An Interview with Hooroo Jackson (“DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict”) – 7/31/24
‘DreadClub’ interview with Mike Haberfelner, July 2024
Your new movie DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict – in a few words, what’s it about?
DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict began when the first review of my film Window Seat, the first AI feature film in history, disparagingly spoke about the movie’s uncanny-valley raw machine video, joking that it’s ‘certainly not like Snow White’, the first animated feature film. In that moment, a fire lit up in my eyes, I was going to make the first AI animated feature film too. Not only that, but it would be 100 % AI, with all sound, video, music, and performances machine-generated, something that wasn’t possible when I made Window Seat, which had non-AI sound effects and music. Incidentally, I ended up stuffing DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict with references to Snow White, such as the red necklace, the cursed love, the evil queen.
The story: Betty Gray, a college student obsessed with gothic romances, finds herself living one when she falls for Duchamps De Ve–a man on trial for being a vampire. In the press, I highlight that the film is actually not a vampire love story, but a love story between humanity and AI. Betty knows that she should not be dating a man like Duchamps, but she is drawn to him just like we are drawn to AI. This is all a metaphor for double-edged technological convenience, that takes our humanity in the process of giving us everything we want. She knows she should be with Liam, a college student her age, but she really wants to be with Duchamps, an exciting bad boy vampire.
The end of the film is like Total Recall, where our character has either just achieved a happy ending, or that they have fallen into a Kafka-esque eternal hell of their own making, a hell from which there is no escape. To offset the implications of the ending, I present it as the most euphoric possible movie ending. It’s the kind of ending Betty read about in stories, watched in films, and longed for.
The alternative reading of the film is like Brazil, Inception or Total Recall, where what we are seeing is the ending watched from Betty’s eyes, not the real ending of what is actually happening. You see throughout the movie we are seeing this movie-within-the-movie, the tragic love story between Emril and Elysee, two lovers doomed to a vampire’s curse. We see their struggle as they gradually fall into madness. Is this Betty’s ultimate fate?
What were your sources of inspiration when writing DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict?
DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict is directly influenced not just by The Count of Monte Cristo, but by the streamlined cinematic adaptations of it. With the exception of the Gerard Depardieu miniseries, almost every adaptation of that novel simplifies the plot into a basic action revenge thriller. If you read the novel, it’s actually a dense conspiracy mystery.
There are several other influences including Max Ophül’s Letters from an Unknown Woman–a film about a girl played by Joan Fontaine and her unrequited love affair with a womanizer. From her point of view, a real love story is happening. From his, she’s just another girl.
DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict is also inspired by classic cartoons like Hey Arnold, which is to me the greatest cartoon series ever made, about kids on different adventures across the city, with a real down to earth jazzy soundtrack. The film is also inspired by Saturday morning cartoons like Scooby Doo with these villains of the week being unmasked; and, of course, anime. Think of something like Speed Racer.
In the interludes of my film, they always shout things like “DreadClub! Assemble!”, a very anime kind of trope. Why put that there? Because I loved making an anime.
One of the most important characters in the movie is an actual AI, called Jamboree. Jamboree is a cereal box toy from Japan that hackers discovered connects to a black-hat AI network; so government spies from anywhere in the world can buy cereal wherever they are in the world, to access secret spy tech. Eventually, students discovered this. They found that Jamboree will do anything you say. But since it’s a wacky toy, you have to finesse it in funny ways to get past its obfuscation.
You made DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict using AI – to put it bluntly, why? And to what extent did you rely on AI when it came to creative decisions? And did you always plan for DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict to be an AI movie?
It goes without saying I lost friends over my work in AI. What motivates me is knowing that I am on the right side of history, making it basically a no-brainer to make AI films.
The incredible high of doing pioneering, historic work is also a real trouble. You want to name-drop the great filmmakers in your imagination, but they are nowhere to be found in today’s demonic climate. Instead, I see such a beautiful future where filmmaking is available to all, not only just the rich. If I can be someone for that future, if they can look back and see absolutely no one in the contemporary day was working for their interests, that it was just a world entirely driven by nepotism, privilege, wealth disparity, the completely random circumstance of your birth determining your entire fate, then moving the needle on that is a life well lived.
I always said, AI is capitalism meeting its match, and they are mad. They would rather tear down the entire thing with them in it than let us make our films. Stephen King in the 70s said, you will get credit only when the old guard dies, and that is exactly what ends up happening; it really is true that they would rather die than give you credit.
In the end what I have learned is that history is no consolation. Material success matters. So DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict is a breakthrough for me because it is really on the other side of this very ugly moment in history. It is timeless. It will live to see a better world, and the best gift I gave it is it being amplified by history, which would ensure eyes will come on it. I really believe they will love the movie.
Do take us through the whole process, how does one make an AI movie?
DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict is a milestone in filmmaking in three ways. It is:
1. The first AI animated feature film ever made.
2. The first AI anime film.
3. The first feature film with 100% AI sound, music, visuals, and performances; so everything on screen is AI generated.
I don’t really see the AI writing as a point of contesting. I am planning to publish the entire dialogues I had with LLMs in the making of DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict for the historical record to show people exactly how I work with AI to write, craft, and produce my films. You see this has been a vast undertaking, with what is entirely a solo made venture.
Published July ’23, Window Seattook just three weeks, assembled from five second video clips. At the time, AI video companies found it was costing them way too much money, so they nerfed the output. It currently is not even possible to make a movie like Window Seatright now, one year later.> And for all the ridicule about its raw machine video, that was actually an extraordinarily performed machine movie, with real emotion and feeling. But after they nerfed the video workflow, I basically soft-quit AI filmmaking. It was like they handed us the most amazing toy, and then took it right out our hands.
In December ’23, MidJourney released the V6 update. I experimented with a new workflow—rather than crafting a film with 5-second videos, I would craft them one image at a time. I ran a test making a short film about Michael Jackson. At the time, character consistency was not possible, but Michael Jackson was so famous I could get him consistent in every single shot. If you watch the short film, the children have no character consistency, they’re different every other shot, but you don’t really mind—you only care about Michael. The Michael Jackson short got something like 25,000 views, with several people saying it sets a new standard in AI filmmaking. So with that, I greenlit DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict. At no point did I think it would work.
Over those six months, I am talking, not even one minute off. I was even generating visuals in the sauna. It was like climbing the tallest mountain. 17,000 still images. Gradually, the movie became possible. Character consistency was solved. Animation, which I dreaded, was actually a breeze. The movie was not only possible, but it was possible to achieve excellence.
You’ve worked with AI before on the movie Window Seat – so how did work on the two movies compare, and how has AI evolved since the earlier film?
Well because I spoke to this, let me talk about how the conversation around AI changed since from making Window Seatto making DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict. That movie came out exactly one year ago before people got word that they are supposed to hate AI. Now, when producers are red in the face with shame, hiding with their tail between their legs, and cringe at a Twitter mob pointing out an AI component in their movie, I am proudly standing behind my AI films. I am attempting to forge a peaceful partnership with machines now. I do not take the criticism seriously, in part because I know that all the haters will pivot once their favorite filmmakers and ecelebs embrace AI. The haters will claim they never opposed AI and were supportive all along, mark my words.
Even still as I have made major ground and developed an actual animated AI film, they still move the goal-post and are now resorting to saying things that have no alignment with reality. They really have nothing this time. Real history is rocky like this. It’s not like in the movies. The swelling music we must play for ourselves. This field is just too important to allow haters to dictate its legitimacy. It is the beginning of the next stage of man’s relationship with machines. So I will never stop trying to legitimize AI films. Every hate comment that comes in only reinforces my drive that human beings need serious machine augmentation to make us better, because right now we are worse than I have ever seen us.
Do talk about DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict‘s approach to the vampire genre, and is this a genre especially dear to you?
Well, ‘vampire’ becomes a thinly veiled story about the evolutionary burden. One key is how intertwined with technology these vampires are. I asked LLMs what genre cliche should I avoid, and it immediately said, avoid the cliche of aristocratic, erudite vampire families. I couldn’t help it. But I made them Silicon Valley-wealthy instead. The kind who wear sports jackets and sneakers.
To me, the most beautiful thing about this movie is not its play on genre. It’s the picture of youth. They are so accurate to that age of 18-21, the things that occupy them and obsess them. It’s exactly like being that age. They are so lost and innocent, hopeless, and smart. Maybe I will make a sequel to follow them on another mystery, but it will only be if people loved DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict.
DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict has a certain anime-look to it, especially when it comes to character design – now what can you tell us about that creative choice of yours?
I have run into this notion so many times that people long for the 80s/90s anime aesthetic and wish we could go back to it. So I didn’t hesitate to show that AI makes this totally possible. As a filmmaker, I always had plans to make animated films, I just didn’t know that I would be animating them myself. One thing that I have my eye on is making a CG Pixar-style film in AI. It does seem sort of impossible right now, but then so did DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict when I began production.
The $64-question of course, where can DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict be seen?
I am pushing it out later this month to streaming. I would love to do a physical media release with multiple cuts (the 100 % machine cut, a personal director’s cut with non-machine elements, the historical July 4 premiere, etc.).
I am also bringing out a ‘making of’ book in August that will include my complete LLM dialogues. The number one question I get is how much of the story is machine-written, and this book will answer exactly how I work with LLMs to craft the stories. It will also show a lot of brutal exchanges I had with critics, gatekeepers, and trolls. The book will document the entire process, because it’s important to have on record how this film was made, so that in the future, people cannot attempt to take the accomplishment out of my hands and ascribe it to their eceleb or ivy league buddies instead.
Anything you can tell us about audience and critical reception of DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict?
I have faced so much opposition from every corner, but in the end, it is everything I hoped it would be, and I am so honored it is the first fully AI animated film. I think it is beautiful and timeless. At the same time, I recognize I am not just early on these AI films but that I am standing almost entirely alone. The idea of films made entirely by one person is just so new, the implications are so staggering, that people often react defensively. They will do anything and everything except just watch and enjoy the film.
Any future projects you’d like to share? And based on your work on DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict, could you ever be persuaded to do another AI movie?
My younger self hot off Aimy in a Cage would be so excited to know that not only would I get to make every film I ever dreamed of, with infinite scale, total creative control, and money as no object; not only that, but I wouldn’t have to deal with Hollywood demons in the process. What a world we are creating. This is only possible in this exact moment in time. The AI filmmaking revolution is here. The AI filmmaking revolution is here. The AI filmmaking revolution is here. And they will all pivot, every single one of them will pivot on AI. That’s maybe when my vision will be totally understood, and I can go “See? You were so worried over nothing.”
Your/your movie’s website, social media, whatever else?
Please keep track of me on my website, hooroojackson.com, and I am also on Instagram.
Anything else you’re dying to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask?
The AI soundtrack for DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict is one of the most surprising elements of the movie. AI music is already so good only a few months out the gate (Suno AI only debuted seven months ago in December ’23).
Other than that, it is an honor and privilege to work in AI and continue to try and legitimize the field. We are filmmakers first, and while all the nonsense we have to deal with is so unfortunate, in the end it is worth every bit of trouble that we go through. It is the smallest cost to getting a film at the end of it. Wow. I can hardly even believe that it is real.
Thanks for the interview!
