Vietnamese films invest in special effects and technology
In August 2024, “Touch” by director Pham Vinh Khuong was introduced as a film created entirely by artificial intelligence (AI) with a total production time of up to 3,000 hours. This is considered a breakthrough in filmmaking in Vietnam.
The reason why Pham Vinh Khuong’s “Touch” has been getting attention recently is because the entire production process of the film, from the initial idea to the final footage, was done using AI. The second thing that surprised the audience about “Touch” was that the entire production process was done on mobile devices.
Pham Vinh Khuong continues to present the film “The Picture of Dai Viet” which is over five minutes long. The film is a praise of the beauty and history of Vietnam, made entirely by AI on a mobile phone. Experts predict that if using traditional cameras and production methods, “The Picture of Dai Viet” would have cost at least 3 billion VND.
However, thanks to AI, the cost of film production is only 3 million VND. With practical experience, Pham Vinh Khuong believes that AI technology opens up solutions for new filmmakers who are not yet able to approach and convince large investors to invest.
“Claws” - a monster survival movie directed by Le Thanh Son was released in 2024. This is a story revolving around a group of 7 friends lost in the deep forest, unfortunately attacked by a bear named Mat. The group must find a way to survive, trying to survive when encountering this special villain.
This is a film that has attracted the attention of the audience because the crew invested heavily in CGI and VFX, with the CGI budget for the bear in the film alone accounting for 30% of the investment. According to the reporter's research, this project has a budget of no less than 30 - 50 billion VND.
Before deciding to use a bear model made from special effects, the "Claw" crew actually thought of the "handmade" method, that is, creating a character from real materials.The design team started sewing a bear mascot, planning for an actor to wear to play the villain.
Officially released in theaters from November 19, 2024, the movie "Lynx: Ghost in the House" recorded revenue of nearly 90 billion VND to date.
With the new project, producer Vo Thanh Hoa said, "Lynx: Ghost in the Palace" was invested with about 600 scenes filmed using CGI technology (image simulation).
“This stage alone was carried out by four companies specializing in special effects in Vietnam. This is the film with the largest number of green screens in our career,” said Vo Thanh Hoa.
Many challenges remain
It can be said that with the development of technology, the Vietnamese film industry is facing many challenges besides the advantages it has.
A typical example is the movie “Claws”, although it invested heavily in special effects and applied many advanced filmmaking technologies, when it was released, this project did not achieve the expected revenue. The movie was praised by the audience for its good special effects, but the content was old and lacked breakthroughs.
The audience believes that the film crew is following foreign survival film projects and paying attention to the technical aspects but has not invested in the content. This is also the reason why the film project has not been highly appreciated overall.
Although there are many advantages to applying AI to filmmaking, Pham Vinh Khuong himself admits that using AI in filmmaking also poses some challenges. For example, finding and processing data to train AI is a task that requires a lot of time and effort.
To address these challenges, Pham Vinh Khuong took the initiative to collect a large number of images of Vietnam, from historical photos to everyday photos, to enrich the AI database. At the same time, he also combined different AI tools to create special effects and impressive scenes.
With big-hitting projects like “The Lynx: The Ghost in the House”, “The Ghost Dog”… despite achieving record ticket sales, the films also faced some controversies about the technical aspects of some scenes that were not yet completed due to limited budget. This was a big challenge for the film crews.
In 2025, domestic cinema needs to make a breakthrough and be bolder in investing in special effects, but at the same time, the quality of content must still be guaranteed to attract audiences to theaters.
