Imagine stepping onto a film set where the director is an algorithm, the cameraperson is a drone powered by machine learning, and the editor can cut a year’s worth of footage overnight. Or maybe even all of this can be done without ever needing a camera, but just using OPENAI’s SORA technology…Welcome to the future of filmmaking, transformed by artificial intelligence. I guess we should call this AI filmmaking…God this all sounds bleak!!
I want to elaborate on the seismic shifts Artificial Intelligence is bringing to the filmmaking landscape. What will be its role in scriptwriting, casting, production, post-production, and even the artform itself. AI is not just enhancing creativity but also democratizing; and some say decimating the craft of visual storytelling in cinema.
AI in Scriptwriting
AI’s capabilities now extend to crafting narratives, generating dialogue, and even creating entire scripts. Tools like ChatGPT, Sudowrite and Jasper are revolutionizing the scripting process, offering new dimensions of creativity for writers. But Hollywood is pushing back hard on AI especially when it comes to writing. I don’t blame them either. If AI is trained on a plethora of human writings it’s only going to churn that data into more of the same. Which doesn’t sound terrible if the dataset is good. We might get the best movies ever made… However the obvious elephant in the room is that we don’t want machines writing stories for us because A) writers still want a job and B) The idea of a machine entertaining us sounds dystopian and thought to be downright plagiarism. The WGA has said:
“It’s important to note that AI software does not create anything. It generates a regurgitation of what it’s fed.”
This may be true for now but literally tomorrow that may not be the case since AI filmmaking tools advance so quickly.
Source: [The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/22/23651804/wga-union-chatgpt-ai-tools-proposal)
Casting AI’s Role
Ever thought of a digital casting agent? AI now analyzes actors’ performances and predicts on-screen chemistry, helping directors make more informed decisions. This technology is not just revolutionizing casting but also ensuring diversity and inclusivity in film selections. But again, the faster this is adopted the less jobs there will be for casting directors. Source: [Deadline] (https://deadline.com/2023/07/artificial-intelligence-casting-charisma-carpenter-instagram-100-actors-program-1235446498/)
Post-Production
The post-production process is receiving a monumental lift from AI filmmaking tools. From automated color correction from ColorLAB, 3D asset AI creations from LUMA AI, Runway ML having about 25 different post-production tools from AI green-screen removal to text-2-video. Stable Diffusion is also rapidly enabling you to create amazing images from text and even animations if you know what you’re doing. I personally have dug deep into this and NeRFs at my day job. Adobe’s Firefly is speeding up all kinds of post-production workflows, enabling filmmakers to focus more on creative aspects. These AI filmmaking tools are quite welcome when it comes to monotonous tasks and annoying busy work. It’s democratizing,simplifying, and reducing costs for tasks we didn’t realize we needed made easier. When it comes to editing we have already seen some amazing tools that will sift through your footage and choose selects, chop up interviews and even versioning/adaptations. I currently work at a company (https://www.edisen.com) that has an amazing platform for meta-tagging versioning and adaptations. For larger brands or films, the Edisen platform is very useful for handling & enhancing your entire video pipeline from start to finish. So whether people realize it or not it’s literally everywhere now. I have to keep pinching myself!
Text-to-Video for Production and Post
However there is this wild new wave of AI generative video that seems to completely erase everything from a director, DP, Production Designer, Hair and Makeup, Actors, ETC. AI tools like Runway ML are transforming the laborious process of filmmaking into an efficient and more simplified task. Words actually cannot express just how insane the SORA project is. For sure the stock footage industry is about to either die an instant death or if they can adapt, just put a lot of people out of work. You may just start paying Pond5.com to create entire scenes for you without ever hiring a crew. Moreover the idea that you can replace the almost every role of the humans on a. Film set by just typing text into a computer is liberating for indie filmmakers with no budget but utterly terrifying for the general film industry. I already have had directors asking if we can use AI filmmaking tools to cut corners on their film and save a few dollars. Most of them have no clue how all this works. Most of it is still rough around the edges while still mind blowing. SORA is probably the most shared and discussed innovation this year. With AI filmmaking you can see real promise with the mind-blowing SORA and even smaller scale, rougher tool sets.
Source: [OpenAI] (https://openai.com/sora)
Democratizing Filmmaking
Perhaps the least significant impact of AI filmmaking is its potential to democratize the field. With AI, independent filmmakers have access to tools that were once only available to big studios, leveling the playing field and fostering a new era of creativity. But this era’s version of democratizing has a cost I don’t think any of us could have ever foreseen… A giant erosion of the artists’ jobs in Hollywood. For example, there is this silent but deadly unemployment rate increasing amongst VFX artists in the film industry. Just hop onto LinkedIn and you’ll see the dreaded green half-circle of unemployment on thousands of VFX artists’ profile photos. Some have even taken to trolling and criticizing anyone that mentions AI on the platform. But I don’t blame them, it’s effectively this forced obsolescence that we all see but aren’t sure how to fix it. My more cynical friends think it won’t at all be mitigated because, “capitalism”. At the risk of confusing you, it reminds me of the Angel of Death from the Exodus story. It was succinctly and openly killing all the first-born and there was presumably this feeling of helplessness… or in our case, AI is killing the livelihoods of many. How’s that for a bad dad analogy. Either way, I’m not so sure I’ve given up as much hope as most. But maybe that’s because I use AI filmmaking tools on a daily basis. But I see the light at the end of the tunnel and the amazing advances that will come from all of this. I believe in humanity and hold out hope for #teampeople.
Conclusion
As we stand on the brink of a new era in filmmaking, it’s clear that AI’s role did not start out to replace the human touch but to enhance and expand the realm of what’s possible in cinema. But from what I’ve seen in the last months, it seems this timeline of obsolescence has shrunk from my perceived estimations of 5-10 years to about 5 days. From script to screen, artificial intelligence is ushering in a wave of innovation that is both exhilarating and unprecedented. But one has to wonder, what is our art-form and craft becoming with this new AI filmmaking gold-rush? Sure there are some tools that will make life easier but I do sort of think we need to draw MORE lines in the sand. We are in fact the people that make up the film industry. We are the grains of sand that make the heap. After all this self-aware fear-mongering I do think what we will see is a crave from audiences, employers and filmmakers to see human stories told by actual humans. I hope it just doesn’t take ruining the lives of many before that truth is realized.
What are your thoughts on the future of AI filmmaking? Let me know in the comments below.
Comments
Simon Astbury