HITS

Despite fear among many in the media and entertainment industry about artificial intelligence (AI), the technology can actually help filmmakers and other creative artists and storytellers achieve their visions, pioneering filmmaker Jerry Rees told the Dec. 5 Content Production Summit, presented by the Content Delivery & Storage Association (CDSA).

During the afternoon creative keynote “How AI is enabling the Storyteller’s Vision,” Rees continued the conversation on the intersection between “AI and Creativity.” The session provided attendees with insight into how multiple players come together to develop amazing AI experiences.

Best known for his Emmy-nominated 1987 animated feature film “The Brave Little Toaster” and for creating visual effects for the pioneering 1982 film “Tron,” animator, director, and one-time Disney Imagineer Rees has been an animation industry mainstay since Pete’s Dragon in 1977. He was with Walt Disney Imagineering from 2015-2020, according to his LinkedIn profile. Earlier this year, he became CDSA’s Creative in Residence.

“From the very beginning, that was the challenge: Take a stack of blank paper and create the illusion of life and have people forget they’re looking at drawings and think they’re looking at characters that have their own thoughts and feelings and individual personality,” he said in response to a question by moderator Richard Atkinson, CDSA president, at the start of the keynote.

“You can’t make generic solutions. You have to make each character seem to have its own  backstory and its own personality, its own attitude towards things,” he added. “So having it come alive in the moment has always been the key.” When an animated character comes to life and really becoming a being, “you’ll see it happen in the eyes.”

After initial praise from the creative community, “the cheers  turned to fears,” Rees went on to say. “AI was evil. The recent WGA and SAG strikes were “basically versus AI. I seem to hear about that constantly…. People that I trust and people that I love said, ‘You know what? Maybe you shouldn’t mention [AI] anymore.’ There were “people of all ages,” including “young people in their 20s telling me” not to mention the technology, he said.

The “big AI fear story – I’m sure you’ve all heard this – is that: “Avatar equals stealing my likeness. AI equals stealing my creativity. Streaming equals stealing my residuals.  And technology equals my enemy.”

But there is actually “all kinds of good news,” including “positive avatar, AI and blockchain disruptors that have arrived to make things turn for the better,” he went on to say.

Produced by MESA, the Content Production Summit was presented by Fortinet, and sponsored by Convergent Risks, Friend MTS, Amazon Studios Technology, Indee, NAGRA, EIDR, and Eluv.io, in association with CDSA and the Hollywood IT Society (HITS).