Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

Two T&T in­no­va­tors are at work on a film cre­at­ed by Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI). Au­thor and sci-fi junkie Ver­e­na Boodoos­ingh and vi­su­al artist Jean Benoit have teamed up to adapt Boodoos­ingh’s first young adult sci­ence fic­tion nov­el, The Cir­cle Ar­mor, for the big screen.

“It will put Trinidad and To­ba­go on the map,” said Boodoos­ingh who has tak­en note of AI ad­vance­ments that are mak­ing movie pro­duc­tion ac­ces­si­ble to sto­ry­tellers.

Her book, The Cir­cle Ar­mor, was orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed to be a screen­play, but due to fi­nan­cial con­straints, it evolved in­to a nov­el.

“Fan­ta­sy and sci­ence fic­tion pro­vides a unique space to tack­le sen­si­tive is­sues like racism and gen­der in­equal­i­ty in a cre­ative and thought-pro­vok­ing way,” Boodoos­ingh said.

The nov­el, which was writ­ten dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and was self-pub­lished on Ama­zon in 2021, is the first in a tril­o­gy loose­ly based on the myth of At­lantis, the Hin­du epic Ma­hab­hara­ta, and the leg­ends of the alien civ­i­liza­tion, the Anun­na­ki.

Set 13,000 years ago, the sto­ry be­gins when in­ter­galac­tic ex­plor­ers sent to search for gold through the galax­ies, crash-land on Earth. Notic­ing the plan­et’s abun­dance of re­sources, the sur­vivors build an ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tion, start­ing with an is­land city.

How­ev­er, their progress is no­ticed by oth­ers lurk­ing about the uni­verse, lead­ing to an in­ter­galac­tic war decades lat­er. In re­sponse to the con­flict, a shield is placed around Earth to pro­tect it from de­tec­tion, but it is breached 100 years lat­er when strange cos­mic mes­sages make it to the oth­er side.

Boodoos­ingh said her life changed when she be­came a moth­er.

She re­called: “I re­al­ly got in­to writ­ing when I had my first daugh­ter. She’s nine years old. I was look­ing for a his­to­ry book for her on Trinidad and To­ba­go and I didn’t find any fun and en­gag­ing book for her age. The store clerk was like, ‘Why don’t you write a sto­ry?’ I said, ‘You know what? That’s a good idea.”

That brief over-the-counter in­ter­ac­tion led Boodoos­ingh to be­gin her ca­reer as an au­thor. She wrote three chil­dren’s books, a se­ries ti­tled The Ad­ven­tures of Ana and Her Mag­ic Dogs, which teach­es young read­ers the his­to­ry of T&T. Fol­low­ing that project, Boodoos­ingh de­cid­ed to take the plunge in­to sci-fi.

She ad­mit­ted that the tran­si­tion was a steep learn­ing curve for her but af­ter the ini­tial strug­gle, she went full throt­tle de­vel­op­ing her fic­tion­al char­ac­ters.

She was in­spired by Star Trek, Star Wars, and Mar­vel comics, as well as au­thors Anne Rice, Gra­ham Han­cock, and George RR Mar­tin. She al­so re­vealed that The Cir­cle Ar­mor was in­flu­enced by Christo­pher Nolan’s ap­proach to screen­plays.

“He of­ten us­es tech­niques such as re­verse chronol­o­gy, mul­ti­ple time­lines, and lay­ered sto­ry­telling to cre­ate a sense of dis­ori­en­ta­tion and chal­lenges the view­er’s un­der­stand­ing of time ... I love all his movies,” Boodoos­ingh ex­plained.

The au­thor ad­mit­ted that she strug­gled since child­hood to de­vel­op a sense of self-be­lief.

“When you come from a fam­i­ly with an In­di­an back­ground, most of the time they want you to be­come a doc­tor, an ac­coun­tant, and I nev­er re­al­ly showed in­ter­est in that at a young age. I was al­ways in­to the­atre. I al­ways told them I want­ed to be on TV,” the for­mer Syn­er­gy TV host said.

Two years ago, af­ter com­plet­ing The Cir­cle Ar­mor, Boodoos­ingh was pitch­ing the sto­ry to Net­flix and oth­er stream­ing gi­ants to get it adapt­ed in­to a film, when her hus­band, Christo­pher Boodoos­ingh, CEO and founder of West In­di­an Min­ing Com­pa­ny (WIM­Co), sug­gest­ed to her that AI could do the job in­stead.

“I thought it was not a pos­si­bil­i­ty but I did my re­search on it and dab­bling with some of the apps, I re­alised it was a re­al­i­ty,” she said.

She went on the hunt for a vi­su­al artist, brows­ing the works of var­i­ous artists through­out the Caribbean and Ire­land. She even­tu­al­ly con­nect­ed with Jean Benoit through a mu­tu­al friend.

“I called the next day and he sent me a sam­ple of his work. I then sent him a copy of my book and a few lines of the back­ground scenes and char­ac­ters for him to cre­ate. In­stant­ly, I was like, ‘Wow, this is it. You were in my head,’” Boodoos­ingh said.

“I re­al­ly be­lieve in the uni­verse con­nect­ing peo­ple and the right tim­ing for every­thing.”

Benoit has been work­ing in the me­dia and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try for a decade do­ing art and an­i­ma­tion full-time and AI and gen­er­a­tive mod­els were re­cent­ly added to the list of tools he us­es.

He start­ed in­ves­ti­gat­ing AI three years ago, trou­bleshoot­ing ear­ly mod­els to de­ter­mine how they could be used and trans­lat­ed in­to an­i­ma­tion and film­mak­ing. He al­so taught him­self to do stan­dard 3D an­i­ma­tion.

As the main ed­i­tor on the project, Benoit has been pulling his weight in the cut­ting and colour grad­ing of the AI film.

“The whole mo­tion of the film came about through her book but my artis­tic di­rec­tion is what was miss­ing from the pic­ture be­fore. We put those two things to­geth­er, so now we have struc­tured a work­flow,” said Benoit who stud­ied dig­i­tal video edit­ing at the Toron­to Film School.

He said in the film in­dus­try, AI “lev­els the play­ing field for cre­atives.”

He added: “AI is just a medi­um like any oth­er soft­ware that you can use when it comes to cre­ative en­deav­ours. How­ev­er, the dif­fer­ence it al­lows now is the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a stream­lined pro­duc­tion with­out ex­treme­ly ex­pen­sive high-end ren­der­ing sys­tems for video an­i­ma­tion.”

Boodoos­ingh, who now us­es AI for her dai­ly tasks, said a mar­gin of er­ror still ex­ists that re­quires her to dou­ble-check what is pro­duced.

“As an au­thor, AI cuts down my time writ­ing emails. I don’t have to pay for a re­search as­sis­tant but at the end of the day, you still have to sift out the work, be­cause not all the in­for­ma­tion is right,” she said.

“By em­brac­ing AI, we can un­lock its po­ten­tial to dri­ve in­no­va­tion, im­prove our qual­i­ty of life, and cre­ate new op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth and de­vel­op­ment.”

The AI film based on Boodoos­ingh’s nov­el is cur­rent­ly in pre-pro­duc­tion and will go in­to the pro­duc­tion phase be­fore the end of the year.

About the au­thor

Ver­e­na Boodoos­ingh holds a Mas­ter’s de­gree in Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Me­dia Stud­ies from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter and a Bach­e­lor of Arts in His­to­ry and In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. She is the Head of Pub­lic Re­la­tions at the West In­di­an Min­ing Com­pa­ny (WIM­Co).