The Brutalist AI Controversy Explained

Addy Ghani and Joey Daoud break down The Brutalist's AI debate over using Respeecher and Midjourney, explore virtual production innovations at CES, and share firsthand experiences of LA's recent wildfires.

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📺 MORE VP LAND EPISODES

AI and Virtual Production: The Future of Filmmaking with Disguise's Addy Ghani
https://youtu.be/mMLMhUFJH2U

Neural Lab AirTouch: Use Apple Vision Pro Gestures on ANY Device
https://youtu.be/30zzXVdFmYc

Disguise Studio Pro: Portable Virtual Production
https://youtu.be/nUAFgPvwDIk

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📝 SHOW NOTES & SOURCES

Connect with Addy @ LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/addyghani

GoFundMe: Help Ramiro Rebuild After Losing His Home in the Eaton Fire
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-ramiro-rebuild-after-losing-his-home-in-eaton-fire

GoFundMe: Ben and Kirby lost everything in the Eaton Fire
https://www.gofundme.com/f/ben-and-kirby-lost-everything-in-the-eaton-fire

Why epic period drama movie The Brutalist was shot on VistaVision
https://www.redsharknews.com/why-epic-period-drama-movie-the-brutalist-was-shot-on-vistavision

The Brutalist and the ongoing debate about the role of AI in the movies
https://www.redsharknews.com/the-brutalist-and-the-ongoing-debate-about-the-role-of-ai-in-the-movies

‘The Brutalist’ Director Brady Corbet Responds to AI Backlash
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/the-brutalist-ai-backlash-adrien-brody-1236113015/

Kino Flo
https://kinoflo.com

Midjourney
https://www.midjourney.com

Respeecher
https://www.respeecher.com

Pro Tools
https://www.avid.com/pro-tools

CES 2025
https://www.ces.tech

Neural Lab
https://neural-lab.com

Pixomondo PXO AKIRA
https://www.pxoakira.com

Blackmagic Design
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com

NVIDIA CES Keynote
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/events/ces

Disguise Studio Pro
https://www.disguise.one/en/products/studio-pro

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⏱ CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:57 Addy's Background
01:49 LA Wildfire Experience
03:25 Hurricane vs Wildfire Impact
04:43 Evacuation Challenges
06:09 Social Media During Fires
07:51 AI Generated Disaster Images
10:47 Fire Impact on Industry
13:18 Support for Victims
16:16 The Brutalist AI Controversy
17:22 Respeecher Usage Explained
19:24 AI Controversy Discussion
24:26 Craftsmanship in Post-Production
27:28 VistaVision Technology
30:13 AI in Concept Art
34:33 CES 2025
36:33 Trade Show Evolution
38:37 Navigating CES Layout
40:59 NVIDIA's Keynote
43:28 PXO AKIRA 
46:01 Vehicle Simulation Tech
48:17 Disguise Studio Pro
50:11 CES vs NAB Discussion
52:08 Closing and Subscriber Update

Transcript

0:00

In this episode of VP Land, we're going to talk about the wildfires in LA, The Brutalist AI controversy, and our thoughts on CES. All right, welcome to VP Land. I am Joey Daoud, your host. But in this episode, I'm co host because I'm joined for the first time. This is my first recording of the podcast in person, and also now we've got co hosts for this episode, Addy. Hey, it was really nice to get you in LA. Yeah. Back in LA. Now that you're in Angeleno, I was like, Hey, let's do a podcast together. And here we are. Let's do an IRL podcast. This is what people in LA do. Right? They invite each other to a podcast. Live into the stereotype. Yeah. So we're going to talk about kind of just some hot topics of what's been going on in the news with AI and filmmaking. Yeah. So this is not the who is Addy episode, but yeah, just to get some context, if you want to do like a two minute kind of background of who you are and what your story is. Sure. Yeah. Two minutes is too long. I'll tell you. 30 seconds. The elevator pitch. Yeah. Look born and raised in LA. I grew up around film and entertainment my whole life. I worked at a movie theater. So when I got my engineering degree, I came right back to Hollywood and got a role into technology behind film. Uh, I spent many years at dreamworks, animation, Verizon media, NBC universal. And now most recently with disguise virtual production is my background before it was even called that. And that's the part of the industry that I'm really passionate about. And I choose to put all my energy into, so, yeah. It's exciting field. Yeah. And we do have, we talked at NAB, we got an interview of that too. So we'll link to that if you want more kind of what was going on last year in virtual production. And we talked about too, like the bigger landscape as well. So I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. That's the first time we met, I think. I think that was too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There we are. That's a year later. Now you're here. Yeah. First we both went through some crazy wildfires. This did everyone else in LA. Fortunately, our homes are okay. We're okay. Yeah. But yeah. It was a new experience as, as, as someone who's not used to this and used to hurricanes. It was a new experience for me, but what was it like for you and going through it? I mean, I can't imagine what hurricane is like in Florida. I could certainly talk about earthquake and to me, the fires feel more visceral, feels more haunting and. Just more, it's just more devastating and more damaging.'cause it's it's a total, yeah. It's like if you're in it and it's like, hell complete. Yeah. Literally. Yeah. Yeah. Earthquake destruction, you know? Yeah. It, it's not a cakewalk, but it's much more manageable to process and digest. It's like, okay, this is a one time thing in a long time, and it was completely random. Whereas fires are like, okay, we live in a city made out of wood structures and then it's very dry and it's just a matter of time before everything burns down. And unfortunately, it's crazy. Yeah, it's a different, it's different. Cause I mean, hurricane, hurricane, you get warning, you kind of know what's coming and it affects, you don't really know. And predictions have been kind of wrong lately, but you don't really know where it's going to go, but you know, it's going to be in this area of it. So the whole area kind of shuts down. And the fire thing was weird because it like pops up in isolated areas. area, but like I had family reaching out from the East Coast and you know, it's like, well, can you still get food in? Cause we're used to hurricanes where it's like, it just destroys highways. It destroys infrastructure and like getting food, getting supplies is a big issue. And it's just weird here because it's like, unless you were in that specific area, Outside of that, it was like things were kind of going on as normal because it's like, what are you gonna do? You're gonna keep doing what you're doing if you're not in that affected area. And it was weird. It's just weird. Yeah. And also the hurricane you see coming on the map and I think what a week is a fair amount. Yeah. You see it as like a tropical depression, tropical storm. It's building up. Where's it going to go? The code of uncertainty. Yeah. But you've like got this whole kind of buildup. I'm still amazed at how well the evacuations go. I mean, I'm sure They're not that easy when you actually get it done, but millions of peoples are able to leave. A certain amount of the country. I can't imagine LA being evacuated like that. Like when they sent everyone an evacuation notice. Yeah. And la at the uh yeah, on the emergency protocol. I mean, our traffic's already bad. Yeah, yeah. Y I mean,Dven in these areas, you saw the images of people had to flee their cars 'cause it was so backed up. And then Yeah. The images of the bulldozers having to push the cars outta the way Yeah. That people had to abandon.'cause I think the fire department's, like, if you're gonna leave your car, leave the keys in there. Yeah. That's grim, man. That's, yeah. That's, that's crazy. Yeah. And yeah, it just, the speed it happens. And we had the two, two big fires that were, you know, destroyed a lot of people's homes and Yeah. Palisades, Eden and Altadena. Yeah. But it was just so weird too.'cause I, I feel like everyone on in LA was just sort of, it was this whole week of being on edge because I'm like sleeping next to my phone and it's like, are we gonna get an alert that something's gonna spread? We could see it outside our window. Uh, there's like this level of background stress that everybody's living and consuming. Yeah. During the, yeah. Even though you're not affected, it is still like a very, yeah, it's in the air. I mean, literally it's in the air, but like it's mentally in, in you that there are good people out there that are losing their homes and everything. Like if you look at this bookshelf, right, it's, it looks like a bunch of random stuff, but every little thing here means something to me. It has a attached piece of memory to it. Like. I was a big fan of Breaking Bad. So I have, you know, Walter Walter White there, and I can't imagine like a whole house full of these things no longer there. The other thing that was crazy about this experience that ties into AI and stuff we've been seeing was I was on X Twitter all the time trying to cut updates or to see what's happening. And it is. a good story. It's probably still the best source for like real time information. But now there was flooded with first, it's a bunch of crazy conspiracy theory stuff, but then also a lot of AI generated stuff. And The first stuff I saw was, okay, it was kind of more like social commentary, like AI generated characters are like politician and stuff. And it's like, okay, whatever kind of commentary, but you can tell us fake comedy. Yeah. And it's like a kind of like kind of like a new form of like the political cartoons or something. Sure. Like math TV. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then, but then I started seeing some other stuff that was images that looked like destruction, like it's actual mountains on fire and like LA shots. And at first scroll, I sent you the link and you're like, yeah, but like when you're scrolling, you see real, real, real, real. And then a shot of like, Yeah. Is this really happening? And it kind of took me a second. And then when I see the police cars and other things, I'm like, Oh, okay, this is AI generated, but also came from an account that I usually trust and they do a lot of AI content. Oh, interesting. Okay. They posted it. But I think. They didn't know that it was fake. I don't think they realized it. They're not from LA. I think they're somewhere in Europe. Yeah, I don't think they realized it was fake at first, which is also kind of scary because they're like an AI Expert and they post about this stuff all the time, right? Their commentary is also kind of dumb. They did eventually take it out So I'm not gonna call out who it was. Yeah, because people were like this is not this is fake It's not appropriate to post. Yeah, but and then I would see a couple of other images like the how you know Hollywood sign on fire Yeah, but they would blend it with other actual real images. So it'd be like a real image, real image, fake image. Oh, so the in edit they would put together. It was like a month. It was like there's one that was like a collage of like, you know, here's images, the destruction and like three are real and one is fake. Yeah, and it just kind of blends it in there too. I never talked about like, why, why even do this? The only thing I can think of is engagement and monetization. I have an interesting take on this. Yes. Look, Hollywood has been making films for hundreds of years and For the most part of that, LA has been the setting for a lot of these films. And so Hollywood has been destroyed, has been set on fire many times. Yes. And a short of Godzilla, Godzilla has never been here yet, but I think the cultural fabric of the world, the cinematic cultural fabric of the world has a image of Hollywood in LA being destroyed and they played into that. And. No matter where you look, we have friends all over the world in London, Australia, people were you know, messaging us through WhatsApp, like, Hey, are you okay? Everybody knows LA is in trouble because there is an associated memory of LA and film and that. Has a negative connotation in this case, where that generated AI generated video is now going to garner more attention because it's poking and prodding into a part of your psyche that's already pre programmed. That's my take on it. That's an easy target. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, look, I could make a, you know, a Mount Rushmore on fire. But that's not really going to turn or click, get a lot of clicks or turn a lot of eyeballs because like, who cares? Well, yeah, I mean, I think also just because it's It was happening and it was topical and it was so real time. I mean, I saw some other stuff before in the last, I can't even remember the name, the last tropical storm hurricane in Florida. And there were AI generated images of like, but they were very obvious, but they kind of did go. Viral on like this was also what six months ago. Yeah, so like the air quality wasn't as good. Yeah Definitely could notice it now, but no, it's crazy how good it's getting but those were like I was like the little girl being rescued in a flooded water or something like Yeah at first glance looks kind of real but it was fake And so this is only going to get worse as like, it's going to get worse, we need, we need an AI like self governing AI check mark of some type. I know Adobe, I know a lot of people are working that's manufacturers for like authenticity to verify. Yeah. That needs to come ASAP. I know. But on the, on the silver lining of it is, you know, The fact that we have the ability to do it and the political freedom to post it. And then you and I can actually talk about it freely. That is something. Yeah. Right. Like the whole cycle of content creation to consumption, to reviewing and talking and discussing that exists around AI content already. And I think that's really powerful too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at least we're here to say like, I think that's crossing the line, but we're able to, but my God, where are we living where that is a thing? Like people can just prompt and text their way into fooling other people. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's just the suspicion radar now for everything is going up and now I'm finding myself to like seeing real images and then thinking AI generated. Well, I have an unreal engine background and I can't imagine building a digital LA in unreal, setting it on fire, you know, with articles and fire, maybe use EmberGen and like, it's such a massive project to do. It'll take you me weeks. If not, I could just do it in a prompt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That part's crazy. That's awesome. And yeah, real quick too, before we move on yeah, we do it as a couple of people. Personally, like they did lose everything for real, not AI generated. Ramiro Montes de Orca, I only know him as Ramiro on LinkedIn, he's, yeah nice guy. Yeah. And super big contributor to virtual production, did a lot of research on 2110. He's at Kino Flo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. His, yeah, his entire, he said his entire house burned down. So you have to go find me a page to get back on his feet. And then a friend of mine from film school, Ben Mekler, writer, a director he and his family, luckily they're okay, but yeah, they lost their house as well. Yeah. I hope you guys can make it a small donation, help them out. Yeah. So I'll link to that and I'll link to some other support groups. Okay. You know, like, cause Yeah, I mean, it's not very topical now, but I mean, there's literally 160 miles per hour winds flying over us. Yeah, we're not out of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we're in another red flag warning, which now I learned what red flag warnings are. Yeah, this is a fact of life And this is something we're gonna have to live with in this wonderful city I mean if it wasn't for this city film would not be where it is Anywhere. No, no. And it is still regardless of tax incentives and, you know, and I applaud, you know, film production going to other places. I think it's better for it to go to other places and thrive than to not have it at all. Give, having said that, I think LA is not going anywhere. Like this is still the epicenter of talent. People that really know high end filmmaking from a creative and technical perspective, they do it here and then they will go elsewhere. The other thing that LA really has is the. What I call the ecosystem of media. So the other day I was walking down, I think it was Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank, right? A very normal street in normal powder town. And yeah, you walk past portos and all those nice restaurants and then you get, okay, there's the IOC building there. Hot rod cameras, their film tools is down the street. And these are businesses that have been built over decades because of the content industry, right? Yeah. Like. You can't replicate that elsewhere instantly. It will have to come over decades and decades of use of film and media use. And we've developed this ecosystem, this infrastructure, if you will. And so it's very natural for film and TV to be done here. Now, the financial incentives are maybe not the right climate for it, but. That infrastructure is not going anywhere. No, and yeah, you mentioned like, oh, they maybe start here then go and come back, but the go is production. Hmm, but and that is that's normal a big state. That's a big phase, but it's still a phase of the entire yeah filmmaking process which Yeah. The offices, the support, the, the, the agents, all that stuff for the development stage. They're all here. Yeah. Production sometimes here, sometimes not. Yeah. Sometimes go somewhere else for tax benefits or just because it makes sense for the budget. Yeah. It happens. But like that also, there is Atlanta is like a big central spot right now, but everyone was New Orleans. I remember when it was Miami and it was just really whoever, whatever state was providing the tax benefits. Yeah. Yeah. The administration's changed or they don't renew them or the someone who's like, yeah, what do we need film here for Bad Boys 1, 2, 3. Burn Notice. I think it was the biggest Dexter taker. They only shot season one in Miami. And then the rest was, if you look in the background and you're like mountains. You know Marina del Rey, the go to for when you need Miami, but if you film it incorrectly, you get mountains in the back of your shot. I see. I see. Okay. So now I can just do it on a, on a volume. Yes, you can. But yeah, anyway, and then post production, which is a bit, some is going more remote ish, but just all the post, all that infrastructure still, a lot of it's still here. Yeah, a hundred percent. And it, I think 2025 is supposed to be the year of recovery. Like last year was supposed to be a year until 2025. Yeah. So now we're in the face of the fire. We're in January. So let's see how this year goes, but I'm, I'm very optimistic for not just LA, but the entire world. Yeah. And I don't think, I mean, I've been seeing the articles, you know, what does this do to Hollywood? What are the fires due to Hollywood? Nothing. It's crappy. It's shitty. But I don't see this drastically changing. Hollywood already was. Hollywood is not streets and blocks. It's people. And it's the knowledge that people have in their mind. That's not going anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. I mean you you're talking about filmmakers that are generational Their dad was a DP and now they're a writer and their kids are an act like this is in people's blood in this town Yeah, so that's not going anywhere All right next story which is Hollywood filmmaking and AI. All right. So this one's really been bothering me. So the last few days If you're on Twitter. You've probably seen that the film The Brutalist, there was an interview in RedShark News and kudos to them. They had a really great interview. Brutalist. I want to see that. That looks great. Yeah, I have not seen. I mean, yeah, I was, I have not seen it. You have not seen it. No. Yeah. It is a three and a half hour epic, like it is a commitment. I do want to see it. But yeah, I mean, the brutalist film with Adrian Brody fictionalized, but, um Jewish Hungarian immigrant that's from the Holocaust comes to America and sort of as an architect and it's kind of brutalist architecture. He's the immigrant story. Oh, amazing. Sorry. Yeah. I would love to see that. So RedShark News interview with Adrian Pennington with the editor David Jancso of the brutalist. The article itself is great and a great, really insightful interview. And we'll talk about some other elements of that that stuck out to me. But the thing that people have very much latched onto, okay, is that he explained that they used a Respeecher, which is one of the AI services. I'm familiar with Respeecher. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, it is. You can train it on an existing voice and you can manipulate and change other voices to sound like a different character, a different voice. Was this one that was used for Anthony Bourdain? Did they Respeecher do it? Is that a different service? The reason I know Respeecher is because Lex Friedman interviewed Zelinsky. And they used And they used, because Zelinsky will not speak Russian. He'll only speak Ukrainian and Lex Friedman only speaks Russian. So they had to use Respeecher to make the podcast happen. Right. But it does a good job of When I listened to it, I thought it was them. Yeah, because it takes the actual delivery and performance and either translates it to another language or you can make someone sound like someone else. Yeah. But use the same, use the direction of their voice with permission, performance permission, of course. But yeah, with permission. Yeah. For assuming this, we're not gonna go into the whole copyright issue, but we're assuming you have permission and trade data. The technology is very robust and I, I don't know how it works, but I'm amazed at how good it is. Yeah. Yeah. So the issue, the editor. Explained that they use Respeecher for there's like a two minute scene where agent Brody the main character is Reading a letter in Hungarian. Okay, and they used it to clean up some of the pronunciation of his Hungarian So he did go through extensive training With Isla coaches did a lot of Hungarian but the guy's American like he's not gonna. Oh, yeah Jancso explains Uh, quote, I am a native Hungarian speaker, and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce. Even with Adrian's Hungarian background Brody's mother is a Hungarian refugee who emigrated to the U. S. in 1956. It's not that simple. It's an extremely unique language. We coached them Brody and Felicity Jones, the other co star. They did a fabulous job, but we wanted it to be perfect so that not even locals will spot any difference. And so they used Respeecher to do some dialogue enhancements in this. Two minute scene. What it sounds like to me is they used it, not even like, Oh, here, give, let's give Adrian Brody this, let's give the two minute dialogue to Respeecher and bring it in. Like, it sounds like very fine tuned, like this word here, that right there phonemes and inflections. Yeah. Some like very, I mean, there's a very manual process. They just use Respeecher too. Let me ask you this. How would you do it manually? So, they actually did try, because my first thought too was like ADR, so, ADR, okay, dialogue replacement of either, you bring Adrian back in and you coach him and try to have him re read the lines. And the different pronunciation, or you get an actual native, a Polish speaker, Hungarian Hungarian. Speaker. Speaker, yeah. And re and have him do it then. Do they do this all the time with singing and musicals? Yes. Yeah. Main actor can't sing. You get someone else that mean This is also the storyline of it's singing in the rain, singing in the rain. Yes. Of the woman's voice is terrible, and they bring in the other actress to sing for her. Yeah. This has been done forever. A DR has been done. We replace dialogue with actors either. So there is an outrage because AI was, that's the thing. It's one of these things, general outrage. Yeah. It's one of these things people hear AI and it's just like a triggered the trigger alert of like, they just hear that word and post about it and don't really, Hey, don't even, don't dive into like what. How did they use it? Because I feel like, you know, AI is such a, it's such a, it's such a gradient, such a big scale spectrum of like usage. But I don't know, people hear it and it's like, I don't know, what did you think? They like typed in a prompt, like give me a three hour film about brutal brutalist and like spit it out. And this is what you're looking at. Yeah. Like, I don't like, what do you think this is? No, no, no. So it's funny because 99 percent of the people without this enhancement wouldn't even notice the enhancement. No, there's nobody. I mean, with so many craftspeople, especially in post, it's like your job is to be invisible. Like if people are aware of your dialogue, editing, you're fully sounds your, yeah, and you hear your sound mixing, then you didn't do a good job. But that's because like it goes to show how high level and how capable and at the top of his game, this editor is that he is going above and beyond to make as perfect of an output as possible. Using whatever tool he has at his disposal to create something that nobody will really notice, but that's art and that's the native Hungarian speakers because even if we watch it and hear it, it's like, I'm sure I'm reading the subtitles. I have no ideas. I have no idea if it's correct or not. So this is to me, this is like the perfect use of AI in a situation where. Nobody lost their job. The efficiency was gained. The end product is better and it was used as a tool not to replace anything, but to enhance a certain thing and to speed up a little bit of the process. So actually there was another quote hear from him quote, most of the Hungarian dialogue has a, has a part of me talking in there. I think that was just clarifying that he, that Jancso, the editor did help drive some of the performance or the pronunciation that they used, but that was trained on Adrian Brody's voice. And then sure. They used his. get some of the pronunciation to drive the AI generation and change it to Adrian Brody's voice, as I believe the process they used. But he was, but as far as that, the minute detail that they got into, it's mainly just replacing letters here and there. So this is like a such tiny detail changing, which is also something that is but normally done. I'll play the devil's advocate on any film. Yeah, it's like the. AI pessimists will say, you know it's a slippery slope, right? Like, yeah, this small use of AI in the next film, there will be a bigger use of AI and eventually AI will make the whole film. Right. But does that matter? I don't think that way, but my guess is that's like when you draw a hard line, that's how you draw it. Right. Like politically, I mean are we saying they didn't do any rotoscoping? They didn't use any tools to help. Oh, I'm sure you can uncover system. Yeah, they didn't use Google or anything that, you know, use some. AI or machine learning behind the scenes. Absolutely. Like where, where, where is the, where is the line? Yeah. But I mean, that's the thing too. I think maybe we just need better terminology for AI because it's such a bucket term, but it's a spectrum of like. It's like saying computer. What? Yeah. It's like that movie is computers. You're talking about my phone. You're talking about the laptop. You're talking about some NVIDIA warehouse, super, super computer. Yeah. But here. Yeah. And you're saying too, you could do this yourself in pro tools, but we had so much dialogue in Hungarian and that we really needed to speed up the process. Otherwise we'd still be in post. Yeah. I used to see See recording engineers do this in Pro Tools back in the day. I mean, yeah, that stuff does take a lot. Every breath you control, every blank space you control. Yeah. It's crazy. Which also comes down to the craftsmanship that is needed to do this. And actually know what you're doing and to know what you're doing to make it sound good. Right. And there's just another tool in that process, which comes into the budget, which also. Bigger scope. So this was like the very end of this RedShark article. Yeah, but the actual article is about a lot of interesting stuff. So the The film itself was a 10 million budget and they shot on VistaVision, which is an old school. I had to look it up. It's an old school. It's what kind of Alfred Hitchcock used. It is basically kind of the precursor to IMAX celluloid. It is 35 millimeter, but the normal 35 millimeter cameras, if you're not familiar, would shoot like this. The film's running down. So you can only get a frame about that wide. This division. They run it through the camera horizontally. Okay. So you could get a bigger negative, you, you could use a big, still 35 millimeter, I believe vertically. It's still 30 or, or no, I mean, diagonally still 35. Your, your, your, your, your film, your stock. Yeah. But you're shooting on it. Horizontally, so you could fit, you could project more onto the negative. Sounds very expensive. Yeah. Because it's not, well, first of all, film is so rare already. And this is a rare type of camera within that world. They had to source these cameras, which I think they said shooting in Hungary was an advantage because they haven't shifted as much to digital as the rest of the world. So they still have some of these cameras. Yeah. I would imagine film processing there is cheaper than doing it in LA. I think the editor also said that he has a posthouse or connections too so they're able to like give him a crazy deal to make this money but still 10 million with film. I mean a feature film shot on film then processed that's millions of dollars already. Borderline to two feature films with the runtime that it is. Three hours. Yeah. Three and a half hours. I love long movies. Yeah. I can't wait to see this film. I mean, the more I hear about this stuff, the more I want to see the film because you look at the dedication of the craft of the people that made it. Yeah. Like and that the DP two of the attack on the AI for this one specific thing. Yeah. And it's taking away so much from the actual craftspeople. Right. And people that spent, yeah. So much time and energy and, and talent. Yes. And now it's getting diminished because people are like AI for this one thing. Yeah. Imagine the ACS and the DP that had to wheel that Vista vision around location. I mean, that's crazy talking about craftsmanship to yeah, like to go and shoot on an old school study format. Right. Yeah. Crazy. There is one other, there was another, there were like two AI issues with this. So there was a separate thing that came up that was, I guess it was like a montage or something at the end of like sketches of different buildings or something. And the. Production designer, someone used Midjourney for it was clarified. They used it as reference generating reference images and then hand drew them or sketch them. But these majority to like generate ideas of like building designs for like background plates for like a montage, but it was not used in film. It was used in production or concepting concept. Yeah. They clarified that it was used for like references, but everything on screen was, I was like drawn by. Hand, but then I think that was one of those either got lost in translation. That's like saying, okay, look, I'm not gonna get into the Midjourney training model where the data came from and all those arguments like that's a black box of yeah questionable stuff. Yeah, sure I understand that Midjourney is probably not The best, best tool to use for final in camera or in picture work. Yeah, make sure that you're clear. However, having said that, it's like, this is the analogy I would make. It's like you have, this is the early 90s. You have a laptop that can send emails and somebody's telling you to use the fax machine. To fax all like a stack of documents. You're like, I can just type it. I can just email it. Why? Why wouldn't I do that? No, no, no. You only have to use a fax machine because we're a fax machine company. Yeah. Like that's the cusp we're in route. Like, of course there's a better, easier, more powerful way to do it. You don't have to hand sketch everything unless you really want to go for it. You know, a lot of films I would imagine in the concepting phase are only using Generative AI just to get pixels in front of eyeballs. That's it. Yeah. And we've seen, I've seen this tons of times on talks and stuff. Yeah. On Unreal Fest, Amazon, a bunch of the keynote talks. Yeah. And that cuts down so much errors and iterations down the road, right? Like the more solid your pre production, your concepting is the less error and mistakes you make down the road. So why not put more emphasis on that? Yeah. And that's part of the process normally. I mean, you just, maybe before we're doing it by just grabbing frames from other films or photography books or just a bunch of research. Which you could still do now too, but also sometimes you just can't find where you're looking for because you're trying to think of something new. Yeah. I mean, I think it should be a combination of all of the above. You should use Photoshop, you should use hand sketches, you should use the Midjourney and use all of them together to get the thing that's in your head out to a piece of paper or a screen that you could show somebody else. Right. Cause everyone can kind of see, it's like, this is what we're trying to get to. That's the building with the sun and that's what you're thinking. Yes. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Let's move on. Yeah. And yeah, the other one thing too, cause going back to the budget. An affordable film. Yeah. Relatively low budget. Yeah. They're making something original. Yeah. And you know, everyone complains like this is what we need. Right. Everyone's like, well, we don't want more Marvel or Disney like retreads or sequels and stuff. And it's like, we want original stuff. It's like, okay, well here's something, the original stuff. Like you can't, they can't, original things can't get the budget that a Marvel can. Yeah. So they got to do what they can, what they can do. Yeah. They have VistaVision cameras. Yeah. They have, sounds like, an amazing editor and a director, so that is a magic formula. And if this movie ends up winning an Oscar, this is like a master class in how to make small budget films go big. Yeah. For sure. We should all be rooting for this film. A hundred percent. Yeah. And, and yeah, and also the editor was like, you know, I think people should let me find the quote here. Yeah. He said at the end quote, it is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn't be, but we should be having a very open discussion about what tools AI can provide us with. Uh, there's nothing in the film using AI that hasn't been done before. It just makes the process a lot faster. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now I'm, I fear from the backlash of this like minor thing that it's going to make other people hesitant to acknowledge or talk about their process because they're like, well, I don't want to, this like ridiculous backlash happening to me, but we should be talking about what we're doing and how we're making things and sharing about what we're discovering. You're drawing a curtain over your process when you shouldn't be because how else are young filmmakers up and coming filmmakers supposed to know how to create something at a high level, not even younger, just anyone in the wild west. Exactly. And you know, we're. Like, I'll take Respeecher as an example, and not necessarily them, but AI, lip syncing, AI, dubbing, tools in general. What a cool thing to have in a world where we're now consuming more and more international content. Yeah. I just finished Squid Game 2 the other day. Yeah, exactly. Right? Like I'll watch a Brazilian movie there, and so on. We, we all speak different tongues. There's like 190 languages. We need tools like this to speed up the translations. And this is a great example. Great use of it. Yeah. And it opens up possibilities to any on Netflix, going down this rabbit hole of, of, of doing real time. Yeah, translation and being able to morph the mouth. So it matches too. Cause yeah, not everyone that's still, I think a little far away, like the, yeah, but yeah. Um, but the, the sound waves are there already. Yeah. Cause yeah, not everyone loves reading subtitles. Yeah. And you also don't like, it doesn't translate, right. When you're, when you have those inflections and those punctuations in your speech. There's so much communication there and Adrian Brody's performance is in those little nuances. Yeah. And so the editor is trying The tool doesn't take anything away from his performance. No. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Now we know what we got to see next. The brutalist. Yeah. Hopefully there's a restroom break in the middle. There is. There is an intermission. There is an old school intermission. Oh, I love it, man. I love it. Yeah. Okay. And Last story up. CES. CES. We were both there briefly. I cut it short. Did we end up seeing each other there? No, I think I got there when you were leaving. Yeah. Yeah. It was a zoo. Yeah. So, I mean, my point of reference is NAB. I've been going there for like 10 years and it's the same exact spot. Yeah. I've done. Yeah. That was my first CES. Okay. Compared to the NAB, I mean, so it is physically a lot bigger. Then a because it's yeah, the entire Las Vegas Convention Center plus plus one of the hotel's mission Yeah, they're huge Convention Center. Yeah, and they're like Basement level convention center. Yeah. Yeah. Massive different vibe to booth wise, like NAB, I feel like it's a bit more open. The booths are a bit more open. Like you're walking and talk to someone, walk and talk to someone, but also the booth design itself is. Yeah, it's not a walled garden. It's like, kind of just come in. CES, especially the bigger ones, these were like walled, like, we're going to suck you into our little world that we built, and like, we don't need to go anywhere else. I remember in the Samsung one, I felt I was like, I need to get out of here, but how do I get out of here? There's walls and displays and people. And they had like, they tried to have like one entrance in. And like They're like lines to get into the booth. I did realize with some of them that you just walk in the exit and like, no one stops you. I was like, I'm not going to mind to go look at your stuff. Yeah, it was similar, but different. Way busier, a lot more people. CES is less goofy this year. Like CES of the past, and I think you would agree is like, you're always going to see a robot. Like walking around the floor, you're always going to see some technology that's never going to solve anybody's problem, but it's just cool. CES seems to be more buttoned up. It's like getting ready for a job interview or something, just growing up. I think that's the part where people are like, it's more like NAB because CES realizes that the true money is a B to C, right? Like business to consumer. So they're caring more on the B side. Like, how does a business come in here, communicate their stuff effectively, and how do we provide the best value for them? So then they'll spend a million dollars on the booth. Yeah. Right. And that's what NAB, NAB is a B2B trade show. Yeah. They specialize in businesses coming in, doing their thing. Whereas CES is like, okay, we're going to have a million consumers. Do whatever you want. I'm not sure. Yeah. I mean, it seems like they're trying to hit both. Other companies or that would buyers or stock, whatever they're trying to sell and press content creators just get buzz out about whatever new product they're launching. Yeah. I think CS does a really good job engaging like the tech YouTubers and stuff. Cause the next day or the next week I turn on YouTube and all of the people, the tech people that I follow, they're like, they're at CES and they have great coverage. And that part's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, they had a separate, I went on a media badge, but that a separate level badge for content creators. Right. So that if you didn't have like a credential from a media publication, you could still go and have a content creator badge. And they had unlike any B I didn't go to it, but they had. Two days before the official show started that were just media days and I think that it wasn't the show floor wasn't open But it was I think separate demos of like companies in a confined space that wanted to like kind of demo their new products right that was where like I saw stuff going around online of the like The Roomba vacuum, but they had the robot arm that would like pop out and like move the sock out of the way That was like awesome. It was cool. Yeah, that was like a clip. That's kind of going everywhere. Yeah, and If I go again, that would probably be more useful to go to because the show floor was so busy that it's really hard to kind of see anything and kind of figure out what's new. What am I looking at? But I found the most interesting things was I was kind of trying to find like off the radar, weird, smaller products or companies. And that was the Venetian Hall, but they're Basement floor was where all of the like little tiny startup booths. Yeah. Yeah. The low budget. Yeah. Like I can't afford it. Right. I'm trying to scrape together my money to come here. And, but they have cool, interesting products. So that was where I saw a lot of more. We've got some videos up of a creative focus products, like a Neural Labs or like a hand control, basically like Apple Vision Pro gestures, but you can do it on any way I saw it on your LinkedIn. Yes. So that one was a cool one. They're like a Minority Report. Yeah. I can control a computer. I was waiting for the gestures. Yeah. They're trying to build it. Yeah. They're in the basement. Some other kind of creator, like microphone type stuff. Some motion tracker things. They're all like in this basement level of the, like literally underground. I missed it. I wasn't there long enough. Yeah. Yeah. CES. So I don't know if you remember during the pandemic, 2020, 2021, there was. This thing going around where it's like, do we even need CES? Right. Do we still need trade shows? Yeah. Right. And at the time I was like, huh, maybe there aren't just because for all of the jobs I've had I've had to go to Vegas many times a year for many trade shows. And I was a little burnt out. I was like, okay, yeah, maybe we don't need CES. But now going back this year, I'm like, absolutely. We need CES as, as much of a zoo as it is there. I met. So many people that I haven't seen in a long time. I met Haas for the first time in person. I saw products that like the Pixomondo AKIRA system in person. Yeah, we'll talk about it in a second. Yeah, like, of course, we need it. Um, is it a hassle? Yes. Can we do without it? Yeah, perhaps. But is it a nice to have? Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's good. I think the face to face seeing people, I mean, yeah, it was the first time I met Ally at disguise in person. And yeah we've emailed like a bunch over the years, but now we can finally like, you know, see face to face. Like, yes, we're humans. Yes, we're like, we can talk about other stuff. Yeah. And I'm sure you and me do a lot of zoom calls, a lot of Google Hangout calls, Microsoft Teams calls, and we yearn for you know, actual physical. Interactions and the CES provides that. Yeah. Yeah. And also you can, you can see the footage, you can see the stuff, but actually like, can I be there or see it in person? The scope, the scale. Yeah. I feel like I'm thinking that one company that I feel like has shifted since the pandemic was black magic a bit because I don't know how much was on your radar. Cause this was more of a media thing, but maybe they would. They have a huge booth compared to CES, their booth is like midsize after looking at the like Panasonic booth and the other booths at CES, like yeah, but Blackmagic has like the biggest booth there, but they would have on the other side of their booth was they like sort of press area where they would have the new products in a quieter area. But before the show, the show opens at. 10 at 9 a. m. I don't know. They had some deal. They would let people in a back door for their own press conference before the show officially opened and they would reveal all the new products there for the year. Okay. This was pre 2020. Okay. And then 2020 they started doing their long like live stream press conferences. Uh, and now they just do that still. They haven't gone back to, we're going to like do a big reveal in person at the thing. They just post the video up like the day before any B. And it's like, I guess that works. Yeah, they're, they're, I mean, black magic is tending to a global audience, right? Like so much of their sales probably comes from Asia. Um, you know, a lot of the regions that really can't afford like ARRI ALEXA or something, you know I could see that. I'm a huge fan of Blackmagic. Yeah. And every year they tend to up themselves. Like they're never, the defense of not doing their press conference was because I think last year their video, their pre NAB video was like, Two hours or two hours of like all the 2110 updates, the resolve updates, the stuff in resolve is amazing. Yeah, that's great. And they're clever too, because they call it a neural engine. And so I feel like they sort of have steered away from calling it AI and being like, Oh, it's AI to base was like, it's AI, but they just call it something else. And it's, it's working very clever. It's not on anybody's radar. Adobe is on everyone's radar. But they are not on anyone's radar. Yeah. Speaking of AI, I mean the NVIDIA keynote by Jensen's amazing. Yeah. Did you go to it in person or no, you're in there. Okay. Yeah. I was, I was watching the live stream. Yeah. Yeah. Is it, I mean, they're building the infrastructure and the highway for the revolution. Right. Yeah. And they just keep putting out new stuff and the new, the digital computer. Yeah. That's a small super computer. Yeah. So you can train your own models on your desk. A little Mac mini AI machine. That's crazy. That's wild. That's going to be interesting. Dude, they're really democratizing it. I think the missing link is the application layer. So they have like. Obviously the wafer up to the compute and even the drivers and the libraries and the applications, you know, that's where, you know, like a Midjourney is an application and stuff like that. If they can own that stack too, then NVIDIA would really be like a vertically integrated solution. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they do have omniverse, they do have frameworks and stuff. It feels like to really leverage NVIDIA, you still are missing like a thin layer that the users can really leverage and use very, very easily. Yeah. I feel like there's still a bit of the backend and need another program. I mean, it's maybe, I don't know, maybe it's part of their day. Yeah, it is. Of course, They piss off all their partners and stuff like that. It's like, what does focus on the hardware and you build stuff on top of them? Or maybe it's up to the software giants like Adobe or whoever to build them, you know, but I would imagine Nvidia has the resources to do the entire thing. Um, yeah, I'm sure they do. We did say it was interesting at CES. I mean, they have this huge keynote at the beginning of the show. No booth. No booth. No booth. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so like, I want to see that line. It's like, show me the digits. Show me the computer in a little glass case or something. Or just have a local model running on it and do something real time with it. Yeah. Yeah. It was just, yeah, it was like, yeah. It was like if Blackmagic did a presentation before NAB, but then yeah, they weren't there. It was like, right. Like, yeah, no, no. I completely agree. I don't know if they've ever had a booth or not. Like, I don't know about enough history of CS of like what their presence is, but yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Big Keynote. And then. AMD had a booth and yeah, and uh, you know, AMD is also making CPUs and GPUs and stuff. And I think the story they have to tell is we have the hardware and we have the drivers and we have the firmware in the middle layer. How do you actually benefit from it? And that's, that's the hard story to craft and then, you know, sell correctly. Yeah. Hardware product wise stuff. We saw. Yeah. I think probably the biggest reveal in the professional filmmaking, definitely virtual production space was the PXO ACURA. Oh yeah. Yeah. That thing's amazing. So what'd you think of that? Oh, I loved it. It was so over engineered. It looked like something out of Iron Man, you know, like Tony Stark himself designed it. I didn't expect the wheels to spin. And that to me was the, I've seen motion plates before, you know, they usually have Six axes or six controllers, right? So you can do this and this pan, tilt, roll, whatever. So that, that part of it is nothing new. Like they've been putting vehicles on motion plates for a long time. The part that's new, the wheel spinning is new. To be able to pre program all the bumps and the curves and then replay it back. Like have a separate driving, right? Actually, yeah. They'll clarify if you didn't see what it was. If you didn't see PXO's AKURA. It is a dry, it is a vehicle simulator, driving simulator. It's a vehicle motion picture simulator. Yeah. For virtual production. Absolutely. You could put a full size car on it. It's a big platform. You can put a vehicle. You could put a speedboat on it. Instead you could put a speedboat or a boat. Or like half of a helicopter or something. Yeah. Synced with the LED wall. They didn't have it on display, but they said it also works with the techno crane so you can have, yeah, you have your moving camera programmed with your moving rig, vehicle rig programmed with the background, all three in conjunction. You could do crazy dynamic vehicle shots. And that's exactly what virtual production needs because so much of driving driving plate shoots which is a majority of virtual production. As you know, I think something like 75 percent of it is driving plates is done on the floor. Right. You just drive the car into the studio. It's on the floor. Yeah. And then because you're limited by the wheels not spinning, the car not moving, the shot, the shot selections are limited. You're doing closeups. You're doing the one over the windshield or the one in the back. And so the two shot, yes, the glass reflections. Exactly. So if you have a car chase with two cars, you know, you're not doing that. You're doing that on a green screen or on the road, the PXO ACURA, I think will, if it, if it truly starts to. Get into the hands of a lot of stages, which I hope it'll bring a lot of green screen, blue screen vehicle work back into VP, especially some of the wider shots where you can see the wheels and you see the whole profile of the car, things like that. I think the cura really has the power to bring back to VP. Mm hmm. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Is there enough to justify enough process shots enough car shots to kind of justify this? I mean, I imagine it's a big investment as a big build out. Yeah for this huge rig Are there enough of these type of shots for them to yeah out there? There are some stages that are thriving doing just driving plate work I would imagine They would probably there's probably no more than 20 to 50 stages like that in the world, a small number, but they could all benefit from this this amazing piece of engineering. Yeah. I mean, and then we started talking about it, but it also had a separate driving rig. Yeah. So someone could drive in a video game basically, and program. The movements I have the car. Yeah, I wouldn't complicate it. Like it's a nice to have the separate rig. All I would do if it was me designing it is I would have some templatized motions motion tracks and okay, I want to be on a bumpy off road. I want to be on the four or five freeway. I want to be on a, um PCH highway going side to side, just like five to 10 different tracks of motion. And then that's good enough for most people, most shoots. Yeah. I feel like most of the driving stuff, it's like not the driving. That's not complicated. It's the programming, the camera and what kind of movie do you want with the camera in the background versus exactly. Cinematography. Unless you're doing like a chase scene or something, you need some specific type of driving. Fast and Furious, you need to program every curve and everything, but for the majority of the driving play shots, probably not. Yeah. But either way, it's a win. For a company to a half the vision be actually put resources behind it to build it and then see bring it to see us have it working have the world take a photo of it. I mean, that shows dedication to virtual production. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that was a big part of their booth of Sony's booth. Yeah. And yeah, I was surprised to see it there. Yeah, I'm surprised the Sony car wasn't on the rig and it was a jeep. Like the car was down the hall. You know, the, the Sony, um. I forgot it also has a similar name, like Akila or something like that, but I would have put the Sony car on there. Yeah. You'd be in charge of their branding. Did you see anything else? And see yesterday you were there from like a day or so. Yeah. The, the, the Disguise Nikon booth was really cool. Yeah. And that was a demo of the mobile kit from disguise. Yeah. So that is a system in a in a box that's on wheels that you could take anywhere around the world. That is the the next iteration, the next phase of virtual production hardware is you're not. integrating all the different components anymore, it's already integrated for you, you know, it's like am I going to make a cookie using flour, sugar, egg, you know, or can I just buy a cookie mix and just take that with me? So wherever if I'm going camping, I just add water and I bake it or whatever. So that's it's going towards that. It's not just disguise. I think other yeah. Manufacturers are also, they have similar, I think view has something very similar as well. Yeah. I've been doing a lot more mobile setups, really good for the industry. Again, we need to simplify the tech and we need to make the tech scalable and templatizable. So everybody has access to the same type of equipment. Yeah, that was called demo to see. Yeah. And then they were running live broadcast, set up with motion graphics and stuff. Mm-hmm . Have a crazy storm. Yeah. With a lot of integration with that. The Unreal. Mark Roberts the, the LT smaller robot. Yep. MIMIK lights integrated. Yes. I believe. Yeah. Yeah. The, the Kino Flo. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, we wanna see all of that.'cause, you know, it's not just about a server or a box or, you know, a light, it's about accumulation, the, the whole thing. Mm-hmm . Yeah. It's great. Anything else you see? Um, yeah, not, yeah, that's the thing. I saw some other artists comparing it to like NAB or so I really didn't see it. There really wasn't nothing really camera wise. Even consumer end. Cause um, I was wondering too, it's like, well, where's the line between pro and consumer ever since we've started shooting stuff with like DSLR is something like that line mirrorless camera is the line of like what you can do has sort of blurred. See anything new there? Yeah. The part of NAB that's the B is the broadcasting. That stuff is really. Professional and at the highest end, right? Like you're talking about a grass valley system or a raw system. Those are like hundreds of like millions of dollars sometimes. Yeah. That would never be a T. S. No, no, of course not. No. Yeah. But I didn't even, I was there too. I was like, Oh, we're going to see more AI and hardware. We saw a little bit of that. Not as much as I thought, not a lot of augmented reality. Like nothing that was like, Oh, wow, this is like a huge, I expected more a vision pro related stuff. Not a lot of that. Yeah, it wasn't. Yeah, it was like everything was a little bit incremental. Nothing that was like, yeah, wow. Amazing. Yeah, right. I saw a few companies that are usually at NAB and I feel like the conversation was always like, what are you doing here? Yeah. Yeah tilt I think cream source and was cream source. Uh, and. Was DJI there? I can't remember the other name, but it was they all parted up on a booth. Oh man, I'm such a fan of DJI stuff. I didn't see them. Okay. Insta360 was there. Okay. Yeah. You know, why weren't, why wouldn't DJI have been there? I mean, they had a lot of consumer products. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they were. I didn't see it. It was, yeah, I think it's huge. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Maybe perhaps CES is just more expensive now. Maybe the booth prices have gone up or something. Could be that too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was fun to go to, I don't know if I'll go to again, definitely. Not a replacement for NAB at all. But you have the press pass. Yeah, I mean, if I'm around, I'll take, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for my free press badge. Are you going back, are you going to NAB this year? Yeah, Okay. Yeah, that's a good one. That's the biggest one. I'll see you there. I will see you there. Yeah. I hope I'll see you before that. Yeah, exactly. That's so LA. Yeah. I'll see you outside of LA. Yeah, yeah. Well, Cole, I think this has been fun. Enjoy chatting about what's going on with you. Yeah. Always pleasure to chat with you, Joey. And I, let's do this again. How about that? I appreciate it. For sure. Let's do it again. Cool. Yeah. Well, thanks for watching. Uh, for more info, we've got the newsletter vp land. com and we've got the YouTube channel, which actually just passed 10, 000 subscribers. Oh, congrats, man. Milestone. Yeah. All right. Is this video going to be on there? It'll be on there. Yes. So you're watching it there now. So if you haven't subscribed, subscribe now. Uh, thanks for watching and we'll catch you in the next episode.