What is the impact of AI on the cost and time efficiency of film production?

Incorporating AI technologies into film production processes holds promise for enhancing cost and time efficiency through the automation of mundane tasks, the optimization of resource utilization, and the provision of invaluable insights for strategic decision-making. Nonetheless, filmmakers must delicately balance these advantages with the preservation of their creative vision and the irreplaceable touch of human expertise, safeguarding the quality and integrity of their cinematic endeavors.

Artificial Intelligence in any industry needs better monitoring. Executives appear to use it to cut costs, as though it was some snake oil cure all. They fail to see how the output is always derivative. They never check to see if it is ethically sourced or that the output is pertinent or correct. So a team that uses AI will need a good AI-wrangler. Someone to get the most pertinent output and then whichever dept is to benefit from the AI outcome will need one of their experts to double check the output for AI 'freewheeling', where it is just plain wrong or just gone off in a redundant direction. I don't believe AI is a finished product. It is in it's infancy, and like any infant it needs a lot of care and attention. Treat with caution.

AI greatly improves the cost and time efficiency of film production. It speeds up tasks like script analysis, casting, and editing by automating them, which saves time and reduces costs. AI also helps predict audience preferences, making marketing and distribution more efficient. While AI brings many benefits, it's important to use it wisely to maintain the creativity and integrity of filmmaking.

The Blank Page Issue is not an issue anymore. Yes, LLMs write almost unusable crap for any real world creative work, but atleast you could talk to them a bit about the idea, ask them to give you a template or structure. You could discuss about characters. You could instruct the chatbot to ask you critical plot development questions and keep asking until you have answered all of them. If you are persistent then you could even make a storyboard using some of the AI tools. AI can assist with various aspects of pre-production, such as location scouting, set design, and optimizing shooting schedules based on data analysis. AI can also help with casting by suggesting actors based on desired attributes and suitability for specific roles.

Studios hope it means they can hire less artists or eliminate some jobs all together allowing them to reduce their costs at the burden of the workers rather than fixing their wasteful processes.

We've had motion control cinematography for 40 years without AI. We also have instant playback and have had that for nearly as long. The examples given don't reflect what AI could bring as it's already here.

Wrangling AI into getting what you need in all other aspects of production is also a crapshoot. The control just isn’t there, and I don’t think that will improve for a number of years because artists aren’t creating the tools. Non-artists are, and they just don’t understand the needs of someone who’s trying to incrementally improve their artistic process.

Beyond these benefits, AI also enhances post-production through automated subtitling and translation, making films more accessible to global audiences. For example, AI-driven tools can generate accurate subtitles in multiple languages swiftly, ensuring a wider reach and inclusivity. This not only improves the film's marketability but also aligns with the industry's growing emphasis on diversity and accessibility.

AI has great potential here, though it is potential at this point. Instructing it is still tricky, as has been shown in a number of demos I've viewed. Again, AI isn't ready for prime time. Check back in a few years. What AI can do may not yet be worth the extra costs.

What AI will bring to the table in a few years could, and the word is could, offer substantial benefits. Will it be cost effective? Eventually. Will it replace human beings? Only if people want to watch repetitive results.

People in the present media should also consider options outside the structures of present-day production: the idea that, like, say, video games, AI-based systems could just replace the entire production process. No cast, no script, no DP or post crew. Just direct response and feeding of viewer requests, one screen at a time. The results might be 1000 times worse than the bottom-rank TV shows of today, but with 1,000,000 times the TAM, a small fraction of the per-viewer cost, and, because it's deeply integrated with the internet, tons of moment-by-moment analytics available to guide it straight to the public's amygdalas. Oh, and realtime-best-bid advertising seamlessly integrated to further reduce the costs.

AI has already become an essential part of my day to day across all my production processes. Whether it's quickly auto transcribing a corporate talking head so I can get a transcript out to the client quickly for them to provide a paper edit, or having to enhance the scratch audio from a B-Cam because the operator forgot to roll the A-Cam that's got the receiver hard wired into it. I am constantly saving projects and my own time with these tools. It clearly is a tool that will remain a part of the industry, and personally as a creative, I stand by its uses. But of course, we should also protect our IPs and make it so it works for the creators, and not just the big corporates.

Given the dystopian possibilities that have been mentioned, the blessing of AI in entertainment will be my increased joy and pleasure in dumping all of it and enjoying my library or going out and having real experiences.

AI has a huge bunch of hurdles before it could even be considered a viable element in production. In early preproduction concepts it could help in providing variations on ideas that may or may not be a part of the concept artist’s thought process. Beyond that, however, AI is really bad at locking down some elements while making subtle or grand changes to others. It basically chases its tail when given those kind of instructions. And Photoshop artists have to be better than ever to piece together a composition that doesn’t blatantly show flaws, where typical Photoshop collage techniques would normally be given a pass.