When XYZ Films’ “Watch the Skies” has its U.S. theatrical release on Friday, Hollywood will also get a glimpse at the state-of-the-art in AI-driven “visual dubbing” and its potential for Hollywood.
“Watch the Skies” is a sci-fi adventure filmed in Swedish (under the name “UFO Sweden”), but, uniquely, the actors will appear to be speaking English through the use of TrueSync, an AI visual dubbing tool from startup Flawless, which effectively syncs new (in this case, English language) dialogue with the actors’ mouth movements. The original actors recorded their lines in English as an ADR process, before the Flawless AI tech was applied to the movie.
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“We are still in control of the vision, and it’s still the same movie,” producer Albin Pettersson of Crazy Pictures said, suggesting that, with this process, viewers may “connect better with the film and with the actors” compared with more traditional dubbing techniques.
Following “Watch the Skies,” additional international films that used Flawless’ AI visual dubbing tools to creating English-language versions will be released in the U.S. in conjunction with XYZ Films. They include Tom Tykwer’s Berlinale opening German film “The Light,” Michael Gondry’s French film “The Book of Solutions,” Stephan Castang’s French film “Vincent Must Die,” Korean language film “Smugglers” from Ryoo Seung-wan, and Persian language film “Tatami” from directors Guy Nattiv and Zar Amir Ebrahimi.
As previously reported in Variety, AMC Theatres is alao involved, committing at least 100 screens to project “Watch the Skies” in the top 20 U.S. markets. This English-language version will also be released in the U.K. and Australia.
“Sweden is a small country, and not many people speak Swedish. So this is, of course, a way to get a much wider release,” suggested Pettersson. “This technique makes that process a lot better, and the experience for the audience will be so much better when [an actor’s] lips can be in sync. [Additionally] now we can be more free and actually translate it as we really want to.”
Describing the process as “really exciting,” director Victor Danell of Crazy Pictures related that “the only request we had to Flawless when they reached out, was that we could bring back the original cast. It was very important for us that they were the ones that made the characters again in this new language. [This was an opportunity] to rediscover the characters in this new language … to be able to return to the movie and to not only translate it to English, but also to be able to polish and refine some details.”
TrueSync may involve the original actors, or where required for language requirements, new actors. “The key things are protecting the actors rights and making sure they’re the beneficiaries of any of these tools. They have kind of full consent through this whole thing,” said Flawless co-founder Scott Mann, adding that Flawless communicated with SAG-AFTRA about the tools and the project. “We work very closely with all the unions, and all of them have a very similar view. We all want these things to help our industry.”
Last month at the NAB Show, Flawless introduced an agreement with editing giant Avid through which Flawless’ DeepEditor (a tool with similarities to TrueSync, but aimed at “updating dialogue and refining performances” in postproduction) would be integrated into the widely-used Avid Media Composer editing system. At NAB, senior vice president of customer success Peter Busch related that Flawless is talking with not just SAG-AFTRA, but Locals such as the Motion Picture Editors Guild, about application of its tools and training.
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