Hollywood Doesn't Get It

The strike is not over and AI is a major sticking point. What is Hollywood’s fear of AI and is it justified? There are so many aspects to AI, but let’s keep the dialogue focused generative AI, which is the perceived foe of the Writers Guild. Having worked with Jasper, Bard and ChatGPT, their sense of humor is lacking so there is one upside to having real writers drive this. Comedy writers are marked “Safe.”

What is the true opportunity? It is using genAI as a tool and not a replacement. A place to brainstorm. A place where you don’t have to enter the name of the character or IP, but make some generic prompts that might help you work through a scene, a premise, a dialogue. The writer is still the conductor here, rejecting, discussing and synthesize whatever might come from the robot, actually the software, there are no robots. Because humans are driving this, it should be protectable.

From a visual efx perspective, MidJourney is a great program to explore new worlds, new environments that inspire the final production designer to then design their own version, again, the conductor of the exploration. This type of AI exploration may span various platforms in ones workflow.

From the Actors perspective, there is a real fear of being cloned. De-aging is crazy enough. Film is very human. Acting is very human. The nuance of acting, the dance of blocking and choreography, the breathing, the sighing, the twinkle in the eye…all human traits. Not easily replicable. Runway is making progress quickly. The lawyers will have to work this one out so actors maintain control of their image.

On the marketing side, I reached out to over 20 entertainment marketing agencies and studio executives asking if and how they are using AI in their workflow. Most did not respond, but those who did admitted to some light use of ChatGPT or were afraid to speak on behalf of their company. Granted, the craft of creating a movie poster is one I deeply appreciate. There are limits and approvals based on Paid Ad requirements that make this complicated, and let’s face it, drawing hands is a bitch and Midjourney sucks at it. Resolution continues to be a problem and finishers will not be out of work anytime soon.

One bright spot in the responses came from Robbie Davis for DG Entertainment. They have developed an AI Driven platform that has been acting as a CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM for years but now has evolved to a CONTENT MEDIA SYSTEM. Robbie goes on to explain, “We process our content (TV/Movie clips) thru AI, which provides automatic scripts of the dialogue and “scraping” for other video markers. (characters, places, actions, etc.) This AI enables our data entry team to provide detailed metadata in a much faster workflow.”

He adds, “AI already is elevating the skills of my team in many ways. I mentioned CMS above. However, as content creators we are looking for every advantage we can find to streamline the process. Our editors have already found many ways AI can help with shortcuts in the way we edit and process content. We just ran a test wherein we needed an animated character to walk up the side of a building. Previously, that would have taken more than a day of rotoscoping. Now with AI, they were able to complete the task in just a matter of a few hours.”

Is social marketing the lowest hanging fruit to use platforms like ChatGPT to create campaigns?

Robbie continues, “There is no doubt that ChatGPT is indispensable in content creation. However, once you move from individual stand-alone content and into a campaign, I believe it requires much more sophistication to make sure the “campaign” is falling within the guidelines of the overall creative brief.”

By the way, ChatGPT could write the creative brief on the studio executive side, let alone a whole marketing plan.

Jim Read of Loyalkaspar says, “We at Loyalkaspar are familiar with and impressed by what we’re seeing in AI. While we have experimented, we’ve struggled finding ways to add value to the current work we do. Much of our focus is on crafting unique brand strategy and design solutions that evoke emotional reactions, and we haven’t found an effective way to ensure that sense of personal touch both in concept development and production. We do find ChatGPT helpful in our research phase, and technically Siri and many other ubiquitous apps are using AI behind the scenes. We do look forward to the day when tools exist that can help reformat our work into every possible aspect ratio - that’s currently something that requires a lot of time-consuming attention.”

So, it seems, the creative community is caught in the Hollywood Terminator 2 narrative and somewhat paralyzed to move forward into the innovative realm, or they are not admitting to the use of AI.

Related Article – Be a Hero

On the flip side of Hollywood is the advertising industry, which has gone through many upheavals and consolidation over the years. But Holding companies like WPP have embraced an AI future and it is amazing what their bottom-up approach is.

“We're seeing real stats from generative AI in ads.
"The savings can be 10 or 20 times," says WPP CEO, Mark Read.
Gen AI is being used in advertising by Unilever, Nestlé, Oreo company, Cadbury, TRESemmé, and more. Cadbury example: 2,000 small businesses used generative AI to spin up a localized version of their national ad. 130k ads were created, generating 94MM views. WPP has 20 "AI apprentices" in their early 20’s who have received AI training in partnership with University of Oxford and work under Daniel Hulme, the Chief AI Officer at WPP. Every business should be implementing role-specific AI literacy training.”
Source – Reuters.com

So, when will Hollywood get it? That is the billion dollar question. In the meantime, whether you are a trailer house, a key art house, a special effects house, or a promo house, change needs to happen from within and you can start small. Become an internal AI Advocate. Create a pilot project, stress test the system and your organization. Download my carousel Generative AI: The Agency Dilemma here. At RealmIQ, we have gathered a group of AI experts from Berlin to Singapore spanning various disciplines; digital marketing, content marketing, UX Design, ethics, education, copyright law and offer bespoke corporate AI workshops for your organization.

About the Author

Curt specializes in branding, product development, social strategy, integrated marketing, and UXD. He has extensive experience on AI-driven platforms Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, Bard, ChatGPT, Murf.ai, and you.com. Recent rebrands include JATAI; the Santa Fe International Film Festival; AUTOVAULT; Legacy Concierge; enViibe; HighGarden Collective; and FullFill. His legacy of entertainment branding: Electronic Arts, EA Sports, ProSieben, SAT.1, WBTV Latin America, Discovery Health, ABC, CBS, A&E, StarTV, Fox, Kabel 1, TV Guide Channel, and Prevue Channel.

© 2023 Curt Doty Company LLC. All rights reserved. RealmIQ is a Curt Doty Company. Reproduction, in whole or part, without permission of the publisher is prohibited. Publisher is not responsible for any AI errors or omissions. Interested in Sponsorships?

Curt DotySeptember 3, 2023Comment