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TECH AND FILMMAKING
I’ve had some underlying concerns about how AI tech will affect the craft, the people, the employment, the storytelling in our industry.
At Sundance I hosted a panel on the topic with:
Ryan from Echobend https://echobend.com/
Nishant from Roll Credits https://www.rollcredits.io/
Daniel from OpenAI https://openai.com/
Then at SXSW I hosted a panel on the topic with:
Soyung from TwelveLabs https://www.twelvelabs.io/
Alan from Tunnel Post https://tunnel.app/
Ian from Sneakar https://www.sneakar.io/
ALL OF WHOME are deep deep deep into specific use cases of AI within their sector of our industry. With Cannes coming up more is certain to slip down. The question is, has this exposure remedied any of my concerns. Before that, a timeline of AI events to set the scene.
AN AI TIMELINE
2016 The First Resurrection Peter Cushing (dead since 94) is digitally brought back in Rogue One. Disney pays his estate £28k. Nobody asked Cushing. A lawsuit follows years later.
2019 De-Aging Goes Mainstream The Irishman and Captain Marvel put AI de-aging on the map. De Niro, Pacino, Samuel L. Jackson all rolled back decades. The start of something.
2021 Willis Lets AI Wear His Face Bruce Willis lets DeepCake train an AI on 34,000 images of him for a Russian telecom ad. His team later denies it's a formal deal. Either way: a living A-lister has lent his face to a machine.
2022 James Earl Jones Sells His Voice Jones licenses his Darth Vader voice to AI company Respeecher on the way out. Future Star Wars will use it without him. He later dies. Vader lives on — as a simulation.
2022 Robin Williams Draws a Line From the Grave Before his death, Williams wrote a clause into his estate preventing AI use of his likeness for 25 years. One of the few people who saw it coming and did something about it.
Early 2023 The Internet Sees the Ceiling "Will Smith eating spaghetti" goes viral. A grotesque, melting AI video. Everyone laughs. Then realises how fast it'll improve. It does within months.
Summer 2023 The Strike Hollywood shuts down for 118 days. AI is a central demand. SAG-AFTRA wins: no face, voice, or body cloned without consent and pay. The industry draws a line.
2023 Indiana Jones, AI Does the Heavy Lifting ILM de-ages Harrison Ford 35 years using AI-assisted tech. Called a major leap beyond The Irishman. 100+ artists. The director insists the performance is still human. For now.
Feb 2024 Sora Drops OpenAI teases its text-to-video model. The demos are shockingly good. Buzz and panic in equal measure. A Napster moment for film?
May 2024 Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI OpenAI releases a voice assistant that sounds like Johansson's character in Her. She'd twice said no. OpenAI backs down. A defining symbol of the consent battle.
June 2024 The Last Screenwriter Gets Shut Down The world premiere of The Last Screenwriter a film with a fully AI-generated script, is cancelled in London due to widespread protests. The industry finds a line, briefly.
Late 2024 Studios Start Dealing Runway signs with Lionsgate to train a custom AI model on their back catalogue. James Cameron, once calling AI "a nuclear arms race" - joins Stability AI's board and starts talking about cutting VFX costs in half.
Early 2025 Oscars Get Complicated Several Best Picture nominees used AI in production. The Brutalist used AI-generated architecture. Its editor used Respeecher to refine actors' Hungarian accents. Emilia Pérez used it to adjust a singing voice. The Academy says nothing clear.
March 2025 OpenAI Takes Sora to the Cinema OpenAI hosts live screenings of 11 Sora-made short films in Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo. A direct pitch to Hollywood. The films are impressive.
Aug 2025 Runway Takes AI Films to IMAX Runway's AI Film Festival with over 6,000 submissions, screens its winners across 40 IMAX locations in the US. Gaspar Noé on the jury. The prestige world takes notice.
May 2025 Google Veo 3 Lands Google's Veo 3 shocks the internet. Near-flawless video output. Barely registers as synthetic. The goalposts move again.
Dec 2025 Disney Does the Deal Disney signs a $1 billion deal with OpenAI. 200+ characters licensed into Sora. The WGA calls it "sanctioning theft." With the other hand, Disney fires a cease-and-desist at Google for copyright infringement. Both things are true at once.
Dec 2025 The Talent Speaks DiCaprio to Time: AI "dissipates into internet junk there's no humanity to it." Del Toro at the Gotham Awards: "Fuck AI." Cameron: "We've got to cut costs in half. That's my vision."
Early 2026 - ever present? Vue Cinemas runs all programming through AI. Lionsgate's VP: "It's being used by everybody that doesn't talk about it." The fight now isn't whether AI enters cinema. It's who controls it, who profits, and whether anything made with it can still make us feel something real.
Scene officially set, what’s the view?
Right now it feels like AI is streamlining the creative process, rather than taking away creativity from us. AI is trained on models of existing knowledge through which it can make suggestion. It is quickening technical processes, making workflows less expensive, less time consuming. It is a tool. As a tool it pushes boundaries of efficiency, facilitating more output at a quicker rate, giving power to filmmakers who are experimenting. Its allowing a new sort of creativity. But it isn’t making better work. It isn’t moving audiences. It isn't an evil genius. And not being an evil genius is key to how we engage with it.
Us humans can have a tendency to see things in black and white. AI is going to take my job, therefore I don’t like AI, therefore I won't engage. But this industry has seen change before - from film to digital. We are an industry that is used to weathering storms and somehow we find a way to tell our story. The question remains how will you further your projects?
In reality, very few things in life are black and white, it has to be up to us individually to engage with the tools, and decide ourselves whether we like them, time will tell whether they improve your story. But understanding what works for us through engagement must be the way for now, and if it doesn’t work for us, then we’ll create our art our way.
Test the water. And if it isn’t to our liking. Swim somewhere else.
This is why next week we’ll be launching The Big Screen Hack, your opportunity to experiment with AI so that we can further our conversation around AI’s uses.
The Big Screen Hack
We’ll be running a short film competition in the run up to Cannes, this will blend traditional filmmaking with AI tools. We’ll then screen the films in Cannes. Then run it all again out of NYC, screenings at Tribeca.
SO:
Are you a traditional filmmaker looking to experiment with AI?
Are you an AI creator wanting to find a team and push creativity?
Are you an existing team that can do both?
Are you an individual allrounder?
Directors, writers, producers, editors, DPs, composers, etc, all filmmakers of all craft are so so welcome, register your interest below:
Register your interst for The Big Screen Hack here
Very interested to see what the creations are born. Very interested to understand your views of the tools.
Stay tuned next week.
OUR PICK OF THE WEEK
Stumbled across this the other day, bluudy loved it.
In 1998, filmmakers tracked Jim Carrey through the production of the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon. Carrey committed so completely to inhabiting Kaufman and his fictional persona Tony Clifton that he stopped responding to his actual name. Director Milos Forman rang complaining about two disruptive individuals constantly appearing during shoots. Carrey offered to dismiss the documentary team and perform impressions instead - only then did Forman grasp that the "individuals" were Kaufman (dead for years) and Clifton (never real to begin with).
This material gathered dust for almost twenty years before Chris Smith wove it together with recent interviews featuring an older, more reflective Carrey. The finished piece, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, is compelling viewing. Carrey irritated production staff by playing deafening music, wrecked vehicles on the lot, invaded Spielberg's workspace, and insisted everyone address him only as his characters. Danny DeVito enjoyed the spectacle; Judd Hirsch grew very frustrated.
Looking back, Carrey treats the experience with striking reverence, implying some spiritual link to Kaufman existed. He becomes so enchanted with his own performance, could his powers of transformation could extend to any figure? Your verdict will hinge on whether you accept Carrey's justification for the approach.
That’s it for now.
Catch you soon.
Ed
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