AI, agAIn
turns out i have more thoughts on the matter
I recently had some friends over to drink margaritas and watch 1998’s Practical Magic; IYKYK. One friend in particular couldn’t stop raving about the sets. It’s a well-known fact that “the Practical Magic house,” a white multi-story Victorian, is the pinnacle of covetable architecture, though sadly it was just an exterior built for filming and torn down afterward.
Still, there’s so much to obsess over in the movie. The greenhouse, the kitchen, the details. “SET DEC!” we cried, praising the set decoration. And not just that, but everything “real” about the movie. The way Sandra Bullock has her God-given teeth, mostly.
After Practical Magic, we watched 1994’s Interview With The Vampire, creating a supernatural double feature that, coincidentally, starred then-married-couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. The thing about IWTV is that Tom is so good in it, and for the first half, it seems like he’s bad in it, but then the second half happens and you realize he’s actually great. But I digress.
The other thing is the sets. Kirsten Dunst, a child at the time, later recalled that she hasn’t, before or since, experienced a production so lush. No, not even on Marie Antoinette, which shot at Versailles. IWTV built a plantation just to burn it down and created period costumes for multiple eras. "It's just, those times of making movies like that, they just don't exist anymore," she said. At Sofia Coppola’s behest, Dunst, too, still has her original teeth.
Anyway. AI. I wrote about it once before, but here we go again.
I try to avoid AI in general (I have that AI overview on Google toggled off, but I think Google is purposefully getting worse so I’ll have to turn it back on, can anyone confirm?), and also, AI “art.” It’s harder than you might think. I spend a lot of time scrolling and some of it’s pretty interesting to look at, but I try to swipe away once I figure out it’s not real because…ethics? I don’t want to be replaced by writer AI and I imagine that visual artists feel the same way.
Except there’s one trend I kind of can’t look away from. It uses image generators to show what popular movies might look like had they been filmed in “Panavision,” which has something to do with anamorphic lenses, and I’m not sure about the terminology but what it adds up to is like, “Harry Potter if it were filmed in the 50s/60s/70s.” Hate to say it but it looks…kinda cool! (ignore the boring voiceovers)
There are more versions of this trend, bringing cartoons to life or creating trailers for future projects and, on one channel, creating Redneck versions of everything. Seemingly all of these channels have hit upon the hack that if you make a fantasy-infused Balenciaga runway video in AI, it’ll go viral.
I feel guilty consuming this content. AI is bad, I shouldn’t give it my time or attention, I should seek out real art. The videos are plenty glitchy; why am I so enamored of what amounts to a screensaver? It took me an embarrassingly long time to catch the irony.
What I like about these videos is that, though computer-generated, they create versions of films…made without computers. They are trying to replicate the look of real sets and painted backdrops. What I like is the analog look, the computer’s imagining of what these films might look like with practical effects.
I think that’s why people respond to the Balenciaga videos in particular. Fashion’s one art form that can only exist in 3-D. Creating an uncanny runway show is a little more interesting than the surreality of most AI images.
That’s why people went crazy for Barbie and why Lord of the Rings holds up so well: practical-ass effects. Look at how hard the sets for the New York City Ballet’s production of Midsummer Night’s Dream went! Fans take pilgrimages to Hobbiton and the filming locations for Twilight. We like that stuff, that handmade, in the flesh stuff. Anna Biller handcrafted most of the set dec and costumes for 2016’s The Love Witch, which she shot on 35mm, if that means anything to you.
I don’t want to be all hurr burr technology bad; I understand it’s a tool like any other. But watch Light & Magic and tell me there wasn’t something lost when FX stopped being potheads in a garage trying to make a paper airplane look like a space ship and started being computer people at their computer desks.
Back to the YouTubes: If even the guys running the AI channels long for the retro look, can we all just admit that real > digital? Can we find a happy medium? Use our iphones to shoot real stuff? Isn’t that what all those craft videos taking over TikTok are anyway? Can we set dec? Set dec?
SET DEC????
Practically,
Lizzie
WAIT I NEED A FAVOR
Okay so my mom used to do this thing when I wrote for Reductress where she’d open my articles on all of her devices so it would register as being read a bunch.
I’m trying to get a recurring column launched at Glamour, and it would be really lovely if you guys could literally just click on the following links. You don’t need to read anything! The powers that be won’t know!
Post-script post of the week:
