Art is Better When it Movies

Brooklyn Film Festival

an AI-powered web experience that analyzes images of art and turns it into movie recommendations from the Brooklyn Film Festival Archive

project year:2024
AI/LLMImmersive WebDigital Activation

The Story

Ever stood in an art gallery and thought to yourself "I'd rather be watching a movie"? Well the Brooklyn Film Festival has the answer. The independent film festival, now in its 27th year, has created an AI led campaign based around the thought of 'Art is Better When it Movies'. This comes to life as an AI-powered mobile experience that allows gallery-goers to skip the art and watch footage from award winning films instead.

The Campaign

To raise the awareness for the annual Brooklyn Film Festival and invite more people to purchase tickets, the Havas team launched web films and OOH billboards to direct people to the AI experience/microsite to match their art with films.

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The Experience

"Art is better when it movies" is an interactive web experience that analyzes images of art and turns it into movie recommendations pulled directly from the BFF archive. Our playful interface never stops moving, framing movie clips from BFF films within cutouts of recognizable sculptural forms as the model carefully analyzes and matches the thematic elements in an artwork with those in a BFF film. The result screen provides an AI-powered film summary, highlighting the connections between your art and the BFF selection.

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Visual System

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Custom Shader & Animation

In order to convey the connection between art and film and a sense of playfulness, I prototyped custom shaders - one is the dynamically changing background gradient that’s cursor-reactive, and the other one is an ever-rotating 3D sculpture that has a 2D video texture made up of selected film clips. Here are the initial prototypes and how they look in the final application.

How does it work

The web application is powered by OpenAI ChatGPT models. We prepared a robust dataset that includes recommendation examples, and fine-tuned a GPT model and a specific campaign tone of voice, so it can be equipped with the knowledge of the awarded films. The model takes an image as an input, outputs a paragraph of its image interpretation and a recommendation of a film, as well as a link to watch the film.

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My Role

I was the tech lead for the project, and was responsible for the development of the mobile site, the WebGL/Shader programming, as well as the integration of the AI functionalities. I worked with different stakeholders from ideation, rapid prototyping to production. I worked closely with the copywriter to ensure the AI recommendation is accurate and relevant to the art, and the design team to ensure the visual experience is seamless and engaging, and the developer team to ensure the final development was pixel perfect.

Agency

Havas CX

The Team

  • Senior Creative Technologist - Lan Zhang

  • Solutions Architect - Mark Clifton

  • Associate Director of Technology - Jad Mintun

  • Executive Director of Technology - James Huerta

  • Creative Director/Visual Designer - Andy Woolfolk

  • Senior UX Designer - Jason Wong

  • Senior Copywriter - Nathan Jubb

  • Associate Director of Program Manager - Elizabeth Ng

  • Account Supervisor - Jacquiline Berci