Today’s film review | Frant Gwo: Artificial intelligence opens the era of film industrialization 3.0
Special feature of 1905 film network In the past two years, generative artificial intelligence applications such as ChatGPT and Wensheng video model Sora produced by OpenAI have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, causing industry shocks. In the government work report of the two sessions in 2024, the hot word "artificial intelligence+"was also mentioned many times, and an "industrial revolution" led by scientific and technological intelligence has arrived.


The director believes that the development of artificial intelligence technology is quite rapid. In the future, with the continuous maturity of artificial intelligence technology, maybe a few people can complete the production of a movie.

This issue of "Today’s Film Review" will follow his perspective, and from the industrialization exploration of a series of films, look back on how artificial intelligence can better empower China’s film industrialization to move towards a brand-new 3.0 era.

The process of film industrialization under the development of technology
Will the arrival of the era of artificial intelligence make you feel that "the plan can’t keep up with the change"?
Frant Gwo: Yes. With the development of artificial intelligence, the technical tools applied to film production will change, and the corresponding process standards will also change. For example, during the film industrialization 1.0 period, chemical imaging and film imaging were used, and images were recorded through film; Around 2000, director Lucas used a digital camera for the first time in the filming of the fourth film, and digital imaging appeared; Nowadays, the imaging logic of film shooting is changing from digital imaging to algorithmic imaging, which opens the film industrialization 3.0 period.

Artificial Intelligence Application 1: Breaking the traditional production mode, reducing costs and increasing efficiency

Li Dan: During the filming of Wandering Earth series, you and your team made a compilation of wrong questions about the film industrialization process, so what wrong questions did you collect in the practice?
Frant Gwo: A lot, mainly management problems. The traditional crew rules and regulations apply to about 200 to 300 people, but the maximum number of people in The Wandering Earth’s filming process is more than 2,000, so it is difficult for the original system to take care of everyone. For example, the simple problem of eating, the unreasonable setting of the meal intake, will lead to some staff not getting the meal after turning on the phone, which will affect the subsequent work. But at the same time, in order to prevent filmmakers from spending too much energy outside the content creation, we decided to try to use new artificial intelligence to help complete similar mechanical, recording and sorting problems in process optimization and design.

Li Dan: The traditional film production process may go through the whole process from planning, drama, preparation, shooting, editing and later filming. What do you think will happen to the film production structure, including the composition of the crew, after the coming 3.0 era?
Frant Gwo: With the change of technology, film creation and shooting may be integrated into a parallel whole by a linear process. Our previous linear production process always needs to wait for the work results of the previous department, and the overall efficiency is not high. In the future, the production logic of movies will be transformed from "12345" series to a parallel process, so that the work of all departments will be promoted synchronously and the time cost will be saved. In the future, there are many jobs that may be "hit" in the emergence of general artificial intelligence, and they may be assembled into a creator, which also means that the platform for future creation will become wider and wider, and the possibility of creation will become more and more. In the future, irreplaceable creativity and ability will become more and more important. For example, if we have a pen and paper, everyone can write articles, so there will be good novels and mediocre articles, so in the future, everyone will fight for more personal creativity. Do you have any extraordinary ideas? Are your aesthetics and the uniqueness of creating stories touching people’s hearts? These attributes will become particularly important. On the contrary, the threshold of tools will be lowered gradually because of the application of new technologies. This is the essence of our artistic creation.

Artificial Intelligence Application 2: Improve the efficiency of conceptual design and realize efficient sample screening.

Li Dan: You once said that artificial intelligence may be divided into 24 specific application scenarios in the process of film production, so how far have you explored the potential of artificial intelligence applications in film creation?
Frant Gwo: Actually, there may be more now than then. For example, we will have a scriptwriter’s seminar. Now it is more convenient to record it completely through a directional microphone, and it will classify who said it. If we rely entirely on people to record and refine these points and summarize an outline, the staff may not sleep overnight. We are already using similar applications to help us reduce costs and increase efficiency. In this process, we will focus on the creativity itself, and some traditional mechanical recording work will be completely completed by the application of artificial intelligence.
Li Dan: In your creative process, you have tried to change people’s faces and voices through the application of artificial intelligence, and put new ways such as film preview and shooting into your creation.
Frant Gwo: In the past, many AI applications were not designed for the film industry. Film creators need to "translate" the requirements to technicians, and only by adjusting or modifying the code can they form applications that meet the requirements.
With the iterative development of artificial intelligence technology, such as the design of robots in trailers, a conceptual design team of about 10 people is needed in the traditional way, which takes about two weeks to complete. We use AI to quickly screen the sample drawings. AI first quickly generates hundreds of drawings, and we select some of them that are close to the required effect. This is repeated in a cycle until we finally form an effect drawing that meets the concept of demand, and then manually intervene to make the model. This model was finally completed in only one day.

Artificial Intelligence Application 3: Breaking the traditional split-mirror mode and improving the shooting accuracy.
Li Dan: During the production of Wandering Earth III, did our art or special effects team use some artificial intelligence technology?
Frant Gwo: The traditional view mode is to go to the scenic spot, but now we can use NeRF technology to scan it, just like "packaging" the scenic spot and putting it in a virtual environment to relocate it for shooting. There is interaction between the scene and people, which not only serves as a reference, but can be used as a bottom overlay. We can constantly improve its accuracy to match the pictures to be shot and the performances of the actors, so as to present the pictures more efficiently.

The development of artificial intelligence feeds back the creation of Wandering Earth 3
Li Dan: So how is the progress of "Little Broken Ball 3" at present?
Frant Gwo: At present, it is mainly in the stage of script, but it will soon enter the stage of art design.
Li Dan: What is moss doing?
Frant Gwo: I don’t know. Maybe I wrote a script.

Li Dan: Actually, in Wandering Earth 2, the Digital Life Plan has already involved your attitude and thinking about artificial intelligence. Nowadays, sci-fi works have gradually come into reality, so do you think that artificial intelligence will feed back your creation in Wandering Earth 3, including the design of artificial intelligence, and some thoughts about it?
Frant Gwo: We are writing a script now, and if we are not careful, we will find that a certain technical trend is written, or that the technical idea has become a reality, so we are actually imagining as much as possible on this basis to expand its boundaries. In fact, I think for artificial intelligence, you should objectively analyze what can really be used in our actual production stage, because some can reduce costs and increase efficiency, and some may waste your time and resources.

Li Dan: Speaking of the prospect of China’s film industrialization, do you have an ideal blueprint for China’s film industrialization in 2034? What was director Frant Gwo doing at that time?
Frant Gwo: I don’t know. Try hard until then. In fact, what I’ve always wanted to do is because I made a lot of mistakes when shooting the first episode and the second episode of The Wandering Earth. Therefore, we especially hope that we can systematically summarize and share the experience of The Wandering Earth series films, and help young creators in the film industry to avoid the same problems.









































