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The Human behind Human Made
Hi, I'm writer director William Grave. My films have featured on BBC news and Talk TV, and have earned awards at festivals around the world. You can find more of my work on bywilliamgrave.com
What I love about directing is the amazing human talent I get to collaborate with. I can't make music to safe my life, but I get to work with brilliant composers to create score for my films. I can't act to save my life, but I get to work with fantastic actors. And I couldn't be trusted holding a camera at a family wedding, but I'm very fortunate to collaborate and learn from talented cinematographers. But, it's also the unsung talent on a film-set that make a film. I will never forget on my mental health film Benchmarks, when our make up-artist Isabella Larter mentioned in pre-production that the semi-colon (;) in the community of those who have survived a suicide attempt, means that life didn't come to a full stop, it continued. The semi-colon is a symbol of hope. I thought wow, how beautiful. Even if it's seen and understood by a small percentage of the audience, it felt right for the main character to have it tattooed on his hand, and for the semi-colons to take the place of the letter 'i' in the end-credits. The human village of artists coming together and collaborating in unexpected ways can't be replicated in AI films.
The original inspiration for Human Made came when Coca Cola decided to created a Christmas Ad that was completely AI: there were no human actors, no human crew in the making of the film. Some people in the industry believed 'ah, it looks fake... this isn't the future.' But, I showed it to my father without mentioning it was AI and simply said, 'check out this new Christmas ad by Coca Cola'. The penny dropped for me, after even watching it twice he didn't notice anything unusual about the commercial. It apparently even scored highly in audience testing. Other brands have followed suit. I believe we can't stop the tsunami of AI films, but what we can control how audience perceive them by celebrating work with humans in font of the camera and behind it too, creating a premium for Human Made films.
About
Human Made
Our aspiration is for brands and film-makers around the world to use the Human Made mark to showcase to their audience that they worked with human talent in front of the camera and behind it too. When so many brands are cheaply turning to AI slop, we are missing a key piece of humanity in films that only a human actor and human director and crew too can bring, which in turns means brands are not truly connecting with their human audience. The knock on effect on the arts is huge too. When an actor does a TV advert - that financially frees them to do a theatre run for 4 months. When a cinematographer works on a commercial for 3 or 4 days - that enables them to take on a lower budget independent film project. AI adverts don’t just affect advertising it affects the film ecosystem hugely.
We believe having the watermark of Human Made at the end of a commercial, our version of the Fair Trade logo, will create a brand premium and an audience that warms to a brand who believes in humanity. When an independent film-maker or even a film studio has the Human Made mark on their end credits, it is a celebration of all the humans that were involved in making the film and tells the audience that we put people before profit. We are in solidarity with the writers and actors strikes, and people willing to stand up for the artisans that make films human. Because with AI films there are no make up artists. There are no gaffers. There are no set designers. There are no runners. There are no storyboard artists. There are no sounds recordists. There are no actors.
As a filmmaker myself, I believe and have experienced moments when human ingenuity on set bleeds into the spirit and atmosphere of the film. The experience of making the film becomes part of the DNA of the film itself. It’s the human touch at every step of the journey that leaves a mark on the work.
There is no art without humanity.
With Human Made, it’s time to make your mark.
