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Entertainment·G Space·Model-prefilled gain·Published 2026-07-20

Into the spider’s lair: how an Australian film-maker made an impossible documentary with AI

Scene: a dimly lit underground burrow. A giant Amazonian tarantula and a tiny dotted humming frog share the space, an unlikely duo captured in extraordinary detail. Except, they haven’t been. Guardians of the Burrow, a short “wildlife documentary” by the Australian digital content designer Jodie Heenan, is entirely AI generated. At the weekend it won a prize in the Omni international AI film festival, adjudicated by a panel led by The Crow and Dark City director – and AI advocate – Alex Proyas. The documentary d…

TRV-2026-0289JournalismPermanent record — cite & verify
Into the spider’s lair: how an Australian film-maker made an impossible documentary with AI

Publisher image: The Guardian.

The quick read

On 6 July 2026, The Guardian reported on Guardians of the Burrow, a short wildlife documentary by Australian designer Jodie Heenan that is entirely AI generated and depicts a giant Amazonian tarantula and a tiny dotted humming frog sharing a burrow. The film won a prize at the Omni international AI film festival. Heenan said no one had managed to capture the pair on film in the wild because lights and microscopic cameras would interfere with natural behaviour.

The case matters because it shows AI being used not for spectacle but to visualize a biologically plausible interaction that conventional filming cannot access, while also illustrating how low-cost AI tools are changing who can make films. What remains uncertain is how copyright, compensation for original creators, and energy use of datacentres will be resolved, issues the filmmakers themselves flag as unresolved teething problems.

Main points
  • Guardians of the Burrow is described as entirely AI generated and won a prize at the Omni international AI film festival judged by a panel led by Alex Proyas.
  • Filmmaker Jodie Heenan researched National Geographic, Animal Planet and Attenborough teams and avoided cheap AI effects to make it feel like a real nature documentary.
  • Heenan is also part of a California studio Fable team reconstructing 44 minutes of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons with AI-generated likenesses and voices, criticized by Welles' estate.
Gain

AI generation allowed an Australian designer to create a wildlife documentary showing the protective relationship between a giant Amazonian tarantula and a dotted humming frog inside its burrow, a scene the filmmaker says had not been captured on film in the wild because lights and cameras would interfere.

The rundown

The short was made by Australian digital content designer Jodie Heenan and presented as a wildlife documentary on YouTube with its AI origins disclosed. The festival context includes winners from the US, UK, Brazil, Ukraine, China and Australia, with Canada's Robert Gaudette winning best picture for A Face Only a Mother Could Love.

The article notes broader controversy around AI training data, with musicians and authors campaigning in Australia's parliament over copyright and communities mobilising against power-hungry datacentres, and quotes filmmakers acknowledging the need to resolve fair compensation as AI replaces older special effects work.

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