How AI is changing The FILM INDUSTRY
As you all know, the AI tech is moving at a pace we've NEVER seen before.
In fact, there's already a film festival highlighting projects that incorporate generative AI!
RunwayML, a startup building a creative suite of 30+ AI-enabled VFX tools, hosted the first annual "AI Film Festival" earlier this year.
Some stats on year 1 of the AI Film Festival:
- All short films
- Hundreds of submissions
- Ten finalists
- Winner: "Generation" by Riccardo Fusetti
Gabriel Gornell asked Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela in his recent interview, if this was possible two years ago.
His answer: "We've been working on this for the last 4 years, but we've seen an explosion in the last 6-8 months."
Big-budget studios have started using "virtual set" technology like Epic Games Unreal Engine, which Lucasfilm uses for The Mandalorian, to increase optionality on set.
The Unreal Engine allows:
-- virtual scouting of different digital environments
-- real-time lighting & VFX adjustments
Filmmakers are now capable of making on-the-fly adjustments that were impossible just a few years ago.
NOW: imagine if text-to-image or text-to-video generative AI tools get 100x better.
Creators will eventually be able to generate entirely new digital environments ON THE FLY from a text prompt!
We're headed for an amazing new world of filmmaking.
How are AI Tools right now for VFX and Post-Production?
Maya, has gained a few interesting AI integrations that generate textures, backgrounds and dynamic scene generation.
It's important to note that these tools are currently being developed by users, which allows for faster innovation compared to waiting for Autodesk to develop new features.
RunwayML is another promising software, offering a collection of browser-based editing and post-production tools. These include object removal from moving video and AI-generated text-to-image/video tools.
While the quality of these tools may not yet be suitable for feature films, they do provide accessible options for consumers and less critical video projects, such as corporate, educational, and late-night talk shows. This democratization of tools has the potential to benefit a wider range of users and clients.
Another interesting change we are seeing is most AI solutions are web-based which makes them available to a broad range of people since a good amount of post-production work no longer requires high performance workstations.
