Sunspring (2016)

A computer generated the screenplay for this short science fiction film.

Director:

Oscar Sharp

Writer:

Benjamin (as Benjamin, a system-on-chip [SOC] computer with graphics processing unit [GPU], running a 'long short term memory' [LSTM] recurrent neural network [RNN])

Stars:

Thomas Middleditch, Humphrey Ker, Elisabeth Gray

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Thomas Middleditch	...	H
Humphrey Ker	...	C
Elisabeth Gray	...	H

Storyline

A computer generated the screenplay for this short science fiction film.

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Plot Keywords:

nonsense | experimental film | 

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Genres:

Short | Sci-Fi

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Details

Country:

USA UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

9 June 2016 (USA)

Filming Locations:

Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

End Cue

Technical Specs

Runtime:

9 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The screenplay was written by an artificial intelligence. The goal of the film was to see if a computer could write a screenplay that could win a competition.

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Crazy Credits

The opening titles read:

Just above your smartphone keyboard lives an artificial intelligence. It was trained on lots of texts and emails, And tries to guess what you'll type next.

We were curious what would happen if we trained this kind of software on something else;

Science fiction screenplays.

So we fed a LSTM Recurrent Neural Network with these: [Numerous screenplays are listed as .txt files.] Then gathered a cast & crew for one day.

Then we fed in random seeds from a sci-fi filmmaking contest...

Prompts Title: Sunspring Dialogue: "It may never be forgiven, but that is just too bad." Prop & action: A character pulls a book from a shelf, flips through it and puts it back. Optional science idea: In a future with mass unemployment, young people are forced to sell blood. ...Gave it a cup of really hot tea...

...And turned it on.

This was the screenplay it wrote:

[Screenplay shown on screen]

Along with these song lyrics: [Lyrics shown on screen]

What follows

is our attempt at making it.

Sunspring

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Connections

References Alien³ (1992)

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Soundtracks

Home on the Land
Lyrics by Benjamin (as The Computer)
Music by Tiger Darrow and Andrew Orkin

User Reviews

All your film are belong to us

It's a great idea. Get some computer program to write a screenplay.

The result? Weird, dull rubbish. It's hard to argue against because, technically, no one wrote it. Just a few weeks ago, some complete moron paid over $432k for an AI generated painting. If that's not a searing indictment against rich d#%kheads, I don't know what is.

This is kind of the same. It's got a certain novelty value, in that a computer was "trained" and then wrote this (it indicates that the "training" is pretty basic). It doesn't make any sense grammatically or narratively. Some reviews have described it as "hilarious and intense", which gives you an indication of the average level of intelligence out there. But we live in a work where the Kardashians are famous and popular, so it really should be no suprise.

It's worth watching because it's potentially the first of its kind. It's not worth a score of 5.7 (at time of writing).