How AI Is Transforming Hollywood’s Visual Effects Industry
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How is A I accelerating business transformation and how can leaders seize the new opportunities it's creating? Join IBM at the break to hear the answer from mohamad, a head of IBM consulting.

The technology behind the visual effects used in movies and television is rapidly changing, and what the tech adds to the media we love has long been a reason why people are drawn to work in hollywood.

I grew up in the shadow of George lucas empire.

people like john d. koki. He grew up across the bay from samford tisco, right in the backyard of lucas legendary effects company, industrial light and magic, which makes visual effects for movies and T, V. Shows from star wars to start track.

Every so often as a kid, we sneak into the the backlight and watch them blow up the starship enterprise on the high speed cameras. I never really got a chance to get away from me.

honestly do. Cause now works as an editor, director and producer on T. V. Shows like star truck discovery, the remake of the man who fell to earth and the umbrella academy. And in a twist that could be out of one of those science fiction shows, the latest transformation the visual effects industry is facing is artificial intelligence with .

machine learning. You can actually just say, I want a shot, a monster walking on the street, breaking down buildings, and he can produce a shot that looks like a monster rogin down the street, bringing the buildings, if you just need that raw concept, is shockingly powerful. But if your monster needs to be gaza specifically, and he needs to be guys in this shot and the next shot and the next shot and the next shot, that's something I can do.

But with companies like lions gate entertainment striking deals with A I startups to develop new tools, how might the technology transform the entertainment industry from the wall street journal? This is the future of everything. I'm danny Lewis.

Today, we're bringing you my conversation with jointed casi about how visual effects shaped some of your favorite T. V. Shows and movies and how A I could change the future of hollywood sick around.

We all know artificial intelligence is pushing business forward, but how can organizations truly harness the technologies power? Here's mohamed al, head of IBM consulting.

The idea is to use technology to enhance our colleagues, their expertise, not to replace that. We have the people with the skills and we have the raw technology to supercharge two hundred and sixty thousand consulting colleagues so they can do their job Better, faster, more effectively for our clients.

John, what do you think people don't quite understand about the effects? But like from an audience perspective.

so the monster walking on the street turn down buildings. There's an army of people that going to make that shot happen. You would need a 3 artist to build a monster and to come up the model。 And maybe there's motion capture that has that happens.

So you have to have an actor on a motion capture stage. Then you have posted team come in and layer the visual facts elements into the actual plates. There's a lot of things that have to happen and there's a lot of control you have over each process.

And now we're starting to enter this phase with A I coming into that process as well. How are people in film and television using IT in the .

production process, A I allows for really rapid conceptualizing. IT is absolutely speeding up a lot of the mundane tasks. And I think that something that a lot of visual fox artists would say they're happy to embrace. So let's say, you want the monster to be walking on the street and knocking buildings down.

What IT comes down to is how can the artists who so good about doing that, the really complex staff of creating a photo realistic vision of gaza, walk on the street? How can they use A I to make their process faster, more efficient, less expensive? And that's something that everybody y's figuring out right now on the fly.

But it's not actually doing the really high level stuff. A shot needs to be a lot more than just a singular example. Um it's not just be real. It's a whole series of shots that make a tell story.

What we're talking about A I we hear a lot about how I could help smooth up these processes and make things cheaper. How do budgets actually impact the v effects that you see on the screen at the end of the day.

on a lot of the big budget T V shows that I work on, especially there's a lot of visual facts involved that starts with the director sitting down, with the story board artist going through the script saying, here's, I think we want this to look like this. This is somebody who's can a trained artist has a whole history of using a pencil and pen to draw beautiful images.

If if somebody, they worked with a lot of the past, they understand the visual language of the show, and they understand that there are certain assets to show oes that are cheaper. I mean, the world just is somebody who actually conceptual, understands all of the intricacies that go into the shots they're proposing. Anyway, when I was working on the last episode of starting discovery that I directed, we have a brilliant sort of artist, and I came to him with some ideas about this giant, evil ship that was bearing down on star headquarters.

And so we were talking about, you know what, the camera down long do we do IT cemetary do we do IT off an angle and Carry. So we SAT down. We came up with the number of ideas and and we basically came up with the drawing that I then handed off to the visual x team and said, this is generally what I want this image to be.

They took that, they started creating models, and then the direction hood come over. And let's say, OK scene takes place on this stage. This stage is going to be impacted by the lighting from this giant evil ship.

All the different departments start talking about how these things happen together. And IT begins with just a cartoon image of the ship. There's A I apps that can produce starboard and IT can produce something that will do a pretty good job. But IT doesn't have the context to understand that depending on where this angle is, it's going to affect the lighting and that lighting is gona affect how the actual production stages lit.

And if the lighting and that scene changes, that's going to affect how many satellites we need or what color temperature things need to be or or if we do with this way is going to be A A Green screen shot of. There's a billion little details that the AI doesn't any contexts of. You can just give you an image that kind of cool if you wanted to.

And everybody along the way understood that this a standard didn't have any context. You could probably use that to move forward without as much input from the store. But a good store ward, see your entire crew an hour of shooting on a stage. Let's just ball parks and say, like, glad hour shooting is fifty thousand dos a good comes and maybe we can do this in two shots instead of three visual shots, which each visual vector t is seventy five thousand dollars and I have to save yourself the fifty thousand dollars of your cost of your crew and another of the those Millers on top of the usual sex budget.

So unless everybody on board knew that the AI generate and story boards didn't have that context and that somebody else had to come in at some point and try to look for those savings, not really saving money, that artist was saving you hundreds of thousands dollars down the road. And chances are you onna pay ford. They on the other hand, let's say, you're doing independent film and you were going to start board because you're not artist.

You can afford to now you can go to the eye story boards and you can do something that wasn't going to be done anyway and you come up with storyboards. That's the savings of that, right? That's one of the things that uh, I see in the evolution of A I A being used in hollywood ds process is that when A I is filling a gap that wasn't being served in the first place, it's remarkably efficient.

So how does this moment with general eye really coming into play compared to, you know, a few decades ago when computer models started replacing actual physical models, new like miniature and things like that? Does this moment compared to that .

transition the thing, but the machine learning technology A I is that it's not just visual fact models. It's it's everything from the blighting that on the scene to the the props there in the background, you can impact almost every little detail in the film. And it's not doing great work yet, but it's getting closer and closer to good enough.

And so the question is really going to be how to utilize these tools to tell the best stories. There's always some value in spectacle and watching gazella destroyed at the city. But what's really pointing about that is the little girl watching her city being destroyed by gazella.

If you just have the one or the other, you don't really have either. That's one thing coming from the backroom that I do is that in the stories almost always hold really in the reaction shots as giant monster spaceship. And this little tiny space station like that in itself is interesting.

But what's really compelling about as then you cut to the face of the admin standing on the bridge of that tiny little space station staring down the barrel, and you're imposed zing with them. And so it's the combination of the spectacle and the emotional and the AI is doing a Better and Better job of helping to create spectacle. But if the world of film making is that is broken up, because inspective al and character, the A I tools are really still very much on the spectral side of equation. They're not on the character of motion.

It's still early days for A I tools, but they're already starting to change how movies and T, V shows are made as studios make bets on the burgeoning technology. What's changing now and how might to change the future of the entertainment industry that's after the break.

John, we're starting to see some studios making public deals with A, I, companies to build tools based on their catalogues of films and T, V shows. The first so far being the deal that lions gate entertainment announced with A, I, start up runway. They're hoping the A I tools will be used for things like storyboarding and eventually creating special effects. How do you see that changing the T, V and filmmaking process over the next five, ten years? Well.

I think it's a great question, and I think cuts to the heart of a lot of concerns about IT, the training of A I and and permissions I don't work for. I know some people working the eyes space. I know that the studies are all expLoring how to use this technology to do things good, fast or cheap.

And you can have two or three, but you can never have all three. Everyone in hollywood is always pushing on all three fronts. And if they can use this technology to do things faster, great. They can use IT to do things Better, great. If they can use things to do things cheaper, best of all, and I can see, using those tools to do some things a lot more efficiently and in the right hands of smart people, figure out where we getting our best bank for a book, whether it's figure out even just lighting, like designing lighting schemes for for future films or concept zing, just just being of the digest the data and use IT efficiently.

We reached out to land scape for comment, and they didn't respond previously. The company said IT expects to save, quote, millions and millions of dollars from using runway is new A I model, and the runway spokesperson says the model generates quote cinematic video and can be applied to pre and post production through storyboarding the effects and animation. But john, what if IT ends up being a situation where there are tools that just don't hit that quality bar, kind of like when people complained about bad visual effects in movies, when computer effects were new. Could a similar thing happen with A I tools?

Cause when IT was done great, IT was awesome, right? I mean, dash apart is a perfect film, but there's lots of movies that come on in you all that does not hold up with. I do think that that's actually a real concern for the entertainment industry is that the spectable side of things seems to be expanding.

But fundamentally, the story, the character, the the community of those moments, I don't see AI helping to make that deliver ate in the same way I worked in shows, attend to be in the fantasy room, whether that's in space. So that's a magical world, monsters. There's going to be a per deliberation of that kind of john of material because it's going to more available.

That doesn't mean they're going to be good stories. And so i'm concerned with a future where you turn on your show and and it's just a pleasure of monsters destroying a city and there's no heart, there's no little kid watching the monster tear down their a partly because I don't know that a is sold in net form since a two part of creation. And just adding more weight, one side doesn't.

So we make things Better, I think gonna. A lot of joke, I guess, with the answer. And the question is, how are people going to find the good show everything but A I when you start thinking about what does this mean for the future, IT tends to be really, really scary.

But then when you stop and look at the stuff that happening right now on the ground in the moment, it's actually really exciting. And and this opportunity, there's there's need things that are happening. I do think that there is a way that this technology can be used to Foster growth. And the only way the industry is going to get Better with growth and with with new models and ingenuity and and new processes, how do we reconcile the cool opportunity stuff that seems to be happening on the ground right now with what this could mean down the roof?

Judged caskey is an editor, director and producer, men of many hats. Thank you for joining us.

I is my pleasure. I tried to wear one of his time and less impressed, and then I were .

to the future of everything is a production of the wall street journal. This episode was produced by me, danny luis, special thanks to Jessica tackle for her help with this episode. Our fact checker is a partner and Nathan sound designed by Jessica thun. Tom, like the show, tell your friends and leave a five star review on your favorite platform.

Thanks for listening.

Earlier, we discussed how the current moment in artificial intelligence Marks a greatly p forward for business. Here's mohamad lee from IBM consulting again on what that means for leaders.

No one has a Crystal ball, but this is a case where if your competition is thirty, forty, fifty percent more efficient, you are we have a lot of exchange agent. One great example is one of the largest health care companies in the next states. They came to us and ask for some help with the call centers, and we were able to reduce the call volume by over thirty percent by using gene. Turns out the er satisfaction actually went up because when people call the agents to information quicker or more cake later I use is a very exciting moment.

Learn more about IBM artificial intelligence consulting services and IBM dot com flash consulting.