It\u2019s that time of year again!
Actually, I don\u2019t know why I said that. It\u2019s always that time of year for something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The good news is that, after a long, cold, hard winter (or two . . . or three), we\u2019re finally seeing more work \u2013 production is showing signs of coming back after last year\u2019s SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, followed by this year\u2019s near-strike by IATSE. It takes a while to get things through the pipeline, but we\u2019re seeing some early hints of it \u2013 like the buds of spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It will take some time \u2013 and perhaps longer here in New England \u2013 for production to return to the scope and scale we saw pre-COVID. But the pandemic had already done some real damage to our community, which we were still recovering from when those first strikes hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those strikes were a necessary step \u2013 for all of us \u2013 as any realization of all the ramifications of Artificial Intelligence has just barely begun. There are elements to this that we simply can\u2019t foresee, and there are some we can \u2013 all of them need to be addressed so those contracts can be future-proofed (to the extent possible) in anticipation of what AI might do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is the obvious stuff that we see now \u2013 actors being replaced or regenerated from random electrons or being made to do things they could never do. Or would<\/em> never do . . . from deepfaking politicians to revenge porn to bringing the dead back to life, almost everything is on the table, and all of it is dark; completely unacceptable without the individual\u2019s consent or without the community of actors standing up to say \u2018no\u2019 to artificially generated actors taking their jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a similar issue presented by the Writers Guild \u2013 to keep their integrity as creators, it\u2019s vital to stand against AI-fabricated ideas \u2013 or maybe entire treatments and scripts. AI doesn\u2019t produce a script like a human \u2013 not yet, anyway \u2013 but that writing is on the wall (pun only slightly intentional). As with everything else AI, it\u2019s simply a matter of time. Five years ago, even the idea that AI would threaten any of our jobs was inconceivable. No one really knows where we\u2019ll end up in another five years, so it\u2019s best to write in those protections now. I am not \u201canti-AI\u201d \u2013 for example, I\u2019ve used versions of automatic mixing algorithms that are a tremendous help, particularly with live shots. The software can open up a mic that needs to go live faster than I ever could, for example. It\u2019s not a very big leap to imagine a time when we\u2019re no longer dealing with a human mixer\/operator, but telling a computer how we\u2019d like that piece mixed. Throw in a little sound design while you\u2019re at it, Siri \u2013 you know what I like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n AI, as it exists now, largely models its responses and generative solutions on pre-existing works \u2013 it\u2019s copying everything from a previous human creator or a human body of work, from concept to style to execution. For AI to do its job, some human, somewhere, needs to have done something like that already; AI is simply cribbing from our work and creating its own amalgamation of that in its version of new, supposedly \u201coriginal\u201d work. In its current incarnation, AI technology simply emulates the human experience, and its learning cycle never end. More and more frequently, it\u2019s good enough to fake us out \u2013 and those instances are going to occur more often as we progress down this path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I, for one, look forward to our robot overlords taking the reins \u2013 just a little, maybe. My hope is that it will take on the more mundane aspects of what we do, giving us more time to concentrate on the serious business of creating.<\/em> It can also help with new concepts, ideas, and combinations of elements, while finding entirely new approaches \u2013 an AI prompt or suggestion might trigger the beginnings of an idea, but any genuinely new creative territory (for now, anyway) will remain in the domain of the human creator. AI Might Be Your Friend After All It\u2019s that time of year again! Actually, I don\u2019t know why I said that. It\u2019s<\/p>\n
Below-the-line employees, represented primarily by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and the Teamsters, had a tougher course of negotiating \u2013 AI hasn\u2019t come for as many of our jobs (yet), but we need those protections, too. We already see it in the scaling back of practical effects work on set; as one example, there\u2019s no need to actually blow stuff up or set it on fire when it can be convincingly (and more safely) done after the fact. AI could also cause the scaling-back of some practical jobs on set \u2013 lighting can be adjusted in post, maybe wardrobe gets adjusted (or replaced) after the fact, makeup can be at least tweaked, sometimes created out of whole cloth \u2013 and on and on.
It’s coming for sound as well; we\u2019ve already seen what plug-in processors can do for audio enhancement and repair. It might be only a matter of time before we can set up a good-enough camera in an undecorated space with a satisfactory microphone and a skeleton crew of technicians to capture the moment for AI to enhance later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s a new season . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"