Walking Shadows Vol. 3 Explainer – Tudor Beeswax Commercial From Episode One

So what is the faux reality show “The Little Sleep” featured in Walking Shadows Vol. 3? And what does this dystopian future world we’re envisioning look like where such a show could exist? Creator/Director of Walking Shadows, Sally McLean, dives a bit deeper into one of the fake commercials she’s created, in the first of a series of explainers for this current season.

Using royalty free stock footage and music and a free A.I. generated presenter (including voice), created from an A.I. generated photograph – this is the updated first fake commercial created for the new season of Walking Shadows Vol. 3.

This post is discussion about A.I. and related tech in regards to the creation of this ad. I’ll talk more about the actual content of the ad (i.e. what its saying and it’s context in “The Little Sleep” world) in my next post, later this week.

The first version of this commercial, as seen in Episode One of the season was created back in May 2024. This new version was created today (18 September 2024). In four months, A.I. has improved enough to make the A.I. presenter more life-like and more animated.

It has given the presenter lips and teeth (which are missing in the first version, which you can see in Episode One here: https://youtu.be/1cMNspIOR_Q?si=oBy8evUMgiVNgtYl&t=258) and more natural movement. This is using a free A.I. video generating service. Can you imagine what a fully paid version can do!?

This whole commercial was created using stock footage, music, some VFX and a fake presenter that I created from an A.I. photograph, that I also created using prompts. It’s also for a fake product. So it’s fake – just to be clear. You can’t buy this product.

The whole thing was created in 90 minutes – without any actual filming. All generated on a computer (obviously the stock footage uses real people and the music was created synthetically by a human, but A.I. is getting much better at creating moving images and music too). I did write the script myself (as I did for all of the series), but if I wanted to, I could have used A.I. for that too and saved even more time. Although I suspect I would have sacrificed some quality.

Yes, a human (me) was involved in writing the prompts to generate the A.I. visual content, sourcing the stock footage and music and editing it all together, but how long will that human element be needed with things like this?

As a creative and actor, this aspect scares the h*ll out of me. But it also meant that I could create a whole suite of these commercials – and also newsbreaks – for this world for free – which is a godsend for a low budget web series.

But I can’t help feeling, that while I have created this season of Walking Shadows to warn against the overuse of A.I. and the general misinformation and societal and political divides we face globally, I may be contributing to the problem in a way. Sure, this season, like all our work with Shakespeare is an experiment, but I’m a little surprised – and unnerved – how well this aspect of the experiment worked.

Mind you, there are already plenty of A.I. generated ads on YouTube and socials generally, and even A.I. influencers, but still – just because everyone else is doing it, should we? Even with the best of intentions?

So, in the advent of A.I. generated content all I and the team ask is that you support real, live artists and creatives too (of which there is an army involved in all our work). All the actors who play the death row inmates in the season are real people. That’s the one aspect of the season that is fully 100% actual live humans. And you can tell. Luckily A.I. has not progressed far enough yet to get rid of the “uncanny valley” aspect when generating moving, talking humans.

The host of the series, “Arial Milan” is a mix of A.I. – generated from photos of myself – mixed with live footage of myself playing the role, and then auto-tune being used on my voice, plus a lot of tweaking in Adobe Premiere Pro with VFX & SFX effects when blending all the elements together. Despite it using my own live performance, with A.I. and VFX elements used to enhance the “uncanny valley” look of the character, it’s unsettling to watch for anyone who knows me, as they all keep telling me. All those performing monologues are live actors, as captured in studio and not enhanced by A.I. or VFX (although they are acting against a blue screen). And the director, writer, sound editor, crew – all real people.

What does this all mean? I really don’t know. All I can say is keep supporting live, real creators and be careful out there in this brave new world!

Sally McLean
Creator/Director
Walking Shadows