Remembering the Past, Reimagining the Future: AI Filmmaker Inspires Sherborne Pupils
What does a creative career look like when AI can generate an image, a voice or a film clip in seconds? This was the question that sixth formers put to two experts leading the way in creative careers at Sherborne’s latest ‘Careers & Pathways Business Breakfast’.
As the Sherborne Schools prepared to commemorate Remembrance Day, the meeting had particular poignancy as Nick Southwell, an Old Shirburnian who is working at the frontier of AI filmmaking, showed pupils an AI film he has made about his grandfather, a pilot who died in the Second World War, ‘Think Of You Often’.
Nick wanted to make a film that helps younger generations understand the sacrifice made by those who lived and fought in the Second World War. His father, who appears in the film, said, "I feel my generation is one of the last to have a real, personal connection to those who lived through the Second World War - that makes it incredibly important to me that we keep their memories and stories alive."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=XhQGwfCqtsA&ra=m
The extremely moving eight-minute film took just two weeks to make and is gaining a great deal of attention from media and politicians. Pupils were surprised, and encouraged, by how much of Nick's process is human. Whilst most of the images are AI-generated, he told them that every creative choice was his – writing the idea and script from scratch, art-directing every still image and editing images and sound entirely by hand. In ‘Think Of You Often’ Nick mixes AI footage with traditional filming, including a real interview with his father.
Nick doesn't see AI as a threat to his work.
"When everyone can do everything, the people who add something of their own rise straight to the top. Creativity, hard work and taste count for more now, not less."
Sherborne’s Business Breakfast underlined the reassuring fact that although creative careers are changing - there are still lots of opportunities. It was also a chance for pupils to pause and reflect on the enormous sacrifice made by previous generations.
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