Picking up on what I was saying yesterday about AI generated videos and how advanced and impressive I find them, later in the day I came across this video rather putting that chain of thought into a different light. It’s an interview/conversation with Richard Taylor, the guy behind Weta workshop in New Zealand, the studio behind The Lord Of the Rings adaptations. To be honest saying it puts AI generated film in a new light is quite an understatement: it’s more like a direct conflict. It becomes very clear just how much care, love and attention guys like Taylor and Jackson put into adapting Tolkien for the screen, creating thousands of props and sets. Their effort was remarkable, and I think it shows on the screen. Over twenty years on, these films still look incredible.

The point these guys are making of course is that such films would never be made today – it just wouldn’t be an option. A studio would just go down the simplest, fastest, cheapest route and do everything using CGI. As stunning as I found the Star Trek videos I came across yesterday, I think it shows: it was ultimately obvious that I wasn’t watching real actors performing. The result is that something is taken away from film, which I think boils down to a form of love and passion for film-making. Frankly, I think that goes some way to explaining the bland, uninteresting pap we see in cinemas these days.