
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 ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
06/07/2026
Long-developed relationships and informal access, three production models, and c...
06/07/2026
The deal follows Lumine's recent acquisition of Synamedia's video-networ...
06/07/2026
This former SportsCenter producer is shaping local-team studio coverage to surro...
06/07/2026
IMS Productions and FOX Sports deployed more than 100 cameras, 32 onboard feeds,...
06/07/2026
Lumine Group Inc. has announced the completion of its acquisition of the Video Network Business from Synamedia. The business will operate as a standalone compan...
06/07/2026
NASCAR has announced a content and commercial partnership with Motorsport Network, a motorsports and automotive media platform, to distribute NASCAR original co...
06/07/2026
Versant Media Group has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Full Swing, a sports technology company, from Bruin Capital and a group of minority investor...
06/07/2026
DAZN has announced global broadcast rights to 3ICE, a professional hockey format featuring three skaters and a goalkeeper per side, with no power plays or offsi...
06/07/2026
Bundle gains 100 new synths & more
Synth Anthology 5 the largest and most feature-packed edition of UVI's hardware synth emulation bundle, bringing toge...
06/07/2026
Available now via free firmware update
MOTU have just announced that three of their popular audio interfaces now boast official Milan Certification. The 16A...
06/07/2026
Rohde & Schwarz completes Hunter Preliminary Design Review for the Integrated Co...
06/07/2026
The R&S IMAGER from Rohde & Schwarz uses millimeter wave imaging to inspect the ...
06/07/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
06/07/2026
Digital Domain Appoints Industry Veteran Patrick Davenport as Executive Vice Pre...
06/07/2026
Gravity Media USA appoints Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development
Brie Clayton July 6, 2026
0 Comments
The strategic new appointment supports...
06/07/2026
Remote Editing Without Cloud Storage in Resolve
Michael Cioni July 6, 2026
0 Comments
This is a step-by-step guide that demonstrates how to setup your...
06/07/2026
Automatic Caption Translation in Adobe Premiere Pro
Colin Smith July 6, 2026
0 Comments
Here I showcase the innovative automatic caption translation f...
06/07/2026
Flavor's First Ever Managing Director Neal Cohen Retires; Longstanding Execu...
06/07/2026
How Adam Rosenwach Pivoted from Music to Medtech Without Missing a Beat What do the rehearsal room and the boardroom have in common? More than you might think...
06/07/2026
Zhongyi Optics unveils the Dreamy Zone T1 FF Cine Lens Series on Indiegogo with ...
06/07/2026
Techtel debuts insyght: making ST 2110 media discovery easy
intellisphereinsyght2026
6 July Written By Suzanne Costello
Sydney, Australia - 06 July 2026 T...
06/07/2026
Monday 6 July 2026
Sky agrees to acquire ITV Media & Entertainment, creating a ...
06/07/2026
Fresh from his World Cup heroics with Cabo Verde, Roberto Pico' Lopes will join the RT panel for Argentina v Egypt tomorrow and for the England v Norway q...
06/07/2026
Nations have long invested in domestic infrastructure to advance their economies, protect and use their data, and take advantage of technology opportunities in ...
06/07/2026
Every year, the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) reveals where thousands of AI researchers have decided to put their work.
This year's ...
06/07/2026
A death can be unsuspicious, but it has to be explained
What happened to Ke...
05/07/2026
We've gone to another level of integrating the graphics into the set architecture' - Zac Fields, SVP, Graphic Technology and Integration, FOX Sports...
05/07/2026
Browser-based and desktop apps available
Digital Sunset Studios have been busy working on an interesting project: a free software tool that provides compute...
04/07/2026
When Canada qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026, OneSoccer knew this wasn'...
04/07/2026
Celebrates company's 80th anniversary
Rhodes have recently revealed that they will be producing a limited run of electric pianos in celebration of their...
04/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Cameras Empower Youth Broadcasting Program
Brie Clayton July 3, 2026
0 Comments
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagi...
04/07/2026
iZotope Joins Boris FX
Boris Yamnitsky July 3, 2026
0 Comments
iZotope, the team behind RX and Ozone, is joining Boris FX. A letter from founder Boris...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...