Talking Robots Circa 2023

[Nate North]

This script is just awful, I wrote it in 5 minutes and just went plunged ahead because I didn't want to spend more than a day on this. Just for clarity, the voice AI used here is an external tech, and was not developed by SP in any way. I just signed up for the new voice service, and then added it's output into our existing pipeline.

Every 6 months or so, I check in on the progress of many different technology tracks, in a rotation. Unfortunately a cursory glance or a youtuber's word isn't good enough for my purposes, so each time I actually build the technology (typically from modular code segments from research papers), or just rent it in this case, and run it through a use case scenario, such as building this video.

To simplify this dumb script, The automatic animation isn't good, but could be useful for youtube videos and comedy. The next gen AI voices are now so good that they could replace about half of the human voice actors. That's up from zero percent last year.

Anyway, I find this video a bit creepy. Not just from watching my head talk in another voice, but more because of the strange Wallace and Gromit teeth it draws in when it opens my mouth. (mouth was closed in the picture I gave it)

On another level though, it's kind of amazing how far it's come already.

The fake characters are from the SP pipe, so this does show what they'll look like, they will just move way more realistically like the cat in the hybrid video.

 

[Nate North]

Kind of surprised that absolutely no one was interested by this. Am I the only Indie filmmaker in the world who can't make films because there aren't enough people around to play the characters? Is it as intellectual giant indiewire proclaims, and there are only a tiny sliver of filmmakers operating without millions of dollars upfront? Like I'm the last one left? Maybe if I can't help you guys out, you can help me out. Just show me how to do the math. I need to hire 30 actors, and pay for travel and studio time, and then recover the expenses by winning a film festival with a $2500 prize, and the entry fee, travel and hotel cost $950. So........ carry the 2........ I don't think it works. So...... wouldn't filmmakers need some kind of workaround?

 

[Feutus Lapdance]

I have seen some intresting stuf.

I'm interested in how to use these tools with each other. I imagine we can feed IA Olivier Ledroits Requiem and connect it to ultimaker to make new gaming miniatures. But even the new generations of art generators could help make consistent storyboards or comic books. Going to experiment with this. Perhaps I'm gonna remake De kammer van Morgen. The movie I made in 2015

 

[Nate North]

The second one is really well done. I've been thinking about doing some "pop" pieces when I start the real channel off, just to grow it faster. It's a lot of work to create something like that one. Probably a week full time, or more. He's basically using the exact same solution chain I am, except he can only move the camera a few percent of a view angle. Basically the AI breaks down exactly where he cuts the clips in the movement scenes.

If you need any help getting set up, I'll be glad to help you out. It can be relatively simple if you just want a basic picture that doesn't move, and you can do this one little talking trick pretty easily, but if you really get into it, it's many months before you'd really have a control panel built and understand what all the controls do. That's just for Stable Diffusion only, but you already know editing and music, so you'd be able to do everything except the 3d scenes.

You'd probably be able to do something like the first video after just a week or so, since this is just photo manipulation on the gpu, driven from an improved version of the same code I was using 2 years ago in that first lip sync video. It's a code module called wav2lip that some university put out as a research paper years back, and someone linked it to one of Nvidia's APIs associated with their new 3d productivity portal, and now it can do a basic job of lip syncing to an audio source and eligible clip in a click after setup. Just FYI, if you want to make something like one of the above videos, a lot of manual compositing is required after that click, so be forewarned. I'm currently working on automating all these steps one at a time, except for creative stuff like art design and writing.

 

[mlesemann]

Kind of surprised that absolutely no one was interested by this. Am I the only Indie filmmaker in the world who can't make films because there aren't enough people around to play the characters?

I have far too many friends who are actors to want to replace them. For me, the best way to address the "not enough people" issue is to limit the number of characters in my screenplays. But yeah, I understand that doesn't work for some types of stories.

 

[Nate North]

I'd love to have all real voice actors, but it's just a logistics and finance problem. I don't think this is a replacement for anyone serious about their craft, but at the speed it's improving, it's not long before indie animators can have thriving cities of people chatting away as their protagonists traverse the world.

Crowds and extras are a real weak point in indie films. Dinner with Andre may not need them (actually it did have some) but it's really noticeable when you go to a film festival, and there are 23 films in a row with 3 people in them.

I think in live action this voice tech could be used for phone calls, tv ads, and in conjunction with deepfake, to actually costume the same few actors into multiple roles, where you couldn't even tell it was the same person. Interesting times.

 

[mlesemann]

For my sake, I hope not.

For your sake, I hope so.

 

[sfoster]

Kind of surprised that absolutely no one was interested by this. Am I the only Indie filmmaker in the world who can't make films because there aren't enough people around to play the characters? Is it as intellectual giant indiewire proclaims, and there are only a tiny sliver of filmmakers operating without millions of dollars upfront? Like I'm the last one left? Maybe if I can't help you guys out, you can help me out. Just show me how to do the math. I need to hire 30 actors, and pay for travel and studio time, and then recover the expenses by winning a film festival with a $2500 prize, and the entry fee, travel and hotel cost $950. So........ carry the 2........ I don't think it works. So...... wouldn't filmmakers need some kind of workaround?

I don't know much about making money from films -- but I do know that the process doesn't typically involve a PRIZE and rather revolves around SELLING your product.

 

[Nate North]

I've sold or been involved in selling a number of feature films, on Amazon, on Filmbaby, etc. Like a half dozen features that were finished, packaged and marketed. Trust me, the 2500 or 5,000 prize is the more substantial payout to consider.

A crew hired me on to a 160,000 film a few years back, and I think they made back 3,500. I got paid more for doing their opening credits than they made from the movie. Basically, nothing ever sells without marketing, and most indie films just refuse to market at all, and the festival prizes end up realistically being most of the income.

In example, my last film that took 5 months, was partially shot on RED, was 90 minutes long, and required travel covering half of a state, I got paid about 12k, on a 10 k investment, in 10 dollar increments, over 3 years. There is a game show where you can win 25 grand by eating a bowl of spaghetti with worms in it faster than the other guy. They pay you the full amount on the spot. Film festivals are the actual revenue center of the indie film world. They are the only ones that will pay you, because the festival organizers are the only people actually making money in the entire space. The director of Blair Witch is shooting a 2 person play on a cell phone in 2021, and Kevin Smith is on youtube this month having a mental breakdown with no new movie in sight.

Still, a lot of people (or so I used to think) like me really want to make films, and explore the possibilities of the artform, and that drive overwhelms what would typically be a non starter business arena. Like I said, none of this makes financial sense until you factor in the trust funds. I've seen a group of Hyundai executives leave a tip at a Vegas restaurant that was larger than the highest microbudget film net I've ever seen. That's a few waiters making an indie filmmakers annual revenue in a single hour. This should at least partially explain my bi weekly rants about how criminally underpaid creatives are. The writers are going on strike for being underpaid and underappreciated again, and these are people that make 8x as much as the average microbudget director/writer/stedicam operator/marketing manager, transportation manager, etc. I don't mean individually, I mean one guy doing every job at once with no benefits or retirement for 15k a year.

 

[sfoster]

Trust me, the 2500 or 5,000 prize is the more substantial payout to consider.
Film festivals are the actual revenue center of the indie film world. They are the only ones that will pay you.

You make it sound so impossible and yet we have someone on this very board, Mara, doing what you claim is so impossible, making indie films and getting them on platforms and getting some money back in return.

 

[Nate North]

You make it sound so impossible and yet we have someone on this very board, Mara, doing what you claim is so impossible, making indie films and getting them on platforms and getting some money back in return.

I don't know the details, and I'm not asking, but I strongly suspect that Mara is in a similar situation to the last 300 people I saw do similar things. Hopefully not.

To Mara, if you did actually make back 2-3x the budget of your film, I'm sure it would be encouraging to others to hear a success story.

The best I've done in the past, was around 1.3x gross return. That was around $2 an hour calculated retroactively in most cases.

I'm only going on my experience, which has overwhelmingly been watching people drop 90 or 160 grand on a film that ends up netting -$73,000 (that's a minus sign, not a dash before the number)

Here is a film I was involved with around 2011. The director was a real estate agent, and sold a high end property one year. He put the entire 250k into this film, and got it about half produced. He spent the next 2-3 years getting it out of editing limbo, and then another year landing some placements. Placements are not deals, that's not a Lionsgate brand at the bottom, it's "Lionsgate Store" meaning that you can borrow their name for a film that isn't horrible, in exchange for a cut of the profits.

I think he's almost made his original investment back now. His primary income is cinema lens rentals, in a huge metropolitan city with thousands of potential corporate clients.

 

[mlesemann]

I have not yet made back the budget of my films but I AM confident that I will over time.
And yes, I get closer every month.

But honestly, I'll have no regrets even if I don't because I told stories that I'm proud of. That's why I made them.

Yes, it's a luxury to be able to say that, and it's only because I worked in other fields previously.

And I'm guardedly optimistic that my next film (co-writing & co-producing with a friend/colleague) will get funded because of contacts that we've made. More on that if/when it happens

 

[Nate North]

I have not yet made back the budget of my films but I AM confident that I will over time.
And yes, I get closer every month.

But honestly, I'll have no regrets even if I don't because I told stories that I'm proud of. That's why I made them.

Yes, it's a luxury to be able to say that, and it's only because I worked in other fields previously.

And I'm guardedly optimistic that my next film (co-writing & co-producing with a friend/colleague) will get funded because of contacts that we've made. More on that if/when it happens

Lol, you answered my question before I hit the post button, that's fast!

 

[mlesemann]

It's also worth mentioning that it's BECAUSE of my produced features - and the fact that they're available for people to check out on many platforms - that I've been able to build a solid 2nd (3rd?) career as a screenwriter for hire/ghostwriter and script consultant.

 

[sfoster]

I have not yet made back the budget of my films but I AM confident that I will over time.
And yes, I get closer every month.

But honestly, I'll have no regrets even if I don't because I told stories that I'm proud of. That's why I made them.

Yes, it's a luxury to be able to say that, and it's only because I worked in other fields previously.

And I'm guardedly optimistic that my next film (co-writing & co-producing with a friend/colleague) will get funded because of contacts that we've made. More on that if/when it happens

That's unfortunate, but you did make more than a $2,500 prize though?
Sorry if thats overstepping I was just intending to defend this point against nate

 

[Nate North]

You make it sound so impossible and yet we have someone on this very board, Mara, doing what you claim is so impossible, making indie films and getting them on platforms and getting some money back in return.

It's not impossible, but it's incredibly hard, and legitimate wins with no "backstory" are incredibly rare. I'm not trying to be depressing, but I do have a moral obligation to put up signs at the edge of death valley that say "You will die if your car breaks down out here". Look it up, people like me go out there and make sure those signs are up every year, because they keep finding skeletons in cars out there.

I'm always looking for good news to give you guys, and there has been kind of a lot of it lately, in terms of democratizing films, which you will remember was my main thing from day one. I get that no one wants to learn python or UE, or do these really difficult things that take years, but there really is good news for creatives that are willing to undergo, lol, a marathon of severe mental pain and frustration. Within a few years, this whole indie film thing will be more possible than it's been in 30 years. A new golden age, at least for a moment in time. Some enterprising person should probably try to set up for the moment of opportunity way in advance. Throw together some type of organization that capitolizes on this once in a generation opportunity. Do years of setup and research, and get ahead of the curve, snatching up pole position in the race of a lifetime. Oh, if we could only find a person like that. I'm certain that the support would be overwhelming, and not just a constant grind rewarded with a tape loop of crickets.

I've pitched many times the case studies that DID have regular positive outcomes, and been mostly ignored. Basically if your mentality is a small business, with a talented core team of like minded individuals that put in sweat equity (that means working like a professional with no paycheck in sight, and all the great ones did it) towards a focused shared goal.

You'll notice that I don't post many dire warnings about becoming an indie game dev, or starting an animation studio that supplements it's income with corporate projects so it can make an anime series, or people that make tv commercials (I used to, it pays the rent), or basically anyone who -

Does case studies, and creates a rational business model with a bottom line that works

Works as a coordinated team with at least a few people. It's really most effective with complimentary skills. EG, I hate social media, so my view numbers and networking reach are stunningly low. It would likely be different if I was tag teaming the issue with someone very enthusiastic about social media, who had experience with that system where my blind spot is.

The whole Save Point thing is kind of patterned after the 300 strategy. The tech paradigm shift I saw coming years ago is arriving now. That is represented by the narrow gap in the rock, and the shield wall. It's a rare moment of underdog leverage, and if we all hit it hard and unified, we could likely achieve what I keep saying is nearly impossible.

That's exactly what got me so excited about the idea in the first place.

 

[Nate North]

That's unfortunate, but you did make more than a $2,500 prize though?

Look, I started into this with the same confirmation bias. It was really a long depressing trek to finally arrive at reality. I've seen others making millions from indie film, so it's possible. That's where it starts. So I worked for years under this assumption, cobbled together from incomplete shreds of evidence. Blair Witch "Was made for 25 grand and grossed 200 million". That was all I needed to hear to "Know" that this was a contest I needed to win. And of course it was possible, I just saw this guy do it, or so I thought.

While the studio heads were collecting 7 figure bonuses from TBWP, the filmmakers made very little. Less than my boss in California made for "answering the phone when someone wanted to use the convention hall" that same year. But I THOUGHT that they had made 30 million dollars or so, having such a huge and famous success. The Good Will Hunting story is crazy as well. I THOUGHT I was seeing these guys at the top of the world, making millions for a legitimate creative effort, but in reality, they each made much less than a plumber in my small town for writing that. I saw that movie in the theater.

Again, people are winning at some creative thing every day, but most of them had won before they started, like virtually every pop star, and the rest are a rare breed who got organized, teamed up, worked hard, and didn't quit when the going got rough. That's the tale of the tape from my perspective.

I do think your YA wizard novel is a good idea that makes sense. Hopefully you'll knock it out of the park and become an indie film investor, lol. I have an amazing pitch for you whenever it happens, lol.

 

[sfoster]

Honestly it's hard for me to believe people still even buy books.

 

[Nate North]

I still buy books, and I'll buy a copy of your book.

It would not surprise me however, if we live in the last generation where a fiction writer can make it from a cold start. You'll have occasional breakout talents, but that mid tier is going to get really really oversaturated in a half decade, and we'll be looking at another lira situation over there.

Honestly the only real solution that I see for future artists is UBI, which would mitigate the crushing vicious cycles that have created the current creative income draught. (only people with money can borrow money to make money, or else wage slave treads water)

 

[mlesemann]

That's unfortunate, but you did make more than a $2,500 prize though?

Yes