GLUT, the first of two albums due this year from theatrical rock eccentrics The Scaramanga Six, was released earlier this month (get your copy via Bandcamp) to great acclaim from Joyzine’s own Mansell Laidler, who proclaimed it “a masterclass in musical storytelling” in his review of the LP. Today we are delighted to bring you the first opportunity to watch the video from the record’s latest single ‘Cultural Cannibal’. A denunciation of two-faced cultural commentators who, having lambasted an artist during throughout their career, pop up to eulogise their brilliance when they die and there are a few quid to be made off their memory, it’s accompanied by a video that combines real life footage with AI generated gunge.
You can watch it here first and read on for the thoughts of vocalist/guitarist and video director Paul Morricone on the process of creating the video and his take on what GenAI may mean for creatives in the near future.
The filmed element of this video was shot a couple of months ago on the back of another shoot we were doing for ‘Bad Time Music’ (this is to come!). We had a spare hour at the end of the day so decided to go out nearby to a long path over a viaduct with just ourselves and cameraman Andre with a steady cam. This was a first-take single continuous shot of the entire song. I had speeded the track up to 200% which we mimed to, so when we played back at 50% speed, our movement and lip-syncing were in time with the normal speed of the song but we were in slow motion.
That was going to be it – a simple one-shot performance. Then, as I started to experiment with image-to-video generative AI on our previous video for ‘Hully Gully‘ I thought I’d elaborate on the things I thought had worked really well for this one. I took the stills of our most recent photo session, then prompted them to move, including some element of interesting camera movement, to create new clips to intersperse in the edit.
I wanted to add action to the generated clips that were inspired by the junk theme of the song – and specifically the lines “In a million years, the only sign that you existed – a tiny layer of multicoloured plastic bits and pieces. You’re living in the plasticine!”. So I took individual portrait shots of each of us and added thick coloured paint covering each of us like gunge. The in the band stills, I prompted the generation of multicoloured plastic useless shapes to rain down all over us.
It is interesting to see the reaction to GenAI, especially given the recent video by Pulp which uses it. We had beaten them to it with ‘Hully Gully’ – employing the same principle of manipulating pre-existing still images into sometimes strange movement, although of course we don’t grab the headlines as we are still woefully obscure!
In this video, The GenAI I used was to deliberately muck about with still images we already had in an unrealistic way. All the art direction and creative thought had already been done by us and our photographer Chris Saunders in our photo shoot. I simply took an existing set of stills and found a way of covering them in colourful gloop.
I’m definitely not trying to promote the use of GenAI it over the craft of the people it seeks to replace. My first intention was to try and pervert it and make no attempt to do anything realistic with it. I’m using image to video prompts very crudely by the standards of some of the excellent GenAI works I’m seeing though, perhaps tellingly, it worked as it often created something unexpected.
What makes this video work is the direction applied to the creation of scenes and narrative – all my choices. Knowing what makes a good music video work and how to edit.
Can generative AI be used as creative tool? Yes. Is it scraping creativity from other sources? Definitely. Will this devalue things? That’s up to you.
In the words of a recent post by a chap called Koshua K on LinkedIn, which is currently going crazy for the promotion of AI tools, in response to the ChatGPT/Studio Ghibli debate: “In the age of GenAI, value is no longer created. It’s extracted — from the unprotected, the priceless, and, most importantly, the human.”
So the question going forward is this – how much do people value creativity and are we going to pay for it?
I run a Production Company and so I’m at the coal face of the impact generative AI is having. We film and animate, so work with things that exist and animate things that don’t. There will be potential clients who don’t value creative processes and those who do – and in the short term AI in video is merely replacing the stock library style briefs that some clients are already reluctant to budget for anyway. We are already using many GenAI tools, but the vast bulk of what we produce can never be replicated by GenAI – films based around real people’s stories. Whether real or not, it is all about being genuine. And if you are using GenAI as your first port of call to communicate – you have ask yourself ‘is this really a credible way to communicate?’.
However, as a filmmaker I have to learn and embrace what it can do – because it is not going to go away. The consumption element of any AI process is troublesome, and that is definitely the greater argument to be had.
GenAI tools, much like access to music via streaming platforms, are being monetised at source by those who don’t necessarily create it. The message from there is ‘you can have your cake and eat it’. Which brings me neatly back to the overall themes of consumption held within this song and our album GLUT. I hope that people value the things that musicians and artists alike create enough to question how they access it – and where the money is going when they subscribe to a streaming platform or rip a film.
GLUT is out now – get your copy on CD or digital download via Bandcamp
Read the band’s track by track guide to the album
The Scaramanga Six: Website | Facebook | Instagram
Introduction by Paul Maps
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