AI Is a Creative Tool, not a Creative Solution

Content Insider #951 – Deliverance

By Andy Maken – andy@markencom.com

 “Sometimes you have to lose yourself ‘fore you can find anything.”  — Lewis, “Deliverance,” Warner Bros, 1972

We’re not a big proponent of AI, but in the right hands and for the right reasons, it will help filmmakers make good projects great and great films/shows with the stuff people will want to see multiple times.

The rest of the noise is techie BS!

And whether it’s Jensen Huang (CEO of Nvidia) or Lisa Su (CEO of AMD), it’s a push to sell more chips.

Or it could be Andy Jassy (head of Amazon/AWS) or Sundar Pichai (head of Alphabet/Google) or Brad Smith (head of Microsoft) or any of the other major/minor cloud services that are encouraging filmmakers to do more in their clouds.  

While Open AI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and responsible AI-enabled tool makers urge creatives to use the technology intelligently, Folks like Google are “encouraging” people to specifically use Google AI liberally, saying post these “creations” on YouTube and you’ll make big bucks/be the envy of people around the globe.

The EU has taken a cautionary approach to AI which is defined by the AI Act. California passed the California AI Transparency Act on transparency for AI-generated content and other countries have enacted similar guidelines.

Even AMPAS and other international bodies have taken a cautionary approach to the use of technology if folks want their work to be respected and considered for a statue. 

A big part of the four-month strikes a couple of years ago by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA spent a lot of time detailing how the technology could be used and the British and EU professional organizations developed similar guidelines.

Unfortunately, other unions and guilds didn’t get similar guardrails established so there is still a lot that is unknown on the best way to use this stuff and how many involved in the creative process will be displaced. 

Our conclusion is that even a halfway normal mind is a terrible thing to waste.

That’s especially true when you’re creating a movie/show because the core idea exists in your teams’ and your mind.

And you’re working on something that you want to bring to life and have people enjoy it.

There are a lot of pretty good/real good AI tools to help along the way that at times are even better than you thought possible.

Technology, 1s and 0s can’t evaluate, create art.  

It’s true, it can copy/mimic it.

But it still has to be managed, guided, controlled.

 Sometimes you simply have to get your hands dirty because the creative process is often messy and totally…illogical.

We still need the human element … you can augment creativity, but you can’t replace it.

Even before Netflix published its Using Generative AI in Content Production guidelines, some in the content creation industry decried their use of AI tools as “a real drag” on the creative process; but as our favorite and most reliable film industry analyst, Stephen Follows, pointed out – https://tinyurl.com/2ujetvpm — Netflix has a comprehensive and patented library of technology that helps it provide guidelines and information to assist content creators in being more effective.

Their unique position as a global streamer with more than 300 subscribing viewers in 190 countries provides the data and analytics that give creatives a better understanding of what, how and when people watched to develop projects – films/shows – that folks really want to watch.

And yes, with 70 percent of their subscribers located outside North America, that information also helps Netflix better understand where they should invest this year’s $18B content creation budget to stimulate organic subscriber growth and minimize churn.

The investments have produced great viewership for projects from India, South Korea, Japan, France, Spain, Mexico, Brazil and other countries across the genre spectrum, proving that video stories really have no borders and people want to watch a good film/show no matter where it was produced.

The technology enabled Netflix to quickly and effectively localize content with subtitles and/or dubbing to reach and involve a global audience.

It has been a great way for us to continually improve and expand our Spanish vocabular and even test ourselves to learn a little French, Italian and Portuguese.

We admit, following the dialogue in Korean, Japanese, Indian and other languages is a challenge but still enjoyable when you recognize a few words without having to read the subtitles.  

And yes, AI technology has helped make it possible because it’s less expensive and faster than was previously done by human translators.

Even if you don’t produce content for Netflix, their guidelines were the first public statement by a studio, streamer or network on how GenAI products/tools should be used and how creatives should publicly identify what was used, when and in some ways why so everyone can understand that it’s a content creation tool … not just a creator.

Filmmakers who have used any of the available AI tools in screenwriting, pre-production, production and post-production will tell you that they help save the budget (time, money) by doing time-consuming/tedious/repetitive work so they can concentrate on ensuring the film/show is … special.

But as Sarandos emphasized, they have to be used transparently and responsibly.   

As an example, he cited GenAI’s use in the production of the Argentina-based series The Eternaut where a building collapsed in Buenos Aires.

Sure, they could have used traditional VFX tools, but Sarandos noted that by using VFX AI tools, they did it 10 times faster and it wouldn’t even have been possible without them–the AI tools the project’s budget.

Everyone in the industry knows that GenAI is here, is being tried, is being used and the applications will only grow.

Sound changed the film industry.  CGI and digital production changed the visual story industry.   

AI is the next phase of the industry’s growth but it has to be used in focused, thoughtful, open fashion so it doesn’t destroy the industry and the thing it is supposed to help/improve.

AI is a tool just like many of the other digital technologies used daily in content creation, production, distribution … it is not a creator.

Motion capture, CGI and AI integration improved steadily with each new Planet of the Apes chapter; and as the technologies evolved, so did the quality and realism of each film.

Markers and camera capture evolved to translate the digital ape characters with realistic fur, muscles and the nuances, emotional subtleties of the movements and facial expressions were enhanced to add credibility/believability to the lifelike ape characters and the storyline.

AI tools refined the movements of the digital apes so they were realistic and credible to the audience in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before regardless of the budget.

Many older studios and nearly all new studios are incorporating VR production sets.

The sets are being used in combination with pre-visualization game engines from firms such as Unreal or Unity in combination with advanced cameras to speed pre-production and improve actors’ performance in a realistic virtual environment. 

And while the technology has impacted the number of trades/people involved on the set, we haven’t found anyone involved in a film shot in the VR environment who says they really want to go back to the “good ol” green screen.

In fact, they prefer having the ability to duplicate and be in almost any environment and still be home in the evening to sleep in his/her own bed. 

But beyond that, there has to be a more cautionary and use/analyzed approach to the implementation of AI beyond simply reducing the budget.

One of the best applications is to AI to create those minute details in the film/show that make a big difference, but you simply don’t have the money or time to create.

Quality still has to be paramount rather than “it’s 90, 95, 98 percent perfect.”

There are a lot of opportunities for AI to help creators make films/shows better but it has to be real people doing real work with better tools beginning at scripting, pre-production/visualization, shot planning and all the way through VFX, production and post-production.

According to market.us, the global GenAI market in the video content industry is projected to be worth $3.9B by 2033 with a CAGR of 26.8 percent.

About 40 percent are in the content generation arena and 33 percent are in the filmmaking/production segment.

We don’t believe AI can write a “real”/original script.

Bosses won’t have any trouble with signing off on cookie-cutter stuff like procedural crime shows and simple-minded sitcoms; but for a real movie/show that would be tough because AI bases all of its “ideas” on material/information it has been fed.

It can’t take advantage of human creativity and imagination.

This means it can be used to analyze large amounts of data and information from other project scripts to create plot outlines, character arcs, dialogue suggestions, suggest rewrites, automatically tag scripts for production breakdowns and manage the new iterations.  

         A variety of automated tools are already being used in the pre-production phase.

They can extract script elements, create shooting schedules, match crew and cast to the entire project or specific segments.

These tools have been immensely useful in scouting and selecting locations or if you’re using a VR environment selection and even to assist directors in visualizing their shot lists.  

Sure, we know the beings in the alien world of Pandora first only existed in James Cameron’s mind and it took a tremendous amount of VFX and CGI to bring them to life on the big screen.

And don’t tell Gareth Edwards that the prehistoric monsters he resurrected may not have actually looked/acted just as they were depicted in the Jurassic World franchise but with each chapter they got better and more “real”.

With each passing year the AI CGI and VFX tools have gotten better, faster, more effective and more reliable to help bring exciting, interesting and scary stories to light faster and more economically.

But still, creative/fertile minds will guide them.

AI has been rapidly accepted in the postproduction arena thanks in a big part because of the extensive quality control and rigid guidelines of leaders like Adobe, Avid and Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve development teams.

Picture, VFX and finishing editors as well as colorists, sound editors, foley artists and actually, everyone involved in the postproduction process have been using constantly improving AI tools for years.

The tools have raised the quality of the people often hidden in the back room so that anyone who sees the raw footage and finished product thinks of them (O.,K., we do) as content magicians and think they could improve even the worst show/film … no they can’t.

But with the new tools, postproduction people/teams have dramatically reduced the number of retakes needed, shaved significant expenses off the project budget and delivered a quality project even under ridiculous deadlines.  

Yes, there are a lot of “AI experts” who say it is entirely possible for AI to soon create/produce a complete movie/show.  

The Safe Zone was the first AI film written and directed in seven days and it’s full of all the clichés without any understanding of what was written, shot, produced or said.

Or, to put it nicely, they have zero creativity, empathy, understanding. 

There have been others – Critterz, The Frost and Window Seat and there will be others; but for now, and the foreseeable future, they lack a key component.

The human element makes the difference between a bunch of stuff, and a film/show people want to watch in a theater, at home or on their phone.  

Technology can – and will – augment creativity, but creatives can’t be replaced.

From what we’ve seen thus far, AI hasn’t/can’t come up with much that is original.

The human touch – in every phase of a film/show – is the soul, the heart, the emotion that makes video creation special.

All GenAI has been able to do thus far is make stuff faster and cheaper.  

It can’t predict anything meaningful in creative work.  It can’t tell you if it’s a good or bad idea.  It can’t come up with much that is original but rather an amalgamation of what has been done and what might work going forward.

It still boils down to trusting your gut as to whether it’s a good idea/execution.  Ultimately, it is up to the audience to say if the project was good or …

If it’s between you and “the data,” which one will the creative and viewer believe?

It’s a going to boil down to what Sheriff Bullard said in Deliverance, “Let’s just wait and see what comes out of the river.”

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 800 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields; he has an extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants.