‘Fuck My Son’ Director Explains Generative AI Use in Film

Todd Rohal‘s subversive, X-rated movie “Fuck My Son!” opened on Sept. 10 as part of Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness section. The rowdy first showing was met with, as he expected, laughs and squirms from the dark comedy about a mother trying to coerce a kidnapped woman into sleeping with her deformed son.

Yet after the screening, several Letterboxd reviews and social media messages popped up criticizing the film for its use of AI, which has become a recent point of discussion among genre fans. Rohal had included an AI explainer in the press notes for the film, but in order to clarify his message on a complex topic directly with moviegoers, the director shared his detailed breakdown with Variety. That way, audiences would be clear how and why it was used before they saw the film.

Read the letter in full below.

A Note on the VFX and Generative AI in “Fuck My Son!”

It can be difficult to discern when and where Generative AI might be used in a movie, so here is a short guide to what was made with AI and what was created using “traditional” computer effects in our movie.

I created a lot of the post VFX and animation myself using a mix of different tools and software. For the more complicated VFX needs (blood, liquids, pukes, smoke, steam, explosions and wire removal) I relied on professional VFX artists at Suplex FX in Atlanta, Teaspoon FX in L.A./Seattle, Lightbuddy Studios in Seattle and independent FX artists and friends in Austin, L.A. and Georgia. I gave these folks all of the post-production money that I had and I took on the task of completing the 200-plus VFX shots that remained.

Otherwise, I served as the sole editor and post-production department of the movie using Avid Media Composer, Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Blender, Davinci Resolve and assets from ActionVFX on my desktop Mac in our home’s spare bedroom.

I created AI images in the following spots of the film:

THE AMC-STYLE “CINEMA RULES”

Initially the idea here was to re-create the Regal Cinema’s roller coaster animation that plays before their shows, which has “evolved” over the years with various incarnations of perfectly bad CGI animation (I am sure that Regal cinemas is working on an updated AI roller coaster intro as I type this). I instead opted for a shorter version of an AMC “Movie Lovers” set of rules that would be made with AI versions of film noir, sci-fi, Ben-Hur and vaudeville movie tropes. This felt like an appropriate use of AI because, well…AMC is likely making something like this as well and this felt like an appropriately accurate way to portray the current state of cinema — digital projectors projecting digital images of digital people in a pathetic effort to harken to the glory days of all things analog. 

THE PERV-O-VISION AUDIENCE SHOTS

The “Move Theater Pre-Show Guide” uses AI-generated images of an audience using the “Perv-O-Vision” and “Nude Blok” Dual Technologies. AI was used here because this is set up to look as if it’s being presented by a Christian tech company and a Christian tech company would happily use AI to sell their product. It would have been easier for me to shoot these shots with some friends, as the AI platforms would not allow for me to generate anything with the word “Pervo” in the images, so I had to composite that text back onto each image with that text.

THE MEATIE MATES

The initial Meatie Mates animation seen on Bernice’s iPad was created by animator Cable Hardin using traditional hand drawn 2D animation for the show’s “opening” sequence.

For the sequences where the Meatie Mates become “real,” I wanted them to resemble a modern cheap-o “Veggie Tales”-type show — something that felt like a contemporary (or futuristic) version of what a YouTube kids show might utilize. At first, I tried Blender (the same software used in the movie “Flow”) but my results felt too dated and clean. I then tried Adobe’s now outdated “Mixamo” animation tools, which were fun, but I ultimately settled on using a mixture of AI tools (Midjourney, Kling, Sora and Flux) to create the characters based on the 2D drawings we made, training the AI models with my own original drawings and images, photos of meat and guts from my local Tacoma butcher shop and then creating a basic set of character motions with Kling. None of these AI tools could completely create and animate the characters the way that was needed, so I spent months stitching all of the characters together one at a time, separately compositing each of their mouths and eyes and creating my own “animation workflow” in Adobe’s After Effects to get them all to work together, composite them into our production footage, sync their voices and make them appear to interact.

My thinking was that by the time “Fuck My Son!” was complete, these AI tools would be at a point where fully animated shows would be possible and resemble what I created, but at the time of this writing (fall of 2025) I think that things aren’t yet quite to that point.

Other instances of AI are used for shots in the movie that either call back or reference the above sequences. The opening titles preview the Meatie Mate world to come, the Perv-O-Vision audience members show up again in the sex scene, Fabian’s brain short-circuits and AI blips of nonsense, memories, meat and perversions mix with vintage clips from Doris Wishman’s films and digital artwork by Belgian artist Marcin Pospiech. 

Apart from these sequences what you are seeing onscreen was either created practically by special effects legend Robert Kurtzman or by the Visual FX artists mentioned prior. 

AI was also used to help me complete the K1 forms to deliver to our 35 investors and complete the LLC tax filings, which I know nothing about.

I hope this helps gives some insight into the how’s and why’s of the software that was used in post-production for “Fuck My Son!” If you have any questions, or want to discuss any of this, please feel free to contact me. 

Thanks!

— Todd Rohal

Todd Rohal is the writer, director, producer, editor, post supervisor, VFX artist, accountant and mixing assistant of “Fuck My Son!”