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
09/11/2025
Dalet today announced a transformative leap forward for media operations: Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) that unifies the Dalet ecosystem under one natura...
15/10/2025
Across the world, early-career reporters are interrogating systems that shape daily life, from mortuaries and classrooms to the corridors of legal education and...
15/10/2025
St. Louis Blues Pay Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne in New Pregame Open VideoThe NHL franchise worked with production firms 2WEI and 4th Floor CreativeBy Mark J Burns,...
15/10/2025
Cobalt Digital, G3DVu, Proxima Vision, and Telos Alliance Renew Premier Sponsors...
15/10/2025
By Paige Bethmann
Before my grandmother passed away in 2019, I went to visit her in the hospital where she'd been for a few weeks. When I arrived, the nurs...
15/10/2025
Two years ago, Spotify set out to grow the entire publishing industry by making ...
15/10/2025
People turn to DJ for a listening experience that feels personal, dynamic, and j...
15/10/2025
Las personas recurren a DJ para vivir una experiencia de escucha personal, din m...
15/10/2025
Rock legend Bruce Springsteen and luminary actor Jeremy Allen White came togethe...
15/10/2025
At Spotify, we're all about supporting rising talent and helping them connec...
15/10/2025
New SBS Documentary Series THE CANCER KILLERS Premieres 4 November on SBS & SBS ...
15/10/2025
SBS celebrates the Festivals of Lights with bold, illuminating stories across th...
15/10/2025
One of humanity's most profound questions continues: Is there any place in our galaxy suitable for life beyond Earth? NASA intends to find out, with the hel...
15/10/2025
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
15/10/2025
Scality, a global leader in cyber-resilient storage software for the AI era, today announced the advancement of its comprehensive AI ecosystem certification pro...
15/10/2025
The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) today unveiled key highlights of the 2026 HPA Tech Retreat, scheduled for Feb. 15 19 at the Westin Rancho Mirage Go...
15/10/2025
At NAB Show New York 2025 (Stand 244), Interra Systems will showcase the future of media QC, monitoring, and captioning, highlighting its award-winning, AI- and...
15/10/2025
Grass Valley today announced that RMC BFM, part of the CMA-CGM Group and France's third-largest private media group, has chosen Grass Valley's productio...
15/10/2025
Appear, the global leader in live production technology, will demonstrate how its powerful hardware and software innovations are shaping the future of hybrid, s...
15/10/2025
Rakim to Join Berklee's Hip-Hop Hall of Fame at Signature Series Concert The rap icon becomes the latest inductee, following luminaries such as Roxanne Sh...
15/10/2025
Berklee Brings Live Music to the Head of the Charles Student artists will perform on multiple riverfront stages during the 60th anniversary of the world's...
15/10/2025
CobbTV, the government access television channel for Cobb County, Ga. recently acquired an automated playout system from Pebble, a global provider of automation...
15/10/2025
OSLO, Norway Appear, the global leader in live production technology, will demonstrate how its powerful hardware and software innovations are shaping the future...
15/10/2025
NEW YORK The NBA is making major changes to the NBA App and NBA TV as it takes control of them from TNT Sports, which has long managed the league's digital ...
15/10/2025
SAN MATEO, Calif. In what promises to be a major expansion of interactive features and personalized content on the DirecTV platform, the operator and Glance hav...
15/10/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Roku has launched changes to its user interface (UI) that the streaming platform says will better showcase original programming on the platform...
15/10/2025
LOS ANGELES Software-defined data storage and data services provider OpenDrives has elevated Alex Dunfey to chief technology officer, responsible for driving th...
15/10/2025
Abu Dhabi, UAE October 15, 2025: Space42 (ADX: SPACE42), the UAE-based AI-powe...
15/10/2025
Sheldon Nichols and Will Trickett to find and prepare more classic cars for budget conscious would-be owners from Wiser Films
UKTV have recommissioned the clas...
15/10/2025
Wednesday 15 October 2025
Nick Cave
JPEG (275 KB)
Explore the creative univer...
15/10/2025
Wednesday 15 October 2025
From breaking up with your partner to quitting your job - new polling shows some messages are just too scary to send
Over a fifth (...
15/10/2025
Rohde & Schwarz unveils compact MXO 3 oscilloscopes with 4 and 8 channels: Advan...
15/10/2025
Back to All News
Revenge Series The Resurrected' Captivates Audiences Across Asia
Entertainment
15 October 2025
GlobalTaiwan
Link copied to clipboard
...
15/10/2025
Back to All News
Bringing the Best in VFX and Virtual Production Together as Eyeline
Jeffrey Shapiro
CEO, Eyeline
Business
15 October 2025
GlobalCanadaInd...
15/10/2025
Deployed by Astound Business Solutions, Harmonic's Primary Distribution Solution Ensures Outstanding Video Quality and Seamless Ad Insertion at the Edge
SA...
15/10/2025
Collaboration extends a trusted relationship as RMC BFM invests in scalable, fut...
15/10/2025
Series coming in 2026 stars Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Justine Mitchell and Jason O'Mara released today
RT today released first look images of new comedy-drama ...
14/10/2025
SVG Europe Summit 2025: All Sessions Now Available to Watch on SVG PLAYNetworking event that preceded IBC2025 shone a light on elite live sports innovation acro...
14/10/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Author Rich Podolsky on Writing Madden & Summerall: How They Revo...
14/10/2025
SVG All-Stars: Michael Reiners, Coordinating Producer, FloRacingThe Illinois State grad steers a vast schedule of motorsports events at tracks across the countr...
14/10/2025
Content protection: Getting the right management for your DRM By Neal Romanek
Friday, October 10, 2025 - 10:11
Print This Story
Eluvio power the EPCR'...
14/10/2025
As League Takes Over Ops, NBA TV and NBA App Add 60 Games, Weekday Studio Show, ...
14/10/2025
Time and effort: World's largest student-led broadcast prepares to go On Air...
14/10/2025
(L-R) Guest, Kimberly Robinson Jones, Geeta Gandbhir, Pamela Dias, and Takema Ro...
14/10/2025
Lossless ist jetzt mit Spotify Premium verf gbar.
Verlustfreies Audio war eine...
14/10/2025
La qualit Lossless est disponible sur Spotify Premium.
Le format sans perte de...
14/10/2025
For the seventh edition of Spotify and FC Barcelona's artist jersey series, ...
14/10/2025
Spotify is committed to bringing the best listening experience to all our users, and that includes parents and families. That's why we're expanding mana...
14/10/2025
Since its debut, the Spotify Original podcast Caso 63 has been more than just a story; it's been a cultural sensation. The science fiction thriller captivat...
By Debra Kaufman
