"Primordial Soup, Aronofsky's AI studio, recently announced " On This Day...1776," a series of short videos posted to Time's YouTube channel that will tell the story of the events of the Revolution 250 years to the day after it happened. On the surface, this is a fine idea. A massively popular YouTube series even did the same thing with WW1 for the conflict's centennial from 2014 to 2018."
"Even if you didn't know the method behind this series, it soon becomes very obvious. AI cinematic technology is still in its infancy, so it's hard to make a clip longer than about 10 seconds or make a clip where anything interesting happens. The result is a boring montage of tableaus with soft pans or zooms, often limited to close-ups of one guy."
"There are constant labels as to who is who, because if you thought it was difficult to keep track of historical white guys before, these fake white guys are basically identical. In perhaps one of the funniest moments, King George is shown snatching a paper out of his aide's hand, but because of the limitations of the AI tech, it's cobbled together through a series of jump cuts like"
For centuries people have re-enacted historical battles using human performers to inhabit past roles. For the 250th anniversary of 1776, Darren Aronofsky's Primordial Soup created 'On This Day...1776,' a series of short AI-generated videos on Time's YouTube channel timed to historical dates. The project replaces human re-enactors with AI-generated figures, producing montage-like tableaus with limited motion and soft camera moves. AI cinematic tools struggle to sustain scenes longer than about ten seconds and to choreograph complex actions, resulting in jumpy edits, repetitive close-ups, and unconvincing physical interactions. Constant on-screen labels are required to identify near-identical faces. Historical detail and emotional resonance are diminished by technological constraints.
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