Martin Scorsese Is Embracing A.I

(nytimes.com)

40 points | by stephen37 1 hour ago

13 comments

  • hdndjsbbs 20 minutes ago
    TFA says he's using it for storyboarding. This doesn't seem like a huge deal, but film is a visual medium! The closer your pre-viz and storyboarding looks to reality, the more you're going to tend to stick to it when you're actually filming.

    You want your rough drafts to have a roughness that conveys your level of confidence. If your AI first draft looks polished people may feel more pressure not to deviate.

    I find these hand-drawn Taxi Drivers storyboards very charming even though they obviously don't map cleanly to shots in the film. This is what you're giving up if you just tell an AI "give me a close up of Travis Bickle's face"

    https://boords.com/blog/martin-scorseses-hand-drawn-taxi-dri...

  • firefoxd 35 minutes ago
    That's right. All their computers will have grammarly installed by default now. /jk

    Ai is too broad a term even when it comes to movies. Which part of the pipeline will include an AI tool? Or are we saying he is going to prompt Seedance to generate an entire movie?

    • john_strinlai 28 minutes ago
      he specifically mentions generative ai for storyboarding in the article

      Mr. Scorsese declined an interview request. But it was clear that his A.I. endorsement had limits. His statement and accompanying video were entirely related to storyboarding, which is the process of visually mapping out a film before cameras roll.

  • Frieren 55 minutes ago
    A.I. like in generating crowds, simulating physics, improving effects... or Large Language Models and Image Generation?

    AI means a lot of different things, I wish I could read the article.

    • john_strinlai 45 minutes ago
      generative ai for story-boarding.

      (i typically find nytimes works if you disable scripts)

  • thatmf 17 minutes ago
    > Martin Scorsese, the living embodiment of cinema as high art and a conscience for modern Hollywood

    That's some ChatGPT-level glazing. No one thinks this. Unless they also think that, like, Bob Dylan is the voice of Gen Z.

    • kahrl 0 minutes ago
      What’s that? Closer to the hole sir???
  • olivierestsage 1 hour ago
    I've noticed a tendency among people who have built careers known for visionary, forward-thinking work that they hesitate to make the natural move into more "conservative" positions/approaches as they age. This leads to missteps, because as one ages, one inevitably becomes further removed from the zeitgeist. On paper, embracing AI might seem like a great idea if you don't want to become an old fogey, but not all changes are positive and I doubt this decision will age well
    • msabalau 45 minutes ago
      Given that, according to the article, he's just using it for storyboarding, in attempt to better communicate a vision to a range of human contributors, it's really unclear how this decision will "age badly." either this is a stronger way to create storyboards or it isn't.

      Presumably he has the experience to evaluate if this is likely to actually help or not. Or at least if it is worth exploring.

      It is rather unclear why you believe he is likely wrong, aside from conjuring up rather ageist speculations about his motives.

    • nonethewiser 43 minutes ago
      >On paper, embracing AI might seem like a great idea if you don't want to become an old fogey, but not all changes are positive and I doubt this decision will age well

      I imagine the whole industry is going to use more and more AI. There may be some hiccups on the forefront but I definitely dont think it will be some direction that gets abandoned.

    • CuriouslyC 34 minutes ago
      AI is just the next step in VFX. Game studios are leaning into it heavily for asset generation as well. These assets are still hand touched for style and composed by humans, but a lot of this work was previously done by outsourced workers/art grunts/asset packs so it's not really a quality loss.
  • brettermeier 38 minutes ago
  • num42 53 minutes ago
    Martin Scorsese x Black Forest Labs

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4jl4htAcuM

  • stephen37 1 hour ago
    Martin Scorsese is backing Black Forest Labs, the company famous for FLUX models.
    • trollbridge 1 hour ago
      Not to be confused with the other Flux that is currently having a legal dispute with Adafruit.
  • thr0waway001 44 minutes ago
    This is a recession indicator.
  • basisword 1 hour ago
    Easy to do when you're 83 and won't be around to suffer the consequences.
    • alex_suzuki 59 minutes ago
      To me this feels like being edgy on purpose… “Look everybody, I’m still relevant!”
  • elpocko 54 minutes ago
    Awesome! The old man has better vision than most young filmmakers.

    The title is missing a period at the end; the embarassing HN title mutilator strikes again, I guess. You should use an LLM for that, it's much better suited to the task.

  • josefritzishere 1 hour ago
    gross
  • maplethorpe 1 hour ago
    Scorcese understands that Hollywood's ultimate limiting factor is the number of available actors. A finite pool of actors means a finite pool of movies. Removing this limitation means that, just like an AI image generator can generate any image imaginable, a future movie generator will be able to generate every movie imaginable, at the click of a button.
    • coinfused 59 minutes ago
      Why would anyone want that? I don't want infinite movies, I don't have infinite time. I'd rather have intent over quantity. There is already an abundance of content, a century of cinema. Who actually wants this and why?
      • voidfunc 16 minutes ago
        But what if you could have the movie you want exactly with the story and characters as you envision them. You may not want that still, but I guarantee you there are people that will.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 10 minutes ago
      There is absolutely not a shortage of actors.

      There's a shortage of actors that you can star in movies to sell enough tickets to justify making $200m movies that have traditionally been the backbone of studio profits.

      The studios probably killed themselves going all-in balls-to-the wall on making the exact same blockbuster movie 12 times a year, every year, for 25 years straight.

      It is a refreshing breath of relief to see all the Indie stuff absolutely killing it as of late, and the Action Hero movies consistently underperforming studio expectations by a mile.

    • tracerbulletx 41 minutes ago
      I HIGHLY doubt that's his POV. Almost all directors, and he has said this himself many times, think of actors as collaborators and their performances as an essential part of the movie.
    • jmuguy 55 minutes ago
      I don't think anyone living in LA would claim there's a shortage of actors.
    • hackyhacky 58 minutes ago
      Instead of using AI actors, couldn't we address Hollywood's actor shortage some other way?

      For example, we could tap the federal Strategic Actor Reserve, or import actors from actor-rich countries such as France and Belgium.

      • sleepydog 48 minutes ago
        We could invade other countries and take their actors. We could reinstate the actor's draft or do mandatory 1-2 years actor's service like some other countries do
      • bazoom42 21 minutes ago
        There is no actor shortage.
        • hackyhacky 18 minutes ago
          There is, however, a large shortage of sense of humor.
    • msabalau 39 minutes ago
      What does this random sentiment have to do with the article, which is about him using a particular tool for storyboarding, which is a process of communicating a vision to a range of human contributors?
    • sdevonoes 59 minutes ago
      Wouldn’t that devalue movies, though? For the consumer is great, but for the people in the industry… I guess it doesn’t sound that great?
    • righthand 58 minutes ago
      There is not a shortage of actors.
      • mlinhares 57 minutes ago
        So much so people do anything to try to become an actor, the ones that make i are an incredibly small fraction of the actual pool. Worse, most of those you see on the screen are also not rich or making bank, sometimes they're just paying the bills.
        • kakacik 35 minutes ago
          One has to come to LA (ideally live there a bit) to see with their own eyes the amount of people trying to break through in movie industry.

          Armies of wanna-be actors and actresses, but also ie screenwriters. We only see publicly the result of many consecutive layers of filters/funnels.

          • CuriouslyC 30 minutes ago
            It's an old running joke that most waiters/baristas/etc in LA are aspiring actors. It's part of the reason that service workers in LA are so uncommonly hot on average.
    • nonethewiser 42 minutes ago
      There is a huge surplus of actors.