It may have been a boast or it may have been another example of the German director’s familiar irony, but when Werner Herzog said that a computer would never make a film as good as one of his in 4500 years, director Piotr Winiewicz was immediately curious.
Herzog’s quote features at the start of Winiewicz’s About A Hero (opening IDFA in the international competition and sold by Film Constellation).
“It is this inherent sense of superiority and this technophobia,” Winiewicz says of the “romantic” attitude espoused by Herzog and others that the individual human artist will always trump AI.
About a Hero is an adaptation of a script generated by Kaspar, an AI programme based on Herzog.
“We trained a very primitive model on the works of Werner Herzog but focused on his books, transcripts of his voice-overs and transcripts of his interviews, basically spoken and written-word Werner. The process wasn’t just ‘press a button and the script popped out.’ We could sense the quality quite early on.”
The first sentence that came out of the machine was: ‘this is a movie about a hero dreaming surprisingly ordinary dreams.”
The script eventually produced was (in the director’s own description) “quite banal…it was not exactly a great script. It was far from that!” However, this is just one component within a broader, multi-faceted work.
The film features Herzog’s voice, talking in his usual mock solemn fashion. This was generated by Ukrainian outfit Respeecher and US company Gamely. We also see Herzog – or, at least, a deep fake double of him.
The legendary German director was willing to play ball. “The film was not supposed to challenge him. He is the voice we trust and he has this very distinct vocabulary…once we decided [to make the film] we reached out to him and we got an audio-memo back,” says Winiewicz.
In the memo, which is featured in the film, Herzog gave the project his blessing. “He expressed his scepticism, but he believes in the free flow of ideas and free speech.”
This was back in 2018. Winiewicz has now met Herzog “multiple times.” They had discussions before shooting, during production and in the editing process.
“It was very important for me that he [Herzog] would see the film and that it was done in a respectful manner; that there is nothing offensive and nothing harmful [to him].”
And, yes, the project did pose moral and ethical challenges for Winiewicz and his team.
“There were a lot of dimensions to it. The legal issues were of course also a matter we couldn’t ignore…also, it might be legal but what does it mean to hijack someone’s identity. How would I feel if someone took my personality?”
The project, then, is exploring where the boundaries around AI should be set. It is not trying to imitate a Herzog movie. Its conceptual approach is very different to that found in Herzog documentaries.
“When I showed it to Werner, for him the premise was very clear. He knew it wasn’t a fake Werner Herzog film. [Instead] it’s a way to trigger a larger discussion.”
About A Hero is structured like a B-movie thriller. It has a story about a local factory worker, Dorem Clery, who dies in mysterious circumstances. It appears as if he has committed suicide but there are nagging questions over what really happened to him. Real-life actors including Vicky Krieps, star of Phantom Thread, appear. There are also interviews with various experts and onlookers, discussing everything from copyright and aesthetics to philosophy.
Among the many talking heads, Winiewicz spoke to filmmaker Paul Schrader (American Gigolo, Cat Peopleetc) – but Schrader didn’t make it into the final movie.
“There were so many intriguing conversations,” the director sighs as he contemplates all the interviews that have ended, for now, on the cutting room floor.
Winiewicz was working on the project long before Chat GPT became a global phenomenon – and instantly changed popular perceptions about AI.
The director credits producer Mads Damsbo with giving the project its early momentum. “He has a big passion for technology and a lot of experience. I worked also with a machine learning engineer. He was responsible for developing those [AI] training tools and doing all the experiments. It is difficult to encapsulate it [the work], but over six years we developed so many experiments and did so many things…”
Winiewicz (a graduate of The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna) was aiming for an “artificial look.” One “big inspiration” was the work of Thomas Demand (“he reproduces photographs with paper models and then photographs them again”) and The Düsseldorf School.
Danish production company Tambo film produced with support from both NDR/Arte and The Danish Film Institute and regional support from Nordmedia and Film Fyn. Pressman Film also came aboard.
Winiewicz is a Polish filmmaker now based in Denmark. “My family lives like a gypsy family. They live in different places. I moved to Denmark from Hong Kong…”
When he arrived in the country nine years ago, he ended up working with such major figures in the local documentary scene as Mads Brugger and Joshua Oppenheimer.
“We worked on an installation together because of my design background,” he says of his collaboration with Oppenheimer around the time of The Look Of Silence. Brugger, meanwhile taught him not to take himself “too seriously.” He also acknowledges support from such well-respected figures in the documentary world as André Singer of Spring Films and Jane Ray from The Whickers.
As for the question of whether a hybrid project like About a Hero should be defined as a documentary, Winiewicz is sure it qualifies just fine.
“I am not sure I would put a label on it but the interviews inform the process – and the fictional narrative to some extent is also an expression of the documentation of the process…[but] I personally like to think about the film as an essay film. The biggest inspiration for me was Orson Welles and F For Fake!”
