Indie Festival Creates a Dedicated "Synthetic Cinema" Jury Category
Inside the 18-month indie production where prompt engineers, VFX veterans and neural animation tools built a feature that is now in the awards conversation. We break down the shot pipeline, likeness clearances and the voting debate.
Sarah Lin
Senior Tech Editor • 4 min read
InterviewUnpacking the lyric workshops, voice synthesis and fan-voted stage choices behind a virtual performer's first tour — and the people who make her possible.
From automated sponsorship posts to always-on livestreams, talent studios explain how a roster of synthetic personalities is actually run — and where disclosure rules come in.
Persona bibles drive everything
Each digital star has a written bible that defines voice, values and no-go topics.
Streaming services are grappling with user-uploaded vocal clones, and some labels are experimenting with revenue-split licences for fans. A plain-language guide to the fight.
Voice is identity
A singer's voice is tied to personal identity, not just to recordings.
Procedural Engine Deep DiveBy pairing local language models with player-action logs, the developers of a fictional online RPG generate fresh quest lines overnight. Here is the architecture — and the human editors in the loop.
Notes for the pilot episode of our planned audio show: what comedy writers say machines get wrong about timing, character and surprise. The audio edition is coming soon.
4 min readExplainerWe designed a set of shot tests — frame consistency, lighting, multi-character blocking — to compare two fictional video generators. Here is our method and what to look for.
4 min readTutorialA conceptual walkthrough: recording consented vocal stems, preparing data, avoiding phase artifacts and getting the result into a plugin your DAW can load.
4 min readExplainerSolo creators can now capture full-body motion with two ordinary phones and a pose-estimation pipeline. We explain the setup, the clean-up and the limits.
Our stories are reported and written by people. Images are labelled: launch-edition artwork is placeholder imagery and may be generated, and we never present a synthetic image of a real person as captured photography.
The Morning Synthesis: a sharp 3-minute morning read on model releases, studio and guild deals, and the synthetic stars everyone is talking about — for filmmakers, game creators, music producers and curious fans.
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