“Some days I’m actually excited concerning the prospects,” says Finnish producer Aleksi Hyvärinen. “The subsequent day, I’m like, ‘Wait, is that this even a superb factor?’”
That rigidity, between optimism and unease, set the tone for a two-day workshop at this 12 months’s Amman Worldwide Movie Competition, the place Hyvärinen led a session titled AI and Filmmaking: A Grounded Information as a part of the pageant’s Amman Movie Business Days program. Hyvärinen, who co-founded The Alchemist, a Nordic inventive studio combining storytelling and AI to create “emotionally clever” content material for movie, TV and branded media, guided the workshop that skipped coding and tech demos in favor of a much more nuanced aim: getting actual about what AI means for the way forward for storytelling.
“It changed into two days of debate,” Hyvärinen recollects. “We didn’t dive into producing movies or studying software program. That’s not the place the true urgency lies. What individuals wanted was context, grounding, and area to replicate.”
Hyvärinen, who has produced movies like “The Twin,” “Lake Bodom,” and Netflix’s “Maintain Your Breath: The Ice Dive,” has hosted comparable AI classes throughout Europe, together with in Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, the Netherlands, and, now, Jordan.
Whereas every group brings a distinct cultural backdrop, the spectrum of reactions is surprisingly constant: “Some had been able to dive in. Some had been completely skeptical. Most had been like me: residing within the gray zone, simply making an attempt to determine it out.”
But regardless of the stance, one takeaway retains surfacing: “Folks go away saying, ‘I must know extra about this.’ Whether or not they love AI or worry it, they realize it’s not going away.”
Reactions to AI
That urgency resonated with many within the room.
“Earlier than the workshop, I had a medium stage of familiarity with AI instruments, principally out of curiosity,” mentioned Anwaar Al-Shawabkeh, a Jordanian filmmaker (“Begin Now”). “However these two days really shifted my notion! After going by means of the instruments with Aleksi, I felt it had turn out to be true and there’s no approach to keep away from it.”
One second that struck her: how casually contributors started referring to AI as “he.” “It made me replicate on how this know-how would possibly evolve, and the way our youngsters may even see it totally in another way. Nobody requested us if we wished this transformation and nobody will. It’s coming!”
Whereas she expressed some moral concern, notably across the lack of clear phrases in inventive industries, Al-Shawabkeh finally sees AI as a pure subsequent step. “As occurred 50 years in the past in purple enhancing rooms, what used to take hours will quickly be performed with one click on. I plan to make use of AI in my future work. With cautious thought and expertise, I imagine it’s going to improve the inventive course of in highly effective methods.”
Her most important takeaway for fellow indie filmmakers? “Don’t panic. AI is only a new software. We have to discover each its strengths and limitations to really perceive its place in our work, and on the earth to return.”
Mohammed AlQaq, Aleksi Hyvärinen, Anwaar Al-Shawabkeh
Courtesy of Mohammed AlQaq, Aleksi Hyvärinen, Anwaar Al-Shawabkeh
How AI Is Reshaping Workflow
One of many workshop’s central targets was to demystify how AI is definitely being utilized in filmmaking and to attract a pointy line between what’s attainable now and what stays hype.
Contributors explored instruments like Google Veo and Google Stream, in addition to 4D Gaussian Splatting, an astonishing new technique that enables filmmakers to create 3D environments from just some flat photographs. “You may shoot a easy 2D scene,” Hyvärinen explains, “and later reframe it, change the digicam angle, zoom in. It turns into a full 3D mannequin.”
Nevertheless it wasn’t simply the flashy stuff. A big a part of the workshop centered on non-generative AI, instruments that don’t create new media however assist arrange and speed up current workflows. Assume AI for de-rushing 300 hours of uncooked documentary footage, robotically cataloging dialogue and scenes.
“It’s usually missed within the moral dialog,” he says. “Whereas non-generative AI instruments aren’t free from moral or copyright considerations, they usually don’t carry the identical weight or inventive implications as generative AI.”
Nonetheless, he’s life like. Entry-level jobs, like assistant editors, could also be among the many first to go. “It’s not essentially higher, it’s simply cheaper and quicker. And that’s normally how the world works.”
That query of authorship additionally resonated with contributors, particularly across the situation of management.
“Earlier than the workshop, I believed I utterly rejected the thought of AI taking the place of my thoughts or my creativity,” mentioned Mohammed AlQaq, Palestinian-Jordanian artist, performer, and filmmaker. “I wished to make use of it solely to avoid wasting time, however to not save my creativity.”
However by the top of the 2 days, his stance had shifted barely. “I nonetheless maintain that opinion, however I’ve additionally modified. I spotted that even in inventive work, I can nonetheless be in management.”
AlQaq pushed again on one participant who expressed worry about AI’s position in filmmaking: “I felt that dialogue was a bit dramatic. There’s no have to be afraid. This can be a software, not a menace.”
Nonetheless, considerations stay. “I’ll proceed to have considerations about copyright, and I’ll all the time have questions stuffed with worry: Will I actually personal all of the rights? Will these instruments sooner or later deceive me and say I’ve to pay large sums to acquire them?”
His takeaway? “AI is simply one other software, an assistant, and I’ll all the time be the director.”
AI: A Value-Cutter When the Business Faces Finances Constraints
When requested the place he attracts the road between help and authorship, Hyvärinen cites a fellow Finnish author, Katri Manninen, who compares AI to having a human assistant in a Hollywood writers’ room.
“In case you’d credit score a human for that stage of enter, then AI shouldn’t be doing it both,” he says emphatically. “You may’t let it cross that inventive line.”
That mentioned, he makes use of it usually as a brainstorming accomplice. “It’s superb at surfacing concepts rapidly. However when you dig in, you see it’s generic. There’s no voice. No viewpoint. Storytelling is all about viewpoint.”
Coming from Finland, Hyvärinen isn’t any stranger to price range constraints. That’s why he believes indie filmmakers might need essentially the most to realize, so long as they method AI strategically.
“There are tales we by no means even pitched as a result of we knew we couldn’t afford them,” he says. “Now? Perhaps we will. Perhaps we don’t want $10 million. Perhaps we will make it for $500K and nonetheless pull it off.”
What does Hyvärinen think about the trade will seem like in 2029? He envisions a cut up: high-end, handcrafted cinema on one finish, and fast-turnaround, AI-enhanced content material, assume telenovelas or streaming serials, on the opposite. “We is perhaps taking pictures actors in inexperienced display screen studios, producing environments, tweaking wardrobe, faces, dialogue, even digicam angles. All of that in post-production.”
Nonetheless, he believes core inventive work will stay human, notably performing, path, and story. “However the remainder? Location scouting, manufacturing design, perhaps even some enhancing, that’s going to shift.”
And whereas he compares the shift to previous transformations like digital cinematography, nonlinear enhancing, and the rise of the Web, he’s below no phantasm that this might be a easy journey.
“It’s going to be partly nice and partly painful. Just like the web within the 2000s, or electrical energy within the early 1900s, we will guess just a few issues, however we do not know what’s actually coming.”