By Carol Badaracco Padgett
In any artform, nuance and detail can make the difference between greatness and mediocrity. Between a human connection or a disconnection. And in the instance of film, between the telling of a fabulous story onscreen versus a disjointed jumble. Technological advances – like AI, today’s headline-stealer — are touching every tool filmmakers use to tell a story, all along the line of pre-production, production and post-
production.
For storytellers working in the medium of film, how are rapid technological advances impacting their workflows? And in the overall effort to tell a great story, is AI helping, hurting, saving time or taking over?
Here’s what three Atlanta post-production professionals are finding and experiencing as they do their parts in the storytelling process. They are Drew Sawyer, founder and veteran post producer at Moonshine Post-Production – a post-production house for major motion pictures, series and advertising. Jeasy Sehgal, filmmaker and professor of practice in virtual production and visual effects (VFX) at the Creative Media Industries Institute at Georgia State University – a specialist in the creation of virtual worlds and people. And Anthony Arasi, chief technology officer and producer at Level 77 Music in Atlanta, a company offering music licensing, catalog curation and custom composition for film.
Q: What technological advancements show the most promise for the work you do
in film? And why?
Sawyer: Our embrace of AI technology in the post-production realm is exhilarating, disrupting and transformative. The emergence of these AI tools is similar to the seismic shifts we witnessed with the rollout of the first AVID non-linear editing systems over two decades ago. [It] also likens to mind the advent of digital cinema over traditional celluloid. Except a little more extreme.
At the core, post-production remains a collaborative dance with a team of creatives, directors, producers and executives. So in our full service post house, we’re seeing it in every department from editing, color, sound and delivery — even producing.
A simple example is the burgeoning technology of text-based editing and script analysis that can seemingly help carve through the traditionally manual stages of organization and project prep, as well as recalling takes and finding story beats quickly, faster than we ever had … The evolution in just the simple routines of organization and navigation alone are already dropping us into the creative process earlier and with
greater clarity, allowing both our editors and assistant editors to collaborate more [closely]and faster on the subjective aspects of the job.
Similarly, the routine behind-the-scenes chore work of building out a scene in the edit, like temporary sound design, mock visual effects and b-roll, in order to engage our creative stakeholders with a more wholly formed edit is just unfathomably benefited with what AI has in store.
And just remember, these tools don’t supplant the human expert, but they are increasing our storytellers’ capacity to piece together better narratives, and [they’re] setting the stage for specialists to refine those temporary elements with precision.
But we’re just scratching the surface. As we integrate these tools into conventional pipelines, just like when VFX became increasingly commodified, enabling scenarios like green-screening an actor and reconstructing entire worlds in post, we face similar crossroads with AI.
As volumetric stages and real-time 3D engines approach full maturity, we have a lot of creative potential. And if we are using these innovations to craft new inspirational works, and not using it as crutches for ill-conceived ideas, then that’s amazing, and it’s going to give a lot of new voices their chance to tell stories.
Sehgal: With new capabilities in technology – AI (through algorithms which mimic human intelligence) and machine learning (a subset of AI whereby a machine is taught to perform specific tasks), both production and post-production are beginning to happen more quickly, where something can be accomplished in a matter of hours instead of six weeks, for example.
[Many of the] industry standard technologies [from the LA legacy of production and post-production]that the industry still uses at the moment will be resigned, with AI and machine learning starting to influence where the industry is headed as a whole.
Anthony Arasi
Arasi: As far as emerging technology goes, AI is what we’re talking the most about right now. [Operationally as a business], we are currently employing it externally, with AI affecting how our clients (film post-production professionals and editors) interface with our music content.
Internally, we’re mostly concerned with utility – we’re leveraging AI to make our lives easier and our clients’ lives easier, because our clients need to find music as easily and efficiently as possible. So where AI comes into play is mainly for searching our music catalogs, at the moment. It’s enabling us to be a better repository for professionals who need to find music.
Q: Let’s drill down into AI in greater depth. What are some of the ways it’s positively and negatively disrupting your work, your workflows and the stories you help to tell?
Sawyer: AI isn’t making my decisions better for me, but it’s helping us get rid of all the routine stuff, the ‘taking out the trash’ things. It gives us faster access to the tools of raw storytelling. The [cameras and production team]collect the raw data, and we refine it and take it to the studio.
There’s a lot of data hygiene that goes along with the digital evolution. For example, when digital cameras took over in the 2000s, by 2012 everything I was working on was pretty much digital by then. Filmmakers were no longer bound by the limitations of celluloid [film]. Instead, they were working with infinite 1’s and 0’s and could capture as much [digital image data]as they wanted to. The better we can get what’s being captured in cameras into the hands of editors and post-production people, the better. Because on the post-production side, for our work at
Moonshine, the integration of AI in the workflow is an extension of our abilities. It’s rapidly becoming a dynamic collaborator of our brains. It’s not taking the place of my staff or of producers, but it does remove a lot of friction from the creative process, as an editor and creative stakeholder.
It can help us work more closely with the available footage and the storytelling options
available in our work, and ultimately get the best story possible. The chief job of post-production is to collaborate and carry the vision that has been written and shot – and to synthesize it. AI is making the job and all the collaboration it requires much easier, and that’s really what we’re after.
[In terms of challenges with new technologies and with AI specifically], technological advances are a powerful ally, but it’s like a paradox. With the digital revolution and cameras, for instance, a person can shoot all day – and this can erode the path of creative commitment. You [no longer]only have so many hundred feet of film, and there was a power in that limitation.
Today creatives can take it for granted. I hope AI tools will help us cut through all that and get to the [heart of a beautiful story]a bit more quickly.
Arasi: [As music publishers], if somebody wants to play a song in downtown Calcutta on any given day, we have to track that data and make sure the person who created it is getting paid. This situation is very disheartening for many who get into the industry, because most creatives like me just want to create – not track the material that’s being used anywhere and everywhere.
So in the past six months, [our company and many others]have been employing AI for this very thing. Before, we had amazing, talented creators of music spending a lot of time on this tracking, but now we’re starting to give some of that work to AI.
Internally, it will also help us with descriptors and tags that allow people to locate our
music when they search our catalogs for what they need for any given project.
Jeasy Sehgal
Sehgal: [In terms of virtual production], the content pipeline is what’s seeing the biggest change as a result of AI. It’s a blessing because the workflows and the fidelity of output are becoming much faster. But the downside is that the studios (production houses) around America and globally are struggling to quickly upscale in terms of talent development.
They’re still sticking to the old workflows because it’s difficult to upscale [their entire teams]at the same time that they’re working on a client project.
But clients are seeing competing studios’ work and starting to put pressure on their own vendors. It’s a trap that the traditional studios are falling into – and they’re quickly trying to find talent and it’s hard [for them]because those people are already getting absorbed into the larger entertainment industry.
A challenge created around the evolution of new technology has been that there are people who know how to execute and push the buttons, but they are told what to do. Now, though, there are more training programs and graduates coming into the market. In 2-3 years from now, we’ll start to see more studios beginning to implement virtual production in its more core form – [even though]it’s not a solution for every film project.
But documentary filmmaking, in particular, needs to jump on virtual production. They can really utilize the in-camera effects aspects of virtual production, in particular.
Q: In closing, what other new technologies are blowing your mind heading into 2024?
Sehgal: With the AI and machine learning aspect of new technology, how will it increase workflow (speed it up) and increase the fidelity of output – without buying fancy tools like expensive cinema cameras?
Also, the global production industry has focused on AAA productions and not looked at the indie production market. With new toolsets, you don’t need a big studio … you don’t need a full body exoskeleton gimbal (armor that a cameraperson wears to manage the weight of a cinema camera without using solely the strength of their arms). You can have an iPhone and an aftermarket gimbal and do something cinematic, then use Unreal Engine (free downloadable design software from Epic Games) to create virtual
worlds at a fraction of the cost.
Arasi: For someone who creates music and enjoys the creation of music, there are so many solutions out there to help people create without barriers. You can make music on a laptop, a simple smartphone … I imagine some gifted musician in Mozambique who can do this on simple technology and express themselves globally.
For me personally, as a sound engineer, AI mixing and mastering solutions are what I’m interested in. Speaking broadly, the best human endeavors are accomplished when people and technology interface in the right way. While we want to use technology as interestingly as possible, we can never forget that we’re the human beings and those are just tools to help us do it better.
The Moonshine Post-Production team at their 10-year birthday
Sawyer: Telling stories is what it’s about. Our motto [when it comes to the adoption of new technologies]is this: If it can help us be creative, we’re all for it. But it can’t create for us.
If it can help our artists remove the friction – take out the trash, do the dishes – then yes.
Only the creatives know where they want to go. The AI doesn’t choose it, but it can help [human]artists with the ability to execute more elegantly and intuitively.
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