How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love A.I.
I was lucky to have a much older father when I was growing up. He once opened a box of long-saved tokens and momentos and started chuckling to himself. “Patrick, take a look at this.” He showed me a card he had received at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, which he attended a a young teenager. It read, “This card is to certify that Pat ‘Patsy’ Caligiuri was televised.” That World’s Fair was where television made its first ever debut to the mass public -and the irony is not lost on me that, as a current television producer, I have a direct linage to one of the first people to be broadcasted on T.V.
Over the past century we’ve seen technology shifts that have transformed the path of human history: the atomic bomb, the computer, the internet, the smartphone (and all the ridiculous apps that come with it) and now, ladies and gentlemen, we finally bring you: Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). The most complicated and terrifying human creation of them all. We're now living in the age that all those 90's era apocalyptic movies tried to warn us about...
But I digress, each of these technologically significant & cultural shifts have, for better or worse, altered forever the way we work, play and live. Everything that’s left in the wake of a technological shift becomes somewhat comical nostalgia… Coal, Rolodex, Microfiche, 1800-COLLECT, need I say more?
We’ve already watching these tidal shifts with the rollout of new A.I. technology just in the past year --remember when everyone’s social media profile was their AI avatar picture? Again, comical nostalgia, and that was only 5 months ago! But as a member of the entertainment industry, I’ve also see a deep rooted concern with A.I. generated content among many of my colleagues.
I first saw this pragmatic fear when cinematographer I once worked with made a post (he was almost shell-shocked) about how he used AI to create a composed interview frame giving the AI direction on tone, lighting and location direction. The end composite terrified him, “this looks better than my best work," he exclaimed, "I may be out of a job soon!”
Now, I’m still kicking myself for not starting a YouTube channel back-in-the-day where I could’ve Blippi’d my way into fame & fortune, so I figured it might be worthwhile to start experimenting with A.I. At best, I would learn a new skillset and, at worst, I would see the psychopomp of my demise. What I learned using this new technology, however, would surprise me.
I reached out to Runway, the creative platform that uses different AI models to create visual content, and asked if I could have access to their generation 2 models (text-to-video). Out of all A.I. generations out there, this one fascinates me the most because there is no visual input. There’s nothing visual to input; no transformation of photos or converting previous video into something else. The generated 4-second clips would come purely from typing out the scene I was envisioning in my head. ?
I quickly became obsessed, writing whatever I could think of: “a drone shot of Paris Expo, in 1903, flying over a glass building, colorful, vibrant, Victorian feeling… OH and a hot air balloon in the background.” And voila, there I was staring at the scene, exactly how I imagined it.
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So, like every industry professional, I have slowly degenerating documents of old stories, screenplays, and scripts in the cockles of my hard drive… and now, without a production crew, director, actors, crafty and armed with only my imagination and a laptop, I was able to create lifelike motion picture scenes based on this original material.
I quickly went to work, ?putting in one scene after an other, “here’s one about Jai Alai in 1982 Miami,” “here’s a scene when the Nazi’s invade the U.S.S.R.” or “here’s an idea for a horror-thriller based on the Skinwalker legend” It was giving me so much joy to see these ideas, some that I had decades ago, finally brought to life. The end result was not perfect my any means…but it was close enough. That’s when I quickly took notice of something peculiar… ?
Although the 4-second clips that were being generated looked fantastic, I myself, a human was still doing all the heavy lifting. All the scenes I was describing for Gen-2 were based on what the ideas I wanted to see. In short, the producing was still on me. I was still doing my old job, just in a new way. And just like producing, it quickly became frustrating when things were going sideways. I constantly needed to give A.I. direction, like a P.A. that still can’t get the coffee orders right after a month on the job... except the computer doesn't give a sh*t what you think of it.
When making the WWII scene, there was one shot where I just wanted a close up image of a leather glove pointing its index finger at someone, and good god, that took like 20 generations (and each of those generations takes about 5 min to render). So I would wait about 5 minutes, all of a sudden to see A.I. create a video of a 8-fingered hairy hand giving the thumbs up. Ugh! Not again! I kept needed to change the wording or the text, then sit patiently to see if the computer can figure out what I’m asking for. ?
Once I had accumulated all the material, it was then up to me to edit it all together. These images also lacked audio, so then I had to completely score and audio design the edit. To make a one-minute video would take an entire day of work. Here’s what the end result looks like:
I don't think many people realized how much work actually went into this... its definitely not as easy as "make a spooky movie trailer" but perhaps it might be that one day. And yet, it was still creative work. The A.I. was consistently looking for my directive to complete the visual.
I no longer see AI as the scary Skynet I was brought up to mistrust. Now, I have the ability to enhance the creative process. I mean, forget the elevator pitch, and trying to convince the movers and shakers to see what I see. The pitch doesn't need to just be based on what’s written on the page -but what is imagined in our mind’s eye. This may usher in a new era of film making, pushing the limits of our imagination or what film making and television can be. Now if only I can get a card printed that says I was one of the first to use Generation-2 text-to-video A.I. ?