Lorena Ares (nominated for the last Goya awards for Hanna and the Monsters) and Carlos Fernández de Vigo (Memorias de un hombre en pijama [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
interview : Carlos Fernández de Vigo
fiche film]), from the company Dr. Platypus & Ms. Wombat (which includes the Professor Octopus lab, focused on the research and development of Artificial Intelligence technologies in the creative and digital industries internationally) visited the 19th Animayo Gran Canaria to screen their films Cafuné and It Dawns The Longest Night, in addition to sharing their knowledge with attendees.

Cineuropa: You are based in Navarra.
Lorena Ares: Yes, there they are committed to the film industry and animation. They also have tax incentives.

Carlos Fernández de Vigo: And we were convinced by its commitment to research and development. They also have a vision for growth, which is inspiring, so we feel welcome. I believe that we have an industry with high levels of creativity in Spain, with work in Cannes, Annecy and the Oscars. This means exporting culture, consolidating talent and industry, and I believe that in the coming years there will be more joy.

And what about the field of animation with the advent of Artificial Intelligence? The same as with the advent of 3D?
CFV: The advent of 3D had implications for the development of 2D. While there were those who did not want to adapt their artistic skills to the new technologies, there was a decade when almost everything was 3D.

LA: When you have a new technology, people want to see it. But when it becomes democratised you start to separate the wheat from the chaff. So it was back to 2D.

CFV: We work with both techniques and enjoy them, but with 2D there’s a different space of freedom. Like when we made these short films we're presenting here or Memorias de un hombre en pijama, works that have nothing to do with each other, but we made the technique work for the intentions of the narration. This can also be done in 3D, but the cost is higher, because the process is more sophisticated, so you need to have more professionals.

LA: The more technology you include in the creative process, the more complicated it becomes to master. With 2D it’s easier to get to what you’re after, because in 3D the technique distracts you from the final finish you want.

But will Artificial Intelligence make animated film production cheaper?
CFV: It does allow you to speed up, but it will primarily increase quality. As filmmakers, we want the expression to be as close as possible to what we want to convey. We want to make the best film with as many resources as we can get. With all the safeguards in place at the moment, there’s a phase of profound and poorly understood technological disruption. Today there’s still no access to knowledge for those who are not in an academic or research context. The Congress [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film] by Ari Folman was a visionary film in this sense. I understand the fears that AI generates and we live in a stage where we have to talk a lot, we have to rebalance everything and design a new status quo. Doing it from the knowledge of how the technology works and how far it is going, seeing the potential evolutions so that it does not become either a deification or a demonisation, because it is neither one nor the other. It is simply mathematics and science. Assuming the change it represents, more quality decisions will be made and not so much a simplistic assessment of whether AI is good or bad.

Will it then facilitate audiovisual creation?
CFV: That is our path. We apply techniques that we’ve developed over the last few years with technicians and artists. You need to understand what is behind the technology in order to use it intelligently in artistic expression. In the next few years there will be a dizzying transformation and for that we need to have different opinions and criteria, so that we can adapt. Today we have a technology (Emotional Films) that makes the existence of a film that responds in real time to emotions viable, with many interconnected AI modules, but the big challenge is how to finance a concept in Europe that is neither a video game nor a film; it’s a new format. With AI disruption, things will be possible that were not possible before. We’re unlocking a new map, with tools that lead to previously unexplored places... and that is a luxury.