Is AI going to replace filmmakers? Grab your movie prop guns and buckle in for a quick and dirty look at basic AI creation tools!

DALL-E
This is Microsoft Bing's AI image creator and its pretty decent when you have very generic requirements to create. So far it is free but falls down on the fine detail of images and when you want to start making variation of the same scene. It works by creating a detailed text prompt. 

Below you can see the variations and errors from this simple tool.

Text Prompt "A photorealistic wide shot picture above a convoy of army trucks on a desert road in Libya in 1943 with blue sky and a few scattered clouds"

So overall the AI creates a typically Hallmark-looking glossy image that looks fairly decent except there's thousands of trucks that look more or less vintage. Some images have what appears to be planes flying in the distance except they may also resemble pterodactyls! Picture No3 has soldiers on top of the truck with obviously AK47s which are not WW2 vintage but what does an AI tool know anyway!

Text Prompt "A photorealistic wide shot picture above a convoy of 20 army trucks on a desert road in Libya in 1943 with blue sky and a few scattered clouds and some black smoke in the far distance"

If we add some variation to the AI creation text we can see that DALL-E starts to struggle. The AI picked up the need for black smoke in the distance but ignored the '20 trucks' (I tried both numeric and text commands with the same result). At least the vehicles seem generically 1940s anyway.

For me as a filmmaker, the utility of Bing is likely in the creation of fast very generic images either as story board or simplistic shot blocking ideas to demonstrate a concept. So far my research indicates that the images will get you about 60^ of what you are after.

​Text Prompt: "A storyboard style black and white sketch of ten army trucks on a desert road in Libya in 1943 and some black smoke in the far distance"

Text-to-Video
SORA, the much feared or desired text-to-video tool from Chat-GPT creators is not widely available yet and is being red teamed to make sure no-one creates videos of nasty stuff (but then who is to define nasty - that's a real rabbit hole of free speech etc). This tech below (Gen 2 by Runway) is certainly not SORA and seems to only generate static images with some horizontal or vertical movement. As can be seen, the objects in the video start to morph like a bad Salvador Dali painting and the AI has a trouble placing priority on each asset in the image.
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Video Prompt: "Camera fly in over a convoy of 20 army trucks on a desert road in Libya in 1943 with blue sky and a few scattered clouds and some black smoke in the far distance."

As you can see the tech is pretty limited for this kind of application so we'll have to wait and see what SORA can or cannot do. Ultimately use of AI will be up to the filmmaker and I think its utility in indie war film production will be very limited. If you are an indie sci-fi filmmaker, the text-to-video will create totally surreal videos that would be impossible to create in practical fx (even if you're Christopher Nolan!) so for us historically accurate war film nerds - we'll have to stick with the old fashioned methods (for now).

Thoughts and ideas - put them in the comments below or subscribe to us below!

Definition
Wartime films with characters and locations set in a major conflict versus a military movie based on a unit, character or military base. Also excluding black-ops and spy movies set in recent middle eastern wars as they fit better into the spy thriller genre. We take a look at some odd and interesting genre crossovers for war films.
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War Crime/Legal
This war genre is fairly under used and features a legal or crime angle to the characters at war.
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Hacksaw Ridge (2016) - Although a good war story, the backstory is the courts martial of the protagonist.
Paths of Glory (1957) - Classic WW1 film on moral courage.
Courage Under Fire (1996) - Another legal investigation after the 1991 Gulf War.

Authenticity
If your film is set in the 1940s (or any period), does the audience believe it? Obviously the costumes are part of the overall production design, so don't skimp on making it look real. Do online research for photographs from the period. Much of the clothing up until the 1950s, were made of heavier cloth and certainly not the stretch fabrics of today. 1940s military uniforms were akin to wearing sackcloth. Trips to Salvation Army or other thrift stores yield absolute bargains and you will often find 1960s era coats in a heavier fabric.

Costumes on a low budget
Accurate WW2 costumes are hard to get and the reproductions, whilst accurate, are fairly expensive for a complete ensemble ($350-$500 for a German outfit). We team up with local military reenactors who are very well versed in all the minute detail needed for WW2 era uniforms and kit. Many reenactors will rent their gear and we used two on our Scheldt feature film to act as coordinators for German and Canadian background cast. We also rented gear from IMS in Vancouver who ship military costumes all over North America.

​Do actors know how to use their gear?
Make sure you train your cast how a soldier should use and handle their gear including how to adjust web gear, helmets. Its easy to see the films where an actor is only wearing the costume vs being a soldier. Another key point, much like actors really reading a book or drinking real coffee - equipment with foam in the pouches looks just like that. Military web gear is heavy when fully loaded (35lbs and up!) so fill the packs and pouches with weight.

They look too clean!
This is a common complaint. Many films show soldiers who look like they just came from a training depot rather than having spent 4 weeks in a trench. Have your cast wear the costume all day. Don't hang it up after each day - just leave it in a crumpled pile or in a garbage bag. Wrinkled clothing with sagging pockets is the most authentic. Don't overdo the mud and dirt either! Soldiers are particular about trying NOT to get dirty - they have to live in muck and filth so they try their best to avoid it.

​Military costumes, War films, period costumes

We've all seen amazing movie prop gun fx and blank gun shootouts that look and sound amazing. Think of the gun battle scene in Michael Mann's 'HEAT' or the beach scene in 'SAVING PRIVATE RYAN'. Ok, these films used mega budgets and real weapons with blanks, managed by skilled weapons handlers and not little Indie films. Small productions can however achieve similar results with a few small and inexpensive methods:

Talent Firearms Training
Talent who are not comfortable or don't know how to realistically handle prop firearms are both unsafe and look bad (unless the character is supposed to be a gun noob!). Our tips are:

• Hold a 1/2 day or few hour training session on safety, handling prop weapons, how the character is supposed to be trained in weapons use.
• Real firearms have a recoil when fired but not all have the same 'kick'. Firing full auto with an assault rifle prop will need a lot of barrel and weapon movement. Think about how to realistically simulate this.
• Use foam or rubber firearm props for fight or stunt scenes (don't try the knockout scene with a regular prop gun - it'll hurt!)

Realistic Prop Guns
Obviously a dollar store $2 plastic toy is going to look like an el-cheapo film prop. Different weapons have nuances when the operated. Automatic pistols have a slide that moves back and forwards when fired; automatic rifles have a bolt that moves; hunting rifles need a bolt to be operated and so on.

• Use airsoft pistols for an authentic look when being 'fired'
• Use cheaper but realistic 3D replicas for set dressing

Help your Post FX Artist
As seen in the image above, some real weapons have a massive muzzle flash in low light conditions. In daylight, the same weapon may have zero or minimal muzzle flash.

• Don't use cheap VFX muzzle flash in a daylight scene - it looks fake.
• Real weapons have some muzzle smoke but not like an 1800's cannon!
• Low light muzzle flash also lights up the talent and surroundings - on set use an LED photoflash strobe on a press switch or microphone trigger to fake the muzzle flash reflection (its near impossible to do in post).
• ​For sound FX, consider whether your shoot-out is indoors or outside, because real gunfire audio differs widely depending on the location. 
• When using VFX for gunfire, don't forget about the ejected shell cases. We use ActionVFX which has a good set of free downloads here. They also have good audio and other bullet hit effects.

Check out the folks at ParaLightWorx in Germany who do great work with replica weapons for WW2 short films. Their 6 minute single take video is one of the best we've seen lately for weapon effects (all 5.1M views!) which are all VFX (except the grenade explosion).

When you cover a tank in sheets of white cardboard to make it look like a United Nations vehicle, you pray it doesn't rain. But it does.....all day long on your only shooting day! Luckily the budget set dressing doesn't fall off and you manage to get all your scenes of an indie war film.
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Making Indie films is hard enough. Making indie war films are even harder, especially when you try to do more than a few pals running around the woods in reenactor uniforms. Here are a few tips of the trade for budget war films.