Here’s How Artificial Intelligence Is Set to Rule the Filmmaking Industry
Humans and their imaginations with regards to artificial intelligence dates back to almost 100 years. The first time when anything closer to the AI technology appeared on the silver screen was in the German film ‘Metropolis’ in 1927 followed by another German film ‘Master of the World’ in 1934. After that it took USA almost 17 more years to come up with their first AI oriented film – The Day The Earth Stood Still in 1951.
Since then as technology evolved, portrayal of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics also evolved in world cinema. Star Wars, Superman III, Wargames, Star Trek are some of the films that came up in 80s and 90s with someflawed AI technology on screen.
But with the advent of CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) in 2000s, an AI explosion took place in the world of cinema. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Matrix Reloaded (2003), I Robot (2004), Transformers (2007), Wall-E (2008), Iron Man (2008), Eagle Eye (2008), Her (2013) are some of the films that earned attention through their unforgettable depiction of AI. Indian Cinema also didn’t stay away from the race and came up with Robot (2010), Ra. One (2011) and 2.0 (2018).
Till now, films were made on AI. In future, AI will be making films for us or to be more precise, AI has already started doing so.
The First Trailer Made By AI
In 2016, Fox wanted to explore the potential of Artificial Intelligence in movie making. They approached IBM to make a trailer for their upcoming horror/suspense movie ‘Morgan’ using Artificial Intelligence. IBM used their ‘question-answer’ system ‘Watson’ to do the deed.
How did they do it? – The major requirement for the system (Watson) was to understand ‘what is scary or frightening to humans’ or what would create suspense for them to the extent of keeping them on the edge of their seats? Watson was first made to realize this particular subject area. Almost 100 trailers from different previous horror movies were provided to Watson as inputs to segment each ‘moment’ from the trailers. Then as per video analysis, audio analysis and composition of the scenes, Watson developed a trailer for ‘Morgan’, which is the first ‘cognitive movie trailer’ in the world.
Normally making a trailer is a manual work that takes 15 days to 1 month. However, from watching the movie to making the trailer, Watson took only 24 hours!
AI Can Predict The Future Of A Film
AI also has the power to predict whether your movie will be a hit or flop. And there are multiple platforms of AI across the globe to do the same -
• Vault ML, a startup company in Israel, developed an AI platform called 4CAST. 4CAST takes into account inputs like box office data for 30 years and more than 4 lakh screenplays along with some other inputs. What’s the output? Almost 75% of the time it accurately predicts the opening weekend box office sales of a film.
• ScriptBook is another AI platform that simplifies things a lot for a filmmaker. All he/she needs to do is upload the script in the system and let it anal
• yse the same. ScriptBook then systematically provides you with target audience, character analysis, MPAA rating and also box office predictions. ScriptBook is said to be right almost 84% times.
• Qloo Inc. is another AI company based in New York. Their system’s database has inputs that consists of more than 3 million movies, actors, directors along with profiles of millions of movie goers. With the help of AI, it generates a report identifying viewers’ preference and tastes. This helps filmmakers to target their audience and understand exactly what kind of movies they should make in order to get returns.
AI In Indian Cinema
India is not too behind in using Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence to predict the future of their films. Infinite Analytics, a startup company backed by Mr. Ratan Tata has opened their AI segment known as ‘ian’ (Infinite Analytics Nucleus). The first project that the company worked on was the Rajkumar Rao starrer ‘Shaadi Mein ZaroorAana’ in 2017. The film used Analytics and AI to ‘pull audiences’ for the film.
Akash Bhatia, Co-Founder of Infinite Analytics in an interview talked about how they were able to pull their target niche audience for the film, “Shaadi Mein ZaroorAana—there are certain peculiarities about the movie. For example, there is a certain kind of clothing mentioned in the movie. Our platform is able to pick up (via social media) what kind of audience would like that kind of clothing, that color, down to that minute detail.”
No wonder the Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence technology have already made their debut in Indian Cinema and are going to play a bigger role in the filmmaking process in future. The industries are going to be quite inter-linked in that way.
iLEAD from the academic year of 2019 has started 3 uniquely designed individual courses on Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Film and TV Production. The undergraduate courses include B.Sc in Data Analytics
and B.Sc in Film and TV Production
. And the post graduate courses include M.Sc in Data Science
, M.Sc in Human Computing and Artificial Intelligence
and M.Sc in Film and TV Production
Our Film and TV Production courses focus on content driven and method filmmaking. Whereas Data Analytics, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence courses separately deal with the modern day technology that is going to dominate the world.
From the latest tools, techniques and programming languages in Data Analytics and AI to the latest software and technology used in filmmaking, iLEAD understands the needs of the future era and designs the present accordingly.