Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
Martin Scorsese has teamed up with the AI company Black Forest Labs.
The Wolf of Wall Street filmmaker has joined the firm as an adviser in an attempt to “push the bounds of creativity to create deeper and richer experiences for audiences”.
In a statement posted on Black Forest Labs’ website, Scorsese said: “Cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve.
“I utilised 3D with Hugo and de-aging technology with The Irishman. Now, with this tool, I can share what I’m visualising more clearly and efficiently to my creative team – the production designer, art designer, and cinematographer – for them to build on to enrich cinematic intelligence.”
In a video clip filmed at Scorsese’s New York City office to accompany the announcement, the Goodfellas director uses Black Forest Labs’ FLUX generative-AI model to help storyboard a scene.
The 83-year-old filmmaker discusses how he staged the 1990 film’s famous Steadicam shot, which follows mobster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) as he makes his way through the Copacabana nightclub, and notes how each “vignette” through the scene had to be precisely staged.
Scorsese said in the video: “If you have a tool like this, you could figure it out much much quicker and you could save production time, and also less wear and tear on the crew.”
Black Forest Labs CEO Robin Rombach told the New York Times that the partnership with The Departed filmmaker represents “a great proof point that this works”.
Although Scorsese is supportive of AI, fellow filmmaker Steven Spielberg has a more sceptical view regarding the technology’s capabilities in the creative industries.
The 79-year-old director – who has helmed iconic movies such as Jaws, Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan – explained on the IMO podcast: “Where I don’t love AI is where it takes a position, or there’s an empty chair at a writer’s table, and there’s six writers and an empty chair and there’s a computer in front of the empty chair and it is the seventh writer.
“I’m not willing to substitute, you know, because I don’t really believe in its sentience. I don’t believe there is any substitute for the soul. I don’t think that is an algorithm that’s inventible, if there is such a word.
“I think a computer that thinks it feels more than we feel is anathema to the way I was raised and how I’ll practice my own trade of producing and directing in the future.”
Spielberg feels that AI is capable of performing some “legwork” during film productions but stressed that the tech shouldn’t have “the final word on anything creative”.
He said: “I don’t want AI involved in that way.
“If AI wants to help me find locations, that’s great. Saves us all a lot of legwork. But don’t tell me that I don’t have the right antagonist in this movie.
“Don’t tell me how to write my dialogue for this character. Don’t tell me where the camera has to go. And also don’t tell me what the set should look like, unless AI is simply a tool in a large tool chest of the production designer and just one of many tools the production designer uses…”
