Films and Shows Should Never Lose the Personal/Emotional Touch

Content Insider #876 – Creativity

By Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com

You should try building a boat with hand tools after a couple of shots of Jack.” – Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, “NCIS,” Belisarius Productions, 2003 – 

Back in 1964, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was asked to describe his test for obscenity (pornography) he said something to the effect, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

That’s about where we are right now when folks are trying to describe how good/bad, beneficial/evil AI is/is going to be for the entertainment industry.

Some “experts” say it’s going to democratize content creation making the production of great/entertaining shows/movies available to everyone.  

But we’re still struggling to understand creativity.

In 1954, Robert Gober unveiled his three urinals masterpiece and some art connoisseur paid $3.5M for it.

We’ve only seen pictures of this work of art but one of the first things we noticed was the d**n things weren’t even plumbed so they were sorta useless to 99.9 percent of the folks who looked at them.

We walked into the men’s room after returning from a business trip and there were three urinals in a row.  

They all worked and we’re pretty sure the airport commission didn’t pay $3.5M for them.

The airport urinals are seen and more appreciated annually by more people than Gober’s.

His work doesn’t make us laugh or cry, scream or cheer.  Instead, it …

So, which is more creative?

Process – Writing is hard work.  Good writing is **** hard work.  

Experts claim that AI is going to speed, simplify and improve project plot/script writing, which seems at best in our opinion … impossible.

Of course, our tech experts probably disagree with Ernest Hemingway as well …

“Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be.”

That’s because …

“…writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge, and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done–so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.”

So, what does AI feel after it wraps up a writing project?

About the same as our computer sending us a love note … nada!

Jeff Katzenberg, former head of DreamWorks Animation and now head of WndrCo, a tech investment firm, has said that AI is going to streamline projects, reduce production time and save project owners millions. 

Emotion – Inside Out 2 was a smash hit and financial success because it was filled with emotion and feelings from people who wanted to tell a story to people everywhere.  

When he says AI can replace 90 percent of the jobs in animation production, slash the time required to create a project like the latest hit Inside Out 2 and dramatically reduce the production (5.5 yrs., $175M) budget, we believe him.

After all, … he knows that stuff!

O.K., even techies agree that AI sucks at empathy and emotions because you can’t reduce them to a bunch of 1 and 0 codes and the men, women and kids that are packing theaters wouldn’t notice … would they?

To reinforce his statements, Bain & Company pointed out that taking full advantage of AI in something like a modest family comedy could reduce the time and cost by five to 10 percent.

Yes, But – There are a lot of places along the creation/production cycle where people can streamline activities and are reducing time/money budgets without replacing the heart/soul of a project.  

For studios and streamers that are struggling to turn a profit on their content, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

WBD shareholders would like to see management turn the ship around and deliver more than just tax savings by shelving projects and staff reductions.

Even though shareholders love Bob Iger, they’d like to see the company’s family fare, sci-fi blockbuster sequels and streaming activities turn red ink black.

The boss of Paramount’s three bosses would probably like to see the former entertainment powerhouse regain its respected position in the industry.

While Netflix, the industry disruptor, is profitable (thanks to the really smart use of subscriber viewing data to disrupt content selection, production and distribution); what senior management team wouldn’t like to be more profitable?

Yeah!

Combine Gen AI with Nvidia’s powerful new GPUs (graphic processing units), Unreal’s insanely great game engine and really creative content quality can be more efficiently and effectively produced and delivered.  

We appreciate the potential and recognize the challenges/issues AI presents for the content industry.

The challenge will be to use it selectively and carefully.

Folks like Bain and AI executives reassure us that the technology won’t replace our heroes, heroines, actors and stars.

Not that we’re dismissing them from the equation, but they are what, 10 percent of the creative team?

Protected – People like Scarlett Johansson (l) have already unleashed their lawyers on AI firms – and others – for unauthorized use of their images/voice that hurt them where it counts, their bottomline.  Others, like Tom Hanks, wouldn’t mind cutting back on his busy schedule and letting AI do some of his heavy lifting along with proper compensation.

Actors like Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Julia Roberts and the rest of the A (and B, C) list actors already have expensive lawyers who have spelled out every detail in their contracts that ensure their images/voices will be protected and paid for in perpetuity.

They and their heirs will receive residuals whenever/wherever their likenesses are used.

There are icons we have lost like Chadwick Boseman, Brandon Lee, Robin Williams and others that at some level people would like to see return to the big and bigger screen but …

It’s the other 90 percent of the creative arena where Gen AI application needs to be addressed–the writers, coordinators, cinematographers, grips, lighting, artists, animators, production/post crew and trades.  

These are the areas where Open AI and the rest of the tech arena feel they can dramatically improve by unlocking production capacity, transforming timelines, unlocking creative capacity, making it more efficient and delivering greater returns for the struggling industry.

“Them” – The men/women who keep the show/movie industry rolling aren’t the actors or directors whose names we see on the credits.  Instead, it’s the hourly, daily and project people in every area who produce the goods people enjoy.  If AI takes over their skilled work so “junior” people can do the execution, too much of the industry is lost.  

In the US, Statista estimated that there were more than 441.7 thousand men/women working in the industry.

Globally, there is at least five times that number in advanced and emerging countries who work on a production project or hourly basis.  

They’re the foundation, the infrastructure, the heart of the industry that gets the least attention and is hurt first when strikes shut the industry down as the trades did last year and this year.

Animation – Animated shorts and shows/films have made significant strides forward by automating many of the details and processes from individual cells to computer-created graphics; but still, it’s the human eye, touch that delivers the emotion, the quality of the projects.  

Automation has been, and will continue to be, vital in the content creation industry.

It used to take painstaking hours to meticulously create a single cell for an animated feature like Disney’s first full-length film, Snow White.

Even with powerful computers and the best creative software at the time, it still required a large team of skilled animators working more than 800,000 hours to render/produce Toy Story.

Post Production – Today’s powerful computers and software like DaVinci Resolve (l) and Adobe Premiere (r) have relieved post production specialists of many of the menial “housekeeping” tasks, enabling them to create content that is not only breathtaking but awe inspiring.  

Significant improvements have been made in post-production tools like BlackMagic DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere, Avid’s Postproduction solutions and others. 

These firms and their teams have selectively and carefully added AI functions/capabilities where they will free video, audio editors, FX/CGI specialists, effects experts from the time-consuming, drudge part of their workflow so they can focus on the creative things that make people jump out of their seats, scream, gasp and say, “holy ****.”

No, no matter how AI and its proponents would like you to think the technology delivers those audience emotions and delivers that empathy, it can only disappoint everyone – studio boss, crew and … the audience.

We always find it “interesting” to hear AI “experts” say things like, “I’m not making a case that we’re going to have a GenAI-created or -enabled blockbuster movie soon, but it will democratize high-quality production.”

Maybe…

We’re constantly amazed that ALL of the AI, tech companies and venture capital firms rush to roll out the next great solution which they claim will solve…everything.  But then suddenly they say it’s got “a few problems.”    

We have our doubts when present/past AI researchers get together to emphasize products are being released without any safeguards or guardrails.  

We’ve all experienced buying a “new, fantastic, leading-edge product” that is going to change/improve the way we work/live, only to find out the seller expects you to do their beta testing.

What we do have right now is a promise that the tools are going to make it easier, faster, better and more profitable for the industry to create shows/movies.

Of course, if that’s the case, then will we eventually be able to do away with the constant parade.

AI Walkin – If shows/movies are increasingly created relying heavily on artificial intelligence, shouldn’t “it” be the one to take home the trophy from the contests?  Heck, it could even vote for itself.   

If AI guides/writes half of the script, spells out the shot list and camera angles, recommends/decides the costumes/hair styles, and does most of the work because it can do it better, cheaper then who can walk the red carpet, accept the trophy and say “yep, I/we did that”?

We can’t … can you?

Not long ago, LG Ad Solutions published a report noting the consumer had a preference toward AI used in ads and remarkably, 49 percent could distinguish between AI and traditionally generated ads.

Seriously?   Really?

Maybe – Our biggest question on AI-generated content is how much, how critically people really examine and think about what they see/hear or if it simply meets their entertainment needs at the time.   Guess it depends.  

We tend to find Morning Consult’s study regarding AI-generated content to be slightly more credible.

Only 20-25 percent of those asked were positive while 40-50 percent were negative and roughly 30 percent didn’t know/didn’t care.

Of course, people in European countries, India and other countries that were barraged by AI-generated political ads have a less than favorable view of the technology and what it produces.

Now that the election in the US is also heating up and we’re drowning in those **** ads, we bet folks are beginning to have a different opinion about the great new ads that are tuned in to what they/it expects us to hear/see.

But then as George Carlin said years ago, “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

We’re not advocating that AI be hidden away on the back of the shelf because frankly, it’s too late.

It’s here, it’s being used and it’s a safety line for content producers, distributors in determining which projects get greenlighted, those that get sent back to the writers’ room and which ones are destroyed before they can ruin anyone’s reputation or checkbook.

AI can make the creative process more interesting, more vital, more fun, more enjoyable.  

In addition, it can help professionals streamline the production, post and distribution processes.

That makes money for everyone in the film/show industry.

Honestly?

Yes, because we’re not really interested in democratizing the video/audio content creation, production and delivery industry.

If anyone/everyone can suddenly create good/great entertainment, then what makes it special, different, unique?

The people in the M&E industry need to take the hands/eyes/heart approach to this work just as Gibbs did in crafting his boat in his basement.  

Getting it out for folks to see, enjoy – okay, even for a short time – wasn’t part of the creative process so he simply said, “I’ve never really thought about it, but I could tear down a wall and build a ramp.”

Technology just needs to be in the background and never become the crutch or driving force to the industry.

If it does, we lose something special.

Perhaps there are times when we have to look behind the technology and more closely at the folks who are encouraging us to jump in the deep end.

Oh, and to clarify things, none of this was written using AI so, we can’t blame anything if you’re “unhappy” with the discussion.

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.