Christopher Nolan: AI Innovators Are in the Middle of Their Own “Oppenheimer Moment” "The starving artist is a cliché, because it's true," said Locke, who worked in the Business Affairs department at Blumhouse for seven years before striking out on his independent filmmaking career. "You're giving up a career in finance, law, or something else. You're not only giving up money, but also social structures. You're giving up a comfortable life. What is that worth to you and what are you going to do when you get an opportunity to take a shortcut?" With nothing left to lose, Scout travels out to the tycoon's state-of-the-art recording studio in the middle of the Californian desert. But the situation slowly turns sour as Donna demands an exhausting amount of creative output from her captive young talent. "In the beginning of the film, she's prim, proper, put together, confident, and in control. By the end of it, she's totally unhinged," Locke explained, citing Jordan Peele's Get Out, Karen Kusama's The Invitation, Richard Shepard's The Perfection, and John Carney's Once as his main sources of cinematic inspiration. "We wanted to start at a 1 on the creepy thriller level and turn it up to an 11 by the end." Why all the craziness? Well, it turns out Donna is feeding copious amounts of sonic information into her patented AI program that will supposedly render musical artists obsolete. "When we first started this back in 2019, Decibel was a futuristic, sci-fi movie," Locke remembered. "And by the time we were shooting, it was a real, present-day horror-thriller. "So, instead of the film saying, ‘Hey, everyone, this is the way things could be, let's think about it,' it was more like, ‘Hey everyone, this is the way things are, let's think about it.’" A still of Scout (Aleyse Shannon) and Donna (Stefanie Estes) from Zac Locke's Decibel. Photo: Courtesy of Chroma Committed to living up to the premise, Locke—a musician in his own right—only used music created by human beings, with cast members Aleyse Shannon and Colby Groves contributing to the soundtrack. Plus, "We had two really talented singer-songwriters, Caitlin Scholl and Jessie Murphy, whose songs we adapted for this," he added. "That was a lot of fun, taking these more acoustic versions and [turning] them [into] these layered pieces for the film … Besides a few overdubs we did later to create some textures, all of the singing was captured live on-set." In addition to the music, sound design was a critical factor in making the story work. After all, the movie's title is the literal unit of measurement for sound! "We had a really long process of organic sounds versus machine sounds, sounds in Los Angeles versus out in the desert," Locke explained, singling out the exemplary work of sound mixer Anthony Wong and re-recording mixer/sound designer Roman Richard. "It was a long and arduous, but really fun process that we knew we were going to be doing from the very beginning. I would recommend listening to the movie with good headphones or on a sound system instead of on your computer." While the film is highly critical—and rightly so—of AI encroaching on creative spaces, the ultimate takeaway should not be that all technology is inherently bad. As Locke pointed out, our interview regarding the film would not have taken place without a helpful tool like Zoom. "Would it be better if we could meet in person over a coffee to do this? Of course it would," he concluded. "But would we necessarily be able to? We might never get to do this and meet each other. So, there's some good things about it, there's some bad things about it. I think the conversation is much more nuanced and I hope it just raises questions more than it is prescriptive as to what you should be thinking." Decibel is now available to rent and/or purchase on digital platforms like Apple TV, Prime Video, and Fandango at Home. Read more about: Source: https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/decibel-director-zac-locke-talks-musical-thriller-cautionary-tale-about-artificial-intelligence