Production team reveals difficulties in composing Rimba Raya scenes with AI

The production team of the cinematic series Rimba Raya has revealed a number of difficulties faced when producing and composing each scene with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).

“AI turns out to be dangerous if not mastered. For example, when we wanted to create an Indonesian forest, it turned out that in AI’s view there is no Indonesian forest. What exists are African and Amazonian forests,” said Rano Karno, the initiator of the Rimba Raya series and Deputy Governor of Jakarta, during a press conference in Jakarta on Saturday.

Rano recounted that when observing the production process of composing each scene featuring backgrounds, AI often provided images or elements that did not match the production team’s wishes. He gave an example that when composing an Indonesian forest background, what AI displayed was actually a forest from another country. This also applied to the wildlife within it, where AI displayed King Kong, which he said is not an animal native to Indonesia.

“So in my opinion, AI is indeed an imperfect technology. We must perfect it,” said Rano.

Therefore, the use of storyboards in the making of the cinematic series is still very much needed to align the final result with the creator’s wishes.

Ario also mentioned that the challenge of using AI lies in the cinematography techniques, whose understanding differs from the theory taught to humans when studying at university.

“Perhaps there are those here who understand the world of film; there is a medium close-up, and it is very different from the medium close-up in the film theory I learned at school and on campus. The aspect ratio is also very different from film cameras,” said Ario.

As a conventional filmmaker, he said, there was also a sense of anger and frustration during the production process because he felt he had to fight against his own desires as well as the machine.

The same sentiment was also expressed by Rimba Raya’s Chief Prompter, Farel Abid, who said that some AI systems do not yet fully understand the Indonesian language. Farel noted that even AI from China, when used, cannot yet translate into Indonesian.

“The AI from China cannot yet understand Indonesian; it understands English or its own native language better,” he added.