Recently, Jackie Chan 's new film " legend " has suffered from word-of-mouth and box office failure. Douban scored 5.4 points and box office results of more than 70 million in more than ten days of release, leaving Bona with a net loss of 108 million to 153 million in the first half of the year. The film industry was not expecting it. Bona Pictures established its own AI studio this year. Before the release of "Legend", AI technology had always been the gimmick of the film, but after it was released, it became something that audiences didn't buy. Bona Pictures used the current popular AI face-changing technology to restore the 27-year-old Jackie Chan, who starred in 80% of the film. However, the overall presentation had many inconsistencies. Audiences said that Jackie Chan in the film was very out of character. The effect of AI in simulating the expressions of real people is not good enough, which creates an uncanny valley effect for the audience.
This time, "AI face-changing technology" is used to restore the younger version of the actor. As early as 2019, Ang Lee's " Gemini Man " and Martin Scorsese's " The Irishman " have both tried it , some viewers at that time said that the characters' faces were a bit stiff after the "age reduction".
ai Al Pacino and Robert De Niro after age reduction.
Even in Hollywood, where technology is more mature, AI face-changing technology is not perfect, and a series of AI-related technologies have also caused a lot of controversy in Hollywood. Last year’s strike wave among screenwriters and actors in Hollywood. In addition to the salary conflicts between actors, screenwriters and management, the threat that AI may replace actors and screenwriters also prompted them to strike.
Compared with Hollywood, the response from Chinese film and television creators seems to be more moderate and positive. Liancheng Yijian, a self-media person who observes film and television in the industry, believes: "It is understood that AI has fully entered all fields of film production, from the creation of early script outlines to the drawing of mid-stage shooting storyboards, as well as in the later stages, whether it is editing, dubbing, or adjusting. There are cases involving AI technology in almost the entire process of coloring, special effects, subtitles, posters, etc. It can be said that AI has become one of the indispensable basic technologies or tools for film production..."
Regardless of AI Whether the technology is still immature, it is already a reality that the film industry has to face.
1
ai technology is an auxiliary technology
which protects the energy of creation very well
On February 16, 2024, openai released the video generation model sora, which can generate one-minute high-definition long videos by inputting text. As soon as sora was released, it caused panic in the entire film and television industry, believing that it would have a huge impact on the field of visual creation. Against such a general background, many film professionals in the industry have begun to apply AI technology. Screenshot of the video generated by
sora.
On April 11 this year, Guo Fan, the director of the " The Wandering Earth " series, said at a conference on "AI, Movies, AI Movies and Discussions about the Future" that "The Wandering Earth 3" will use AI technology, " For the early text work, language models such as claude3 are very helpful to our film and television creation. claude3 is more like a 'human' state than gpt4, and it will even 'test' the questions I asked. "
Guo Fan. Added: "When the screenwriters are meeting, the recording and AI recognition can parse out the speeches of each participant, and finally form a corpus. After ten consecutive days and ten hours of discussion every day, AI recognition can accurately refine each person's speech in 'seconds' The important point is to avoid the complexity of manual query. The same is true for writing scripts. With the help of the claude3 language model, we basically free up our hands... As a movie, the script needs to be converted into audio-visual language and Unlike novels, which focus on literature, language models such as claude3 and gpt4 can fully undertake the task of "explaining things clearly"
In Guo Fan's view, this is not laziness, but "very good." It protects the creative energy.” After basically coming up with some plots, Guo Fan's team will use runway, stable diffusion, and midjourney to generate visual concept maps, and there will also be dynamic concept videos. They will then select one or two final use options. At this time, artificial intelligence began to intervene, and detailed design, split models, and animation testing were carried out based on the intentional concepts generated by AI. AI technology greatly saves time and energy.
htmlOn June 21, during the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival, Lenovo Group and the famous film director Lu Chuan filmed the documentary "Western Fields" for its premiere. Earlier, director Lu Chuan and Lenovo Group announced the joint establishment of Lenovo Yuanchuang AI Imaging Laboratory. The documentary "Xiye" is the first work of the joint laboratory. Lenovo provided Nishino with an AI animal behavior detection system. Lu Chuan completed part of the post-production of the "Western Wild" documentary with the help of Lenovo's AI PC, which greatly improved the speed of creative visualization and allowed his vision for the film to become reality with the help of AI. This is an important case of using AI technology to shoot documentaries in China.Screen from the documentary "Western Wilderness".
Whether it is "The Wandering Earth 3" or "Western Wilderness", AI technology provides convenience in shooting for both, saving time and energy investment. Some people in the industry were worried about AI technology replacing humans in coming up with ideas, but this was overstated for the time being. Yan Peng, a member of the
Science Writers Association and a film critic, told Nandu reporter: "AI technology can only be an auxiliary technology, it is not a creative (technology). This technology depends on the user's aesthetic level and technology Level. In the future, AI will be widely used in the pre-, mid- and post-production of movies, but it will be used as a tool, rather than a magical technology that turns stone into gold. In the future, it will be used well. There is a huge difference between creators and creators who use it poorly, so a good creator will not be controlled by AI, he will be able to control AI technology calmly."
2
The cultivation of film talents using AI technology has kept up. ? As a new technology,
ai technology has a large talent gap, and the corresponding education in major universities is still lagging behind. One of the reasons is that AI technology is changing rapidly, and college teachers are also in the learning stage.
At present, the film and television university in China that systematically develops AI courses is the Shanghai Vancouver Film School of Shanghai University. Starting from February 2023, the school will begin to offer AI courses. This is the first AI film course in a Shanghai film school. Nandu reporter contacted Odet Abadia, the head of the Wen Ying AI Future Imaging Research Center of the school. In her course teaching, she used AI as an auxiliary tool to improve the efficiency of industry workflow. The teachers and students of the school use the large language model (LLMS) to set up script creation courses. With the help of this language model, students can better analyze the script and then improve the scene description or dialogue characterization, and stimulate their minds about potential scenes. storm.
The school has different levels of courses in the curriculum. The most basic one is to use mainstream artificial intelligence applications, such as midjourney, runway or elevenlabs. These applications are very easy to use, so that students will not be afraid of difficulties and can learn more later. Deepen little by little.
Academic activities of the 7th Pingyao International Film Festival, second from right is odet.
odet believes that AI is a great boon to the traditional film production process, especially in terms of reducing costs and increasing speed. In the past, even just a few years ago, only a handful of filmmakers who already had project development funds could afford to hire concept artists to help them translate their film ideas into images. For artists, creating even one frame is time-consuming and expensive. Nowadays, for any young filmmaker, creating your own concept drawings is just a matter of paying a small subscription fee, and the process becomes very fast. We can even change our thoughts and opinions countless times and try different things without considering the cost and time of each modification.
Of course, in order to prevent students from relying too much on artificial intelligence and becoming lazy. Odet advocates that AI should be gradually introduced into the curriculum. Students need to learn how to use traditional methods to complete something before they are taught how to use AI to improve efficiency and save costs.
At present, AI technology is mainly discussed at the "technical" level in China, but in fact many people have raised questions about the ethical issues of AI, and odet has also captured this public opinion.She believes that whether it is from the training method of the model, bias, possibility of abuse, or copyright issues, etc., odet's response is to plan to launch a new course called "Artificial Intelligence Literacy." In this course, she will cover all of these topics so that students can properly understand the full background and context of use of AI, not just a user of AI.
ai teaching must go from the "technical" level to the "Tao" level.
3
Animation production is more sensitive to the AI technology environment than live-action movies
In addition to live-action movies, AI technology is also used in animation production.
Zhu Haipeng, director of the Animation Department of Guangdong University of Finance and Economics' Bay Area Film and Television Industry College, told Nandu reporters: "Compared with live-action movies, animated movies are actually more sensitive to changes in such a technical environment. In the past two years, films such as Mid Journey, Tools such as stable diffusion and chatgpt have actually begun to be used by animation companies of all sizes in China. Some animation companies have gradually developed their own AI applications.
is a new technology represented by AI, which has great impact on the animation industry. The impact is mainly reflected in two aspects: The first aspect is the transformation of the entire production process. Traditional animation production, whether it is two-dimensional or three-dimensional, has a very clear and strict workflow. But now with the emergence of AI tools, we It is found that it will have a new production trend.
Work that may have required a team to complete in the past may now be completed by a few people with the support of AI technology. This is undoubtedly a subversion of the traditional animation production process. . Another point is that AI technology may subvert the current structure of the animation production industry, because the main large-scale models are currently controlled by some high-tech companies, such as domestic Baidu, Alibaba, and some large integrated platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. These technology companies are very likely to lay out the development of the animation industry in the future with their large models and the big data they have mastered. This will have some very important impacts on the traditional animation industry structure.”
The first domestic ai. Cartoon "Ode to a Thousand Autumn Poems".
Similarly, the emergence of AI technology also requires innovative talent cultivation programs for animation production. Zhu Haipeng believes that the emergence of AI technology has also brought some challenges to the cultivation of animation professionals. First of all, the construction of the curriculum system needs to adapt to such a situation, and some basic computer application knowledge should be added to the entire curriculum system. Then there are the course contents of some AI tools;
The second point is the challenge for teachers. The existing teachers are mainly from traditional animation majors, so the teachers’ mastery of this new technology is also at an exploratory stage. It can be said that teachers and students are on the same starting line, so this relatively speaking provides great needs and requirements for teachers;
The third point is the change in the integration of industry and education. In traditional animation production, in fact There is still a big difference or gap between schools and enterprises, and it is difficult for college students to have access to actual projects. However, with the emergence of AI, universities and enterprises are on the same starting line. At this time, if universities can give full play to some of their advantages in scientific research, they will take advantage of the opportunities provided by AI to further strengthen cooperation with enterprises, thereby in industry Make more breakthroughs in teaching integration.
summary
ai is rapidly iteratively updated, and there will be new developments every time, which is a challenge for creators and teachers. From the earliest fear to the subsequent embrace of learning, the change in mentality also shows that everyone realizes that the technological wave is unstoppable.
"Legend", as the first attempt at AI under domestic large capital, faced a surge of negative reviews. In response, Tang Jili, the director of "Legend", responded that the AI technology is not perfect and is still being studied. I hope everyone will be more tolerant. Although "27-year-old AI Jackie Chan" was not successful, its role as a link between the past and the future cannot be ignored.Creators in the industry should regard it as a case study, otherwise it will be a waste of expensive trial and error.
Written by: Nandu reporter Liu Yifan Intern Lin Ruiyuan
Special translator: Lin Hao
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