The New Machine Cinema

By Hooroo Jackson

In The New Machine Cinema, pioneering AI filmmaker Hooroo Jackson presents a groundbreaking theoretical framework for understanding cinema's next evolution. Drawing from his experience creating the first AI-generated feature film (Window Seat, 2023) and first AI animated feature (DreadClub: Vampire's Verdict, 2024), Jackson examines how

• Language: English
• Publisher: Film Inc
• Release date: Dec 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798348308612

Book preview

The New Machine Cinema

Hooroo Jackson

In The New Machine Cinema, pioneering AI filmmaker Hooroo Jackson presents a groundbreaking theoretical framework for understanding cinema's next evolution. Drawing from his experience directing the first AI-generated feature film (Window Seat, 2023) and the first AI animated feature (DreadClub: Vampire's Verdict, 2024), Jackson examines how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing filmmaking at both practical and philosophical levels.

This collection of seven landmark essays explores the transformative potential of AI, laying the groundwork for the AI filmmaking revolution. One Man, One Film positions AI filmmaking as the ultimate realization of Bazin’s auteur theory, while Speed of Mind introduces a new cinematic language that matches the pace of human consciousness. The Living, Breathing Cinema envisions a future where cinema is malleable, and The Automated Film warns of potential threats to artistic autonomy. Additional essays tackle questions of legitimacy, creative freedom, and moral implications of AI in cinema.

Together, these writings establish fundamental principles for a nascent art form while documenting its emergence. Jackson's unique position as both film theorist and on the field practitioner provides invaluable insight into AI's impact on film production, distribution, and creative possibility. Essential reading for filmmakers, critics, and anyone interested in cinema's future, The New Machine Cinema provides vital context for understanding this pivotal moment in film history.

Featuring the essays:

The New Machine Cinema

AI Films Are Films

One Man, One Film

Speed of Mind

The Living, Breathing Cinema

The Moral Argument

The Automated Film

Foreword

Jackson's essays emerge at a pivotal moment when the foundations of cinematic creation are being rewritten. While much of the discourse around AI and film has focused on technical capabilities or economic disruption, these writings venture into deeper theoretical territory, examining how machine cinema fundamentally reshapes the relationship between creator, medium, and audience.

The central tension Jackson explores is not between human and machine filmmaking, but between cinema as an institutional product and cinema as direct creative expression. His concept of speed of mind - the collapse of distance between imagination and realization - represents a profound shift in how we might conceptualize the creative process. Where traditional film theory often treats technical and economic constraints as generative forces that shape artistic expression, Jackson proposes a cinema liberated from material conditions.

This liberation, however, raises complex questions about authorship and authenticity that Jackson approaches from multiple angles. His notion of the living, breathing film - works that exist simultaneously in multiple forms - challenges conventional ideas about the singular, definitive version of a film. Yet rather than suggesting this multiplicity diminishes authorial intent, Jackson argues it potentially strengthens it by allowing the creator's vision to manifest in its fullest form, unconstrained by the need to choose a single interpretation.

The essays build toward a radical proposition: that machine cinema might not simply be a new tool for making traditional films, but rather a fundamentally new form of artistic expression that shares more in common with literature or dreams than with industrial filmmaking. Jackson's examination of the automated film suggests that even the complete removal of human technical labor from the process might not mean the end of artistic creation, but rather its transformation into something we can barely conceive of yet.

What makes these writings particularly valuable is their emergence from direct engagement with the medium. As both theorist and practitioner, Jackson writes from the perspective of someone actively grappling with these questions through creative work. His experiences with both traditional and machine filmmaking allow him to identify the subtle but crucial ways in which AI transforms not just the mechanics of production, but the very nature of cinematic thinking.

The essays collected here will likely be viewed as either prophetic or misguided, depending on how machine cinema evolves. But their real value may lie in how they push us to question our assumptions about what cinema is and could be. Just as early film theorists had to develop new frameworks to understand the unique properties of their medium, Jackson attempts to establish theoretical foundations for understanding an emerging form that may ultimately transform our relationship with visual storytelling itself.

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