With Michel Hazanavicius currently deep in post-production on The Third Hand, his 10th feature, Vincent Maraval, head of the Goodfellas company, has revealed that the use of artificial intelligence made it possible to cut the shoot for a major battle scene from 10 days down to just 2. Enough to reignite the debate about AI in creative circles, the film industry chief among them. In any case, here it's owned up to — and in fact heavily promoted. Let us tell you all about it. Well, let me tell you about it.
Billed as a fantasy film in colour but entirely silent, The Third Hand is the new project from Michel Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning director of The Artist, who also gave us the first two OSS 117 films — the third wasn't his and it showed in the finished product (Nicolas Bedos, if you're reading this...). The French filmmaker is adapting Arthur Dreyfus's novel of the same name, in a story that takes us back to 1916, during the Battle of Verdun. The film follows Paul Marchand, a young French soldier seriously wounded in combat, only to wake up and discover that a mad scientist has grafted a German hand onto his abdomen. A premise as strange as it is completely unhinged, for a film that blends First World War atmosphere, fantasy and the absurd, with a staging entirely stripped of spoken dialogue. In short, it's a mad gamble, but it definitely whets the appetite (thanks to Michel Hazanavicius and his producer for taking the punt, by the way).
Shooting wrapped just a few weeks ago and Michel Hazanavicius is now working on post-production with his usual team at Digital District, given that a considerable amount of visual effects still needs to be created. The French director has also said he hopes to finish the film next spring.
A battle scene shot in 2 days thanks to AI
It's against this backdrop that Vincent Maraval, head of Goodfellas, discussed the use of artificial intelligence on The Third Hand at the 5th edition of the "Creative Investors' Conference" held in San Sebastián. Goodfellas is currently handling the film's international sales, and Vincent Maraval had no qualms (nor any shame) about explaining to anyone who'd listen how the use of AI had changed the shooting of a major scene set on a First World War battlefield.
"The film opens on the battlefield during the First World War. Without AI, that would have meant 10 days of shooting. With its help, it was 2 days," the Goodfellas boss explained.
Enough to give pause to an entire industry still trying to justify considerable production budgets, without forgetting all the crafts and trades that stand to suffer... In any case, for a film as ambitious as The Third Hand, the difference is considerable for a production that has to recreate a historical period and a large-scale battle. As Maraval sees it, these technologies cut down time spent on set while giving the teams more scope to work afterwards on the visual effects and the creation of the film's environment. That said, we've seen nothing of the result, and when you know that some filmmakers are going back to practical, time-honoured methods, the debate is only going to grow more fraught — that much is obvious.
Soon all out of work?
This reduction in shooting time obviously raises the question of AI's impact on jobs in the film industry. Asked about it, Vincent Maraval defended an approach that puts the emphasis on the new possibilities opened up for filmmakers. In his view, these tools also allow projects to exist that would have been too costly or too complex to produce using traditional methods. Maraval cites Flow, the animated film by Gints Zilbalodis, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. The director largely built his film on his own computer using software suited to his creative process. For Vincent Maraval, the project simply couldn't have come about in the same conditions without those tools.
"If we use AI to open up our creativity and our imagination, it will help us," he declared.
A top-tier French cast?
But let's talk a little about The Third Hand itself, because the film brings together François Civil, Bérénice Bejo (no surprise there), Rebecca Marder and Michel Fau. The screenplay was written by Michel Hazanavicius and Thomas Cailley, the latter also behind 'Love at First Fight' and 'The Animal Kingdom'. The cinematography is by David Chambille, while the score will be composed by Alexandre Desplat, a two-time Oscar winner: in 2015 for The Grand Budapest Hotel (directed by Wes Anderson) and in 2018 for The Shape of Water (directed by Guillermo del Toro). The man's a legend.
Elsewhere, the film is produced by Florence Gastaud and Michel Hazanavicius for Les Compagnons du Cinéma, with France 3 Cinéma and StudioCanal co-producing. StudioCanal will also handle its distribution in French cinemas. We've also learned that the production received backing from Canal+, Ciné+ OCS, France Télévisions, the CNC, the Île-de-France and Hauts-de-France regions, as well as several international financial partners.
