Director Brady Corbet responds to an online chat about the use of AI technology in his award-nominated film, The Brutalist, and the film’s editor David Jansso gives an interview about the use of AI to improve the performance of the film’s lead character, Adrian. He has been criticized for his comments. Brody and Felicity Jones.
In an interview with video technology publication Red Shark News, editor David Janso revealed that the filmmakers used AI tools from Ukrainian experts ReSpeaker to improve the character of Brody and Jones in the film. He said he tweaked his Hungarian dialogue to make it sound more authentic. The film’s use of AI in any way has sparked outrage online, with many suggesting it should be excluded from awards consideration.
“Adrienne and Felicity’s performances are completely their own,” Brady Corbett said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on Monday, adding that technology was used to improve and alter the actors’ performances. I objected to the point. “They spent months perfecting their accents with dialect coach Tanela Marshall.The innovative Respeecher technology is used exclusively for Hungarian dialogue editing, specifically to ensure that certain vowels and letters are accurately The English was not changed. This was a manual process and was done by the sound team and Respeecher in post-production. The aim was to preserve the authenticity of Adrian and Felicity’s performance in another language, not to replace or change it, but with the utmost respect for their craft. I got it.”
Much of the dialogue in the film is in Hungarian. In an interview with Red Shark, Janso praised Brody and Jones’ performance, stating that small adjustments were needed to enhance the distinctive Hungarian vocal sound as accurately as a native speaker.
“I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that Hungarian is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce,” Janso said. “Certain sounds may be particularly difficult to understand for someone coming from the Anglo-Saxon world.”
With a tight budget of less than $10 million for The Brutalist, the filmmakers relied on technology from Ukrainian AI startup Respeecher to craft the film. Mr Janso said Mr Brady and Mr Jones recorded their own voices for the AI, inputting his own native Hungarian voice into the system as a model.
“We were very careful to maintain their performance, mainly just replacing letters here and there,” says Janso, who says the process is more like interactive editing than creative. I explained. “You could do this yourself in ProTools, but there was so much dialogue in Hungarian that I had to speed up the process, otherwise it would still be in post.”
Janso said generative AI was also used in the film’s final sequence, as part of the inspiration for a series of architectural drawings and the completed building, which Brody’s character, the fictional architect László Tóth, allegedly designed. said that it was done. The design itself was hand-drawn.
“Talking about AI in the industry is controversial, but it shouldn’t be,” Janso told Red Shark. “We need to have a very open discussion about what tools AI can provide. There’s nothing in this movie that uses AI that hasn’t been done before. It’s a process that’s a lot faster. We use AI to create these little details that we didn’t have the money or time to photograph.
Commenting on the architectural design seen in the film’s final scene, Corbett said, “(Brutalist production designer) Judy Becker and her team did not use AI to create or render the buildings. The image was hand-drawn by the artist. For clarity, the commemorative video featured in the background of the shot was intentionally designed by our editorial team to look like a poor digital rendering circa 1980. I created a photo.
Critics have praised the performances of Brody and Jones in the film, who play Hungarian refugees who immigrate to the United States after World War II. Brody’s role won him the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama and is considered a front-runner for this year’s Oscar.
Commenting on his period drama, Corbett said, “The Brutalist is a film about human complexity, and every aspect of its creation was driven by human effort, creativity, and collaboration. I’m very proud of our team and what they’ve accomplished here.”
The fact that AI was used in The Brutalist has sparked a heated debate online.
“My take on the Brutalist AI issue is that it’s a slippery slope to award Adrien Brody with an award knowing his accent was edited by AI,” said an X user. “IMO using AI to alter performances like that should automatically disqualify someone from these awards ceremonies.”
“I saw ‘The Brutalist’ on 35mm film and was completely blown away by how beautiful the film was,” said another. “It’s absolutely pathetic to know that AI was used to design the buildings in the movie, and not just to accentuate Adrian Drody’s accent.”
Some argued that it was unfair to reduce an actor’s performance to a small number of vowel pronunciations.
“On the other hand, the fine details fade a little bit, but I wouldn’t say the accent was the determining factor in how[Brody’s]performance sounded,” said one X user. I was moved by the way he conveyed his emotions. ”
Ukrainian company Respeecher has been at the forefront of audio AI for several years. The company made headlines and caused some controversy after it struck a deal with Lucasfilm to use the iconic voice of the late James Earl Jones for future Darth Vader projects. Jones had given permission for his audio recordings to be used in this manner. The company also worked with Lucasfilm to create a younger version of Mark Hamill’s voice for Luke Skywalker’s cameo in the second season finale of The Mandalorian.
This article was originally published on Jan. 20 at 6:38 a.m. and has since been updated with director Brady Corbett’s response to editor David Janso’s comments about the film’s use of AI.
