A new Lionsgate thriller, “Fall,” didn’t have the budget to reshoot, so the filmmakers hired a firm that used artificial intelligence to cut down on f-bombs instead.
The movie hoped for a PG-13 rating, Variety reported, to capture an audience under 17 in addition to adults. But since the $3 million project was already completed, there was no good way to eliminate so many swear words without using deepfake technology.
The filmmakers turned to the London-based technology firm Flawless, which was able to manipulate the actresses’ faces and change the dialogue to remove the word “f***” more than 30 times with artificial intelligence-based dubbing technology.
The team was able to take the existing footage and scrubbed the dialogue of many swear words which originally earned “Fall” an R rating. The Flawless team used technology similar to what’s used to alter movies into different languages while making an actor’s mouth movements and facial expressions match with the new dialogue.
“For a movie like this, we can’t reshoot it. We’re not a big tentpole … we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the time, more than anything else,” writer and director Scott Mann said in a behind-the-scenes video feature about the upcoming movie. “What really saved this movie and brought it into a wider audience was technology.”
“When we were filming the movie, we didn’t know if we were R or if we were PG-13, so I said the F-word so many times I think Scott wanted to kill me in post when we were trying to get a PG-13 rating,” Virginia Gardner, who stars in the film, told Variety.
“As far as I know, every movement my mouth made in that movie, my mouth made,” co-star Grace Caroline Currey said of the final product.
“Fall” is about two women (Gardner and Currey) who get stranded at the top of an abandoned 2,000-foot tall radio tower in the middle of the desert. The duo had climbed up to scatter the ashes of one woman’s late husband when their ladder broke off, stranding them with no way down. The film details their fight against the elements as they try to find a way down.
“Now we’re now stuck on this stupid freaking tower in the middle of freaking nowhere,” Gardner’s character says in one altered scene.
Mason Gooding (“Scream”) and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (“The Walking Dead”) also appear in the project. “Fall” debuts in theaters Friday, August 12.