Youth, love, birth, death, dreams, ageing and regret – the video for “The Hardest Part” by US synth-pop musician Ernest Greene, aka Washed Out, does it all, in one sweeping four-minute sequence. The camera follows two protagonists in constant motion as they travel through the tunnel of life bathed in a blaze of retro nostalgia, it’s sexy, trippy and darkly romantic. And yet, something feels constantly askew.
The dark-haired Hispanic boy and his red-permed paramour never appear to be quite the same people in any two consecutive segments – as if they’re being played by a procession of squiffy lookalikes. The camera performs impossible, queasy swoops and sudden surreal shot transitions. The human movement is stiff and unnatural.
Everybody’s got strange hands. Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter All common shortcomings – or qualities, if you look at it another way – of AI-generated imagery. Of which the video is entirely made – making it a world first.
To some it’s an exciting milestone. To others, it’s a source of outrage. The video’s director Paul Trillo says he’d had the concept for “an infinite zoom of a couple’s life over the course of many decades” for 10 years, but he hadn’t attempted it until now “because I figured it’d be too ambitious for a music video”.
OpenAI’s Sora, which can create semi-realistic video entirely from text instructions, pre.