Become a hot word in the Shanghai Film Festival and begin to fully infiltrate the industry
AI will bring huge changes to the film and television industry
Our reporter Yuan Yuner
If you count the hot words of the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival, AI must be one of them. In the large and small forums of this year’s Shanghai Film Festival, directors, producers, technical experts, etc. talked about AI. Some people are full of ambitions, some are full of expectations, and some are not without anxiety. It is still too early to draw conclusions on the extent to which AI will change the film and television industry and the creative process, but what is certain is that AI has begun to fully penetrate the industry, and the future film and television industry will definitely have a place for AI.
Opportunity to overtake on corners
“I have a sweeping robot, but it is quite troublesome to use. I don’t think it is very convenient. Other things, basically no robot can do it well. I still think there is a lot of room for improvement in the robot.” If Without an introduction, viewers could easily think that this is a video recorded by science fiction writer Liu Cixin. But in fact, this video was completely generated by AI. In the video, “Liu Cixin”‘s movements, expressions, voice, intonation, and even pauses are all no different from real people. “He” not only talked about his evaluation of the movie “The Wandering Earth 2”, but also complained about the sweeping robot, which can be called “destroying” each other between artificial intelligence. On June 12, at the Shanghai International Film Festival’s “Innovative Vision of Culture and Entertainment Science Under the Wave of AIGC” forum, SenseTime released the digital human version of Liu Cixin, which shocked everyone present.
Luan Qing, general manager of SenseTime’s Digital Entertainment Department, introduced that with the current level of technology, it only takes 5 minutes to record a video and give it to AI to learn, and you can have your own digital human. This digital human is almost astonishing. I don’t know if they are real people, and they can live in the digital world like Tu Yaya and Tu Hengyu in the movie “The Wandering Earth 2”.
Three years ago, when director Guo Fan led the team to create “The Wandering Earth 2”, he felt that a large language AI model like ChatGPT might appear around 2030. Unexpectedly, just after the movie was finished, ChatGPT was born, which caught Guo Fan by surprise. Guo Fan said frankly that when he was writing the screenplay three years ago, the team had already conceived the script of “The Wandering Earth 3” in sevens and eighties, but he did not expect that the reality is more exciting than the plot.
“The Wandering Earth 2” used a lot of AI technology in the production, such as the aging and aging of the starring Andy Lau’s image, the restoration of Li Xuejian’s lines, and the production of full CG digital humans. But at that time, Guo Fan felt that the applicability of AI was not high enough, and it took five or six hundred iterations to generate a result. However, with the development of AI today, it only needs to describe a scene or character to generate breathtaking pictures or videos.
In Guo Fan’s view, AI is expected to realize the 3.0 transformation of the film and television industry, which is a good opportunity for domestic practitioners to overtake at a bend. “Hollywood doesn’t know how to face the application of AI now, so we are on the same starting line, and there is a possibility of overtaking on corners.”
Improving the efficiency of animation film production
At the end of last year, the release of ChatGPT dropped a blockbuster on the world that has remained high ever since. The film and television industry with content production as the core responded immediately, studied hard, and actively deployed to ensure that it can lead this brand-new AI track, especially the animation industry, which responds more quickly.
Shang Linlin, executive president of Huaqiang Fantawild Cultural Technology Group, revealed that the 2023 Spring Festival movie “Bear Infested: Be with me “Bear Core” produced by their company used relatively little AI at the time of production, but the next latest film In the big movie “Bear Infested”, the company requires every link to try AI applications.
“AI is a very good tool in the conceptual design stage, which will greatly expand the creator’s vision, improve efficiency, and provide a good reference for the main creator. In the art design stage, we combine a lot of artificial intelligence with AI, such as making our own The art design drawings of the project will be handed over to AI for further refinement, and it will provide richer choices and further improvements in details such as materials and props.” Shang Linlin said, “But in the screenwriting stage, the originality of AI is not enough. , most of them are based on some adaptations of existing works, and I think it’s not bad at first glance, but there are many problems when I look closely.”
“I estimate that AI may increase the efficiency of the main links of animation films by 50%, and increase the cycle efficiency of the entire animation film production by 30%. 4.” At the opening forum of the Shanghai International Film Festival, Wang Changtian, chairman of Enlight Media, said that AI not only helps the production of animated films, but also penetrates into all aspects of digital films. “AI’s changes in animation production are amazing and completely unimaginable. For example, it may take a very mature artist to spend a month to make a scene map, and AI can output thousands of pictures in one night, which is much better than a single person. A month’s time draws a much better picture.”
Force practitioners to innovate
The large-scale application of AI will also have an impact on the creation and production of many practitioners, and intensify competition in the film and television entertainment industry. The coexistence of excitement and anxiety may be the mentality of current practitioners facing AI.
“We believe that the entertainment industry will move towards multi-modal competition. For example, companies that originally produced online novels began to produce comics, many comic companies began to produce animation, and companies that originally produced film and television began to publish books…” Founder of Entertainment Capital After three months of on-the-spot research led by Wu Lixiang, the team found that changes have already begun. “The competitiveness of the entire industry will be greatly intensified. By then, users will not care whether it is a digital live-action movie or a real live-action movie.”
Science fiction writer Chen Qiufan put forward a concept of “man-machine co-creation”. He believes that after the large-scale application of AI technology, more than 80% of the average practitioners in the market may soon be replaced. “AI will quickly occupy the market for a period of time, and when it reaches a certain saturation, it will cause aesthetic fatigue. It may make everyone feel that we still need people, and we need something that belongs to human life, emotion, and aesthetics.” Chen Qiufan said , The contest between AI and real people will be a spiraling curve, and the pain in this process needs to be borne by everyone. Therefore, practitioners have to think about what their competitiveness in the industry cannot be replaced by AI.
Chen Qiufan believes that AI can force practitioners to work hard and innovate, and use AI to assist production. In addition, some abilities may not be replaced by AI in a short period of time, such as making yourself happy and making others happy. Such abilities will be particularly scarce in the future, and therefore more talents will be needed.
Guo Fan called on relevant departments to speed up the introduction of AI-related laws and regulations to guide the development of AI. “AI is not only related to the creative industry, but will have a profound impact on all aspects of society. Therefore, we need time to re-understand and think about AI, and develop AI in a planned and step-by-step manner.” (Beijing Daily)