Into the Spider’s Lair: An AI-Generated Documentary
Jodie Heenan, an Australian digital content designer, has created an award-winning short film titled s of the Burrow, which she says ‘looks and feels’ real despite being entirely AI generated.
The film depicts a dimly lit underground burrow shared by a giant Amazonian tarantula and a tiny dotted humming frog, an unlikely pair captured in extraordinary detail. However, this scene is not filmed in the wild but generated through artificial intelligence.
s of the Burrow recently won a prize at the Omni international AI film festival, judged by a panel led by Alex Proyas, director of The Crow and Dark City, who is also an advocate for AI in filmmaking.
The documentary openly discloses its AI origins on its YouTube page.
Currently, AI remains a contentious topic. The technology used in films like Heenan’s reportedly involves complex AI tools. Recently, musicians, authors, and other creatives have campaigned to protect their copyrights as AI systems train on their works, while communities worldwide express concerns about the implications.
Facing Criticism and Embracing Creativity
Heenan acknowledges she has faced significant criticism for her use of AI. She is part of an international team organized by the California-based AI studio Fable, which counts Amazon among its major investors. This team recently used AI to recreate the digital likenesses and synthesized voices of the 1942 cast of Citizen Kane, completing the ending originally intended by Orson Welles but not realized during his lifetime.
The use of AI in that project was criticized by Welles’ estate, which described it as “a purely mechanical exercise without any of the uniquely innovative thinking or a creative force like Welles.”
Despite such critiques, Heenan believes AI has the potential to reveal the impossible and serve as a creative tool rather than merely a derivative one, as demonstrated by her documentary.
“Nobody’s actually managed to capture [the spider and frog] on film in the wild, to my knowledge, so I thought that was a really great reason to use AI specifically,” she says.
She explains that even renowned naturalist David Attenborough could not have accurately documented the mutualistic relationship between the fierce tarantula and the tiny humming frog because all the interaction occurs inside the spider’s lair, where lighting and microscopic cameras would disrupt natural behavior.
Heenan adds that AI allowed her to show the intricate details of this relationship by recreating the spider’s burrow in a natural environment, making it appear and feel like a real nature documentary.
“I can show the detail of the relationship, I can get into the spider’s burrow … and then recreate that in AI, but put it in a natural environment, so that it feels and looks like a real nature documentary.”
Research and Approach to Authenticity
Heenan conducted extensive research into how National Geographic, Animal Planet, and Attenborough’s teams produce their documentaries. She deliberately avoided AI’s capacity for flashy special effects.
“No fancy camera tricks and morphs and warps, none of the fun stuff that AI can do that looks really cool,” she says. “I almost wanted it be: you’re in a boring hotel room, you put on Nat Geo because there’s nothing else on the TV, and you get sucked in.”
Global AI Filmmaking and Recognition
AI filmmakers from countries including the US, UK, Brazil, Ukraine, China, and Australia were among the winners in the Omni festival’s AI category. Canadian filmmaker Robert Gaudette, who describes himself as a “middle age nobody” working in creative AI, won the best picture award.
Last month, Gaudette’s eight-minute film A Face Only a Mother Could Love received the $50,000 grand prix at the Runway AI film festival held at New York’s Lincoln Center.
“I knew what type of story I wanted to tell, and I knew I wanted it to be different from what a lot of other people were doing in AI,” Gaudette tells from his home in Toronto.
“AI is really great at creating spectacle … a lot of eye candy can be very visually stimulating but I wanted to see if I could test the limits in terms of storytelling, trying to connect with an audience through a character … a character who had been treated very callously throughout his whole life, yet a character who just refused to meet the world the same way the world was meeting him.”
Gaudette’s film tells the poignant story of Marcel Dupont, a physically disfigured man who perfects the waltz alone in his kitchen each night, hopeful that one day someone will ask him to dance. He hopes the film counters criticism that AI cannot contribute to emotionally resonant stories born from uniquely human imagination.
He emphasizes that AI did not create the story itself; he did. AI was merely one of the tools he used to bring his story to life.
Industry Challenges and Future Prospects
Both Gaudette and Heenan stress the need for the industry and governments to address the ongoing challenge of fair compensation for original creators, as AI systems consume copyrighted works for training.
Gaudette acknowledges that as AI replaces older special effects, some jobs may be lost, but he believes new roles will emerge.
“In the Hitchcock era, there would be 30 to 50 people sitting on a sound stage, and then CGI came along, and there was a lot of fear, a lot of disruption, and a lot of people laid off from their traditional jobs and replaced by computers,” he says.
“But if you look at a Marvel film nowadays, there’s 300 to 400 people working on those projects, so there’s been a net addition in terms of the economy and employment.
“And I think AI, once we see it a little further down the pipeline, we’re going to see the same kind of thing – unanticipated and unexpected new roles … we will just be using creative teams in a new way.”
Democratizing Visual Storytelling
Heenan believes the accessibility of AI technology has sparked a democratic revolution in visual storytelling.
“I don’t need to wait for Hollywood to allow me in as a PA, then get the gracious gift of being able to maybe be on a film set to maybe make something one day,” she said.
“It’s no longer a choice – do I spend my house deposit on making a short film? I can make a short film for $500.
“The more stories that people can tell that don’t have the money and the resources behind them to tell their individual stories, that is just groundbreaking.
“It’s going to level the playing field … removing those gatekeepers stopping you from telling your story.”
Gaudette concurs with this view.
“Nobody knew who I was three weeks ago,” he says. “I would have had zero potential of having my short film funded in any traditional way to shoot it live action.”
