AI for Film Making Hackathon

About
The past 10 years have witnessed a fast-growing field of AI technology in computer vision and graphics. All these technologies facilitate image/video processing/generation, which benefits video production. The mission of the MIT Film Makers Association is to leverage the power of these technologies and empower everybody to create stories/scenes to sympathize with others. We are organizing the "AI for Filmmaking Hackathon" on January 21st, 2023 at MIT Innovation Headquarters with the theme of "recreating one’s life". We invite people with both artistic and coding skills to team up and utilize AI for filmmaking. No previous experience is required! Come and learn cool techniques to create art! We will provide unlimited beverages and food during the event.

Requirement

Format: The film has to be original, 1-2 min long, and finished on time.

Content: The film has to match the topic of the hackathon “Tell me your dream”. This topic is designed to accommodate a wide range of stories for people to express themselves. For example, “dream” can take any meaning in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, like “a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep”, “something that fully satisfies a wish”, etc. The keyword “me” can hold various meanings as well, eg. sharing between friends, inquired by people of power with the intention to help the less fortunate, or as a question during an interview…. anything you see fit.

Utilization of AI technology: The film has to utilize at least one of the following AI techniques:

AI techniques that reduce the cost of film making:

Video frame interpolation (Github summary)
Video super-resolution (Github summary)
Video stabilization (Nerfies)

AI for content creation:

AI for script generation (Writecream's AI Script Generator)
AI for image generation (DALLE2, Stable Diffusion, Disco diffusion)
AI for image-to-video synthesis (Stochastic image to video synthesis using cINNs)
AI for video generation (Meta text-to-video, Google Imagen)
AI for music creation (AI for music creation summary, Hugging Face img to music)

AI for facilitating artists:

Neural radiance field for modifying object features (Decomposing NeRF for Editing via Feature Field Distillation)
3D reconstruction from image + artificially moving the camera (3D reconstruction GitHub summary)
Face swapping/enactment (Github summary, Adobe neural filters, Davinci Face Refinement)
Motion capture (Adobe character-animator)

AI techniques built-in software:

Runaway

Speakers and Judges

Greg Dandiels

Screenwriter, television producer, and director

Ben Relles

Content Strategy, Office of Reid Hoffman

Pat Pataranutaporn

Technologist and researcher at MIT

James Tompkin

Visual computing researcher, Assistant Professor at Brown Univeristy

Schedule

Time (ET)
11/15/2022		Registration MIT Building 6 - 120 We will send out a sign-up sheet for people to sign up around mid-November. We welcome both undergrads and graduate students from MIT, Harvard, Emerson College, Berklee, etc. to participate. Other AI or art lovers are also welcome if they can come on-site. Registered participants are then invited to a Slack group and freely form teams of 5 people. For people that are left out, we will match them with participants with complementary skills.
01/16/2023 6pm		Workshop 1: AI tools for video production MIT Building 6 - 120 We will introduce AI tools for video production in the first half of the workshop. We will host a coding session for participants to try these models/APIs themselves. Our staff will troubleshoot GPU access, model installation, and model deployment.
01/18/2023 6pm		Workshop 2: Traditional tools for video production MIT Building 6 - 120 We will give a quick tutorial on the Adobe series and DaVinci Resolve in the first half of the workshop. We will host a practice session in the second half of the workshop. Our staff will troubleshoot the installation of software and answer questions related to the functions.
01/21/2023		Hackathon MIT Innovation Headquarters, 292 Main St, Cambridge, MA 02142 3rd floor Student Innovators Lounge all day 4th floor Student Venture Studio Open Space for Opening Speech, Screening, and Awarding Ceremony
01/21/2023 9 am		Opening Speech [Participants only] Pioneers in the AI for art creation Pat Pataranutaporn will give an opening speech.
01/21/2023 9:30 am-6:00 pm		Film making [Participants only] Teams finish shooting/creating a 1-2min long film. Our staff will provide technical support on GPU access/model implementation/software usage.
01/21/2023 5 pm		Panels: The future of AI for film making [Participants and audience are welcomed] We will host a panel discussion on the future of AI for film making. Our speakers include producer and director Greg Daniels, formerly head of Comdey at Youtube Originals Ben Relles, Brown university CS professor Dr. James Tompkin.
01/21/2023 6 pm		Screening + Dinner [Participants and audience are welcomed] We will serve dinner and watch the finished films together. Professional judges will pick the winners based on the quality of the story, technical innovation, and artistic skills. The audience can vote for the most liked team.
01/21/2023 7 pm		Awarding Ceremony [Participants and audience are welcomed] We will host the awarding ceremony.