Jodie Heenan, Robert Gaudette Win AI Film Awards, Including Runway’s $50,000 Grand Prix
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Jul 6
Jodie Heenan, Robert Gaudette Win AI Film Awards, Including Runway’s $50,000 Grand Prix
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jul 6
Summary
Australian creator Jodie Heenan won an Omni AI film festival prize for “Guardians of the Burrow,” an entirely AI-generated wildlife short depicting a tarantula and humming frog inside a spider’s lair.
Canada’s Robert Gaudette added momentum for AI filmmaking after his eight-minute “A Face Only a Mother Could Love” won Omni best picture and last month’s $50,000 Runway grand prix at New York’s Lincoln Center.
Heenan said AI let her show animal behavior that conventional crews could not film without disrupting it, while Gaudette said he used AI as a production tool rather than a substitute for human storytelling.
Both filmmakers acknowledged the backlash surrounding AI models trained on copyrighted works and the risk to some film jobs, but argued the technology can widen access to filmmaking and create new creative roles.