Five weeks in, the Midpoint of this journey, and what a ride it is 🎨 🤯
Perfect time to take a moment to breathe and reflect on what’s going on.
Yesterday, Episode 5/10 of “Rita Äventyret” (Draw the Adventure) released on SVT Play. That means we’ve now gone through five full production weeks of a kind of filmmaking improv, with the prompts being the drawings of children. So far, more than 8 200 drawings have been sent in to the show.
The process has been intense, to say the least. Initially, we planned to be more prepared, to create large chunks of the episodes in advance and then find a way to weave in the drawings into already existing material. The prospect of having nothing at all, not a single generated image, five days before airing on the national public service streamer, was a bit terrifying.
Cut to: None of that preparation happened.
Enter improvisation.
Each week, we start by scanning through all the hundreds or thousands of drawings that has been sent in through the app, not just looking for visuals, but also for ideas and functions that could shape the story (kids sometimes gives us comments on what their drawing can do). From there, we mix the series’ overall arc with what the kids have given us for the particular episode. After that, we have an idea of what the episode will look like.
We then run 3-4 days from the first generated image to final edit, then 1 more for final sound, mix, color and miscellaneous polish. Somewhere in that process we also come up with the dialogue, do voice-acting and occassional motion capture when the characters’ faces can be detected… What, never seen a talking pizza before?
The process is fast. Too fast to get lost in perfection. And in those moments of panic where you dont know if it’ll all come together, you have to trust the process, have fun with the improvisation and keep collaborating, with the AI tools, with each other, and with whatever wild ideas the kids have.
Of course, as creators we deeeeply value a slower pace where attention can truly be paid to details and where you can refine the work to the standards you have in your mind’s eye, but there’s something magical about this speed too. The Dalai Lama once said “Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon”. This is a process of constant letting go.
At the end of the day, it is a creative experiment, for us, for SVT, for Swedish media. And we’re very grateful to Calle Gisselsson, whose mix of playfulness and professionalism makes this wild journey possible.
Curious to hear what you think. In what other ways do you see AI opening up storytelling where audiences can be a participant in the shaping of the narrative?
If you fancy, you can watch the series here.
