Post-Production

Problem solved! Thanks for this great post on HDI (how do I?)!

What great advice for filmmakers. Thanks, Ashley Renee Smith!

Great share, Ashley Renee Smith! I second Stage 32's Job Board. Members can post jobs and look for jobs on the board. There's so many jobs on there, and it's updated regularly. I recommend members check it out!

Shōgun, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Alien: Romulus, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Sam Sokolow.

I thought the sound editing and mixing in Fallout was amazing, Sam Sokolow!

This is awesome for all who edit - the value and capacity are amazing. Go DaVinci Resolve!

I do believe DaVinci is taking the top spot, and I’ve been predicting this for years. That being said, entire production processes and infrastructures at studios are built around Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro. So, if you’re a video editor or animatic editor, be sure to learn all of them, because you never know what a studio will have. Switching to another system is something studios are not fond of doing without a lot of hard work. https://editorjoshuayoung.weebly.com/

I will be updating to 19 shortly.

So what happens now if you try to run premiere on an ARM pc? does it break or just tun slow?

Here's a quote about that from August of this year - Adobe has enabled the ability to run Premiere Pro under emulation on Windows 11 on ARM laptops powered by the Snapdragon X system-on-a-chip. Adobe had originally allowed Premiere Pro to run under emulation when Copilot+ PCs first launched but disabled the ability once it became aware of performance issues and glitches.

Great question! Sorry I was late in responding. So there are two types of AI even though fear mongering has created a public perspective that there’s just one: AI as a tool or AI as a Replacement. Both exist and we should, to a degree, resist against the replacement version. I say to a degree because every technological breakthrough results in job loss and job creation. Think of typing pools in the 60s how they transformed having dozens of people, mostly women, into one person with a personal computer, or just a few.

So here are some amazing AI tools coming out and some that exist, as well as my thoughts on some of the scarier ones you see like text-to-video, which is getting closer to perfection every day.

AI Tools That Help Post Production

ChatGPT - Most don’t think of it for post-production, but it’s incredibly powerful. Let’s say you get a bunch of back and forth emails from the client and the director and you don’t want to sift through to figure out what you need to do, what they are still debating about and so on. Copy and paste all the emails and tell ChatGPT to sort them into to-do lists and state who said to do what and make another list showing what is still being discussed. Let’s say you’re a video editor and you’re working on a trailer that is going to be HD, but they sent you 3K footage and you want to know how much you can zoom in on a shot percentage-wise before you lose picture quality. Pump the information into ChatGPT.

Adobe Premiere Pro AI Tools (Current) - Text-Based Editing, Speech to text for transcription and more, scene edit detection, Remix tool (my favourite), enhance speech, auto color…the list can go on.

Note: I use a mixture of ChatGPT and Adobe Premiere Pro as well. When an edit of a video is done, let’s say it needs to go to YouTube, I’ll export the transcript created from the final edit, paste it into ChatGPT and tell it to act as a YouTube and SEO expert and use the transcript to: Create a concise paragraph for YouTube description using popular keywords for SEO that are in the transcript, chapter everything, and give me thirty keywords to use as tags.

DaVinci Resolve AI Tools (Current) - DaVinci Neural Engine, Magic Mask, IntelliTrack AI, Dialogue Separator FX, Face Refinement, Music Remixer FX, text-based timeline editing, Ultra NR…

Both Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer have similar or slightly different AIs as well.

Future (as in later this year and next year) AI features coming to many editing systems include: Generative Extend (An AI will extend a video’s length by creating more footage. Yes, you heard right), Object Addition, Object Removal (no more After Effects needed for this), Semantic Embeddings, PhraseFind AI, ScriptSync AI, Conversational Editing…

Text-to-Video AI

This is the big one. This is what everyone is freaking out about, or it’s one of the top ones everyone is freaking out about, and with good reason. Anyone who says we are years away from this being perfected are grossly incorrect. In North America, our progress is slow. In China, the AI MiniMax is incredible. So we are a year away at most because China knows how to dish out new software faster than most countries. The problem is we will get a massive influx of incredible text-to-video online.

Its Current Limitations

Camera Angles / Movement - Currently most, if not all, text-to-video AIs put the subjects in more “presentational” positions with very limited camera movement and camera angles. It’s fine for social media, but not great for telling stories. This will be fixed in less than a year, however, and we’re seeing great strides already.

Cartoon Rigging - If I worked at an animation studio and saw the cartoons people can create, I’d be scared. That being said, we are still a year or two away before someone can simply say to an AI, “make the dog do this instead,” and it will do it perfectly. We’re getting there, but not there yet. So the current limitation with AI is that it creates cartoons that have no ‘rigging’ or ‘bones’ to their character so that a real Animator could make adjustments to fix imperfections or change things around for a director.

Bad Storytellers - At the end of the day, whoever is the pilot of the ship is in command and although we see great visuals, I see nothing but subpar storytelling. Yes, ChatGPT is getting better at telling stories, however, if I’m not a trained storyteller, I can find it hard to tell if a story is good or bad. So the people that would benefit the most from ChatGPT, just as an example, are great storytellers because they have a strong foundation themselves. So at the end of the day, whether you’re a writer, a video editor, a director etc…, if you’re not great at it, you won’t know how to use AI to create something better! If you are great and have a strong foundation, then you can utilize it better. We see this all the time in education where someone with a little bit of knowledge asks limiting questions, but someone with a greater knowledge base for a topic can ask more incredible questions. So it will always end up in the hands of the creatives.

I agree with you on the fact that you can use it for pitch presentations to make short animated storyboards and such, and I see AI as being a tool rather than a crutch or cure-all for things. thanks for answering my question.

Joshua Young thanks for for insight. It seems like we need a AMA Pre-Production Workflow Lounge from taking a script to storyboards to (to the very expensive) to the Linear Editor.

We humans are rarely open to expectations written by a human from another culture much less AI.

I am not worried about AI ever having the craft to write with human emotion, (the expectation of that emotion is it's genre) without that emotion (some people now call that a connection) how will an human audience ever expect to feel something written by AI?

Pre-Production - Absolutely. I feel the film industry is behind the times when it comes to utilizing the latest tools for pre-production. An AMA on that would be fantastic. Like I think I said in a previous comment, "solving it in pre-production is the key."

AI & Human Emotion:

I agree that a part of the soul of the creator is lost, however, given my daily work with AI, I'm sad to report, AI can absolutely mimic human emotion enough for someone to believe it. With the recent issue with Lionsgate giving access to Runway, an AI model, it really is only a matter of a year, possibly two, before someone can simply upload a script and the movie is made by AI. I know how crazy this sounds, but it's technically possible to do it now.

Here's an example right now. I just asked ChatGPT to write a fictional letter from a parent to a child who is moving away for college. Although it's not perfection, you can tell that it's good.

Hey sweetheart,

As you’re getting ready to head off to college, I’ve been thinking a lot about all the little moments we’ve shared. It feels like just yesterday I was chasing you around the house, trying to get you to put your shoes on before school, and now here you are, packing for a whole new adventure. I’m so proud of you, and I know this next chapter is going to be amazing, but I’d be lying if I said I won’t miss seeing your face every day. Remember how every night, when you were little, I’d say, ‘You can take on anything, just don’t forget to come home for dinner’? It always made you laugh, but now I think it means even more. You really can take on anything, and while you’re out there doing that, I’ll be right here, waiting with open arms—and maybe a home-cooked meal too.

Love you more than words,

Mom/Dad

That is good letter full of Human Emotions!

What a great watch! They say a film is made 3 times - when its written, when its shot ad when its edited - and Joe Walker is a brilliant filmmaker. Thanks for the share, Geoff Hall!

Sam Sokolow you are welcome, Sam. As I progress in my career, I’ll be looking for those kind of creative relationships to take my work to the next level.

WoW, what a inspiring information!

Thanks, Suzanne Bronson - flagging this for any in my network who lives near Phoenix.

I left my heart in Phoenix! One of my favorite places... will flag for my network too in the Phoenix area!

The impact this could have on live reporting will be fascinating. I stumbled upon live streams of the protests in Portland in 2020, and in only 4 years they've become so much more sophisticated. There's streamers functioning like tiny news networks in and of themselves. It will be interesting to see if this will allow reporters to become further embedded, and what new vantage points it could produce.

Thank you for sharing, Ashley.

This is a fascinating perspective and such a cool way of looking at editing. His vision and concepts of poetry are sitting with me - not sure I'll ever approach an edit in the same way again. Thanks, Ashley Renee Smith!

I agree, Sam Sokolow! I've never thought about it in that way before and now I'll never think of it the same way again.

You're so welcome, Gisele Orellana! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Sound editing and design are the game within the game when making a movie or episode. It's how a filmmaker takes their audience on the contours of the ride. Flagging this for my network. Thanks, Sydney S!

I couldn't agree more Sam and thank you for flagging for your network!

Thank you to everyone who attended today :)

Sydney S - anyway to view a repeat of the Webinar ? I thought it was a paid event. Definitely sounds interesting!

I was thinking of posting this question in here:

Is this post - production Lounge mostly. For video post production or is audio included?

I’m starting to do more Mastering music in Logic Pro. I use Dorico Pro for making music and scores.

Hi, Kerry! Yes, you can view a repeat of the webinar. The recordings are available in your library once you’ve purchased access. It’s great to hear you’re interested! Let me know if you have any other questions.