Ben Affleck's AI Firm Set Aggressive Production Cost-Cutting Targets, 50% D******* on Visual Effects

Feels like harm reduction at this point when we know the studios are intent on as much AI as possible

Please, it's not like those plebs that do all the work actually *matter*.

So many jobs lost...like tears in rain

As CGI became easier to make it created more jobs because they could produce either more content or higher quaility. These changes often don't end up reducing the amount of people involved. The movies make the same amount on net, so the money to compete either goes to involving more people to make it better or to paying other people for the equipment (better cameras, server farms etc...) Granted we have much fewer stop motion people - but we have way more VFX people the roles do change. There was a large anti cgi croud saying it would cause job losses at the time. They were of course wrong in hindsight. Of course a well written movie can beat a billion dollar CGI movie but I have no doubt there won't be billion dollar movies all competing to be the best - and that will require investment in humans. So maybe there will be net reduction and there certainly will be displacement but we can't say there will certainly be reduction in net amount of artistic work.

Are you the type that would fight against electricity because we need to think about the Lamplighters losing their jobs?

The job losses in the US VFX market have already been massive over the last 15 years, going to whatever country provides the film production company the most tax breaks + cheapest global labor price. I'm sure you were all over this on Listnook during that time right?

Of course

Cars put horse carriages out of work, I'm not mad at technology progressing.

The good optional future of all this story is working together with Ai. Decisions stay human.

If AI was coming for the livelihood of you, your peers and the work you consider vital to a healthy society, rendering you all irrelevant, what would you do? Would you just walk away? Or would you try to figure out how to tame and harness the threat? The answer is obvious to me; but your comment, void of alternative solutions, suggests you believe we should dig our heads into the sand.

Sometimes your job becomes obsolete with the advancement of technology, ever see a car production assembly line ? Mini model and stop motion photography for SFX were replaced long ago by technology that is being replaced now. Its called progress

The RIGHT Kind of creators in mind, meaning the kind that does their work, is what they actually mean. They don't give a shit about those other kinds of creators, no different than the studios really.

No, Affleck and Damon have an interest in making more movies, and their production company is one that includes profit sharing for literally everyone involved. The world is complex.

On the flip side, maybe it shortens time lines with same staffing and we can push back towards 1season/yr and everyone's still employed

Savings can come from not paying someone to do 1 scene in 1 month but instead 2 scenes in one month. If you can shorten the time it makes for a creative to do their job you aren’t getting rid of jobs, you are paying them for the same job but for less time.

Jobs are means to an end, not an end in themselves. If fewer folks can produce high quality visual effects, more films and shows can be created. Or folks are freed up to spend their labor elsewhere. It happened to coal miners and car manufacturers and human computers. It can happen to anyone and it’s not a bad thing. Edit: Blaming computers for capitalisms failures is so hot right now. Favorite past time of your most despicable CEOs and your average dumbass.

VFX industry worker here. It’s still as much horseshit coming from a dipshit actor as when it comes from studios. Executives and A-list are still elite and above the line. They don’t give a f***. Workers need to unite against this.

Yea, those are jobs. People who have bills to pay.

Hey Joe

As someone actively trying to break into the industry (in my "cold query to producers" stage), I'm excited to see how this develops with artists like yourself and Affleck, who have genuine creative passion, leading it.

Because with some industries more knowledgeable people working on the project the better. In the end cutting jobs can actually EXTENDED filming times and reshoots and lower quality. Film is one of the industries with the most technical moving parts. A director doesn't understand the electrical output or set up needed in order to get the lighting 'look' they want. The director can say 'I want this scene to be pinky red with a soft glow' but unless they know the lights set has have on hand, the bulbs, the wattage it uses, and the filters it needs to get the color you want then you're outta luck. That's the lighting departments job. The director can say 'I want to pan the wide shot here.' Who's putting down the track for the camera? Which camera? What frame rate? What file format? Be careful, if you f*** this up this one scene might not be right for post-production, causing expensive reshoots. That's the camera departments job. The director doesn't wanna deal with all that. Then there's stunts. And sound, how are we gonna rig the mics? This scene has the actor n*** like Mystique but she's far from the camera so the boom mic doesn't work. What do you do? All of these are very common very basic questions on film sets the 'creative' doesn't want to deal with. The producers, writers, and actors do not know the answer. Trades people do. And we need TEAMS to fix these problems. Having one trades person in reach department and expecting them to diagnose AND fix the problem all by themselves will absolutely slow down production. People like to think that films are widely creative. However there are actually way more technical parts than the creatives are willing to admit, and when those technical parts fail the movie looks bad. No matter how creative it is.

Jesus Christ

There already are.

Movie end credits are about to shorten from 5-6 minutes to 2.

Wait, hold on a second...did Ben Affleck really use the word "disintermediate" in an interview?

I mean. It sucks. But this is like being mad about the steam engine or personal computers or washing machines. New technologies that massively disrupt labor markets aren't just going to stop because people feel bad about them. The burden/onus/blame here isn't on Affleck or even on Anthropic or OpenAI or any of those other companies. It's on politicians (especially Republicans) failing to build meaningful safety nets and protocols for the displaced.

Cutting post work in half by catching mistakes, missing shots, wrong lighting, etc before it gets to the "fix it in post" stage. The idea is to use the AI to catch those things, among others, so filming is streamlined, gets all the shots you need to edit together a coherent story, and catching glaring mistakes that require vfx to fix, like shadows from the wrong direction, reflections, Superman's mustache...

I personally don’t know the specifics so I won’t form an opinion on the topic

And if they weren't making this particular AI company do you think that nobody else would have the same idea?

The reason why InterPositive was purchased at all is because they specifically filmed and trained their model on their own footage and scenarios. Thats what made it valuable to Netflix. Netflix is in the position to enrich that dataset with their own content.

Well that's a real negative way to look at it 🤷‍♂️ AI is coming regardless of opinions, I'd prefer some people at least involved that have admirable goals than not

That’s even better 😂 what a clown I hate all these people.

The point of AI eliminating menial tasks is not to give free time, but to free up time to do better, more complex or complete work. Whatever the product is can be done better with more innovation and bandwidth

I don’t see it that way. Businesses run on budgets. They are incentivized to spend a certain amount of money because of tax benefits. R&D costs. If my budget for the year is 100mil and I have 10 projects I can greenlight, of course I’m going with the one that’s projected to be the most profitable meaning less creative works are being made for a potential 1 off movie that “could” be big. Now, if I could lower the cost of that one project leaving me with more budget, then I have more incentive to greenlight smaller projects. Businesses have to spend money to make money. It isn’t just about cutting jobs to save costs or having AI do everything. If that was the case they would lose so much to taxes that the benefit of AI would go away. If the cost of producing projects goes down that means more projects can be made which means work. Not more work. Not less work. Just the same amount of work for creatives just at a faster rate.

Exactly. This is just the new face of automation. We need to figure out how to progress with it because it isn't going away just because you don't like it.

I'm not agreeing with the idea of using this AI, but do you think VFX artists do not consume energy while they are creating and rendering their designs? Contrasting energy consumption is not the correct argument here.

Okay cool the movie industry will just die instead