‘Brutalist’ filmmakers used AI to improve Hungarian dialogue

The Hungarian dialogue of Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones in The Brutalist was improved using AI tools, according to the film’s editor, Dávid Jancsó.

“I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages ​​to learn to pronounce,” Jancsó said in an interview with technology magazine Red Shark News, adding that Brody and Jones had been carefully coached in this language.

“They did a fabulous job, but we also wanted to perfect it so that even the locals wouldn’t see any difference,” Jancsó added.

“If you come from the Anglo-Saxon world, certain sounds can be particularly difficult to understand. We first tried to ADR these more difficult elements with the actors. Then we tried to cast them completely with other actors, but it didn’t work. So we looked for other options to improve it.

To perfect the dialogue, Jancsó says the filmmakers used AI tools from Ukrainian company Respecer. Jancsó added that he even fed some of his own voice into the AI ​​systems to help filmmakers find the right balance.

“We were very careful to maintain their performance. It’s mostly just replacing letters here and there,” he said. “You can do it yourself in ProTools, but we had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really had to speed up the process, otherwise we would still be in office.”

The magazine notes that AI was also used to create a series of architectural drawings during a late sequence in the film.

“It’s controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn’t be,” Jancsó said. “We should have a very open discussion about the tools that AI can give us. There is nothing in the film using AI that hasn’t been done before. It just makes the process much faster. We use AI to create these little details that we didn’t have the money or time to film.