“There’s life in these stories, and that’s why we were all drawn to this project.” – Lauren Greenwood
This blog post is a report by CLCF Postdoc Cate Cleo Alexander on the closing reception of The Logline Project. For more on The Logline Project, check out our project page here!
On August 24, we celebrated the culmination of The Logline Project with a reception at Hart House. This reception allowed the screenwriters and artists involved in the project to come together — many of them meeting for the first time! — and share their experiences contributing to the project as well as insights into the ethical issues of GenAI, what could come next for the project, and the joy of human-made art.
Introduction to The Logline Project
One year ago, during the course of her research project “Exploring GenAI in the Screen Industries,” Daphne Idiz asked screenwriters: “If this moment in the industry were a film or series, what would its logline be?”
A logline is a one-two sentence summary that conveys the premise and the emotional hook of a screenplay. Essentially, loglines are compact and formulaic micro-narratives that are really effective at quickly conveying information.
Supported by funding from CLCF, the School of Cities, and the Jackman Humanities Institute, Daphne and collaborator Aline Zara selected eight loglines from local screenwriters and commissioned local artists to bring them to life as original movie posters.
The reception opened with an introduction by Daphne where she discussed the genesis of the project and the themes that emerged across the individually produced posters. This was followed by a roundtable moderated by ME Luka and featuring some of the contributing screenwriters: Lauren Greenwood, Elyne Quan, Bronwyn Aanaguniak Szabo, and Josh Granovsky. The next roundtable discussion, moderated by Daphne, featured several of the contributing artists for the Project: Andrew P. Barr, Avery Droumetsekas, Jared Olsever
Art by Gerardo Ernesto Gutiérrez, logline by Bronwyn Aanaguniak Szabo. Did you notice this Easter egg? The marks from the cord look like a vampire bite.
The ethical issues of GenAI
A common theme across the roundtable discussions was the ethics of using GenAI. These issues are likely well-known to any readers of the CLCF blog, including the use of copyright-protected works in AI training, environmental impact, and labour concerns. The screenwriters also brought up colonial extraction, the inherent misogyny baked into GenAI, and its use to harass women and minorities.
As Bronwyn stated during the roundtables: “I would want people to think deeply about the ethics of using [AI] before you engage with it. We engage in exploitative practices every day. It’s easy to say ‘the world is burning, why does this matter anyway?’ I don’t have the answer, but I want people to think about it.”
The artists and screenwriters also discussed how the pressures to use AI are connected to capitalism and the fact that people were already being overworked. As Elyne stated: “How different a conversation would be having right now if this wasn’t driven by late-stage capitalism?” Avery incorporated the concerns of inevitability and being “left behind” into her poster, choosing to depict the “monster” at a scale that felt insurmountable. While iterating the poster, though, she inverted the head to add hope that the workers would prevail.
Talking about GenAI and its impact on creative work can often feel depressing and dystopic; yet we, and the audience members that we chatted with, felt quite hopeful after the roundtables about the agency of creative workers in determining possible futures. Several panellists discussed how the tone around GenAI had shifted in the last year since they originally came up with their loglines, and in particular how their initial fears have lessened knowing more today about the capacities and limitations of these tools.
Caption: Art by Avery Droumetsekas, logline by Elyne Quan. Did you notice this Easter egg? The monster’s head is upside down, to make the poster more hopeful!
What comes next
The writers and artists talked about what could happen next for these stories. Suggestions from the panel ranged from producing trailers, to shorts, to full films. Daphne and the CLCF team are also considering a Brazil edition of The Logline Project as part of the new SSHRC Insight Grant Worker-led AI Governance: Power Resources and Shared Learnings of Cultural Workers in Canada and Brazil. In addition, Aline Zara and Lauren Knight — the graphic designer for the project who also assisted during the Q&A — will be co-leading zine workshops based on The Logline Project in York and UofT classrooms this fall term.
On a broader level, the screenwriters and artists talked about the value of academic collaboration for combating AI and demonstrating the importance of human creativity. As Josh stated: “A lot of the conversation about AI is happening about us and not with us. It’s great to have these conversations to parse what is true and isn’t true about what’s coming for us.”
The screenwriters and artists also highlighted the importance of data sharing and being able to bring concrete numbers to meetings with execs. They suggested additional audience research to demonstrate how AI-elements in films impact audience disengagement, as well as studying whether using GenAI actually saves money. Having these numbers and “proof” makes a big difference to creative work.
Caption: Art by Andrew P. Barr, logline by Lauren Greenwood. Did you notice this Easter egg? The eyes have the letters “AI” inside of them!
The joy of human made art
Part of the logic behind The Logline Project is to produce creative worker-centred alternatives to the dominant narratives of AI-inevitability and boosterism from “big tech.” One common theme across the roundtable discussion was that, despite these narratives of AI “inevitability” that often devalues creative work, there are significant limits to what GenAI can do.
The screenwriters discussed the industry trend of moving away from more generic “crowd-pleasers” into art with a distinctive voice. One example they lauded was Heated Rivalry, the gay Canadian hockey show which has been a massive success despite not checking the typical industry boxes (you can read more about Heated Rivalry in this post). Another example they gave was Obsession, the indie horror film made by people who are passionate about filmmaking on a shoe string budget; it has smashed box office records, becoming the highest-grossing film ever made for less than $1 million US.
In addition to distinct narratives, the screenwriters and artists talked about the joys of practical effects. Practical effects are increasingly used as a selling point in film — see, for example, Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. They expressed optimism that we’ll see more practical effects in the future, because audiences seem to care more about this than they did even a year or two ago.
Part of the magic of filmmaking comes from that human element. Lauren gave an example of improvisation on set, and how the variation of human error makes films more real, authentic, and fun. As Josh joked: “AI could not make The Room. You wish AI could make a plot-hole like that. There’s so much that goes wrong that is so fun to watch.” Avery gave the example of Jaws, and how the constant breakdowns of the prop shark helped to make the movie great. They argue that: “Finding it along the way is one of the best pieces about art.”
After all, GenAI works as a predictive engine, selecting the most likely possibility based on its training data. And as Andrew put it: “The most likely thing to happen is the most boring thing to make.”
Photos from The Logline Project Reception, courtesy of Lauren Knight
Research Assistant
Aline Zara (they/she) is a Ph.D. candidate and artist at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information. Their research focuses on voice, sound, embodiment, and AI at the intersection of critical AI studies, voice and sound studies, transfeminist science & technology studies, disability studies, and queer studies.
CLCF Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Cate Cleo Alexander is a graduate of the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Cate employs a wide variety of methodologies in her research, including autoethnography, digital ethnography, media historiographies, sampling/scraping, qualitative coding,& artistic autoethnographic experiments with genAI
CLCF Co-Director & Assistant Professor
Dr. Daphne Rena Idiz (she/her) is Assistant Professor in Film and Media Industries at York University. Her research investigates how media industries, cultural policy frameworks, and production cultures respond to and shape technological change, with a particular focus onstreaming and generative AI (GenAI).
Research Assistant
Lauren Knight (she/her) is a sound artist and Ph.D. candidate (SSHRC CGS-D) in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include acoustic ecology, cultural sound studies, media history, and research creation.
CLCF Co-Director & Associate Professor
Dr. MaryElizabeth (“M.E.”) Luka is PI and Co-Director of the Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF) cluster and Associate Professor, Arts & Media Management, at University of Toronto, where they examine modes and meanings of co-creative production and distribution in the digital age for arts, culture, and media.
CLCF Co-Director & Assistant Professor
Rafael Grohmann is a Co-lead and Co-Director of the Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF) cluster and an Assistant Professor of Media Studies (Critical Platform Studies) at the University of Toronto. Rafael is the leader of the DigiLabour initiative and founding editor of the Platforms & Society journal.
