Without enough production budget for reshoots, the director of upcoming action-thriller Fall says the team turned to AI technology to remove over thirty F-Bombs to turn its R-rating into a much more box office-friendly PG-13, reports Variety.
The problem – which has now become a handy little marketing hook – apparently arose when the indie film was picked up by Lionsgate for a theatrical release, where an R rating (meaning children under 17 can’t see the film without an adult present) would limit its box office potential when it releases August 12 in the US.
“When we were shooting the movie, we didn’t know if we were R or PG-13, so I used to say the F-word a lot,” said Virginia Gardner, one of the film’s stars. “I find [director Scott Mann] wanted to kill me in the mail trying to get a PG-13 rating.” Thanks to machine learning, the finished film reportedly includes family-friendly lines like, “Now we’re stuck on this stupid fucking tower in the middle of fucking nowhere. “
“Now we’re stuck on this damn tower in the middle of the damn nowhere”
Variety reports that the swap was made possible because the film’s director, Scott Mann, happened to serve as the co-CEO of Flawless, a company that specializes in using its TrueSync AI technology to translate films between different languages . Its technology is designed to provide “seamless” lip-synching, making it appear as if the film’s original actors are speaking and performing in a completely different language.
“With a film like this, we can’t reshoot it. We’re not a big tent pole … we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the time, more than anything,” Mann said in an interview. The film was shot with IMAX cameras in the middle of California’s Mojave Desert on a modest production budget of just $3 million, meaning reshoots would have taken time and money that just wasn’t available. “What really saved this film and made it accessible to a wider audience was the technology,” Mann said. Variety Reports The virtual redubs were completed in less than two weeks.
Although altering a film before its original release isn’t generally as controversial as alterations made once it’s already in theaters (*cough* Maclunkey), it always feels like a shame when the original vision of a Director does not receive public release. And with a small indie film like Fall, it seems unlikely that an uncensored director’s cut will be released after its first theatrical run.
While Fall used AI to change individual words, there are hopes that machine learning could allow entire films to be made available seamlessly in different languages without the telltale lip-sync issues that make current dubbing efforts such an eyesore.
In 2020, Polish film The Champion became the first film to be fully virtually re-dubbed into another language (English), thanks to technology from Tel Aviv-based startup Adapt Entertainment. VFX-focused YouTube channel Corridor Crew broke down the tech in a video you can check out below (starting at around the 10 minute mark).