AI in animation

This last week I’ve been at the Manchester Animation Festival - a week-long festival for industry, education, and public alike. The panels and short films lit my mind up with an inspiration and drive that I haven’t felt in a while.

On the Industry Day, one of the panels I’d most anticipated was about AI: the fears, the predictions, the ways we’re already using it to improve our work… I’m certainly using AI tools in my photo editing, and as a base for subtitling any fast turnaround work for YouTube etc

For my money, a lot of the practical uses will end up being based on personal/client preferences, past the obvious ethical and legal conversations that are already taking place.

Take voice acting. When we change a line / scene in a script, we usually scratch in the dialogue by getting someone in the studio to record it. The actor then records the line at their next session, or ADRs it if it has already been animated to the scratch.

The current ethical debate, prompted by existing “machine learning” in which AI systems have been “trained” on an actor’s voice and then prompted to generate new speech from a written prompt, is “we can replace that by training an AI on the actor’s voice” vs “actors should be paid, and given the chance to produce the most authentic work”.

Obviously I agree with the latter- audiences deserve the authenticity, and suggesting that AI can replace their training and talent is horrible. But. How about using the AI as a temporary placeholder, instead of the scratch of a completely different voice just jumping in?

+ you get a smoother viewing experience

- the output is misrepresenting what you actually have “in the can” (burn-ins are easily overlooked)

+ it joins up more neatly, and you can judge timing better with a more accurate placeholder

+ if animation for the shot must happen before the actor is next available, a smooth read in the correct cadence and pronunciation will help lipsync

- the actor may be unnerved by hearing their own voice at ADR/ sense the uncanny valley more readily

… all of this assumes that the technology allows for cadence, tone etc. But existing technology such as VocAlign/ Revoice Pro (where you can match an audio clip by the actor to a reading by anyone else) take us a long way towards that already. We can use a written “find” command to find words or syllables in an audio library in Avid’s PhraseFind or DaVinci Resolve Studio. I feel confident that I could get some way towards a useable voice performance… if given enough time. If AI can be used as a tool to cut out that time, and present options to a human, it could be very useful indeed. IF it is desired.

It’s going to be an interesting time. But whether people currently view it as the dawn of a new era or the opening of a new Pandora’s Box… AI is happening. It’s worth being part of the conversation.

Awards season

The BAFTA Film nominations were yesterday. Unfortunately, Pirates not only failed to win - they were not even amongst the three animated features nominated in the relevant category.

However, this was more or less righted by the nomination in the 85th Academy Awards - announced earlier today. Pirates is one of five films nominated for Best Animated Feature, and one of three stop motion films within the category! So, fingers crossed for the 24th of February.

Another recently announced set of nominations that I eagerly browsed were those of the Visual Effects Society Awards - having been the previs/ VFX editor on Pirates, I was rather hoping to see a few nods in that area. Indeed, there's an Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture - competing against Brave, Hotel Transylvania, and Wreck-It Ralph - all of which are fully CG. I personally attribute a large part of this (corrrectly or not) the seamless overlap between stop-motion and CG to a fair amount of confusion over the nature of the film and its effects. Not only amongst lay-people (although I have had to clarify on a few occasions that the water was indeed generated and yes - CG CAN do that these days), but also amongst VFX pros - for whom I answered several questions on Twitter about the production and stop motion, previs, vfx, CG animation, etc. at the time the film came out.

Pirates also has a Best Animated Feature nomination in the 40th Annie Awards, as well as Outstanding Achievement nominations in four categories:Character Animation in a Feature Production,  Production Design in an Animated Feature Production, Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production, Writing in an Animated Feature Production. So... exciting times.

Working on Pirates was an amazing experience in its own right, especially as it was the first feature I ever worked on - but it's certainly amazing and fulfilling to see it get some outside recognition too, from people who didn't actually work on it - or who don't feel they have to say nice things because they know me.

It's been almost exactly a year now since VFX finished on the film, and it's immensely gratifying to see it still making its way out there. I really hope that it continues to get the same level of love and commitment from the rest of the world as those of us involved in its production put in.

Almost there! (But not quite yet)

Principal shooting on The Pirates! has finished. The cut is (mostly) locked. Many of the sets have been dismantled, shooting crew have left, and we can still get parking spaces if we arrive slightly late. We even have Shaun The Sheep setting up where the Pirates sets used to be.

 Access: DENIED

We had a spectacular wrap party last weekend at Bristol's Mshed, where everyone dressed up as Pirates, Scientists, and some of the lesser-known (and potentially spoiler-y) characters.

We have 4 more weeks of work before final delivery. That's two before Christmas, and two after - in which all versions are finalised, confirmed with edit (who'll be finishing in London by that point), and delivered. It's getting quite close - after 5 years in the making.

However, it's proving quite difficult to get the company to get out of the mindset that now that filming's finished the film is over. Yesterday (Friday) afternoon and this weekend, half the phones aren't working while they "upgrade" the system. We've had whole days of not being able to access the viewing theatre. And we're not a small department - we've easily over 100 people. Plus there are outsourced shots to be approved. And still some final bits of sequence which aren't even locked yet.

So, please - everyone.

It's not over when the fat/ thin lady sings at the Wrap Party.

Some of us are still going, and really hoping to not have to work over Christmas - with or without added disruptions! Spare a thought for your post people this Christmas. We're still working really hard to make everyone look good.

Bye Sally

Today both my Twitter and RSS feeds have been abuzz with the news of the death of Sally Menke ACE.

Whilst editors are usually unseen (both on set and on screen) and therefore relatively unknown, Sally's work with Quentin Tarantino evolved to become much more than that in both areas. On any given DVD it would usually be possible to find Tarantino gushing about the importance of collaboration in the edit room as a chance to rewrite the story one last time - and the nonlinear nature of many of his films gave the general public the chance to consider work beyond the shooting stages and sets.

Something extra-special, though, was the way that Quentin would get his cast and crew to shoot several seconds of them greeting Sally, to keep her company in the edit room - sometimes in their own right, sometimes by way of apology after fouling up a take! I've always liked to assume that their inclusion of a "hi Sally" reel in some DVD extras (see below) was his way of letting the world in on some of their relationship. It's always seemed to me like an ideal dynamic to aspire to within a director-editor partnership.

So bye Sally. Your presence in the cutting room will be missed by more people than you would have known.

A Pirate's Life : Not for me.

The story so far: A copy of the upcoming X-Men spin-off 'Wolverine' gets put onto the internet in its unfinished state. Because this is the internet, it spreads like wildfire. Other copies get uploaded, it seems that everyone's talking about it and has an opinion.

Then a FoxNews columnist reviews the film in its non-finished form with incomplete VFX and sound (link to article on WorstPreviews). Possibly with the best of intentions - he says in the article (which has since been removed from the FoxNews site) that 20th Century Fox should have no concerns over the leak because the film is so good.

But within that, he's endorsing the series of events which led to him being able to see it. Not only that, he's significantly denying the contribution that possibly hundreds of VFX artists whose work had yet to go into a full cut of the film. He's denying the impact that a full sound tracklay and mix will have on the film.  And he's saying that it's fine for people to go out and download films before they've even opened.

Now whatever your views on current definitions of piracy (there are certainly business lessons to be learnt from how the release of media can encourage purchases once a passion for a product has been built), this is a very bad thing to start legitimising. A lot of people who've worked in a very creative capacity (directors, cinematographers, editors, actors) on a film can be very insecure about the part they've played and will try to minimise the number of people who'll see it before a certain stage. Endorsing leaks would take that decision out of their hands and invite judgement before the product looks anything like it would otherwise have ended up as, and may even influence the rest of the post-production process and distribution. The 'released' version would doubtless be compared to the leaked version(s) without any understanding of the processes which took them from A to B to C.

Of course there are test screenings. Of course films change massively from script to production to edit.  But these are all controlled by a much much smaller number of people. Whether these people are the best people for the film is often a subject of debate amongst the fans.... but any editor will tell you how having more than a couple of key decision makers commenting on a cut can often lead to as many different opinions as there are people in the room. Imagine that multiplied on a global level. Not only is there never a way to please everyone, but any film which aspires to do so will often lead to utter blandness on screen.

So let us hope that this doesn't become a trend. News sites indicate that the FBI is following the trail in an attempt to catch the origin of the Wolverine leak, and whoever did it is certain to never work in the film industry again.  And if nothing else, the rest of us have been reminded that once out, these things can spread really quickly - irrespective of any original intention.

Save the Avid dongle

An Avid dongle USB key

http://www.savethedongle.com is a site hosting a petition to save Avid's dongle-based authentication for the users who rely on being able to transfer their license from one machine to another in the course of their work.

They seek to give the user an option - to follow the software-based authentication proposed for MC 3.5 and not have to worry about losing their dongle and having to buy a brand new system if they lose it, and/ or keep their dongle for authentication.

Plus, you know, it's called a dongle. We can't let go of that.

See their website for more information and for the petition.