Humans: Playtime

Inspiration

I love sketch comedy and experimental expressions in cinema, so this film is a blend of both! There's a lot of Tim & Eric, Monty Python, and Eric Andre in this piece.

What it does

Humans: Playtime is a short film. Hopefully what it does is take the audience through a strange and unconventional journey while making them laugh along the way.

How we built it

The film was created using many AI and traditional design tools: Many scenes in the film were first illustrated as storyboards in Adobe Photoshop then made photorealistic using ChatGPT and Flash 2.5. Other scenes use Midjourney images as starting points. Every frame of the film was heavily photoshopped and edited before being animated by video models. When each frame was ready, it was run through Google Veo 3.1 to bring it to life. Some shots also utilize Runway Aleph. In many cases scenes had to be brought into Adobe After Effects for compositing, masking, keying and more in order to achieve the desired final shot. The film was edited, sound designed, and colored in Adobe Premiere. Much of the film uses sound outputs from Veo 3.1 but there are also a lot of sounds from sound libraries as well as AI voices from Runway and Veo.

Challenges we ran into

The primary challenge with any piece of AI filmmaking is getting the model to do what you ask. Prompting specific camera directions, performances and actions are often flat out ignored or misunderstood. This was a huge issue for Humans: Playtime especially due to the wacky and unconventional requests I was asking of the image and video models. This piece also features a lot of comic violence and destruction which was frequently blocked by safety filters. I had to find clever prompting workarounds, re-write scenes on the fly, or perform some crafty photoshopping and after effects work to get the results I was looking for.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This will be my first film that I feel is truly both an illustration of my style and signature as an artist and is also genuinely funny. Much of my past work has been designed as an experiment with some AI feature or to push the limits of the current tools. This time I knew exactly what my limitations were and just had fun making something I think is both a visual spectacle and an expression of my sense of humor.

What we learned

By the end of the production I felt for the first time that AI tools are ready for truly cohesive and professional filmmaking workflows. I have been enjoying "doodling" with AI tools for almost two years now, but only now do I feel confident that I could pursue a legitimate filmmaking project that is fully AI generated.

What's next for Humans: Playtime

I will be submitting the film to a few other AI filmmaking contests and festivals. After that I may take the format of the film and play more with short-form sketches on social media. Depending on how generative AI fares legally in the UK and US, I would love to use Humans: Playtime as a spec piece for a fully funded series of the same or similar concept.

Built With

• aftereffects
• flash2.5
• midjourney
• photoshop
• premiere
• runway
• veo3.1