7 ms·

I'm rooting for this tech. Hopefully this will get modern movies out of their low risk reboot loop since it will be cheaper to make a movie that have new story

I'm rooting for this tech. Hopefully this will get modern movies out of their low risk reboot loop since it will be cheaper to make a movie that have new story lines that are commercially untested. I'd be happy to watch a movie that doesn't look AAA, but has compelling writing and makes me think. Or maybe I'll just stick to books.

RupertEisenhart 4y ago
Have you tried MUBI? It takes a lot of the hassle out of finding quality arthouse films, there is a lot of good stuff on there. Though I must admit that if I didn't have friends holding my hand through the minefield of modern cinema, I would also just stick to books.
Xelynega 4y ago
I don't think modern movies are stuck in a "low risk reboot loop" because of the cost to produce, it's because of the potential profit. Why spend money on a film with new IP and ideas that you're not sure will be popular when the data science team has already worked with marketing to figure out exactly what movie will sell well? Good luck finding your movie with compelling and thought provoking writing in the big pile of movies produced by comittee to show up above yours in discovery algorithms.
- asutekku 4y ago
  With the future version of this you could theoretically prototype movies way faster and try ideas with test audiences without requiring to actually film them
  - generalizations 4y ago
    In the future version of this, the end user asks for a movie and gets a custom movie generated just for them. You want a thought-provoking Bourne-style action thriller with hints of Jane Austen and a bollywood dance sequence? How about a Matrix sequel that lives up to the first one, but ends just the way you like it? Just ask.
    - Verdex 4y ago
      Xenomorph cop. It's a Dirty Harry style movie except the lead is a xenomorph. The other characters are only vaguely aware that he's a xenomorph. Or how about the movie Clue with the three endings except an infinite sequence of "or maybe it happened this way" sequences. I mean how else are we going to get a sequence where Darth Vader and Tim Curry reenact the "No I am your father" scene while Martin Mull dies in the background due to a heart attack.
    - SethMurphy 4y ago
      This could certainly be entertaining. The trick will be for the studios to continue to brand it as recognizable, yet have it be unique. It begs to ask what part of the experience will be a shared experience since it could be radically different for all of us. Would we then share the story created for us with friends? Will there be an Oscar for best mind to have a video created for them?
      - BizarroLand 4y ago
        I think it would be great for people who write scripts for a movie they imagined. You could conceivably write a script and feed it into a machine and have a decent 1080p rendition of the movie with consistent characters and voice acting which you could use to better pitch your movie idea to people, or get to watch a movie you created between you and your friends even if no one else ever gets to see it.
        anigbrowl 4y ago
        Having written several feature length scripts, I'm certainly looking forward to trying this. But with an explosion of cheaply produced content, people will probably spend less time watching movies and TV shows. I'm a lot more selective now than I used to be because there's just too much stuff to watch even if I spent the rest of my life on the couch. The current trend of remaking movies as 10 hour miniseries (and then making more and more seasons) is Not Great. Whereas I could be fascinated by a quirky-but-compelling original movie, I'm less attracted to 10+ hours of hyper-polished content. Sometimes I've watched a series and thought 'that was good, but it could have been a better movie.'
- echelon 4y ago
  Films today require institutional capital. There are less than a thousand directors a year that get greenlit. There isn't enough conceptual or directorial diversity, and it sucks. In the future, kids will be making their own Star Wars movies from home. All kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds will make novel films that would ordinarily never be made, such as "Steampunk Vampires of Venus", starring John Wayne, a young Betty White, and Samuel L. Jackson. This is absolutely the future. I'm working on building this. I'm sure lots of others are too.
- zackmorris 4y ago
  I was just thinking about this for the long tail problem in recommendation engines for stuff like video games. I blame the algorithms themselves. We're in a situation where the very best algorithms (like the one used by Netflix), doing exactly what they're designed to do, create inequality and the vacuous economy of influencers we have today. Look at Steam or any other marketplace: they're all the same, with 1% of the players getting 99% of the prizes. In a very real way, the only winning move is not to play. I would suggest that this tendency of capitalism (economic evolution) is unstoppable, and that it must be attacked from a different angle. If we don't want to inevitably end up in late-stage capitalism that looks like neofeudalism, then there has to be some form of redistribution or people spend the entirety of their lives running the rat race to make rent. Traditionally that was high taxes on the winners, but UBI would probably work better. Unfortunately, the very same people who win are the ones most resistant to any notion of a level playing field or social safety net. So I feel like there may be no solution coming. We're probably looking at long slow decline for the next 15 years or so until AI reaches a level where economics don't really make sense anymore, since economic systems by definition control the distribution of resources under scarcity. Without scarcity, they're pointless. And we moved into the age of artificial scarcity sometime after WWII, probably in the late 1960s, but certainly no later than 1990 with the fall of the USSR and the rise of straw man enemies like terrorism, using divisive politics as the primary means of controlling the population. Noam Chomsky saw this coming before most of us were born. In other words, when anyone can wish for anything by turning sentences into 3D-printed manifestations of their dreams, then artificial scarcity quickly loses its luster. Because the systems of control around dependency no longer work. Then a new fear-based enemy comes along to fill the void, probably aliens. I wish I was joking.
adamsmith143 4y ago
Not sure we're quite there yet. A real movie needs a lot of dialogue, speech, sound effects, music, etc. Even the best LLM's don't do really coherent storytelling yet and a script for a movie is just the absolute barebones.

RupertEisenhart 4y ago

Have you tried MUBI? It takes a lot of the hassle out of finding quality arthouse films, there is a lot of good stuff on there. Though I must admit that if I didn't have friends holding my hand through the minefield of modern cinema, I would also just stick to books.

Xelynega 4y ago

I don't think modern movies are stuck in a "low risk reboot loop" because of the cost to produce, it's because of the potential profit. Why spend money on a film with new IP and ideas that you're not sure will be popular when the data science team has already worked with marketing to figure out exactly what movie will sell well? Good luck finding your movie with compelling and thought provoking writing in the big pile of movies produced by comittee to show up above yours in discovery algorithms.

asutekku 4y ago
With the future version of this you could theoretically prototype movies way faster and try ideas with test audiences without requiring to actually film them
- generalizations 4y ago
  In the future version of this, the end user asks for a movie and gets a custom movie generated just for them. You want a thought-provoking Bourne-style action thriller with hints of Jane Austen and a bollywood dance sequence? How about a Matrix sequel that lives up to the first one, but ends just the way you like it? Just ask.
  - Verdex 4y ago
    Xenomorph cop. It's a Dirty Harry style movie except the lead is a xenomorph. The other characters are only vaguely aware that he's a xenomorph. Or how about the movie Clue with the three endings except an infinite sequence of "or maybe it happened this way" sequences. I mean how else are we going to get a sequence where Darth Vader and Tim Curry reenact the "No I am your father" scene while Martin Mull dies in the background due to a heart attack.
  - SethMurphy 4y ago
    This could certainly be entertaining. The trick will be for the studios to continue to brand it as recognizable, yet have it be unique. It begs to ask what part of the experience will be a shared experience since it could be radically different for all of us. Would we then share the story created for us with friends? Will there be an Oscar for best mind to have a video created for them?
    - BizarroLand 4y ago
      I think it would be great for people who write scripts for a movie they imagined. You could conceivably write a script and feed it into a machine and have a decent 1080p rendition of the movie with consistent characters and voice acting which you could use to better pitch your movie idea to people, or get to watch a movie you created between you and your friends even if no one else ever gets to see it.
      - anigbrowl 4y ago
        Having written several feature length scripts, I'm certainly looking forward to trying this. But with an explosion of cheaply produced content, people will probably spend less time watching movies and TV shows. I'm a lot more selective now than I used to be because there's just too much stuff to watch even if I spent the rest of my life on the couch. The current trend of remaking movies as 10 hour miniseries (and then making more and more seasons) is Not Great. Whereas I could be fascinated by a quirky-but-compelling original movie, I'm less attracted to 10+ hours of hyper-polished content. Sometimes I've watched a series and thought 'that was good, but it could have been a better movie.'
echelon 4y ago
Films today require institutional capital. There are less than a thousand directors a year that get greenlit. There isn't enough conceptual or directorial diversity, and it sucks. In the future, kids will be making their own Star Wars movies from home. All kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds will make novel films that would ordinarily never be made, such as "Steampunk Vampires of Venus", starring John Wayne, a young Betty White, and Samuel L. Jackson. This is absolutely the future. I'm working on building this. I'm sure lots of others are too.
zackmorris 4y ago
I was just thinking about this for the long tail problem in recommendation engines for stuff like video games. I blame the algorithms themselves. We're in a situation where the very best algorithms (like the one used by Netflix), doing exactly what they're designed to do, create inequality and the vacuous economy of influencers we have today. Look at Steam or any other marketplace: they're all the same, with 1% of the players getting 99% of the prizes. In a very real way, the only winning move is not to play. I would suggest that this tendency of capitalism (economic evolution) is unstoppable, and that it must be attacked from a different angle. If we don't want to inevitably end up in late-stage capitalism that looks like neofeudalism, then there has to be some form of redistribution or people spend the entirety of their lives running the rat race to make rent. Traditionally that was high taxes on the winners, but UBI would probably work better. Unfortunately, the very same people who win are the ones most resistant to any notion of a level playing field or social safety net. So I feel like there may be no solution coming. We're probably looking at long slow decline for the next 15 years or so until AI reaches a level where economics don't really make sense anymore, since economic systems by definition control the distribution of resources under scarcity. Without scarcity, they're pointless. And we moved into the age of artificial scarcity sometime after WWII, probably in the late 1960s, but certainly no later than 1990 with the fall of the USSR and the rise of straw man enemies like terrorism, using divisive politics as the primary means of controlling the population. Noam Chomsky saw this coming before most of us were born. In other words, when anyone can wish for anything by turning sentences into 3D-printed manifestations of their dreams, then artificial scarcity quickly loses its luster. Because the systems of control around dependency no longer work. Then a new fear-based enemy comes along to fill the void, probably aliens. I wish I was joking.

adamsmith143 4y ago

Not sure we're quite there yet. A real movie needs a lot of dialogue, speech, sound effects, music, etc. Even the best LLM's don't do really coherent storytelling yet and a script for a movie is just the absolute barebones.