Anyone who caught Yung Lean’s MTV VMAs performance of “Storm,” his short film with director Romain Gavras’ audiovisual project Gener8ion, is no stranger to the complex choreography that went into the project. Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped a bevy of copycats from “recreating” the film with AI, subbing in Yung Lean and the video’s crew of young male dancers for dogs, babies, grandmothers, Elon Musk, Jeffrey Epstein, and even Hitler.
The trajectory appears to have left no one more disappointed than Gavras himself, who told Vulture that the AI copies “made me sad for all the people who put in so much work on our video.” Per Gavras, the budget on the original film was “very, very, very, very low,” and he worked for free. Dancers were selected through a two-month casting search, and rehearsed with choreographer Damien Jalet for three days; it took Gavras about 15 tries to nail the unbroken take, captured on 16-mm film.
“A trend like this can make even good work look lame,” Gavras added. “Part of me wanted to quit filmmaking, move back to Greece, and become an olive farmer.” Although Gavras emphasized that he never intended “Storm” as a commentary on AI, he felt like AI companies took the video’s elaborate practical effects as a sort of dare. “The tech people were like, ‘Oh yeah? AI could never?’ Then they started replicating it."
Gavras also noted he’s exploring legal avenues to stop the slop, but the logistics of suing the multitudes of anonymous users behind the recreations are hairy to say the least. He told Vulture a few AI companies reached out about licensing the film, but he declined: “There’s an economic model coming that we didn’t want to be a part of."
In fact, all the copies were part of what galvanized him to present the project live at the MTV VMAs, where “Storm” was nominated for four awards. Gavras saw an opportunity to show the world that AI still can’t replicate what’s so cool about “Storm.”
“They’re missing the swagger of Yung Lean,” Gavras said. “He looks like a dangerous baby. There’s something in the imperfection of humanity, and the interior life of someone who dances or even someone who just smokes a cigarette, that’s not quite there yet. But who the fuck knows what will happen in a year.”