Nigerian filmmaker Obi Emelonye has revealed how artificial intelligence helped him visualise and build the historical world of his 2024 Igbo-language film, Out of Breath, turning generative AI from an experimental tool into part of his filmmaking and production-design process.
Emelonye, who directed and co-wrote Out of Breath, said the film represented a significant development in his experimentation with AI after he first began exploring the technology as a filmmaking tool.
The 121-minute thriller, which stars Jide Kene Achufusi, Nonso Ekemezie and Kanayo O. Kanayo, tells the story of an Igbo elder who challenges an ancient tradition of burying servants alongside their masters. IMDb lists Emelonye as the film’s director and one of its writers, and records its Nigerian release as November 8, 2024.
Speaking during a Filmmakers Forum discussion on artificial intelligence and the future of filmmaking, Emelonye explained that his use of AI had evolved considerably by the time he began working on Out of Breath.
He said the film required him to create a convincing visual world based around a 1920s society in which the practice at the centre of the story was still taking place. “Out of Breath was like the culmination of all the experiences that I’ve had trying to build, trying to generate prompts and inspiration using AI,” Emelonye said.
According to the filmmaker, Midjourney became particularly useful in helping him imagine the world of the film in considerable visual detail. He said AI allowed him to generate visual concepts that helped establish the period, environments and cinematic atmosphere he wanted before those ideas were translated into the physical production.
“What AI, Midjourney particularly, allowed me to do was to create this world in such a cinematic detail,” he explained. Rather than keeping those AI-generated images as personal references, Emelonye said he could take the concepts to members of his production team and use them as a common visual reference.
He described a process in which he could effectively show the team the intended visual direction and say, “guys, this is the scene,” allowing the lighting designer, set designer and other members of the crew to work towards achieving the same visual idea.
The approach marked an expansion of how Emelonye had previously used generative AI. He said his initial experiments began around 2020 with Black Mail, after his cinematographer introduced him to Midjourney.
