The short story vs. AI?

 

Note: this is a new version of a video I posted a few days ago. I’ve improved the audio levels, and hopefully that makes it more listenable. Regarding the animation sequences in the background of this video: they’re from a moviestory entitled High School that I write a long time ago, and first made into a movie in 2019. At that time, I shot the footage around the university where I teach (because it resembles a high school). But I didn’t have actors and deliberately avoided shooting the faces of random strangers. However, since this story is very much character-driven, I’ve always wanted to have actors play the main roles. AI animation allows me to create them. Do these animations work as well as real actors? Obviously not; human actors will always be irreplaceable. But the new version of The moviestory (now entitled High School 1976), works, I hope, as a bridge between a spoken word rendition of a story and a filmed version that has real production funding behind it.

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Artist Statement: On Authorial Moviestories

I make video art, and one genre I’ve created is what I call authorial moviestories; these are literary narratives transformed into short cinematic pieces. Each moviestory began as an original short story written entirely the old fashioned way: by sitting down with a paper notebook or blank computer screen, and creating a work of fiction based on my own imagination and experience. Over the several years (starting in 2012), I’ve filmed many of these short stories. 

I did all the work myself, including the music. That solitary effort has some negative characteristics: it’s painfully obvious the videos are low budget (no budget, really). But at the same time, for better or worse, these videos are, like traditional short stories, very much the result of one consciousness. 

Recently, I’ve started adding clips made with AI programs. These clips are sometimes based on prompts and sometimes based on my own artwork (I started my creative career as an illustrator and fine artist).

I incorporate AI-generated video clips into my moviestories. These serve as illustrative elements that create characters. In a sense, the characters I’ve created in my written work now become visualized versions of the same.

By creating a fusion of human-made literature, art and music, and adding clips generated with the help of AI animation apps, I hope to create a hybrid form of literary art that is rooted in my own lived experience and able to reach out to a wider audience.

#shortstory #shortfiction