Four years on from the pub­li­ca­tion of her first nov­el The Cir­cle Ar­mor, Ver­e­na Boodoos­ingh is hop­ing she can en­cour­age lo­cal film­mak­ers to seize up­on op­por­tu­ni­ties through the use of AI.

On Thurs­day, Boodoos­ingh host­ed a view­ing of the 32-minute screen­er of a film de­rived from her young adult sci-fi nov­el.

The view­ing, at the club room at the The Re­nais­sance at Shore­lands in Glen­coe, was at­tend­ed by mem­bers of the lo­cal film com­mu­ni­ty.

While she ad­mit­ted the screen­er shown was a work in progress, she said that its pro­duc­tion thus far has opened her eyes to many wider pos­si­bil­i­ties.

“As you can see from this teas­er. When­ev­er I cre­ate and write, I of­ten get lost in my world-build­ing, blend­ing my re­al-life ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing on an is­land in­to my sci-fan­ta­sy uni­verse. And us­ing AI al­lowed me to bring that work alive with lim­it­ed re­sources,” said Boodoos­ingh.

“Tonight’s pre­sen­ta­tion demon­strates the trans­for­ma­tive po­ten­tial of AI-dri­ven in­no­va­tion for Trinidad and To­ba­go, po­si­tion­ing our na­tion as a re­gion­al leader in the Caribbean’s emerg­ing tech ecosys­tem. By lever­ag­ing AI to adapt our unique sto­ry­telling—we not on­ly show­case our cre­ative skills but al­so open new av­enues for eco­nom­ic growth, for­eign ex­change earn­ings, and dig­i­tal ex­ports,” she said.

Boodoos­ingh is an avid fan of sci-fi moves and ad­mit­ted she had been in­spired by au­thors Anne Rice, Gra­ham Han­cock, and George RR Mar­tin, as well as the uni­vers­es cre­at­ed by Star Trek, Star Wars, and Mar­vel comics. She said the de­vel­op­ing tech­nol­o­gy has giv­en her an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate on an un­ex­pect­ed scale. This tech­nol­o­gy could be used to push lo­cal and Caribbean ideas on­to glob­al screens, she said.

While the film is set in a dis­tant fu­ture an­chored in typ­i­cal sci-fi set­tings, it al­so fea­tures, sig­nif­i­cant­ly trop­i­cal set­ting not nor­mal­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the genre.

Boodoos­ingh said this was pur­pose­ly done to in­tro­duce a lo­cal el­e­ment to the film.

“I just want­ed you to see that some­one in Trinidad and To­ba­go was ac­tu­al­ly tak­ing the leap here and us­ing AI to cre­ate this film. But it’s not just about me. It is not just about us­ing AI to trans­form my book in­to a movie. It’s about show­ing the world that, de­spite where you came from, your back­ground, AI is re­al­ly open­ing doors for a lot of peo­ple. There is no more gate­keep­ing,” she said.

“And you know, a girl like me from the is­land with lim­it­ed funds could ac­tu­al­ly bring her world to life. And as you can see, me liv­ing in the Caribbean, I meshed our en­vi­ron­ment with a sci-fi world, and AI al­lowed that.”

She said, “This AI pro­duc­tion demon­strates how small na­tion states can har­ness cut­ting-edge AI tools to fos­ter in­dus­try di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ments, and el­e­vate our glob­al pro­file as a hub of tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion and cre­ative en­ter­prise. De­spite ini­tial set­backs, our re­silience and com­mit­ment to in­te­grat­ing AI in­to our cul­tur­al in­dus­tries sig­nal a promis­ing fu­ture where in­no­va­tion fu­els both so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and na­tion­al pride.”

Boodoos­ingh ad­mit­ted the screen­er did high­light the need for a hu­man el­e­ment. She made an open ap­peal to lo­cal ac­tors and voice tal­ents to be a part of the process.

“As you can see, it is miss­ing some­thing. It’s miss­ing soul,” said Boodoos­ingh, who ex­plained that cur­rent­ly there were on­ly two voice ac­tors used in the screen­er; Hans Christo­pher Chow and Boodoos­ingh her­self.

“But if we had the right fund­ing, the right re­sources, imag­ine how pol­ished, how re­fined this would have been. And this is what I want­ed to do. As you can see, we need to have voice ac­tors act­ing be­cause it’s miss­ing that soul. It’s miss­ing that suit. It’s miss­ing that essence. And once I get my voice ac­tors in­to that stu­dio, I’m go­ing to map their act­ing with their emo­tion, re­al act­ing, and map it on­to my char­ac­ters. And this is what I want to do to take this to the next lev­el,” she said.

She stat­ed that it al­so cre­at­ed a new lane for lo­cal film­mak­ers who may have faced fi­nan­cial chal­lenges in bring­ing their scripts to life.

“It al­lowed me to cre­ate some­thing that prob­a­bly would have cost mil­lions of dol­lars. So I would like for you all to see the eco­nom­ic val­ue of this. Be­cause I do have a dis­trib­u­tor. And my end goal for this is to pol­ish and re­fine it and just show the world that we, too, are cre­ators,” said Boodoos­ingh.

The film­mak­er said while work on the film was on­go­ing, she had al­ready been in talks with a dis­trib­u­tor with the in­ten­tion of get­ting the film in­to the­atres and on­to in­ter­na­tion­al stream­ing ser­vices.

“It is in­no­v­a­tive prod­uct, and we are tak­ing this world, and next time you view this, it will be on big screens, on Net­flix. And this is some­thing that is part of a plan to pro­duce a pro­duc­tion every year, so it’s open­ing up a lot of doors.”

The po­ten­tial av­enues cre­at­ed by AI film-gen­er­a­tion were al­so ac­knowl­edged by Kavi­ta Ra­j­nar­i­nesingh-Ramdeen, who de­liv­ered open­ing re­marks at the view­ing event.

Ra­j­nar­i­nesingh-Ramdeen said, “AI tech­nol­o­gy-re­lat­ed ap­pli­ca­tions present a most com­pelling ex­am­ple of a new age plat­form that po­ten­tial­ly rev­o­lu­tionis­es cre­ative path­ways with­in var­i­ous mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary set­tings. It recon­cep­tu­alis­es ed­u­ca­tion and as­so­ci­at­ed tra­di­tion­al learn­ing par­a­digms in­to more of a high­er or­dered think­ing space. If lever­aged re­spon­si­bly and suit­abil­i­ty, it en­cour­ages pro­found in­sights and un­der­stand­ing around stud­ied sub­ject mat­ter, pro­motes crit­i­cal and an­a­lyt­i­cal think­ing, which cul­mi­nates in knowl­edge-based so­lu­tion build­ing. All of which are the hall­marks of a so­phis­ti­cat­ed and evolved so­ci­ety.”

She felt that the in­no­va­tion shown by Boodoos­ingh had the po­ten­tial to catal­yse the cre­ative sec­tor.

“A na­tion’s com­pet­i­tive­ness speaks to its ca­pac­i­ty to en­gage in in­no­v­a­tive prac­tices and up­grade type process­es in a way that ab­sorbs and proac­tive­ly re­sponds to en­vi­ron­men­tal shocks. It begs a con­sid­er­a­tion of how best we can re­bun­dle or repack­age ex­ist­ing re­sources, prod­ucts and ser­vices, lo­cal­ly avail­able, to pro­duce in­no­v­a­tive and recon­cep­tu­alised niche prod­ucts and ser­vices,” she said.

Ra­j­nar­i­nesingh-Ramdeen de­scribed AI is a mul­ti-faceted dy­nam­ic plat­form, which like all oth­er cred­i­ble plat­forms at times, may be ex­ploit­ed for the spread of mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion.

“Notwith­stand­ing, I am pleased to be in­clud­ed this evening, to wit­ness one of the more pos­i­tive as­pects of AI tech­nol­o­gy ap­pli­ca­tion ….an AI an­i­mat­ed film, home­grown right here on the soils of Trinidad and To­ba­go, a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state of lim­it­ed re­source ca­pac­i­ty but ooz­ing imag­i­na­tion and bril­liance!”

When com­plet­ed, Boodoos­ingh is ex­pect­ing The Cir­cle Ar­mor to have a fea­ture-length run time of 85 min­utes.