We are on the cusp of the most profound disruption of information, communications and the ways we share our stories.
By Michael Caporale
Private: SORA AI puts the Writer in the Driver’s Seat of Filmmaking
Michael Caporale has spent an entire life, both as a student and as a career professional, behind the lens of a camera. So it is with over fifty years practicing his craft, that I have chosen to interview him regarding the introduction of the AI program SORA, and what it will mean to the production community and audiences alike.
Michael earned a B.F.A. from Syracuse University in 1971 while also studying Photography at their Newhouse school of Journalism. He went on to attain a Masters in Fine Arts in 1973 from the University of Illinois where he studied painting and photography.
Whether it was as a Director of feature films, or as a Panasonic consultant training National Geographic staff as they transitioned from film to HD, or the many other companies such as Lockheed Martin, Versus, the Director’s Guild of New Zealand and the Democratic National Convention of 2008, he has left his mark on the medium. Michael made the first ever feature film shot on a VariCam in 2001 and travelled from Anchorage to Nome filming the Iditarod for Panasonic in 2005. In 1989 he created the first all-digital edit facility in the Midwest, “Finis,” and was instrumental in the development of AVID, the first Apple MacIntosh edit system. His many skills, including photography, filmmaking and writing qualify him to speak on the subject of AI and the future of filmmaking.
Steven Jay:
“You were inspired by a story about a new technology called SORA and the comments by the actor, Ashton Kutcher on it being a game changer. We’re calling on you due to your extensive background in many sectors of the creation process. What do you believe this means for the future of filmmaking and the future of storytelling.”
Michael Caporale:
In the story (LINK HERE) Ashton Kutcher spoke about seeing several short, fantastical and very imaginative clips created by Sora. These scenes are virtually impossible to film in the real world, and Ashton was predicting that soon Sora would be able to make entire feature films this way.
Now this is where it stirs up a big controversy for filmmakers because filmmakers will be saying to themselves:
“What happens to my job? I’m an actor you don’t need me anymore?” or “I’m a director, I’m a soundman, I’m a composer I’m a producer… whatever…I’m a prop person, I’m a wardrobe person, I’m a caterer…”
What happens to all those jobs? And what’s going to happen with SORA as it’s adopted by Independents and large studios alike?
It is just like other technological revolutions. It’s going to find a niche and it’s going to find a means of replacing certain types of films and not replacing other types of films because there will always be room for the large-scale director like Christopher Nolan who’s known for making 10 full films that are larger than life.
Those kinds of films really don’t require AI technology but I can predict some forms of filmmaking where the technology will definitely become a player. In the animation field… if you consider animated films there is a style, a genre of animated filmmaking called Anime which comes from Japan but it’s largely adopted in the United States and it’s now being copied in other countries. If you look at most Anime movies there is a recurring theme. They’re all dystopian and they all revolve around heroic characters generally young people.
And AI, because of the fact that anime is very often digital, it has a niche. It has a strong foothold in the anime world to become that. The tools are all available for making animated features in AI. What that means is that there will be fewer anime artists working and more storytellers working because of what is happening in the world of Sora and other forms of AI.
Sora holds the most wonderful possibilities, promising that AI will become the ultimate partner in your team making feature films. It is the perfect collaborator for developing storylines, for developing characters, for creating environments and atmospheres and for utilizing all of the elements that go into a film including the scenery, digital extras, sound, music, digital lighting and effects and more.
Most notably some of the most expensive and difficult scenes to create in a feature film today are large crowds. Thousands of armored extras, say in a medieval battle scene, with horses and weapons, are costly and prohibitive. Not so in Sora.
Software exists even now, that’s being used in Hollywood for some time to create digital crowds. It’s a technology that was first popularized by Peter Jackson and a team of his designers and engineers at his workshop in New Zealand. The crowd creation software is called Massing and so there are no crowd scenes for the most part in a film like “LORD OF THE RINGS.” You might have a thousand extras but a hundred thousand soldiers all made with this technology.
There is another element of filmmaking where AI is really important and becomes a game changer, and that’s lighting.
I can’t tell you how many people are on the set and how many people are in the production office and how many people are involved in just managing the lights. Every light has a different purpose. Every light has a different need and many films today are still using incandescent lighting, but in my experience, in the past three years all of the films that I worked on and all the lighting equipment that I own, are LED-based which means that every single fixture that I own can be controlled from a distance with my iPhone or iPad and I can use that to set the color the color temperature the brightness the contrast any kind of effect that I want, and all of my LED fixtures also have the ability to be controlled by an Alexa board or I should say a DMX board.
In case I want to program the lights to flash on and off, if there’s a storm approaching or things like that, what AI allows us to do, is it allows us to replace the Gaffers, it allows us to replace the grips, who managed to set up the lights.
It becomes a monumental assistant to the Director of Photography who is also the Lighting Director. Now that’s an important aspect for filmmakers to consider because it just demonstrates what can happen when AI is introduced to filmmaking. There is still room for collaboration.
There’s one more aspect I think that should be discussed at this moment. and that is the actual characterization that takes place with actors AI today is not sufficiently sophisticated to replace the actor because the actor brings not just the voice the facial expressions the body movements the slight nuances the changes in their line readings that make a character and many in the audience.
And many people who see to this will say well you don’t need those subtleties? But you do because it those subtleties that make us care about the character it’s those subtleties that make us feel something for the character.
If we don’t feel something for the character then the movie isn’t really successful on an emotional level and movies are all about emotions.
It’s not about just the story and it’s not about just the effects it’s about caring what happens to the character. If we don’t care what happens to the character the movie falls flat.
And then it’s just a demonstration of the technical skills of the filmmaker. For that reason alone, Sora and AI will not replace the actor initially, but will over time, as it becomes more sophisticated and responsive.
Currently. the actor is paramount in every single film. A-list actors are the largest line items in any film’s budget. There’s no other way around that AI can replace every other aspect of the filmmaking process and not the actor leaving only the writer as essential and that’s my position.
Well, I think you really need to understand the background of the person is who’s speaking, you know I think it’s important for the audience recognize that I’m just not spouting opinions from nowhere.
I am a very, very knowledgeable person when it comes to film. I spent nearly 50 years making films and 15 years before that learning all of the aspects of filmmaking so I’ve been around cameras for my whole life and I can tell you with some authority that the only thing that AI can’t replace is the writer, but the other thing that’s very important to note is that there are elements of filmmaking that are called the intangible elements.
Those intangibles are what everybody in the audience brings to the film and those are elements that make you care about a film or not care about a film. and I think that AI is going to have to develop a huge learning curve before it can get to a point where it can replace that and as an audience member you know what makes a film exciting and interesting and what makes you leave the theater with a warm feeling or a or a very unsettled feeling depending on the outcome of the film and I don’t think AI is quite at that level yet.
About Michael Caporale
Michael has worked in various capacities on feature films, most notably as a Director of Photography but also as Producer and Editor, Soundman and Digital Imaging technician. Since 1994, he has written 17 screenplays, three novels two cookbooks, three biographies and a book on current politics.
As a contract consultant for Panasonic Broadcast for the better part of 10 years he created all the scene files to program the VariCam and other cameras for different “looks.” These files, read from an SD card inserted into the camera, would program the way the camera performed.
“I also functioned as their Digital Imaging technician for the VariCam’s creator, Toguchi, on a trip to New Zealand where he and I had a shootout with Sony and their CineAlta camera for the Director’s Guild of New Zealand. In a blind test, we prevailed.”
Caporale managed the camera and served with Mr Toguchi, the inventor of the camera. In a side by side test with the VariCam vs. the Sony CineAlta and an ARRI BLIV film camera, the Director’s Guild members voted the Panasonic VariCam was the winner.
Subsequently, he traveled to Anchorage Alaska to train the Versus crew and while traveling the 1200-mile sled dog race, the Iditarod, by small plane and sleeping in Eskimo villages, he filmed it for Panasonic.
“Before I my adventure, I spent two weeks in Anchorage training the Versus crew on their new digital cameras.”
Previously they had been using videotape-based cameras that in the severe, sub-zero cold weather of the of Iditarod trail, the videotape would break, transport rollers would freeze and the lubricating grease would get so thick that the cameras would fail. With the new digital cameras none of those problems existed
“Weeks later, ensconced in Nome I filmed the finish of that arduous race, establishing the viability of a digital solution to filming in adverse weather.”
As National Geographic transitioned from film to digital, Caporale trained theitr camera crew and producers on their new VariCams. Notably, he also trained Lockheed Martin, The U.S. Senate, The Democratic Convention Committee of 2008, and the Mayo Clinic among many others.
But the highlight of his career with Panasonic Broadcast is remembered by his manager as his contributions to understanding how to shoot 3-D with their newly developed revolutionary, small hand-held camera.
Every day it seems that our world is rocketing into the future at breakneck speed. Those comfortable with a comprehensible traditional life may wish things would remain the same, or even return to a time past, while those more adventurous may well welcome each, and every change as an opportunity for growth. Certainly, there is comfort as well as stability in “the known,” and change inevitably carries risk and delivers uncertain outcomes.
For filmmakers, enormous changes have occurred in rapid succession, particularly since the turn of the century. The movement from film to digital and the availability of inexpensive cameras, together with the preponderance of film festivals and the ever-expanding ubiquitous YouTube, has democratized the craft and broadened communication. The iPhone and it’s replicants, together with social media, exploded the use of video to become the primary communication medium. No one is left out from participating in a medium that just a few short decades ago was the domain of a few privileged, very skilled professionals. It’s time we must ask, “Are we any better or worse off now? Did it ruin professional filmmaking or expand it?” Does democratizing the medium produce better, or just more, media–quantity or quality?
The problems with traditional filmmaking, and its joys as well, are all derived from the fact that filmmaking is a team effort. Those who have fought the battle to make a film have benefited from the struggle. It takes patience and perseverance, both objectivity and subjectivity, decisiveness and ponderance and above all, the ability to collaborate with other people. The writer needs a director who requires a producer who needs actors, locations, wardrobe, props, and a crew, just to name a few. And all this requires money, and let’s not forget, TIME. Lots of time, just to get it made.
But these many components are not the film itself, just a means to an end. If they are not the film, then one might rightfully understand that they are all expendable to the essential core of a film, and that is “story.” The only essential element of a film is story, and that makes the writer the only essential element to the production of a story. After that, to produce a film all else is a matter of circumstance and serendipity.
To understand this is to embrace AI. With the advent of “SORA,” and as Ashton Kucher has justly noted, in the very near future it will be possible to make a film with only a writer, a film made just as the writer envisioned it, unadulterated by massive egos, resistant crews, financial restraints, limited talent and the ever-present, profit-incentivized gatekeepers.
Knowing this, my advice to would-be and aspiring filmmakers is to learn the craft of writing. Major in English, not filmmaking. Learn from other writers. Read all you can. Embrace history. Get political. Take a stand. Represent something good and valuable and then write your story. It won’t be long until you can put a complete screenplay in Sora and have it create a flawless movie from even the wildest imagination.
Let me speak plainly. You don’t need those other bozos. Yes, you will have missed the struggle and all its benefits, building character, learning from others, and socialization through work, and yes the tradition of just plain hard work, but if you want to make that perfect movie and you know that as it stands now you will never make another “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Apocalypse Now,” or “ET,” take heed, your time will come sooner than you ever hoped for. But for now, start planning. Get on the web and check out Sora and be ready to bathe yourself in the flood.
