Tropika ‘Nothing Smoother’ Director’s Version

Morgan: As far as man-hours go, the AI route took far longer. The work to get the packs and artwork accurate was painstaking, with every pixel poured over in detail. Everyone thought AI would be quicker, but the demand to present the product in its true state needed a far more attention-driven process.

Morgan: Getting hi-res images accurately made-up for the LLM to springboard off of is where the hard work happens. There’s too little control when giving the robots just a still of the product and asking it to make it move. It’s hallucinatory chaos. By using Photoshop to create considered images, then expanding on the world with a consistent look, lighting and fidelity – that all has to be established before the machines give it life. All of this was done by myself, but we still had to bring in traditional VFX professionals at the end to ensure the labels on the packs remained accurate. 

Morgan: Many. Every time a generated shot would do something that could never be achieved in the real world, it sparked the imagination to try wilder, more-innovative things. Those were the happy discoveries, where the iterations themselves led to brighter, better ideas. The challenges were then to try and control those moments of otherworldliness and wrangle them back to the real world of accurate product demonstration.

Morgan: The same misconceptions the entire world has – that it will replace production completely. I do not think this is the case. When decent cameras started appearing in our pockets over a decade ago, we all thought we would be out of a job, but rather an entire new industry arose: Vloggers and influencers were born. If we act accordingly, this new tech doesn’t have to be an industry cancer but rather a panacea for production problems, bettering our craft and expediting work-flows. It may also lead to an entire new industry altogether, which is an exciting prospect, not a scary one. 

Morgan: We can’t control that. People are using it for shortcuts all over the show and the resulting slop speaks for itself. AI isn’t impressive anymore and it’s up to our imagination to find ways for it to impress without being self-evident. The most successful CGI to date is still the stuff done in the shadows, going unnoticed to audiences. We’ve been using trickery ever since cameras were invented but our magic has to be performed without exposure. That takes hard-work, not corner-cutting. 

Morgan: They loved it but would still like that one blueberry on the far left to move over slightly.

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