Director Kwon Hansl (Hansl von Kwon) in February won the Grand Prize and Audience Award at the inaugural Artificial Intelligence Film Festival in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

By Gil Kyuyoung and Lee Kyoung Mi
Photos = Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN)

A horror film is made with no cast, cameras or computer graphic images but only artificial intelligence (AI) programs. "One More Pumpkin" is about an elderly couple who live over 200 years and their secret. 

In February, the movie's director Kwon Hansl (Hansl von Kwon) won the Grand Prize and Audience Award at the inaugural Artificial Intelligence (AI) Film Festival in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, emerging as a pioneer of AI cinema. His work earned the Jury's Special Mention at this year's Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), and he also attended the BIFAN+ AI International Conference as a Korean representative.

"As YouTube ushered in the single creator era, a new era is coming in which anyone can make a film using AI," Kwon told Korea.net on July 23 in an interview at his studio in Seoul's Seocho-gu District.

After graduating from Chung-Ang University with a bachelor's in film studies, Kwon directed many movies such as "The King of Backyard" (2018), "The Bystander" (2020), "Man of Na Manza" (2021) and "Magical Nara: Prologue Teaser" (2023). Yet he realized just how tough reality is for a new filmmaker. 

"I discovered possibilities in AI. To move forward, I decided to apply new technologies rather than sticking to conventional methods," he said.

That is how "One More Pumpkin" was made. Its eerily weird yet scary mood shows the images of an elderly Korean couple, the Grim Reaper, a jack o'lantern and other combinations of Korean backgrounds combined with Halloween elements. It received kudos not just for its use of AI but also its cinematic narrative and thematic consciousness.

Kwon input the mm number of the camera lens, angle, lighting, aperture value and depth of field into the prompt, produced hundreds of images and edited each of them to create a video. 

"Anyone with a computer can create images imagined in their minds," he said. "AI is an innovative tool to help creators freely express themselves."

These are scenes from director Kwon Hansl's award-winning film "One More Pumpkin," which was made with generative AI.

Kwon dismissed fears that generative AI could threaten the arts, saying, "AI is just a tool of arts, not the subject." 

"Technological advancement gave birth to the art of cinema," he added. "As movies evolved from silent to sound, from black and white to color and from film to digital, we must now accept AI as the trend."

Last year, he opened Studio Freewillusion, a startup for making AI video content. He also runs AI-Kive, a platform that introduces AI services to the world, and is working on a Korean-style AI video model. 

He said his dream is to boost the competitiveness of domestic content by raising the AI penetration rate, not just through content creation.

"The trend now is to introduce AI all over the world, including Hollywood," he said, "We must actively use AI to prevent Korean content from falling behind. Going beyond artists and companies, we desperately need interest at the national level."

Kwon will soon release his next work "Poem of Doom" (unofficial title), which is said to the be world's first AI-generated musical using all AI know-how accumulated so far. 

"If 'One More Pumpkin' was an experimental film that explored the potential of AI, my newest film is a high-quality work with AI creating all audiovisual elements. Please watch for it."

Director Kwon Hansl on July 5 presents at the BIFAN+ AI International Conference at Arts Theater of Bucheon Art Center in Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do Province.