Brady Corbet explains AI use in ‘The Brutalist’ after online outrage: ‘Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own’
The Brutalist director Brady Corbet clarified how AI tools were used on the film during postproduction after social media outrage about the practice spread widely over the weekend.
In a statement provided to Gold Derby, Corbet said nothing was done to alter the performances of stars Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, who play Hungarian immigrants in America just after World War II. “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own. They worked for months with dialect coach Tanera Marshall to perfect their accents,” Corbet said. He explained that AI tools were used in editing parts where the actors spoke Hungarian onscreen.
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“Innovative Respeecher technology was used in Hungarian language dialogue editing only, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy,” Corbet added. “No English language was changed. This was a manual process done by our sound team and Respeecher in post-production. The aim was to preserve the authenticity of Adrien and Felicity’s performances in another language, not to replace or alter them and done with the utmost respect for the craft.”
Corbet’s remarks come on the heels of a controversial weekend for The Brutalist, which faced broad backlash on social media due to comments editor David Jancso had made to Red Shark News about using AI tools during post-production on the film.
“I am a native Hungarian speaker, and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce. Even with Adrien’s Hungarian background [Brody’s mother is a Hungarian refugee who emigrated to the U.S in 1956], it’s not that simple. It’s an extremely unique language. We coached [Brody and Felicity Jones], and they did a fabulous job, but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference,” Jancso said to the outlet in a piece published on Jan. 11.
After explaining that the editing team had first tried to ADR (automated dialogue replacement) some of the “harder elements” with Brody and Jones and then tried using other actors to ADR the tricky Hungarian dialect sounds, Jancso said Respeecher, a Ukrainian software company that uses AI tools to edit speech, was deployed with full awareness from all parties involved.
“Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there. We were very careful about keeping their performances. It’s mainly just replacing letters here and there. You can do this in ProTools yourself, but we had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really needed to speed up the process otherwise, we’d still be in post,” he explained.
When Jancso’s comments went viral, many online falsely conflated Brody’s accent work with the Hungarian dialect, wrongly suggesting that Brody’s accented English-language dialogue in the film – which accounts for most of his performance – was created using AI. As a source close to the film confirms, none of the actors’ English-language dialogue was impacted by the Respeecher usage.
In the same piece published by Red Shark News, it was also reported that generative AI was used to create “architectural drawings and finished buildings in the style of the fictional architect” László Tóth, the character Brody plays.
“It is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn’t be,” Jancso said. “We should be having a very open discussion about what tools AI can provide us with. Nothing in the film uses AI that hasn’t been done before. It just makes the process a lot faster. We use AI to create these tiny little details that we didn’t have the money or the time to shoot.”
In his comments on Monday, Corbet clarified how AI imagery was used in the finale sequence. “[Production designer] Judy Becker and her team did not use AI to create or render any of the buildings. All images were hand-drawn by artists. To clarify, in the memorial video featured in the background of a shot, our editorial team created pictures intentionally designed to look like poor digital renderings circa 1980,” he said.
The director added, “The Brutalist is a film about human complexity, and every aspect of its creation was driven by human effort, creativity, and collaboration. We are incredibly proud of our team and what they’ve accomplished here.”
The Brutalist is one of the year’s top Oscar contenders, having already won the Golden Globe Awards for Best Drama, Best Director for Corbet, and Best Drama Actor for Brody. The film received nine nominations at the BAFTA Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor for Brody, Best Supporting Actor for Guy Pearce, and Best Supporting Actress for Felicity Jones. It’s widely expected to land several Oscar nominations later this week, including bids for Corbet, Brody, and the film itself. (Jancso is also predicted to receive an Oscar nomination, as The Brutalist currently sits in fourth place in the Best Editing odds. However, the film’s editing has missed some significant precursors, including at the BAFTA Awards and ACE Eddie Awards.)
Respeecher has been used in several Hollywood projects in recent years, including Obi-Wan Kenobi, Alien: Romulus, and Emilia Pérez.
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