Great piece. I think it will be a combination of 1 and 4. Studios budgets will focus on marketing and distribution. With the glut of content produced, the ones with the money to get mass awareness campaigns will still have an advantage. Having done multiple AI projects, having a strong graphics person, and a great editor are essential, which are below the line currently but have higher importance in AI workflows.
Agreed. LIke you, I see the value in a "small-ish" team working together. Filmmaking is a team sport. I think it is unlikely that solo creator will outperform a small team that works well together, but I've been wrong before. Very few people are good at all of these things: worldbuilding, screenwriting, shot design and blocking, directing, costume and hair and makeup, editing, scoring and sound design. Without those (and other key elements) the stories will feel flat.
What it means: today's major feature films involve hundreds and sometimes thousands of crew members. That seems like bloat. When AI continues to improve, it will also become a liability. Sure, some blockbusters can justify huge crews but there are plenty of streaming series where this huge cost is not justified by the product.
Without a doubt teams are always better, but lighter teams are also better than big ones. The film I shot in France, probably the last one I'll ever make with solely traditional live-production, had a very light crew compared to U.S. productions because they have different union rules around crew members. It was a shorter work day, but they worked really efficiently, and everyone pitched in to get whatever needed to be done even if it "wasn't within their job department". So no one would wait for a grip to move a piece of equipment, if it needed to be moved someone would just do it.
When you go to a union set in the U.S. at any given time it seems like 80% of the people are standing around waiting for when its their time to do something pertaining to their role. I can't tell you the amount of times I heard someone say "that's not my department" even when it was an easy task that would have sped things up. I think the only people who will lament this process are the ones who got paid to stand around.
Years ago, when I was a young director working on TV commercials for a car, I groused about the big crew to my cinematographer. I thought they slowed everything down. The DP and the AD took me aside and quietly explained that a big crew, properly managed, is much better than a small crew because they get more done faster, and they have a diversity of useful skills. They had a lot of evidence to prove the point. I was convinced. As a young guerrilla music video director, I had gotten used to working with a small tight crew in a run-and-gun kind of way, but that day I learned that on bigger, more ambitious projects with 30 HMIs and a generator and dollies and cranes, you simply cannot get the same quality of light and shot with a tiny crew.
I still believe that for certain performances (esp intimate documentaries) smaller is better.
With AI it is quite different because the problems are not about scale or physical settings. The hardest problems are continuity, consistency, repeatability, coherence, etc. For these problems, adding more people only adds more complexity. I suppose I might be wrong about that, but so far I would lean towards a small crew of about six people to make an entire episode or film. Maybe ten.
I read your captivating article having also listened to you with great interest when you spoke at METAL.
Great things can, and will be made with AI providing scintillating human ideas and talent will use its incredible capabilities skillfully.
Great piece. I think it will be a combination of 1 and 4. Studios budgets will focus on marketing and distribution. With the glut of content produced, the ones with the money to get mass awareness campaigns will still have an advantage. Having done multiple AI projects, having a strong graphics person, and a great editor are essential, which are below the line currently but have higher importance in AI workflows.
Agreed. LIke you, I see the value in a "small-ish" team working together. Filmmaking is a team sport. I think it is unlikely that solo creator will outperform a small team that works well together, but I've been wrong before. Very few people are good at all of these things: worldbuilding, screenwriting, shot design and blocking, directing, costume and hair and makeup, editing, scoring and sound design. Without those (and other key elements) the stories will feel flat.
What it means: today's major feature films involve hundreds and sometimes thousands of crew members. That seems like bloat. When AI continues to improve, it will also become a liability. Sure, some blockbusters can justify huge crews but there are plenty of streaming series where this huge cost is not justified by the product.
Without a doubt teams are always better, but lighter teams are also better than big ones. The film I shot in France, probably the last one I'll ever make with solely traditional live-production, had a very light crew compared to U.S. productions because they have different union rules around crew members. It was a shorter work day, but they worked really efficiently, and everyone pitched in to get whatever needed to be done even if it "wasn't within their job department". So no one would wait for a grip to move a piece of equipment, if it needed to be moved someone would just do it.
When you go to a union set in the U.S. at any given time it seems like 80% of the people are standing around waiting for when its their time to do something pertaining to their role. I can't tell you the amount of times I heard someone say "that's not my department" even when it was an easy task that would have sped things up. I think the only people who will lament this process are the ones who got paid to stand around.
Years ago, when I was a young director working on TV commercials for a car, I groused about the big crew to my cinematographer. I thought they slowed everything down. The DP and the AD took me aside and quietly explained that a big crew, properly managed, is much better than a small crew because they get more done faster, and they have a diversity of useful skills. They had a lot of evidence to prove the point. I was convinced. As a young guerrilla music video director, I had gotten used to working with a small tight crew in a run-and-gun kind of way, but that day I learned that on bigger, more ambitious projects with 30 HMIs and a generator and dollies and cranes, you simply cannot get the same quality of light and shot with a tiny crew.
I still believe that for certain performances (esp intimate documentaries) smaller is better.
With AI it is quite different because the problems are not about scale or physical settings. The hardest problems are continuity, consistency, repeatability, coherence, etc. For these problems, adding more people only adds more complexity. I suppose I might be wrong about that, but so far I would lean towards a small crew of about six people to make an entire episode or film. Maybe ten.