Lights, Camera, AI – A Look Into How AI Is The New Star Power For Studio Operations

Artificial intelligence walked the red carpet this year at the Hollywood Professional Association Tech Retreat. If there’s one takeaway, AI is here to stay in studio operations, optimizing media workflows from content creation to distribution. 

Video generation  

Tools like Midjourney are revolutionizing the way ideas can travel from conception to screen. At the HPA Tech Retreat, we saw some impressive demonstrations of some new AI video generation tools. OpenAI Sora utilizes a complex neural network trained on vast amounts of text and video data. You can type in a prompt, and within a minute, a high-quality dynamic video unfolds before your eyes.  

AI-powered video generation can make video creation more accessible, allowing those with less technical expertise to see their visions realized. Advances like these are sure to drive even more video creation across industries.  

Pre-production 

AI in pre-production can help studios and creatives get buy-in for their projects before they get off the ground. Utilizing AI programs to gather data on audience trends and behaviors can ensure a project resonates with the key demographic.  

From generating storyboards, scene summaries, scheduling, and budgeting, AI is a valuable tool to keep a project on-track and freeing time and resources to produce the film.  

Production 

Creating virtual sets, effects, and animated assets and characters are all used today in production. Complex tasks, like tracking actors and facilitating interactions between real and virtual characters during filming, are simplified with the implementation of AI.  

AI is uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between practical sets and virtual ones. Compositing is a labor-intensive process for modern VFX artists, but with AI’s help, it won’t be that way for long.  

Post-Production 

Complex editing tasks are made simple with the assistance of AI. AI tools help with image resolution, artifact removal, color corrections, sound effects, noise reduction, and more. If the editing teams that worked on Game of Thrones used AI, maybe a Starbucks cup wouldn’t have stolen the show from the likes of Mother of Dragons.  

AI can also be embedded in cloud storage, making searching for indexed content like objects, actors, and text easy. This enables directors and editors to quickly find the best shots for the projects they are working on.  

With the acquisition of Curio AI, Wasabi is working to marry cloud storage and AI to create storage where content is automatically indexed and cataloged. This will connect production and post-production workflows to work hand-in-hand to deliver quality content quickly and cost-effectively. 

Distribution 

Audiences have different tastes and preferences based on where they are from. AI creates more personalized content for distribution and opens up the opportunity to break into new markets by giving studio operations the tools to tailor and customize content based on the region in which they plan on distributing their film.  

Content moderation, making sure that videos and pieces of assets created by individuals fit the brand and voice of a platform, is made possible with AI adoption. Content localization, compliance, and marketing campaign creation can benefit from quickly identifying videos and images that must be adapted and tailored to the targeted audience. 

Bringing AI to cloud storage 

The HPA Tech Retreat showcased AI’s capabilities today, making it clear that AI is here to stay. Many AI tools start with the application, but all machine learning tools learn from stored data. 

The first step to utilizing AI in studio production and operations is building the storage backbone to handle the exponential data growth needed to train and adapt AI tools to your specific environment. Wasabi continues to help media and entertainment industries digitize their content for the next film and video creation stage. 

• Cloud tiering: Organizations can take control of exponential data growth with bottomless cloud storage. Wasabi’s simple tier structure eliminates the complexity of storing data, allowing studios to prioritize all the data in their library instead of limiting access. 
• Active archive: With no fees from egress or API calls, producers can accurately forecast budgets while allowing directors to freely edit and create content that’s best for the project they are working on. 
• On-demand content streaming: Wasabi seamlessly integrates into MAM environments and is built to handle the capacity needed for video content. Entire content libraries can now be migrated into the cloud to be preserved as playback equipment diminishes in supply. 
• Remote global access: Production workflows are optimized by creating a centralized cloud environment. Production teams can load data anywhere they shoot, allowing editing teams to access it anytime. 

As Wasabi makes storing and using entire content libraries easier, AI now breathes new life into archived content libraries, looking for their chance to shine in the spotlight again.