4 ms·

> Firstly, there would need to be a film to begin with, and that requires a lot. A whole hell of a lot. Not sure what you mean by that. Like, there needs to b

by ugh123 3y ago

> Firstly, there would need to be a film to begin with, and that requires a lot. A whole hell of a lot. Not sure what you mean by that. Like, there needs to be a written script? But I don't think you're following the "vision" here :) I wouldn't want my own face in a movie and i'd bet most people don't. I'm sure you've seen the demos from Wonder Dynamics and others like them. So that tech already exists and will get "smaller" and in the hands of non-studios soon. In regards to the rest of your comment, what i'm getting at is this: First, just let a human continue to write the script as usual (no AI really needed for this). There's countless unemployed screenwriters in Hollywood (and aspiring all over the world i'm sure) that could provide this. Does it need to be a "top tier" screenwriter already connected to Hollywood? That's rubbish. Some stories will be crap, others could be phenomenal. Good and bad YouTube content is a great example of this. Also podcasting. Also music production. All of which is on a much smaller production scale than what i'm talking about here, but the leap in technology is rapidly unlocking insane capabilities. Second, create an app/platform that hooks in the script and allows a "director" or whatever to define scenes using visual templates, pre-baked scenes, AI-generated, whatever and link to a timeline (like a soup'd up Adobe Premier). The current and upcoming games-industry use of AI could help here and i'd imagine will get substantially better over the next year. They've already been using game assets and 3d game scenes in current production. Look at the scenes created by "The Volume" from ILM. Much of it is Unreal engine 3d game scenes. There's plenty of 3d artists outside of the Hollywood/Disney sphere that could provide assets and talent. AI could help polish it or completely build it at some point in the near future. No need for camera-men, lighting experts, grips, etc. Third, all you need as of "filming" of an actor is to point a phone at them, crop out their body and facial features/movement, and generate 3d space around them to allow the director to point the virtual camera from any angle. You could have multiple cameras/phones at different angles just to help the 3d space generation and probably a max of 4 to create a suitable 3d space all around an actor. Note: these are not director's "film angles", this is just to drive the AI scene generation. Although i've seen tools come out recently: look at Google research's AI generative fill technique that came out recently. Or Adobe's generative fill feature. This will only get better and more adaptable to video rather than still pictures. Example: film me at my dinner table talking to my wife. Then, employ the platform to inpaint a 3d scene around me, replace my face/body with whatever I choose, and let me point a virtual camera a different angles throughout a timeline. Example 2: film me running down my street as if i'm being chased by a [dinosaur, a car, a mob of zombies]. Crop me out and build a scene around me. Obviously, each of these would be independent scenes but multiple shots/angles could be captured during editing. But of course it would take quite a bit of time and talent to build up an entire movie or show. The platform i'm talking about here wouldn't be for most people. But it wouldn't just be for big-budget filmmakers either :) #2 and 3 obviously take a lot of tech to build, but we're already seeing pieces of this with current AI tools. Heck, i've seen several within the last 2 weeks that could be a good starting point for this, including the topic of this HN post. I don't agree at all with "one of the biggest draws a movie has is who stars in it". Can you name any great films that don't star an A-lister over the last 30 years? I'll bet you can find lots :) Either they were attached by an A-list director or the story/production of the film had top-tier quality - and that is really all that needs to be replicated - a good story and convincing production and scene generation/lighting, etc. By nature of today's internet, good stories will find exposure one way or another. Do we think the best actors in the world are only those with connections to Hollywood? Or those who were willing to sleep with Harvey Weinstein? Maybe the best actor is some 80-year old woman living down the street from me. Let's build a platform to give her a chance. >So, no. As long as people will continue to seek entertainment for the reasons they've always sought it, this is not going to fundamentally change the art of storytelling anytime soon. I think YouTube and other online outlets have completely flipped the narrative of what people find entertaining and where they find it. Sure, it hasn't put a huge dent into Hollywood box-offices yet, but it's slowly happening. The "nail" in Hollywood's coffin will be low-cost, high-quality production with full creative control to humans to tell the stories they want to tell. I'm sorry if all of this runs counter to your career and aspirations as a film-industry insider. But Hollywood is largely an industry run by lawyers, suits, and financiers operating on top of the creative medium of filmmaking. And that needs to change.

chefandy 3y ago
You're conflating technology and magic. You've omitted many dozens of crafts, jobs processes, and pipelines, required to make these projects work because you don't realize they exist, let alone why they exist, or what's necessary to change, replace, or automate them. I work in unreal engine every day, including doing a lot of automation work, and see how generative AI is used at the bleeding edge: I assure you that the hand-wavy parts of your grand scheme are "the moon is made of cheese" level misguided. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hiding behind those gorgeous unreal engine promo videos is thousands of hours of manual work— environment art, lighting, custom shader work, configuring pipelines, modifying stock assets and creating new ones, animation, music and foley art, writing, concept art, character design, storyboarding, graphic design, motion graphics, direction, compositing, editing... The list goes on, and that's for entirely digital productions leaning heavily on pre-made assets and procedural generation. Once again, could something very very loosely approximating the shape of your proposal serve as a comparatively low quality novelty? Sure. Is it "goodbye Hollywood elites?" lol. I have no love for Hollywood elites and my skillset would be dramatically more marketable in the industry you imagined, but describing your mental model of the topic only reinforced the glibness of your initial comment.
- ugh123 3y ago
  "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clark. The reason i'm convinced this can happen is because I think the [very fundamental - read early] building blocks seem to be already there. Will it happen? Depends if a well-enough funded group with the right talent and motivation choose to aim their sights at the consumer market rather than enterprise/studios. Meaning, it will probably not be Adobe, or any of the Streamers. Maybe could be Meta or Snap.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    Yes-- the well-worn quote proves my point. It is indistinguishable from magic to people who don't know how it works, and not challenging that perspective is a luxury afforded to people who don't want to reason about it or solve real problems with it. You only know what the building blocks are for the required software. You don't know what the other far more consequential building blocks are. You can't just assume they don't exist or aren't consequential because you don't know they're there or how they work. You're looking at a straight, mile-long, 10 foot thick wall from the side and assuming you're looking at a 10 foot wide wall that's a few inches thick. And then, despite someone who builds walls like that telling you otherwise, you insist you could knock it flat with a wrecking ball in a matter of seconds. It doesn't matter if the wrecking ball is exponentially better than the hammer you're used to, it's still not going to do what you think it does. This sort of hubris which is endemic to current dev culture was a major factor in my deciding to leave the software industry.

by ugh123 3y ago

chefandy 3y ago

You're conflating technology and magic. You've omitted many dozens of crafts, jobs processes, and pipelines, required to make these projects work because you don't realize they exist, let alone why they exist, or what's necessary to change, replace, or automate them. I work in unreal engine every day, including doing a lot of automation work, and see how generative AI is used at the bleeding edge: I assure you that the hand-wavy parts of your grand scheme are "the moon is made of cheese" level misguided. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hiding behind those gorgeous unreal engine promo videos is thousands of hours of manual work— environment art, lighting, custom shader work, configuring pipelines, modifying stock assets and creating new ones, animation, music and foley art, writing, concept art, character design, storyboarding, graphic design, motion graphics, direction, compositing, editing... The list goes on, and that's for entirely digital productions leaning heavily on pre-made assets and procedural generation. Once again, could something very very loosely approximating the shape of your proposal serve as a comparatively low quality novelty? Sure. Is it "goodbye Hollywood elites?" lol. I have no love for Hollywood elites and my skillset would be dramatically more marketable in the industry you imagined, but describing your mental model of the topic only reinforced the glibness of your initial comment.

ugh123 3y ago
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clark. The reason i'm convinced this can happen is because I think the [very fundamental - read early] building blocks seem to be already there. Will it happen? Depends if a well-enough funded group with the right talent and motivation choose to aim their sights at the consumer market rather than enterprise/studios. Meaning, it will probably not be Adobe, or any of the Streamers. Maybe could be Meta or Snap.
- chefandy 3y ago
  Yes-- the well-worn quote proves my point. It is indistinguishable from magic to people who don't know how it works, and not challenging that perspective is a luxury afforded to people who don't want to reason about it or solve real problems with it. You only know what the building blocks are for the required software. You don't know what the other far more consequential building blocks are. You can't just assume they don't exist or aren't consequential because you don't know they're there or how they work. You're looking at a straight, mile-long, 10 foot thick wall from the side and assuming you're looking at a 10 foot wide wall that's a few inches thick. And then, despite someone who builds walls like that telling you otherwise, you insist you could knock it flat with a wrecking ball in a matter of seconds. It doesn't matter if the wrecking ball is exponentially better than the hammer you're used to, it's still not going to do what you think it does. This sort of hubris which is endemic to current dev culture was a major factor in my deciding to leave the software industry.