‘The Brutalist’ Editor Admits Film Used AI to Make a Key Part of Adrian Brody’s Performance More Believable
https://www.thewrap.com/the-brutalist-editor-film-ai-hungarian-accent-adrian-brody/
‘The Brutalist’ Editor Admits Film Used AI to Make a Key Part of Adrian Brody’s Performance More Believable
https://www.thewrap.com/the-brutalist-editor-film-ai-hungarian-accent-adrian-brody/
35 comments
>The decision to use A.I. was born out of the need to supplement Brody and Jones’ Hungarian speaking skills. “I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce,” he said.
>Despite the fact that Brody’s mother is a Hungarian who emigrated to the United States in the 1950s, Jancsó continued, “it’s not that simple. It’s an extremely unique language.” The actors were “coached” in the language, but A.I. helped.
>“If you’re coming from the Anglo-Saxon world certain sounds can be particularly hard to grasp,” he said. “We first tried to ADR these harder elements with the actors. Then we tried to ADR them completely with other actors but that just didn’t work. So we looked for other options of how to enhance it.”
>The team used Respeecher to record the actor’s voices and then add in A.I. words in Hungarian. Jancsó’s voice is also in the film. “Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there. We were very careful about keeping their performances,” he explained.
>“It’s mainly just replacing letters here and there. You can do this in ProTools yourself, but we had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really needed to speed up the process otherwise we’d still be in post.”
This is kinda insane and while they mention they want to “keep the performances,” this in no doubt changes the performances to some degree. It’s like motion capture animating something slightly different from what was given by the mocap actor. I feel like finding this out this late into awards voting (or did the ballots close already?) was a strategic move because hearing about this definitely gives me the ick and thinks differently about “how well” their performances are.
And so it begins…
Is there a substantial and salient difference between using an AI tool to fix a bad accent in a film and using Autotune or similar to fix a bad note in a vocal performance? Vexes me just a little when folks are complaining about a loss of performance authenticity when big chunks of everyday dialog is already typically being replaced with ADR. Speaking your lines again in a recording studio after the fact by yourself is authentic? No it is not.
And yes, I do actually grasp that recreating this skill with AI is not the same as compensating actual artists for its acquisition and application. One rewards the owner and the other rewards an employee. But that’s not what is being pointed at here. (Although it’s more like the central issue.)
I’m certain that they used AI for some of the archival shots as well. Seems like such a weird decision for a film that is lauding it’s “70mm” format
People talking about the sanctity of performances in The Brutalist would have their mind blown by how much performances are manipulated during the normal editing process
A key part of his performance was a few letters here and there in a 3.5 hour film. Ok. Nothingburger.
Awesome, another tool for them to make movie magic.
Still don’t like this. Stuff like this starts, then it gets like that black mirror episode where celebrities just start selling their likenesses to companies to use however. I dunno. Stuff like this always “start small”
Another tool for making movies, like when they added sound, or cgi, or foley, or stunt doubles, or adr, or motion capture, or painted matte backgrounds, or scale models, or men in rubber suits pretending to be monsters, or any kind of practical effects, or pyrotechnics, or color processing/grading, or…
Should be disqualified from award consideration
Is voting over? Because I feel like I’m a dumb person who thought that Brody worked sooo hard and did his homework soo well that he was speaking Hungarian with a fluent accent. I was rooting for him in the best actor category. Haha
He’s still good but less impressive
Streep didn’t need AI to speak Polish for Sophie’s Choice.
Does this mean he is ineligible for any awards for this performance?
Change is bad. We should only make films using the same technology that was available to Eadweard Muybridge
We need AI to no longer be a component when it comes to sound editing.
These actors should not get nominated for awards then.
Whelp, if I had to guess, this editor just put a serious dent in Brody’s chances of winning best actor at the Oscars.
I think they should’ve left it
Just acknowledge that he worked hard on the language, but didn’t get it perfect. People in the know can give their critique as far as how close he was. The audience and the academy can decide how much that matters.
By altering his performance this way, there’s going to be a question mark of how much was changed
I hate that they used AI for this. Great films have been made with actors having poor accents in different languages for decades. When the accent is bad enough, you use dubbing (a la Werner Herzog in many of his films in the ‘70s, Burt Lancaster in The Leopard, and countless other examples). If you don’t want to dub, then use a narrator. But to pretend like it’s actually Adrien Brody then have the editor feel so guilty it about they do a confessional in an interview is stupid.
I get that not everyone can be Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds, but going about it this way is ridiculous.
TLDR: they used AI to improve the actors pronunciations of Hungarian words.
Big whoop. This is actually a great use of AI, because making certain sounds is practically impossible for humans who didn’t learn to do it in early childhood. Example: Why is there a stereotype that Chinese people pronounce L as R? Because L sound does not exist in Chinese. There are countless examples in every other language, including American English.
The Brutalist had an editor? Are we sure about that? Saw it this weekend and it didn’t feel like they hired an editor.
In the style of mechanical brutalist, using AI this way seems fitting
They first tried to ADR in a performance from another actor. This would be even less Brody than the current situation, yet no one would care
It’s a movie, not a sacred text. Entertainment’s been tweaking performances forever—ever heard of auto-tune? This is just the digital facelift era.
Why the hell would he just randomly mention this while voting is taking place – what an idiot
Then I won’t watch it
Maybe they should’ve used this on Selena Gomez to improve her Spanish
I dig the effort. Hungarian is one hell of a language to learn and speak and I’d rather have an actor’s voice augmented with AI to push the realism of the pronunciation than accepting that romans spoke and wrote English. Looking at you Gladiator 2.
I guess we are now in the AI panic stage?
AI is a broad term, not all of it is evil.
In this case everyone involved sounds like they consented to their work being used. It’s called Respeecher and it blends two people’s voices.
Brody is trash ever since he “kissed” Halle Berry at the Oscars
Too bad AI couldn’t fix the absolute train wreck of a third act.
And just like that, Brody is not getting an Oscar
This is more what I think AI should be geared towards in media. Translating performances into other languages preserving the performers’ voice and potentially the emotion they bring to a role, kind of. I imagine this would harm the world of voice actors, though.
Hoo boy people are gonna be pissed if Brody does wind up winner Best Actor.
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