We’ve seen the boom of artificial intelligence everywhere: be it automatic cars, medical diagnosis or even serving customers, so it’s no surprise that AI is now taking over one of the biggest industries to exist – filmmaking.
AI has been steadily used by filmmakers in the form of VFX, take Oscar nominee ‘The Irishman’, the film essentially put veteran actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino through a digital time travel by de-aging their faces by almost half. Another popular film that heavily relied on the usage of CGI and VFX is ‘Avengers: Endgame’, right from Thanos’s snap to the climactic war sequence, everything was made larger-than-life with the help of AI. The war drama ‘Finding Jack’ is taking things one step further by resurrecting yesteryear heartthrob James Dean through CGI to lead the film.
Beside the direct use of AI on screen, it also has found its way into other aspects of filmmaking such as the pre-production stages, editing stage as well as even promoting the film. During the release of the film, AI can dictate which medium is best suited for what content and which region will the film be well-received in as well. The use of computerized learning can even help producers evaluate the success of a particular film by swapping actors digitally in roles and playing out different scenarios in the AI algorithm.
On film sets the role of AI has definitely increased in the last two decades but on the production side there’s scope for improvement still as they don’t optimize the analytical tools available to them to cut down on the time-consuming work of scouting locations, casting actors etc.
One downside of AI is that it’s based on the data it’s fed. This essentially repeats the cycle making the films seem mediocre and repetitive of the past. These tools need to be used as a supplement and not relied upon completely to ensure originality and innovation.
After all AI is made by humans and not the other way round – so it’s important to learn the distinction between reliance and dependence on AI.
What a “good” film is depends on various factors and is a subjective concept – one that has led AI-driven filmmaking to acknowledge its shortcomings in that the predictions it makes are not 100% accurate and need fine-tuning to be deemed fit for complete trust in the system.
It’s really interesting to see how an industry rooted in creativity and self-expression – a trait that’s innately human can be adapted to include technology and automate it. The creative aspect of filmmaking, if digitalized could mean a statistically well written script or an error-free process but what makes films so universal in their emotionality is the portrayal of a human emotion via the story and characters and AI definitely has a long way to go before it can even begin to capture this multilayered aspect of cinema.
For now technology and cinema seem to co-exist peacefully yet one can never predict the future unless AI accomplished that as well!
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