we wondered about.

The great news is that this is exactly what has happened with Andor. The Playlist’s Rodrigo Perez talks for all of us new devotees, writing, “A much more adult, serious, dirtier, and complicated look at the Star Wars galaxy and what living under an oppressive regime does to its populace; centering on one of its leads, Rebel Alliance Captain and spy Cassian Andor.”

READ MORE: ‘Andor’ Review: Tony Gilroy Doubles Down On ‘Rogue One & ‘Star Wars’ For Adults In Engaging Spy Thriller About Tyranny (The Playlist)

Showrunner and creator Tony Gilroy explains where Andor sits in the Stars Wars timeline. “It rewinds back five years from the events of Rogue One to follow Cassian Andor on his journey to get to the movie. He’s the one person that the whole Rebel Alliance is going to trust with this assignment. So, he’s the tip of the spear. How did he get to be the tip of the spear? How did he get to have all of the skills that are required for that?”

With the advent of streaming, the ability to do a series that could potentially answer those questions by examining the untold story of the formative years of the Rebellion and the personal history of the hero who gave his life for the cause became more of a reality.

“We’ve done 12 episodes for the first season. The 12 episodes that we’ve done cover one year in time. We’re going to do another twelve that are going to take us over the next four years into Rogue One.”

In a series of interviews, Gilroy and his editor brother, John Gilroy, spill on the intensity of the work involved and how naive they were going in, which ironically helped them cope.

“Scripts just have to be dead tight, just dead tight,” Tony said to Maggie Lovitt at Collider. “I was so naive at the very beginning. I don’t know. I mean, when I think back, what I didn’t know when we started is shocking to me. Really, it’s like I said before, it’s like having kids. If you knew what it was going to be, you wouldn’t do it. Once you do it, you’re like, Oh my God.”

READ MORE: ‘Andor’s Creator Tony Gilroy on When Season 2 Begins Production, Cassian’s Destiny and ‘Rogue One’ (Collider)

  • Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and Adria Arjona as Bix Caleen in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and Adria Arjona as Bix Caleen in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Faye Marsay as Vel Sartha in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Faye Marsay as Vel Sartha in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Matt Lyons as Dewi Pamular and Matt Lyons as Freedi Pamular in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Matt Lyons as Dewi Pamular and Matt Lyons as Freedi Pamular in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Duncan Pow as Melshi and Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Duncan Pow as Melshi and Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • B2EMO in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    B2EMO in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Andy Serkis as Kino Loy in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Andy Serkis as Kino Loy in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Arvel Skeen, Diego Luna as Cassian Andor, Gershwyn Eustache Jr. as Taramyn Barcona, and Alex Lawther as Karis Nemik in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Arvel Skeen, Diego Luna as Cassian Andor, Gershwyn Eustache Jr. as Taramyn Barcona, and Alex Lawther as Karis Nemik in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and a shoretrooper in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and a shoretrooper in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Diego Luna as Cassian Andor with delivery guards Kenny Fullwood and Josh Herdman in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Diego Luna as Cassian Andor with delivery guards Kenny Fullwood and Josh Herdman in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Kyle Soller as Syril Karn and Denise Gough as Supervisor Dedra Meero in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Kyle Soller as Syril Karn and Denise Gough as Supervisor Dedra Meero in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Andy Serkis as Kino Loy in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Andy Serkis as Kino Loy in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and Alex Lawther as Karis Nemik in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and Alex Lawther as Karis Nemik in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Alastair Mackenzie as Perrin Fertha, Genevieve O'Reilly as Mon Mothma, and Bronte Carmichael as Leida Mothma in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Alastair Mackenzie as Perrin Fertha, Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma, and Bronte Carmichael as Leida Mothma in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and a KX-series Droid in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and a KX-series Droid in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Genevieve O'Reilly as Mon Mothma in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Stellan Skarsgard as Luthen Rael and Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Stellan Skarsgard as Luthen Rael and Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Genevieve O'Reilly as Mon Mothma in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
  • Genevieve O'Reilly as Mon Mothma, Bronte Carmichael as Leida Mothma, and Alastair Mackenzie as Perrin Fertha in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+
    Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma, Bronte Carmichael as Leida Mothma, and Alastair Mackenzie as Perrin Fertha in “Andor.” Cr: Disney+

Brother John, who edited four episodes (and was the finisher on the rest), also saw the strength of scripts that were watertight, as he told Sarah Shachat, host of IndieWire’s “Filmmaker Toolkit” podcast.  “Finding the tempo of the show was really not hard in the cutting room because a lot of it was written and executed so well,” he said.

In fact, there were no scenes that weren’t used in the show. John even joked that there wouldn’t be any DVD extras as there was nothing left to use. “The better the scripts, the less you’re going to have to invent later,” he concluded.

READ MORE: ‘Andor’ Swapped Two Scenes — and It Sparked a Rebel’s Emotional Fire (IndieWire)

John explained to Iain Blair at Post Perspective how the show wasn’t relatable in size to any other medium, film or linear television. “I’ve been on big movies editing for a year, but this was like doing four movies in two years. It was huge, with a lot more people on the post team and a lot more editors — seven in addition to me. You work the same way as a movie, but you delegate more, and there are a lot of moving parts. You’re always overlapping with one or two or more blocks at a time, so there’s a lot of place-setting,” he said.

“They put a lot of money into this, but not as much as in a big feature, so the way you make up for that is that the TV schedules are longer. All the VFX shots took a very long time, but we had more time to get it all right. It’s the same thing with the sound. The sound crew is smaller, but all the prep is far more spread out.”

READ MORE: Andor Editor/Producer John Gilroy Talks Post Workflow (Post Perspective)

During an episode of “The Rogue Ones: A Star Wars Andor Podcast,” John described his work practice and how he cut his episodes together. “For me it’s a feel, it’s instinctual. When I’m cutting a show I’m actually watching it in super slow motion kind of. It’s like watching a glacier move, but it’s moving in my head as I’m building it,” he said.

“It might be one of my superpowers but I can watch something over and over again and I’m really good at keeping my bearings and keeping objective,” he added. “You’ve also got to know when it’s done and not walk past the truth, I think I have a pretty good sense of that. There’s so much work to do but you could mess about with something forever, I’ve seen people do it, believe me.”

READ MORE: ‘Andor’: Editor John Gilroy Talks Being ‘Rogue One’ Fixer & Building ‘Andor’ From The Ground Up [The Rogue Ones Podcast] (The Playlist)

Speaking to Shachat on the IndieWire “Filmmaker Toolkit” podcast, the brothers discussed the score and how “spotting it,” or cueing the score, was so important.

“We had to learn how to spot differently on this than we had been trained to do making movies. If you spot normally a lot of times you can have a scene, say an eight page scene and you spot it like a movie and you put good music too soon all of a sudden the scene just disappears, it just washes out,” Tony said.

He challenged the music fans to watch how late they spotted. John agreed that the scenes were longer and you didn’t want to run out of gas. “You feel that it’s sometimes better when it’s dry for the first few minutes,” he said.

But less definitive was the process of dealing with so much content that needed editing, and were there options for each shot to deal with as well? “It’s the kind of shooting plan they would have on a big movie. But on a big movie they would have four shooting plans or at least a back-up. They would then shoot the crap out of it,” Tony said.

“Ours is the opposite of that and is very specific,” he continued. “We were always trying to find points of entry to start us off. Like the gloves on the wall in Ferrix, where you would hang them after working a shift. In your imagination that’s where your father or your mother hanged their gloves before you. It was that obsessiveness we were after that slowly built-out their culture.”

The Playlist’s Perez sums up what this gem of a Star Wars episodic means to him, and encourages everyone to watch it, even super-fans. “If Andor is slow to start, it ignites with fury in episodes three and four, paving the way to a show that, so far, feels gripping in its tension and resolve,” he writes in his review.

“It’s debatable if the series will be embraced universally by all Star Wars fans, but if you’ve been disenchanted by most of the Disney-era Lucasfilm projects — or at least craving something more substantive with depth — Andor is likely a provocative one that will light a fire under you, and compel you to sit up and take notice.”

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NOW STREAMING — BEHIND THE SCENES OF FAN-FAVORITE SERIES:

As the streaming wars rage on, consumers continue to be the clear winners with an abundance of series ripe for binging. See how your favorite episodics and limited series were brought to the screen with these hand-picked articles plucked from the NAB Amplify archives:
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January 21, 2023
Posted January 11, 2023

“Aftersun:” How Do You Remake Memories?



TL;DR

  • The emotional weight of the debut feature from Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells has been lauded by critics.
  • Wells discusses how she baked certain visual choices either into her script, when she discovered others on set, or during the edit.
  • The indie film is produced by Barry Jenkins’ production company Pastel and bears some of the hallmark’s of his Oscar-winning film “Moonlight.”


Sight and Sound, the prestigious international film magazine, selected Charlotte Wells’ debut feature Aftersun as the best film of 2022.

Inspired by, but not based on, the director’s experiences as the child of young parents, the ‘90s-set film stars newcomer Francesca Corio as Sophie, an 11-year-old girl on a package holiday to Turkey with her father Calum (Paul Mescal).

The film, which also won seven British Indie Film Awards, is described by the magazine as an “exquisitely subtle yet deeply affecting and honest depiction of mental illness, father-daughter love, and memory.”

READ MORE: The 50 best films of 2022 (Sight & Sound)

Developed and produced with the support of the BFI Film Fund, using funds from the National Lottery, Aftersun was one of the most talked about films at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and was picked up for international distribution by A24.

IndieWire’s Eric Kohn judged it “the most evocative look at an adolescent gaze coming to terms with the adult world since Moonlight.”

Several critics compare the way Aftersun paints its characters’ interior lives to that of Moonlight director Barry Jenkins. Not coincidentally, perhaps, Jenkins and his producing partner Adele Romanski served as producers on the film.

The 35-year-old was born and raised in Edinburgh, but moved to the US in 2012 to study film at NYU. There, her standout short films including Laps and Blue Christmas caught the attention of Romanski, who encouraged Wells to develop the script.

“Her short films were pretty fucking brilliant,” Romanski tells Kohn. “I was curious to hear what she was working on and how the storytelling style for her shorts would translate into that longer format. Then we waited patiently for years.”

That was in 2018. Wells finally retreated into a two-week writing frenzy in 2019, but held onto her first draft for another half a year before sending it to Romanski. “I spent six months pretending to rewrite but in actual fact just spellchecking it over and over again,” she said.

Her film is very much about memory — how certain moments stay with us forever, but also how our interpretation of events can differ from what actually happened. The story’s “beautiful elusiveness — its accumulation of seemingly inconsequential fragments that gradually accrue in emotional power,” per Tom Grierson in the Los Angeles Times, makes it a difficult movie to encapsulate, even for its maker.

READ MORE: How director and star create emotional power with glimpses of memories in ‘Aftersun’ (Los Angeles Times)

Deadline’s Damon Wise isn’t the only interviewer to observe Wells appearing “somewhat shell-shocked by her film’s progress in the world,” adding “I’m actually a little in awe of the fact that this film has — and could — reach so many people.”

That’s perhaps because, as she tells Marshall Shaffer at Slant Magazine, “Mental health struggles are messy, symptoms overlap and diagnoses are often [incorrect]. It’s incredibly difficult to pinpoint many mental illnesses.”

READ MORE: Interview: Charlotte Wells on Delineating Memory and Story in Aftersun (Slant Magazine)

  • Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Frankie Corio as Sophie in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Frankie Corio as Sophie in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Frankie Corio as Sophie and Paul Mescal as Calum in writer-director Charlotte Wells’ debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Writer-director Charlotte Wells on the set of her debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Writer-director Charlotte Wells on the set of her debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
  • Writer-director Charlotte Wells on the set of her debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24
    Writer-director Charlotte Wells on the set of her debut feature, “Aftersun.” Cr: A24

Of the film’s deliberate ambiguity Wells says to Alex Denney of AnotherMag, “I think inherent in whatever style it is that I have there is space for people to bring their own experiences. It’s both conscious and not: I think when you avoid a certain kind of exposition it does create ambiguity and people will fill that ambiguity with their own experiences, their own reference points that they enter the cinema with.”

Withholding information “is kind of the point of the film” she tells IndieWire. “I think the ambiguity is inherent in the subtlety and my aversion to exposition. But for me, the answers are all in the film.”

Her reticence to talk in concrete terms about her work is also warning not to label it an autobiography. “It’s very much fiction, but rooted in experience and memory,” she reveals to Denney. “It’s personal in that the feeling is mine and I allowed my own memories and anecdotes through all of childhood to form the kind of skeleton outline [of the first draft]. But after that point it did become very much about the story I was trying to tell, and that frequently required pushing it away from my own experience.”

Cinematographer Gregory Oke records on lush 35mm and partly masks Calum’s appearance throughout the film, rendering him as a semi-ghostly presence.

“We worked hard to keep Calum at arm’s length, to keep more physical distance between him and the camera in order to create the feeling that he is in some sense unknowable,” Wells tells Denney.

READ MORE: Charlotte Wells on Aftersun: “Grief Doesn’t Exist without the Joy” (AnOther)

Interspersed throughout the narrative is a jarring dreamlike rave sequence, which finds the adult Sophie confronting her father under strobe lights on the crowded dancefloor.

“In a lot of ways, there was a mystery to the process of discovering exactly what this was,” Wells explains to IndieWire. “So much of the process found its way into the film. The process of rooting through the past and memories and allowing some to rise to the surface, transforming them or reframing them.”

Noting Aftersun’s impressionistic style, Deadline’s Wise wonders whether Wells achieved that by taking things away in the edit, or scripting it.

“Both,” is her reply. “I didn’t shoot anything I didn’t want to be in the film. But there is plenty that isn’t in the final cut, that was lost in service of the edit. There were discoveries in the edit that were originally just strategies that we used to solve problems but which ended up being quite a meaningful strategy in terms of creating a sense of memory.”

READ MORE: Charlotte Wells On The Surprise Success Of Her Festival Hit ‘Aftersun’: “I’m A Little In Awe” (Deadline)

The way Aftersun deceptively drifts from scene to scene — punctuated by meditative cutaways of shots like a person’s hand or a random passerby yelling at their child kid — are all painstakingly crafted.

“Some of [those shots] were whole scenes reduced to an image,” Wells tells IndieWire’s Kohn. “Some were details in the script, and some were discovered on set based on months, if not years, of conversations with my cinematographer.”

When it’s suggested the deft execution of Aftersun feels like a magic trick, she demurs. “I don’t have an answer as to what it is,” she says. “We didn’t set out to pull off an emotional heist.”

READ MORE: Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski Had to Give Up on ‘Aftersun’ Before Charlotte Wells Could Finish It (IndieWire)

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Posted January 5, 2023

Staring Into the AI Art Abyss

Vincent van Gogh’s painting ”Wheat Field with Poppies and Lark,” 1887, courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Vincent van Gogh’s painting ”Wheat Field with Poppies and Lark,” 1887, courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam


TL;DR

  • Culture risks being populated by AI-generated images that do nothing more than repeat the past over and over — and that’s a bad thing because it destroys our capacity as humans to connect.
  • Blogging at “The Convivial Society,” armchair philosopher L. M. Sacascas takes aim at the ultimate blandness of machine-made media and says that it is all surface, no depth.
  • Unlike “high art,” AI art can startle or surprise us but isn’t able capitalize on that initial reaction to lead the viewer to a deeper insight or aesthetic experience, Sacascas argues.


READ MORE: Lonely Surfaces: On AI-generated Images (The Convivial Society)

Listen to the audio version here.

One reason we appreciate and are moved by Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel chapel or Vincent Van Gogh’s wheat field paintings is because we can relate to the blood, sweat and tears — and years, in the case of the Renaissance Italian — that went into them.

Can the same be said of machine-generated art? Does the product of generative AI have any depth of meaning?

Armchair philosopher L. M. Sacascas, blogging at The Convivial Society, has gazed into the abyss and got nothing back but a shrug.

If nothing else, the rise of generative AI tools like DALL-E 2 this year has changed the discourse around the technology from Cyberdyne Systems slavery to more benign issues like whether copyright law needs to be changed.

But Sacascas and others are more concerned with what AI media will do to our imaginations in the longer term.

There are those who argue that AI tools will actually enhance our imaginations by conjuring visuals or sounds that we might not have even dreamed of.

But Sacascas is unconvinced. He quotes digital artist Annie Dorsen; “For all the surrealism of these tools’ outputs, there’s a banal uniformity to the results.”

Dorsen went on to write that “when people’s imaginative energy is replaced by the drop-down menu ‘creativity’ of big tech platforms, on a mass scale, we are facing a particularly dire form of immiseration.”

AI is the manifestation of something Andy Warhol saw all those years ago: the commercialization of art, its mass production rendering shock images like assassinations or execution chambers, as banal as wallpaper.

Paraphrasing the words of Dorsen, Sacascas and philosopher Bernard Stiegler: When industrial technology is applied to aesthetics, conditioning of the same “substitutes for experience.”

That’s bad, they argue, not just because of the dulling sameness of a world of infinite but meaningless variety. It’s bad because a person who lives like this “has forgotten how to think” and is “incapable of forming an inner life.”

AI-generated images may be technically amazing — but there isn’t room for the happy accidents or the blood, sweat and tears that inspired so much of what we hold up as high art from the past.

“They may startle or surprise, which is something, but they do not then go on to capitalize on that initial surprise to lead me on to some deeper insight or aesthetic experience,” Sacascas writes.

Tech commentator Rob Horning has made a similar observation in his recent comments about generative AI focused on ChatGPT.

“AI models,” Horning observes, “presume that thought is entirely a matter of pattern recognition, and these patterns, already inscribed in the corpus of the internet, can [be] mapped once and for all, with human ‘thinkers’ always already trapped within them. The possibility that thought could consist of pattern breaking is eliminated.

READ MORE: What of the national throat? (Rob Horning)

This also hints at how, as Sacascas wrote last summer, we seem to be increasingly trapped in the past by what are essentially machines for the storage and manipulation of memory.

“The past has always fed our capacity to create what is new, of course, but the success of these tools depends on their ability to fit existing patterns as predictably as possible. The point is to smooth out the uncanny aberrations and to eliminate what surprises us,” he says.

Dan Cohen, another blogger on AI art, agrees. “The best art isn’t about pleasing or meeting expectations,” he wrote. “Instead, it often confronts us with nuance, contradictions, and complexity. It has layers that reveal themselves over time. True art is resistant to easy consumption, and rewards repeated encounters.”

In contrast, all AI tools are designed to “meet expectations, to align with genres and familiar usage as their machine-learning array informs pixels and characters.”

This is in tension, says Cohen, “with the human ability to coax new perspectives and meaning from the unusual, unique lives we each live.”

READ MORE: Humane Ingenuity 45: What AI Tells Us About Art (Humane Ingenuity)

Proponents of AI art — artists producing artworks with AI tools — can and do explain the process by which they arrived at the prompts that yielded the final image, but Sacascas dismisses this as like “talking exclusively about the shape of the brush or the chemical composition of the paint.”

You can’t discuss or critique an AI image in the same way that you would dissect a painting or symphony that has been made by someone. What’s missing is a deeper understanding of the image precisely because the viewer of the artwork knows that there’s a person behind its creation. It is that knowledge — the shared knowledge of having inhabited the same world as the artist — from which richer meaning about the human condition is derived.

He argues this in relation to “high art,” like a painting by masters Pieter Bruegel the Elder or Rembrandt van Rijn.

“What I find, whether or not I am fully conscious of it, is not merely technical virtuosity, it is another mind,” he says. “To encounter a painting or a piece of music or poem is to encounter another person, although it is sometimes easy to lose sight of this fact.”

He argues, “I can ask about the meaning of a work of art because it was composed by someone with whom I have shared a world and whose experience is at least partly intelligible to me.

“Without reducing the meaning of a work of art to the intention of its creator, I can nonetheless ask and think about such intentions. In putting a question to a painting, I am also putting a question to another person.”

The same argument extends outside of AI-generated media and to the volume of visuals, videos and text we are bombarded with daily.

Sacasas has previously written about how skim reading characterizes so much of our engagement with digital texts. He calls it a coping mechanism for the overwhelming volume of text we typically encounter on any given day.

So, likewise, might we settle for a scanning sort of looking, he suggests, “one that is content to bounce from point to point searching but never delving thus never quite seeing.”

Does that happen when we watch TV, for example? Do you skip seconds or minutes of the latest binge-worthy show in order to simply catch up? What happened to savoring the drama and all its on-screen elements?

Filmmakers like Damien Chazelle, James Cameron and Alejandro González Iñárritu have all given us three-hour movies as if to test our patience in cinemas where we can’t just leave. You could argue nonetheless that in each case (Babylon, Avatar: The Way of Water and Bardo) it is the sumptuous visuals that will leave more of an impression than any deeper emotional meaning.

Sacasas doesn’t reference movies but his words can be applied: “This suggests that there are surfaces that may arouse a desire to know more deeply but which do not have the depth to satisfy that desire. I think this is where we find ourselves with AI-generated art.

“Why does this matter? Because without that profundity of feeling of connection with another person, then there is nothing but surface. Nothing in fact but loneliness which fatally undermines the reason humankind produces art in the first place.”

Essentially, he is saying that without the blood, sweat and tears of artists we have no culture, or none worth having.

The problem, as Sacasas sees it, is that we need these encounters with depth of meaning to “sustain us, to elevate our thinking, judgment, and imagination.”

So the exchange we are offered is this: in place of occasional experiences of depth that renew and satisfy us, we are simply given an in finite surface upon which to skim indefinitely.




AI ART — I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS BUT I KNOW WHEN I LIKE IT:

Even with AI-powered text-to-image tools like DALL-E 2, Midjourney and Craiyon still in their relative infancy, artificial intelligence and machine learning is already transforming the definition of art — including cinema — in ways no one could have ever predicted. Gain insights into AI’s potential impact on Media & Entertainment in NAB Amplify’s ongoing series of articles examining the latest trends and developments in AI art
  • What Will DALL-E Mean for the Future of Creativity?
  • Recognizing Ourselves in AI-Generated Art
  • Are AI Art Models for Creativity or Commerce?
  • In an AI-Generated World, How Do We Determine the Value of Art?
  • Watch This: “The Crow” Beautifully Employs Text-to-Video Generation



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  • Al / Machine Learning

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