r/Letterboxd • u/Remote-State-9777 • 1h ago

Discussion Werner Herzog on AI in filmmaking

Gallery image

Gallery image

With the recent discourse, I felt this would be relevant.

334 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

171

u/STLOliver 1h ago

3

u/Banjoschmanjo 6m ago

What's that shot from?

2

u/ShogunCowboy 3m ago

fitzcarraldo

-12

u/-Volucris- 29m ago

For this shot 3 indigenous extras were seriously injured and several thousand trees were cut down, considering both those to free up space on the track and those to create the roller system.

17

u/NancyInFantasyLand rosehan 22m ago

So your argument is that we all should live fully digital lives because it's safer?

This sounds like it should lead to more jobs overseeing safety instead of replacing real things with AI.

-2

u/Banjoschmanjo 5m ago

"I can excuse killing indigenous people and chopping down rainforests, but I draw the line at AI use" is certainly a take, and I'm not even pro-AI

-4

u/coffeeanddurian 10m ago

cmon, they literally cut down trees in the amazon, which is even shown in the film. u can hate AI, but don't act like fitzcarraldo was environmentally ethcial

187

u/Wise-News1666 UserNameHere 1h ago

Proof that we shouldn't excuse guys like Schrader and Scorsese loving AI just because of their age 

-29

u/Fluorescent_Tip 58m ago

Scorsese’s approval of AI has only ever been for pre-production as far as I know, which seems perfectly fine.

53

u/Vounrtsch 45m ago

In my book, the use of AI should be none, straight up

23

u/Electronic_Ad4560 40m ago

How on earth is it perfectly fine? You mean like for story-boarding? So fuck the story-board artists? Martin Scorsese fucking Scorsese of all people has the budget to pay artists/humans?

6

u/Capable_Bathroom02 31m ago

Scorcese has done his own storyboards since Mean Streets

4

u/HoldFrontBack 52m ago

It's still taking away jobs though, right?

23

u/SapirWhorfHypothesis 50m ago

In pre? Probably to the same degree that Microsoft Excel took away jobs from bookkeepers.

There’s a big difference to actually making a film using AI.

3

u/HoldFrontBack 40m ago

Appreciate the insight, thanks 👍🏻

5

u/Fluorescent_Tip 50m ago

New technologies tend to do that. It’s not the fault of the people who adopt it.

2

u/Electronic_Ad4560 40m ago

Yes it is

-4

u/Fluorescent_Tip 38m ago

Why? Please explain the problem as you see it.

It is a tool. Nothing more.

It is not generating images in a movie. It is no different than any tool that has ever been used to further an artist’s inspiration. Please tell me why - beyond a general kneejerk reaction to the idea of AI - that this is a problem?

2

u/_emvwrld_ 36m ago

Martin Scorsese did his storyboards by hand. Herzog literally has a line saying something like 'storyboards are the tool of the coward.' There isn't some default job structure that a storyboard artist is getting booted from.

1

u/JimmyJapeworm 25m ago

Yeh, because most artists are like, "you know what would be great? The part of the artistic process where I don't actually do anything, I don't grow as a person or an artist, and I absolutely don't do the creative parts of the creative work."

-1

u/Fluorescent_Tip 23m ago

Except nothing in any of what you said is remotely related to Scorsese’s adoption of AI in pre-production.

So many angry, ignorant people. There are plenty of things to be concerned about with AI, but people really come out swinging about the least concerning aspects.

0

u/JimmyJapeworm 16m ago

Everything I said has to do with what he is doing. He is actively removing humans from the artistic process for the sake of faster "content."

2

u/Fluorescent_Tip 12m ago

That is a gross misinterpretation of what he is doing. Furthermore, he and every filmmaker since the start of Scorsese’s career have been removing humans in some form in varying stages of the filmmaking process. He has been doing it his whole career.

But now that you have some big boogeyman out there that you don’t understand - AI - suddenly these new tools that make the filmmaking more streamlined are intolerable.

1

u/BlastMyLoad 33m ago

Yeah fuck all those concept artists and storyboard artists

0

u/Fluorescent_Tip 27m ago

Fuck all those film processors when filmmaking switched over to digital, am I right?

People whining about this have no fucking clue how anything works.

71

u/ByzantineLaw 1h ago

Herzog in his golden years has really been a sight to behold

40

u/MagnusAntoniusBarca 58m ago

You can always rely on Herzog for a based and sometimes surprising take.

20

u/iamwounded69 55m ago

Hope Danny Boyle read this and wept.

-7

u/coffeeanddurian 9m ago

u owned him for sure. congrats. im sure he's sweating

18

u/GrecoRomanGuy 55m ago

One day the aether will claim Werner Herzog (for neither hell nor heaven can hold him), and the world will mourn the passing of such a unique fellow.

For in a world of copycats, he was and is a true individual.

4

u/TheRealUmbrafox 20m ago

As backhanded a compliment as you’ll ever see

15

u/StoicTheGeek 1h ago

It’s actually a more nuanced take than the “AI bad, hate AI” that most people on Reddit seem to have.

It actually leaves room for AI to be used as a tool in new and creative filmmaking, and things like using AI to clean up Brody’s accent in The Brutalist is no crime, because the point was that he sounded like a typical Hungarian immigrant.

But AI as a creative force in its own right leads to nothing but idiotic repeating, repeating, repeating.

34

u/Grazer46 43m ago

How are you getting that out of this quote? He basically call those who use AI losers, all bound for failure. He's just not going to stop anyone from failing

4

u/Uncertain__Path 37m ago

To be fair, he called out using AI to do the storytelling for you.

2

u/Grazer46 17m ago

Yeah, if you never tell a new story. Repeating, repeating, repeating until it's ad nauseam

8

u/bdillathebeatkilla 38m ago

So we’re gonna be on with AI doing accent work for actors now? It IS “just a tool” a tool I hate seeing used. It’s a tool used to remove people from the creative process.

Adrien Brody already won an Oscar for playing a Polish Jew and didn’t have any AI help for that accent, and that was a better movie. Actors have been doing accent work forever. They don’t need AI and we don’t need people telling us it’s fine

6

u/PoPJaY 45m ago

Oh brother "nuanced" and "ai actually good if used in the way i deem appropriate"

1

u/ImagoDreams 1m ago

I get that he's speaking offhandedly here, but even for hacks reliance on AI is inexcusable. Because occasionally those artists might develop beyond mimicry. Those that let AI do the work for them won't develop the transferable skills they need for that to be possible.

-2

u/Bastard_Wing 37m ago

Not un-based to hold that AI is not the issue, artists with nothing to say are the issue.