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Tag: Akira Kurosawa

  • Eros Investments collaborates with IIT Bombay to develop AI-based script generating tool Kurosawa

    Eros Investments collaborates with IIT Bombay to develop AI-based script generating tool Kurosawa

    Mumbai: Global media, entertainment and technology portfolio of ventures Eros Investments has announced a strategic collaboration with IIT Bombay to design and develop an AI-based tool for automatic script generation.

    Named Kurosawa, after the celebrated Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa, the software will assist film makers in developing the plot and script of movies by generating a full-length feature film script. IIT Bombay will also create a whitepaper on Kurosawa for academic and research purposes.

    The teams from IIT Bombay and Eros have been collaborating on Kurosawa for over a year. Kurosawa will help identify the right genre, output logline, and synopsis and deliver a potentially hit script that can be customized further as required. In the current phase, Kurosawa can generate multiple engaging plots and scenes basis single input. For example, it can create genre-specific movie plots, basic genre(s) and a short 2-3 sentence prompt. It can also create scenes in a standard screenplay format basis a brief description.

    Automatic Movie Script Generation is a subfield of Natural Language Generation (NLG). The machine can learn plot and scene generation from the pre-existing data with minimum human intervention.

    Eros Investments director Swaneet Singh said, ” This association between Eros Investments and IIT Bombay is an excellent example of the amalgamation of the left and right brain. Kurosawa is a pioneering and cutting-edge technology that will revolutionize the entertainment sector. The tool will enable scriptwriters to focus on creativity and quality while doing the groundwork for them. This innovation marks a new milestone for Eros Investments that will be used as a case study in the future.”

    IIT Bombay dean of research and development Prof. Milind Atrey, added, “Kurosawa will be a huge opportunity to transform the art of storytelling with proficiency and improve efficiency for content creators. We welcome collaboration with Eros investments, led by Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya from IIT Bombay, to provide automation to the process of scripting in the entertainment industry. As the outcome of the research, IIT Bombay will also be jointly launching a white paper on Kurosawa that will be used for academic and research purposes, further supporting the upcoming generation looking to make a mark in the industry.”

    Kurosawa is based on the latest deep learning and natural language processing technologies. It is led by Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya, known for his artificial intelligence and machine learning expertise, and an internationally renowned research group. He is a professor in the computer science and engineering department at IIT Bombay and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering (2015) and Abdul Kalam National Fellow (2020). Prof. Bhattacharyya is supported in this project by the students from IIT Bombay who are a part of the curriculum.

  • Cannes Lions 2022: Decoding Pixel Party’s award-winning campaign

    Cannes Lions 2022: Decoding Pixel Party’s award-winning campaign

    Mumbai: A wholly independent Indian content and experience company and one of the key partners behind the ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ campaign Pixel Party has created history at the Cannes Lions: The International Festival of Creativity. This is the first time an India based firm has won the highest number of Lions, including a Titanium Lion, three Grand Prix, one Gold Lion, four Silver Lions and three Bronze Lions. This stellar campaign was created by Dentsu Webchutney and Pixel Party, thus creating an unparalleled interactive tour of the British Museum using augmented reality technology.

    Being the most awarded campaign at Cannes Lions 2022, ‘the Unfiltered History Tour’ captures the story of the British Museum’s stolen artefacts. For this award-winning campaign, Pixel Party developed the filters for the British museum tour by using the first of its kind technology – LiDAR (light detection ranging), which was employed to create a dynamic auto adapting Instagram filter that blends satellite data with augmented reality, to account for changing lighting conditions in the Museum.

    Using Instagram augmented reality filters, visitors can scan the museum’s disputed artefacts and see them being teleported back in time to their countries of origin. It also relays violent moments in history with the help of ten experts from those countries. The visuals were inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s black and white films and were designed to match the emotional stories told by the experts.

    Pixel Party founder and director Kalpit Dwivedi said, “This has been one of the most exciting and rewarding journeys for us. The entire process of creating an immersive experience was fascinating and challenging. It forced us to think out of the box and tackle unique situations, and we are very proud of the results. Working with a hardcore creative advertising technologist like Gurbaksh Singh (chief innovation officer of Dentsu Creative) was very thrilling and inspiring. Technology enables more powerful, impactful storytelling. So, we decided to try this using a social platform that can build a rich experience for every user – which is how Instagram’s augmented reality filters became part of this project.”

    Pixel Party director Sumit Grover said, “Executing this entire campaign took almost 18 months and the entire journey was exhilarating. It feels truly incredible to be recognized on the biggest international stage. From the entire team that poured their heart into crafting this campaign, this is our commitment to further discourse that will make room for underrepresented voices in the industry. Well, it’s been a long journey and now it’s getting the rewards that it truly deserves”

  • Akira Kurosawa’s films to screen at 72nd Venice International Film Fest

    Akira Kurosawa’s films to screen at 72nd Venice International Film Fest

    NEW DELHI: Restored films of famed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and Hou Hsiao-hsien will be screened in the Classics section of the Venice International Film Festival in September.

     

    The 72nd edition of the Festival, one of the oldest in the world, is being held from 2 – 12 September. The full list of selected films will be announced by director Alberto Barbera next week.

     

    The 21-film Classics programme includes Kurosawa’s Red Beard (1965) presented by Japan’s Toho Co Ltd and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Boys from Fengkuei (1983) co-presented by Hou, Cinémath?que Royal de Belgique and the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. 

     

    Other films in the section includes Sal?, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Yilmaz Güney’s Hope, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Léon Morin, Priest and Federico Fellini’s epoch-making Amarcord.

     

    Everest directed by Baltasar Kormákur for Universal and shot on location in Nepal and the Italian Alps will be opening film. It stars Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Michael Kelly, Sam Worthington, Keira Knightley, Emily Watson, and Jake Gyllenhaal.

     

    The world premiere of Everest will be screened on 2 September. Inspired by the incredible events surrounding an attempt to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain, Everest documents the awe-inspiring journey of two different expeditions challenged beyond their limits by one of the fiercest snowstorms ever encountered by mankind. Their mettle tested by the harshest elements found on the planet, the climbers will face nearly impossible obstacles as a lifelong obsession becomes a breathtaking struggle for survival.

     

    Another film that will have its world premiere out-of-competition is Warner Bros. Pictures’ highly anticipated drama Black Mass, directed by Scott Cooper. The film stars Johnny Depp as notorious gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, along with an acclaimed ensemble cast including Joel Edgerton,  Benedict Cumberbatch, Rory Cochrane, Jesse Plemons, Dakota Johnson, Peter Sarsgaard, and Kevin Bacon.

  • Quentin Tarantino’s next: ‘The Hateful Eight’

    Quentin Tarantino’s next: ‘The Hateful Eight’

    MUMBAI: Right around the time of the Golden Globe, rumor has it that Quentin Tarantino will complete his new script, which will be a western; the working title of the film right now is The Hateful Eight. “I had so much fun doing Django, and I love westerns so much that after I taught myself how to make one, it’s like ‘OK! Let me make another one now that I know what I’m doing,’” Tarantino told Jay Leno in November when he appeared on The Tonight Show.

     

    Tarantino has finished a draft, and is in the process of showing it to a handful of actors he wants for the picture. Nothing has been confirmed yet, however the title suggests Tarantino could be stepping up his game, playing off the title of John Sturges’ 1960 film The Magnificent Seven, which in turn was a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 Seven Samurai.

     

    No one has been cast yet, but Tarantino has reached out to veteran casting director Victoria Thomas, who worked on Django, to work with him on casting for the flick, say several insiders. A part has been written for Christoph Waltz, who starred in Tarantino’s Django and Inglourious Basterds. As rumor has it, another part has been written for Hollywood veteran Bruce Dern who, at the age of 77 and after a career worth of distinguished mostly supporting performances, has emerged as a Best Actor frontrunner in Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska.

     

    Pilar Savone, who served as a producer on Django and was also an associate producer on Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Death Proof after being his assistant, is producing Hateful Eight.