Marvel Screenwriter Gives His Opinion On AI - Russell Palmer

Russell Palmer, Co-Founder of CyberFilm  AI: The meeting started with “I only took   this meeting with you to tell you how  much I hate you and I hate this idea   and let's see this thing, show me  a demo, watch it crash and burn.” Film Courage: You mentioned in a prior  interview don't meet your heroes which I   think for anyone who's ever met a hero they  might relate to that for various reasons? Russell: Yeah Film Courage: Have you experienced that or  you and your brother who's your co-founder   where you did talk to someone in the film  and television industry and their reaction   was less than favorable absolutely yeah and we  during the strike we had a lot of downtime we we   decided not to release features or do marketing  we kind of went back into stealth mode just out   of respect for both sides in the negotiations  but we did take meetings with people because   they were very interested and and the writers  and filmmakers had downtime too and there was   one writer who's was written on big Marvel movies  I won't name but like you know top of their game   wealthy successful and the meeting started with  I I only took this meeting with you to tell you   how much I hate hate you and I hate this idea  and let's let's see this thing show me a demo   watch it crash and burn and it was actually one of  the proudest moments as a founder for me because   at the end of the hour long conversation after  showing the demo and then telling our vision   and our founding story and what our team's made  of we had flipped them and and the guy actually   apologized and said I get what you're doing you  know I've been reading The Hollywood Reporter   And if every week There's a clickbait about how  evil it is and how I should be afraid but I see   this is a tool it just helps me where I'm stuck I  do most of the works still and it's not what the   doomsday scenario was which was was evil Netflix  executive you know comes up with a funny premise   and clicks generate 100 page script you know  send it to the AI deep fake place send it to   whatever put the check in my bank and you know  I won't even have to read it or do anything our   app is is the opposite of that it's most of our  writers input about 80 80% of their idea to start   and then they just get help with the things  they're missing but they still pick we give   you five or 10 ideas and you pick the best one  and you edit it after and so that's why we think   you know you will still own the copyright to it  but also that our users say it still feels like   my movie it feels like I would have thought of  that idea eventually it just helped me get there   sooner and so one writer I talked to said you know  it took me seven years to write my last screenplay   and I had another idea and in your app I finished  the 100 page screenplay all the character sheets   and everything in 10 days and I'm halfway through  storyboarding it myself I can't draw but now I can   storyboard it and he was he was really happy so I  think what we say is in writing and my brother had   this too it took him almost a decade to turn his  novel into a screenplay because he was doing it   part-time evenings and weekends he's in ad on set  all day it's exhausting when he was done with it   no one really wanted it so he's okay now I have  to start again with a new idea is that going to   take me another 10 years so what we like to say  is the app will let you get that vomit draft out   for all your ideas and get more shots on net and  then maybe of if you can come up with five new   scripts this month maybe two of them end up being  a hit so we just want it to be more of your best   work but faster how does saga make screenwriting  faster yeah so what I've learned from interviewing   probably a hundred screenwriters around the world  now is everybody writes different and they have   a different process so for example my brother  starts with A cork board and cue cards and he   will try to plan out the most important beats  then he goes back does characters then a lot of   the plots and and he plans it out for almost weeks  before even writing you know the first page other   people I know sit down they you know they bring a  typewriter to a cabin in the woods and just start   typing maybe have a few drinks and so everyone  does it differently I'm not sure what's the   fastest or best but all the potential customers  and interested people who reached out to us say   they get stuck on the planet phase and so what  our app does is it's almost like a film School in   a box my brother went to film School took Advance  TV U Film Production he's my co-founder he helped   design the app it's almost like a form and you  know in his classes there was a day on plot a   day on characters a day on acts a day on beats and  those are the tabs in our app and they help you   you know chatgpt you ask it for a character it'll  say name physical description and and maybe one or   two things about them ours we've studied some of  the great books K.M. Weiland Creating Character   Arcs among others and so we know that even  secondary characters need a compelling backstory   and so we have boxes for the ghost the the LIE  the need the want with examples and when you hit   generate we look at everything you've written  from the title to beat 40 to whatever and then   we asked the GPT API among others to give a bunch  of ideas you don't like them click it again click   it again it never gets tired it never runs out of  ideas chances are there will be one in there that   you like and what our users also say is because  you can see and this is why it's hard in chatgpt   it's a scrolling chat window but on our app you  can see the process you're filling in the blanks   and so I think we can get people through through  the planning phase just if they have a premise or   a log line in in less than a day or maybe two  days and so I think that really speeds things   up the writing part to be honest people use it  less for Generations for Technical and product   decisions there's no okay now generate 100 page  script button on our app we encourage you to   start writing and then when you get stuck on a  line with writer's block you can say give me an   idea for the next line or if you have a beat and  there's just a scene in the midpoint that you just   can't you're staring at a blank page you can say  Okay help me but it'll it'll give you half a page   so the idea to speed people up is to prompt them  to get them around writer's block to show progress   how it does not speed people up is by doing all  the work for them and writing everything for them   and so that's what I think is really going to be  different about us and our company and why our   users seem to like it enjoy better than chatgpt or  or some of our competitors and it doesn't complain   that it's tired well it's interesting so we also  do storyboards and so that came of sometimes we   interview people and they say listen I'm a writer  WGA not not crossing that line never going to use   not even going to use chatgpt to like do a beat  sheet for and that's fine people don't have to   not everyone has to use AI that was one of the  outcomes of the script negotiations the studio   can't force people to use it but a lot of writers  we talk to say I can't draw and I would love to   communicate some of the scenes as they are in my  head the storyboard is really it communicates the   emotional impact visually of the scene and so one  one of our our users who's a director said I am   so picky with storyboards and someone will draw  them by hand or you know with a pen on an iPad and   they'll spend weeks doing it it's very expensive  it's was like $500 a day you know for anyone to   hire a storyboard artist and then they would say  you know what I've changed my mind I want you to   redo everything but make this character you know  this gender or or ethnicity or and so the human   has to go redo it all and then they say I will  go back three or four times and make them redo   hundreds of storyboards and by the fifth time they  hate me and that's when I think okay I have to   compromise and give up on my vision of perfection  and what that person loved about our app is you   can keep asking for the smallest changes a million  infinite times if you want and it will never get   tired it will never complain and it will you will  end up with almost more creative control by using   AI so that's a feature that a lot of writers who  don't like AI writing they are very interested   in the storyboarding aspect and now we're adding  pre-vis so if you saw Sora from OpenAI we're using   a a version from a different company but we'll  integrate Sora [AI] soon and then you can actually   do pre-vis and animatics on all your storyboards  and and everybody loves that writers storyboard   artists who can animate and directors so yeah  I think it's I think it's going to be great.

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 5,753

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Id: 1uQcjmfLvys

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024