Director/co-founder Chris Boyle at Private Island in London: “Synthetic Summer is a machine learning interpretation of an American beer advert. It features no real people and is generated entirely from text prompts.

“Generally, our work is mixed media, combining live-action and animation, so using AI tools seems like a natural evolution. We’ve been investigating generative images for the last 12 months – exploring new ways of working and new mediums of visuals powered by Machine Learning.

“Using Stable Diffusion, Control Net, and Runway Gen 2 we are creating a series of in-house experiments that help us figure out how these tools can be used in production – Synthetic Summer is our most recent.

“Currently, wrangling text to video is like working with a vast and infinitely variable library of stock imagery, with specificity quite tricky. Nevertheless, the rapid iteration and uncanny aesthetic make for a new and super exciting workflow, with the nosebleed speed of the evolving technology feeling both invigorating and disorientating!

“If 2022 was the year generative image stills went mainstream, 2023 will for sure be the same with motion.”
 
 

 
Production: Private Island
Director: Chris Boyle
EP: Helen Power