AI is Making Movies Now

Cheaper and more efficient, but better? 

AI Is Here, and It's Making Movies. Is Hollywood Ready?

By Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2022

'Vubbing' software can visually alter an actor's image to sync with foreign dialogue.

The movie industry could be revolutionized with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) software. Technology developed by Flawless, an AI filmmaking company, uses a neural network to recreate filmed scenes of an actor's face to match newly recorded dialogue. "You can't tell what's real and what's not," says Flawless co-founder Scott Mann.

Elsewhere, technology from Papercup produces synthetic human voices for dubs and voiceovers, and Digital Domain uses machine learning to recreate actors in scenes where stunt doubles are needed.

Such software is raising ethical concerns, particularly about consent. "What actors thought they were agreeing to isn't literally what is created," says Associate Professor Scott Stroud of the University of Texas at Austin.

Mann cites the benefits of AI, including breaking down language barriers, eliminating the need for reshoots, and even allowing for product changes in films to generate revenue from new sponsorships.

From Los Angeles Times

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Taking a Look at Binge Times

Reading this book, quite good so far, can it be used as a predictor of future times and Technologies?  Predictably just a 'black swan' event, or more?  More to follow.

Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix  By Dade Hayes and Dawn Chmielewski

Their intro: 

The first comprehensive account of the biggest wake-up call in the history of the entertainment business: the pivot to streaming. Go inside a disparate group of media and tech companies—Disney, Apple, AT&T/WarnerMedia, Comcast/NBCUniversal and well-funded startup Quibi—as they scramble to mount multi-billion-dollar challenges to Netflix.

After spotting Netflix and the deep-pocketed Amazon Prime Video a decade’s head start, rivals from the tech and start-up realm (Apple, Quibi) and traditional media (Disney, WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal) all decided to move mountains to enter the streaming game. At a cost of billions, each went after their own piece of the market, launching five new services in a seven-month span. And just as the derby was heating up, the coronavirus pandemic arrived, a black-swan event bringing short-term benefits but also stiff challenges.

The battle for streaming supremacy may end up having more than one winner, but the cost and disruption to decades-old business models have also produced a lot of losers. Binge Times reveals the true costs of the vision quest as companies are turned inside-out and repeatedly redraw their org charts and strategic plans. Stretching from Silicon Valley to Hollywood to Wall Street, it is a mesmerizing, character-rich tale of hubris and ambition, as the fate of a century-old industry hangs in the balance. ....  '

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.   .... 

Using the Craft of the Pitch

Having worked with a company that was well known for pitches of all sorts. 

Persuasion, Hollywood style  in Strategy-Business 

Professors Peter Desberg and Jeffrey Davis explain how leaders can enhance their persuasive skills by mastering the craft of the pitch.    by Theodore Kinni  in Strategy-Business

I usually associate pitching with characters like the late inventor and pitchman Ron Popeil, who earned a spot in America’s cultural history—and a small fortune—hawking products such as the Chop-O-Matic, the Pocket Fisherman, spray-on hair, and the Showtime Rotisserie and BBQ oven on late night TV. (“Set it, and forget it!”) But that’s a reductionist view, at best. Pitching is a form of interactive selling that business leaders at all levels need to master.

“We define a pitch as a scheduled meeting for the specific intention of trying to promote an idea, business project, or script,” write Peter Desberg and Jeffrey Davis in their new book, Pitch Like Hollywood. As the title suggests, Desberg, a clinical psychologist and a professor emeritus at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and Davis, a screenwriter and professor at Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television, look to the film industry for lessons in pitching. And rightly so. Movies and TV shows are typically sold on the strength of a pitch to studio executives that can take anywhere from an hour to several days, depending on the size of the project.

Though CEOs tend to be polished presenters, pitching a new strategy to the board or an acquisition offer to the founders of a promising startup is not the same thing as making a presentation. “The biggest difference is the interactivity. Pitching is not a one-way presentation—it’s not, ‘I’m gonna tell you, and you’re gonna sit and listen to me,’” Davis told me during a video interview with the two authors. “A pitch is less controlled. If your pitch is good, you’re involving the people you’re pitching. You are trying to get their opinions, to get to what’s important to them, and to get them to help you shape your pitch to really make it work.”

This interactivity gets to the root cause of many failed pitches—mishandling criticism. “If a catcher asks a pitcher a hostile question or points out a flaw, and the pitcher gets defensive or counterattacks, the conversation dies,” said Desberg.  ..... '