
By Debra Kaufman
In 2017, newspapers around the world began carrying stories of crimes against the LGBTQ community in Chechnya, a constituent republic of Russia located in the North Caucasus region. Later that year, noted journalist Masha Gessen published a story in The New Yorker that revealed that, despite global political pressure, the Chechen government continued its kidnapping, torture and murder of members of the LGBTQ community but that a small group of activists were clandestinely rescuing individuals at risk and getting them out of the country.
Documentary filmmaker David France (who made the award-winning 2012 movie How to Survive a Plague about the AIDS crisis) read the news reports with growing horror and called Gessen to learn more. Masha put me in contact with the people on the ground and within days I was embedded in the safe house in Russia, filming, he recounts. On his first trip, with a cinematographer, he brought a 4K Sony Handycam which was small enough to look like a tourist's camera. They then left the camera at the safe house so the residents could use it. When we returned to the shelter, we found that people picked up the camera and told their stories in case anything happened to them, says France. They wanted to record their lives and their suffering so something would be left behind. These stories were the spark that grew into the acclaimed documentary Welcome to Chechnya.
When France met the activists and the people they were helping to escape, he made a life-or-death promise to keep their identities safe. During production that meant a tight, secure workflow for getting footage off the cards and onto encrypted hard drives and then overwriting the cards to every trace of the content.
But hiding the identities of the activists and those fleeing persecution was another, more complex security problem. I didn't want to put them deep in shadows or in hoods, says France. I wanted to feel their humanity and see their expressions. As production was wrapping up, France began what became almost a year of R&D and painstaking labor to make good on his promise. I had told everyone we'd render them as cartoons, he says. And we tried out rotomation. But it turned out that this technique amplified their physical characteristics, turning them into easily recognizable caricatures.
France then worked with artists who interpreted the subject's emotions and actions, overlaying that over the footage but, he says, that technique masked their humanity. We tried Snapchat-like technologies to give them dark glasses or masks but that undermined the seriousness, urgency and danger they were encountering, he says. We eventually turned our attention to the idea of transferring one person's face over another. France was leery of using such a deepfake technology but tried to imagine what if it could ethically be used to reveal something real that otherwise could not be conveyed.
After speaking with numerous VFX supervisors, he found Ryan Laney and his partner Johnny Han who believed they could make it work. They came back with a stunning example that showed it would be possible, says France.
Laney noted that what was important to France and his team was to not dehumanize the people in the film. We want to give them a human voice and to keep them safe, he said. David wanted the face replacement to be so good that even their own mothers wouldn't recognize them. When they tested out style transfer (in which, say, Van Gogh's painting style is transferred to a photo of the Golden Gate bridge), Laney said it gave him and Han an understanding of how machine learning could be used to solve the problem.
Next came the code writing, using Google's TensorFlow open-source AI/ML software library. We treated it as if it were a VFX show, says Laney. The style transfer of faces became like a different kind of rendering images, but instead of CG as the result, we were generating a face. In New York, France recruited 23 LGBTQ activists to be the new faces of the Chechen/Russian subjects, shooting them in a bluescreen studio with an array of Panasonic cameras. He made sure to shoot the head in multiple positions and the mouth making every position possible for believable lip-synching.
According to Laney, compositing required a VFX artist to look at every frame to check the fit regarding tracking, color, lighting and anything else. But it wasn't a creative tweak, emphasizes Laney. As an ethical consideration, we constrained it strictly to technical correction. They also placed a soft halo around the face to make it clear that it was a replacement, which was also spelled out in the film's opening. In the first 20 or so shots, we made them very soft so viewers could really see what we were doing and understand the halo, says Laney. When I first saw it work, I got the chills. It was incredible how well the picture matched and the emotion came through, even though it's another face.
France also made sure that anything that identified the subjects was removed, including clothing and jewelry as well as kitchen and bathroom products in safe houses outside of Russia. In the process of obtaining informed consent from the interviewees, Laney reports that one subject said watching it helped him process his experience because it was like watching someone else go through it.
According to France, who is currently working on a documentary on COVID-19, screenings of Welcome to Chechnya on Capitol Hill and in the U.K. and Europe provided the evidence needed to prompt sanctions. But the atrocities continue unabated. Laney, whose team processed over 400 shots and over an hour of screen time, is now providing this and related identity protection services, most recently employed in director Jennifer Ngo's Faceless, a film about the pro-d
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
01/04/2026
January 4 2026, 18:00 (PST) DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION
Douyin Users Can Now Create And Share Videos With Stun...
20/01/2026
SVG Sit-Down: BitFire's Jim Akimchuk on the Future of Cloud, Remote, Softwar...
20/01/2026
From architecture to reality: What CBC's Milano Cortina 2026 workflows tell ...
20/01/2026
Milano Cortina 2026: Making the Winter Olympics and Paralympics workflow work fo...
20/01/2026
Countdown to Milano Cortina 2026: SVG Launches SportsTechLive Blog in Lead-up to...
20/01/2026
Grand finale: Rally Saudi Arabia pushes WRC to make the most of cameras and dron...
20/01/2026
State of Change: What's Happening in the Remote-Production Business?NEP Group, Game Creek Video, Dome Productions, Mobile TV Group, Program Productions exec...
20/01/2026
CFP National Championship 2026: A Look Back at SVG's Complete CoverageGo behind the scenes with ESPN, Game Creek Video, Van Wagner, and the champion Indiana...
20/01/2026
The Gotham, Film Independent, and Creators Coalition on AI Join Alliance
by Michelle Satter, Founding Senior Director, Sundance Institute's Artist Programs...
20/01/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
20/01/2026
December, the first month of winter and the holiday season, has traditionally encouraged families to spend time together in front of the television. During this...
20/01/2026
During December, streaming's share of TV viewing in Mexico settled at 24.3%, an increase of 0.1 share points from the previous month.
Disclaimer: YUMI TV,...
20/01/2026
Christmas Day is Most-Streamed Day Ever with 55 Billion Viewing Minutes, led by...
20/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/01/2026
Disguise and ASB GlassFloor today announced a strategic partnership that turns the arena floor into a fully customizable interactive digital surface. This will ...
20/01/2026
Last summer, ITV celebrated the tenth anniversary of its popular reality dating show, Love Island. To ramp up the excitement of series 12 (launched in the UK on...
20/01/2026
Berklee's Mark Ethier Named One of SPIN's Most Influential People in Mus...
20/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/01/2026
Emergent, a provider of AI-powered media production solutions, today announced its presence at ISE 2026 in Barcelona, taking place February 3 6, where it will u...
20/01/2026
Back to All News
Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery Amend Agreement to All-Cash Transaction
Business
20 January 2026
Global
Link copied to clipboard
All-C...
20/01/2026
Back to All News
Now You Can Play a Role in Our Live Events With Real-Time Voting
Elmar Nubbemeyer
VP, Member Product
Product
20 January 2026
Global
Link...
19/01/2026
CFP National Championship 2026: Indiana Football's Digital Crew Generate Hyp...
19/01/2026
CFP National Championship 2026: Van Wagner Relies on Experience for Indiana-Miam...
19/01/2026
CFP National Championship 2026: Game Creek Video Fields Premiere IP Compound for...
19/01/2026
CFP National Championship 2026: For a Slew of Studio Shows, ESPN Turns Hard Rock...
19/01/2026
CFP National Championship 2026: ESPN's Sweeping Live Game Production Leverag...
19/01/2026
The new L3Harris NOVA binocular system is the every-soldier goggle' - and the beginning of a new era for night-vison capability....
19/01/2026
The Majority of Those Surveyed Prefer to Buy Brands Who Advertise in Content Tha...
19/01/2026
Back to All News
Straight to Hell' Sets April 27 Premiere: Teaser Trailer,...
19/01/2026
New Workflow Enhancements for All Broadcast Pix Systems, Plus 4-Channel ISO Recording for Hybrid and Roadie Tyngsboro, Mass. - January 2025 - Broadcast Pix ann...
19/01/2026
Monday 19 January 2026
Sky News reinvents News at Ten for the modern audience with The Wrap
Sky News today announces The Wrap, a bold evolution of its 10pm ou...
19/01/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Announces the Series Nights & Days, Directed by Kamila...
19/01/2026
DPA Microphones is striking a new chord in piano miking with the debut of its DPK2015 Piano Stereo Kit, an out-of-the-box, plug-and-play miking solution that ta...
19/01/2026
DPA Microphones will present its 4099 CORE Instrument Microphone and redesigned...
19/01/2026
Trianel relies on Arvato Systems for future-proof data center operations
Moving to the cloud: Arvato Systems implements extensive IT migration project
Migrat...
19/01/2026
Celebrating 21 Years of the RT Choice Music Prize
RT Choice Music Prize
In association with IMRO and IRMA
Irish Album of the Year 2025 - Shortlist Announce...
18/01/2026
January 18 2026, 21:30 (PST) Dolby Cinema Arrives in Bengaluru: Dolby Laborator...
17/01/2026
Lightware, an industry leader in signal management, is helping to elevate the Google Meet experience with the introduction of an integration with Taurus UCX. Th...
17/01/2026
Clear-Com announced a strategic partnership with NETGEAR AV to offer four high-performance networking switches as original equipment manufacturer (OEM) solutio...
17/01/2026
QuickLink, a leading provider of award-winning video production and remote guest contribution solutions, today announced a new U.S. distribution partnership wit...
17/01/2026
NUGEN Audio announces the latest evolution of MasterCheck, its industry-trusted optimization plug-in for cross-platform mastering and loudness verification. Des...
17/01/2026
BHV has announced that it will highlight its new SportsBox remote vision mixer and picture processor at ISE in Booth #4H900 marking its official introduction in...
17/01/2026
Clear-Com will return to ISE 2026 to demonstrate its latest intercom solutions for broadcast, live production, and AV professionals. Exhibiting at Stand #4P700...
17/01/2026
Grass Valley, a leading provider in live production solutions, will exhibit at ISE 2026 in Barcelona from February 3 6, presenting its vision for how modern Bro...
17/01/2026
Utelogy Corporation, the global leader in connected workplace management, monitoring, control, automation and analytics closes out a record-breaking 2025. The c...