ROUND TABLE
THE PANEL Chris Nolan
Chris Nolan is the CEO of 90,000 FEET Studios. Like his famous namesake, he’s also an award-winning director and writer. His latest work is a docu-fiction film by futurist Gerd Leonhard called Look Up Now , which contemplates how humans can best utilise AI. Dominic Lees Dominic Lees is associate professor of filmmaking at the University of Reading and writes on synthetic media and its impact on the screen industries. An AI expert, he’s also an experienced director, with credits including co-writing and directing 2008’s Outlanders . Martine Bertrand A senior AI researcher at DNEG, Martine Bertrand is helping to develop cutting-edge AI-driven technologies that can be applied to a variety of visual effects challenges, from creating realistic character animations to generating complex visual landscapes. Quentin Jorquera Quentin Jorquera is an experienced DOP with credits on short films, commercials and music videos. He’s worked and trained as an actor, film critic, producer, creative director, virtual production expert, rigging electrician and gaffer over the course of his career.
Definition: How has AI technology impacted our industry in 2023? Martine Bertrand: AI is just beginning to show its impact on our industry. Many studios are exploring AI-driven technologies in an effort to reduce the time and cost required to generate complex visual effects. Some pragmatic use cases of AI, for instance, involve frame interpolation, denoising and image upscaling. AI approaches can now analyse and replicate patterns of movement and textures, creating realistic animations that would have taken much longer to craft manually. Furthermore, AI has enabled the creation of deepfakes and virtual actors, which have been utilised in both film restoration and new productions, providing fresh avenues for storytelling. Dominic Lees: The big talk has been about ChatGPT 4, but AI has wide- ranging impacts on production. Big benefits in 2023 have been in areas like
be time-consuming and expensive is now just a click or two away. Tasks like rotos, removals and expansions could cost tens of thousands and require 40 workers spending days on them. Now, the cost is nothing. Another significant breakthrough is in AI-driven audio. We can now inexpensively dub multiple languages using AI, adapting actors’ mouth movements to match. This means Hollywood no longer holds an advantage in filmmaking. Great movies made in South Korea, for instance, can be dubbed into English, retaining real actors’ voices and intonations without appearing out of sync. This shift impacts actors significantly: The Actors’ Guild will need to become more global to maintain leverage with studios, who can now produce films anywhere, convert them to English quickly and potentially employ foreign actors without the obligation of residuals. Quentin Jorquera: I believe that, for now, AI has impacted the film industry more
VFX; easy text-to-image systems, such as Midjourney, enable concept artwork to be produced quickly and cheaply. We are already seeing the impact on jobs in the industry – changing patterns of work and some roles disappearing. Chris Nolan: I’m a ‘protopian’ futurist filmmaker, so let’s first look at the positive: the democratisation and acceleration of production and filmmaking. For aspiring filmmakers, or even seasoned ones with a script collecting dust, new AI tools and opportunities now exist to make your films like never before. It may not have been as visible as now, but AI technology has been impacting our industry for over a decade, rendering lifelike characters and environments, allowing filmmakers to create visuals faster, cheaper and in more creative ways. The difference now is that AI has hit the desktop computer, for instance through rotoscoping, the removal of objects in a moving image and expanding a scene. What used to
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