More than two years and more than 1.2 million base pictures - Sanxingdui: Past Events - accepted theater inspection

 At 7 pm on October 27, nearly 60 people occupied the seats for a screening of Sanxingdui: Days of Future Past at Shanghai Cinemas.This is a movie viewing event organized by a movie blogger. During the post-screening exchanges, many people said that they came because of the status of being the first AI cinema movie and wanted to see what an AI-generated feature film would look like on the big screen.

This 100-minute long work was introduced as China’s first AI feature film to win the Dragon Award.It grossed about 1.5 million yuan at the box office in its 9 days of release, with an attendance rate of about 0.1%.People are used to watching AI short videos and short plays for free on their mobile phones. In theaters, you need to buy a ticket to watch this feature film.

The story unfolds from a disaster three thousand years later: super AI sweeps the world, and an archaeologist discovers that the inscriptions on the Sanxingdui bronzes may be the key to solving the crisis.The film switches between sci-fi scenes similar to "The Wandering Earth" and "Tomb Raiders"-style historical adventures. Scenes such as the arrival of divine birds and sacrifices in the ancient capital of Shu shocked some viewers.Some people admire the screenwriter's imagination, while others are willing to give it an 8.

Other viewers focused on the characters: expressions were dull, scenes jumped, and the narrative line seemed messy.One viewer said that when the heroine expresses sadness, she often sheds a tear; another felt that it was more like 50 episodes of AI short dramas made into a feature film, which was not suitable for such a length.

The production took more than two years, and a total of more than 1.2 million base maps were generated.The graphics and some of the music are handed over to AI, while screenwriting and other tasks are still done by humans. All characters use original digital images.

The team spent a lot of energy solving technical problems in the early days, and later encountered constant model updates.Supervisor and producer Qu Ji Xiaojiang gave an example. In September, it was as if four large models were iterated at once, and the generation time, resolution, fluency and performance delicacy were all improved.Seeing new effects, the team had to redo the old show.There must have been more than 100 minor adjustments, and there were five major changes that included overturning the story.

Repeated revisions also made the connection between the scene and the plot and the consistency of the characters' faces problematic.The producer did not launch any special announcement.Chiang Defu, CEO of Bona Pictures Group, the producer and chief producer of the film, explained that they are worried about misleading the audience: if they praise the film as a good film according to the usual commercial methods and attract more people to the theater, there may be a gap in actual viewing.

The film switches between the ancient Shu Kingdom, space, and the desert, presenting a grand scene of thousands of troops.Based on real-life shooting and overseas location estimates, such a scale may require 8.9 billion yuan; this figure is not the actual cost disclosed by the film.

Chen Xiaoda, deputy director of the Shanghai Vancouver Film Academy and a film selection judge for the AIGC unit of the Shanghai International Film Festival, believes that AI movies have gone through this link from script proposal and production to theater certification, and the works have merits in terms of production technology.

Guan Yadi, a movie podcast blogger, suggested that AI should be applied more slowly and let it first assist creativity and release people's imagination, instead of rushing to replace the entire human imagination.Chen Xiaoda said that technology is a means. Audiences spend money to go to the theater to watch the 100-minute story and feel the emotional resonance.Creators must not only bring out the advantages of AI, but also produce video works that have a sense of living people.