Technology and humans are bringing the next big cinematic experience to a theater near you

The process of making films is being reshaped by technology.

Through masterful storytelling, movies have helped humanity find the meaning of life in dark rooms. 

Over the years, technology has helped filmmakers make better films. From the first Lumière Brothers projections to the present unbelievably real world of Computer Generated and VFX technology-enabled graphic films, technology has enabled us all to travel to Hogwarts, Mordor, and many more realms. Technology has much more to offer and cinema can’t refuse it.

Pen to Paper

If you thought only a human could understand the emotions that drive stories, you’d be wrong. Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is ready to write its magnum opus. This could mean AI can help us tell better stories. 

Currently, an AI called Story Prism can give shape to your ideas and get the story-telling process started. You have to just enter your idea and hit a button to frame a logline, the message you want to convey through your story, the story outline, and the character design. Thus, taking the pre-writing burden off your shoulders and getting you started on your writing journey. 

Other AIs are joining the party, GPT-3 is a deep learning model that can produce human-like text. It has written a script for a short film called Date Night. Jasper, WriterSonic, and ShortlyAI all use the GPT3 algorithm to write for you.

Carpe diem. Make your stories extraordinary because when the story is good there is no snapping out of it.

Pre-Production

The world is not in your scripts or ideas, it’s out there, and it’s uncertain. Therefore, planning is essential and pre-production is a crucial phase. Here is where the adventure truly begins and the world you want to create takes shape. This is the phase when you can plan everything from the length of the shoot to the budget and the crew you want.

If you get it wrong, the whole movie is at risk. No pressure! But technology is here to help, so relax.

Directors use storyboarding to communicate the intangible to their crew, but what if you can take it to a new dimension, and turn it into 3D? It is possible with 3D pre-visualization softwares that are as powerful as game engines. These softwares can help teams do more than just outline their creative process.

The famous dialogue from Field of Dreams (1989) “If you build it, they will come” applies to the technique of 3D Pre-visualisation perfectly. Teams can use tools like Unreal Engine and Unity to build those larger-than-life plans with more control and authority.

Also, AI can significantly streamline the pre-production process by assisting with scheduling, budget breakdown, location suggestions that suit the narratives, and designing shooting schedules based on the availability of actors. Automating these tasks helps film production companies go on the floor much faster, meaning the wait for the most awaited films won’t be too long!

Prediction game

It takes a lot more than dreams and aspirations to make movies, but what is most important is the budget. 

Now, why would someone put their hard-earned money into your movie project? AI may also be used to analyze a movie's script and forecast how much money it will make. If you want Warner Bros. to produce your movie, you need to be friends with Cinelytic — an AI-based platform that Warner Bros. uses to forecast the box office performance of its films. Sony Pictures has employed ScriptBook, another AI-based film prediction engine, to examine its productions. While Merlin technology has partnered with 20th Century Fox to match movies to certain genres and audiences and give detailed demographic information for any movie.

Production

If Cinelytic or ScripBook doesn’t pass your script what will you do? Don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world. Artificial intelligence can also produce films. A data scientist, Ross Goodwin used an AI called Benjamin to produce a science fiction film "Zone Out" in approximately 48 hours.

Technology is also helping a director’s unimaginable sets come to life. Volume Technology is a new technology that has helped high-budget, high-profile projects like The Mandalorian and The Batman bring authenticity to their respective fictional worlds. Recently for shows like House of the Dragon, volume technology is used, where enormous LED walls playback pre-recorded pictures in the background of a shot while live-action elements are being filmed in the foreground.

With all the shots in place, it’s time to bring everything together in the edit.

Post-Production

Over the years, technology is hitting it out of the park in this stage of film production. The advancements in editing are literally cutting-edge, but it doesn’t stop there, editing tools are now more powerful and responsible than ever before.

Earlier, the editor's imagination set the boundaries for editing. Today, anyone can edit using sophisticated editing tools. This includes automatically cutting footage or changing the dialogue of a scene after it is recorded. Algorithmic video editing makes it all look like magic. 

Descript is a video editing tool that makes editing videos as easy as editing documents, you can even edit the dialogue of a scene after its shot, without dubbing.

AI can also dramatically increase the speed of editing, it can make choices for us and edit some great videos. For instance, a trailer for the movie Morgan was made using IBM Watson. A human editor can use the AI system to identify scenes with a lot of action or emotion and highlight them for the final trailer.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute I tell yer, you ain't heard nothin' yet” there is no magic without music. AI-based music composition can help you compose songs like the Beatles. At least that is what tech giant Sony composed with an AI called Flow Machines and called the song Daddy’s Car. 

Essentially all of this means that technology is transforming the art of cinema. But what happens now to all the artists out there? Does it signify the end of Steven Speilberg or Christopher Nolan? Well, not at all. Rest assured that this transformation in tech will only unleash more of humanity’s untapped creative potential. Helping us create and share stories that transform our understanding of the world.

Sources:

1. https://www.beta.storyprism.io/
2. https://gpt3demo.com/apps/ai-goes-meta-date-night-short-film
3. https://www.perforce.com/blog/vcs/3d-previsualization-software
4. https://www.allerin.com/blog/can-ai-automate-the-film-industry
5. https://www.descript.com/video-editing
6. https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/28/18637135/hollywood-ai-film-decision-script-analysis-data-machine-learning
7. https://nofilmschool.com/2017/04/scriptbook-black-list-screenwriting-ai-algorithm
8. https://medium.com/carre4/how-artificial-intelligence-is-used-in-the-film-industry-eeaf91d4165a
9. https://www.educative.io/answers/how-is-ai-automating-the-film-industry
10. https://www.cartoonbrew.com/vfx/understanding-the-volume-the-technology-thats-changing-vfx-production-198751.html
11. https://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/2016/08/cognitive-movie-trailer/
12. https://qz.com/790523/daddys-car-the-first-song-ever-written-by-artificial-intelligence-is-actually-pretty-good/

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