Glenn Kitson Uses AI-Rendering to Craft This Tremendously Trippy Berghaus Film

To coincide with the reissue of its Mera Peak jacket, legendary outdoor brand Berghaus approached director Glenn Kitson to make and front a documentary.

He said yes, but on one condition: he could do wholly what he wanted with it. The result, in Glenn's words, is "very northern. And trippy." 

Glenn's take on a documentary, the film is a joyfully mad collage of mind-bending visuals and audio, all backed up with voiceovers that lend it some genuine authenticity. "I wanted to reflect the era it harks back to as well," says Glenn, "hence the trippiness. Although it's not a total retro thing, I interviewed a bunch of young festival goers and 'cosmic scousers'."

Glenn shot roughly 90% in-camera before rendering it all with AI, and crafting the rest using VFX. "For me, generally it's always a case of refining what I am into and the kind of things I like to make," says Glenn about how he approaches a blank-page project like this. "So, in this case, I go back to what I know - youth culture, raves, the north of England (lol)... stuff like that. To be clear, I am into other stuff now too... like ceramics and mid-century furniture an’ that. It's just not as exciting.” 

"And technique wise - when allowed, I always like to mess around with animation, so doing a mad AI trip was a dream."

Glenn says that he and the team approached the film much like they would any fashion film: casting, styling, locations, etc. For casting, Glenn made a list of people who he thought would have their take on the Newcastle-founded brand. "Jacket-heads, vintage dealers, former and present ravers, cosmic scousers (don't ask), ramblers and even a former ram-raider who used to do all the camping shops in the early ‘90s and who now is actually into mountaineering," he says.

"Once we had a locked cut, we then rendered it out with AI. This stage of the process was completely new to me and I really enjoyed it, using prompts to achieve a look and feel that made sense (or rather no sense in this case). It was a trial and error process that was only constrained by time and money. For once."

With this project in the bag and out in the world, Glenn is keen to experiment further with AI in his filmmaking. "I pitched on a Lenny Kravitz over Christmas that was gonna be all AI," he tells me. "But he shit himself and went with someone mega cheesy.”

"I think AI is going to drive us all insane," adds Glenn. "I mean, the world is already crazy but this is going to accelerate things. No point fighting it now, it’s too late. I got to make an interesting documentary with it. I’m aware I’m part of the problem."