This summer at UW-Stout, students in a new AI Assisted Film and Video Production course will use AI tools from pre-production concepts to completion, generating scripts, storyboards, shot lists, visual effects, video, music, voice-overs and sound effects to produce a short film.
With the course, UW-Stout video production faculty are establishing AI use in filmmaking as a baseline competency.
“The core philosophy of the course is that AI tools are utilized to handle the technical ‘grunt work,’” Assistant Professor Jonny Wheeler said. “By offloading labor-intensive tasks, we are opening the potential for a high level of creativity, allowing students to focus entirely on their narrative vision without being limited by traditional budget or production constraints.”
With creative freedom over their storylines, students will develop a complete concept package for an original film. The specific deliverables will include a creative pitch document, a sizzle reel and a short video teaser.
The course will incorporate AI-generated images and short films as examples, including “Relic” by Wheeler. “Relic” is loosely based on the Old English epic poem “Beowulf,” but which takes place on a post-human Earth with an intelligent ape as the hero.
The film is set in the overgrown, futuristic ruins of a once-great city. The lone warrior navigates this concrete wasteland to hunt down a powerful, ancient weapon to end a reign of terror. His journey leads him into the heart of a monster’s lair, where he must use this artifact to vanquish the creature or face extinction.
Wheeler was inspired by “Beowulf” and the famous quote by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
“I wanted to take the ‘magic’ of the Beowulf tale and give it a technological origin – reimagining the mythical swords and monsters as remnants of a high-tech past,” Wheeler said. “Using AI allowed me to cast an ape as the lead and create a massive, ruined world – elements that would have been impossible for me to film live with a meager budget.”
The course, possibly a first-of-its-kind in the Universities of Wisconsin, was developed by professors Keif Oss, Co O’Neill and Wheeler.
UW-Stout’s School of Art & Design is one of the largest public art schools in the Midwest. It offers bachelor’s degrees in animation and digital media; game design and development-art; graphic design and interactive media; illustration; industrial and product design; interior design; studio art; arts administration and entrepreneurship; fashion design and development; and video production, and an M.F.A. in design. UW-Stout also has a new program in game and media studies.
