India's entertainment capital Mumbai has seen many film festivals but this time it is gearing up for a stage where Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated storytelling will go mainstream.
A group of 20-somethings made Bollywood sit up and take notice of how Artificial Intelligence can reshape entertainment. Their brainchild — the upcoming AI Film Festival — will unfold at Royal Opera House in Mumbai, on November 2.
It all started with a tweet. "Getting in touch with Sam Altman is easier than reaching Karan Johar or half of Bollywood," Chandan Perla had tweeted some time last month after facing a hard time getting Bollywood's attention. Perla along with Hardeep Gambhir are the brains behind the AI film festival.
What began as a slow effort to get the industry’s attention has now turned into a full-blown collaboration, with an impressive Bollywood contact list to show for it. The judging panel features filmmakers like Shakun Batra, director of movies like Don, Kapoor & Sons, Ram Madhvani, director of popular series Aarya, along with actors such as Abhay Deol, among others.
Who all are attending?
Over 100 celebrities from Bollywood are expected to attend the AI film festival. "More people just keep coming on the VIP guest list just to see what we have achieved with AI already. They want to see how far we have gotten," Perla told Moneycontrol.
Who is sponsoring the AI film festival?
While the festival is bootstrapped with Perla and Gambhir putting $30,000 or around Rs 27 lakh of their own money, they have also raised funds via sponsorship. They are expecting more than Rs 1 crore from sponsorship.
The sponsors list includes Invideo and LocalHost India as Official sponsor, Morphic as Founding sponsor. Other brands sponsoring the event includes Coinbase, OrangewoodLabs, LumaLabsAI, ElevenLabs, Devfolio, Superteam.
How many are participating and how?
A total of 1,265 submissions have been received out of which 15 teams have been shortlisted with around 45 participants.
Gambhir calls it a hackathon more than a film festival. "Every participant has to make a 10-second AI-generated montage based on Japanese aesthetics. After that we do a 10 minute call to gauge their interest.
Who will decide the winners?
The judging panel includes Mukul Deora, Shakun Batra, Tanmay Bhat, Karan Anshuman, Abhay Deol, Kunal Kapoor, Ram Madhvani among others. There is a prize pool of over Rs 20 lakh.
Why the need for an AI film festival?
According to Perla, AI will give film editors their due. "Editors have always been seen as a cog in the machine rather than being given any respect. They've been seen as the smallest entity making the supply chain work. But now, the moment when we see how AI has progressed in the last six months, we see how editors are now one-man production houses. They have the capability of running the entire show themselves."
There are so many things that AI can do that you wouldn't think that it would be possible, Gambhir said. "Some of the shots that are generated now are so high quality."
What is the cost of making an AI film?
An intermediate advanced filmmaker would have to spend around $600 to make a film using AI, Gambhir said.
With regards to softwares and tools, there are open source tools but then there are different tools for specialization, Perla noted.
Top tools for AI filmmaking include Sora, Higgsfield, Midjourney, Nano Banana, Gemini's AI image generator and photo editor and Runway.
What are the challenges of making a film using AI?
To make a full length feature film the challenge is maintaining character consistency, Perla said. "For example, in one frame, the person's face from a particular angle looks something else and then somewhere else it changes. So we are still at a pace where it's growing, becoming better and better day by day. While that is happening, to craft something for like two minutes, it takes a lot of time and so many takes. Two minutes might sound very easy, but there is a good amount of work that people have to put in to nail down every bit of it."
Who is the team behind the AI film festival?
Both Perla and Gambhir have no Bollywood rather film background. But they are passionate about films.
"In a highly guardrailed industry, when expressed that it's easier to reach Sam Altman than Karan Johar, it showed how the industry is built. But then the world came together to give us contacts. I didn't expect that I would have a telephone directory of the entire Bollywood in my direct messages (DMs)," Perla said.
Perla previously built a company called Blue Learn as for Gambhir he had started a firm called The Residency, backed by Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI).
"Today, I run this company called Podcast Circle. Hardeep is the co-founder of this venture capitalist firm called The Local Host. If someone between ages 16 and 25 has an idea and is constrained by a little bit of capital, they can approach The Local Host," Perla said.
Will there be more editions of the AI film festival?
Gambhir, who was on a world tour to 30 different countries to cover the stories of the best young founders and researchers, reached Paris and stumbled upon an AI film hackathon.
While he saw how good AI had gotten, it lacked character consistency. And this gave him the idea of building a bigger hackathon or a big film festival.
Gambhir hopes to organise bigger events across the globe and more editions of the AI film festival. He hopes his next destination for the AI film festival will be Palace of Versailles in France. After all that's where the AI festival's journey had started.
Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!
