MAKE Animation Thesis Grant Announces 2026 Winners
June 23, 2026
In a straight-up weaponization of AI against it’s creators, director Chris Boyle and the crew at London mixed-media studio Private Island drop a satirical, three-minute boy band take-down of tech billionaires.
Chris Boyle: “A boy band lives or dies on its archetypes: the heartthrob, the bad boy, the goofy one, the quiet one. In this film, each one needed his own physicality and comic register, holding steady across every scene so the group dynamic read instantly.
“But the part we find most interesting goes a layer deeper. You’re also caricaturing a real person underneath that archetype, and both of those things have to land at once.
“The question is always how the thing can be funny, how it can carry personality, how it earns its tone. The technology is only ever in service of that.”
“Finding the granular control that holds up shot to shot and stays funny is the actual craft of it. The dancing had to clear that same bar, referencing a specific genre and era precisely enough that the parody landed for anyone who lived through it.
“That is how we think about all our work in this space. It’s never a technical exercise. The question is always how the thing can be funny, how it can carry personality, how it earns its tone. The technology is only ever in service of that.
“The technical challenges came down to the fact generative video excels in short bursts, but stretch toward long-form and the cracks show: faces drift, environments wander, sync slips once you bring in music and movement.
“As with most technical challenges, there was no one-size-fits-all fix. It was a mix of motion control and 3D guidance to keep characters and space stable where the tools wanted to improvise – plus a genuinely tenacious attitude: refusing the near-misses, and pushing each shot until the look, the performance, and the choreography all held together at once.”
Production: Private Island
Writer/director: Chris Boyle
EP: Helen Power
Sound: Private Island
