Netflix Says AI Will Make Films 10% Better. Meanwhile, New Study Reveals Bias Against AI Involvement

Netflix's Ted Sarandos reveals his strategy for AI in filmmaking, suggesting a focus on making movies "10% better" rather than just cheaper. Hosts Addy Ghani and Joey Daoud dig into what this means for production costs and Hollywood's future. Plus, surprising findings about audience perception of AI-generated stories, and the deal that gives Ryan Coogler copyright ownership of 'Sinners' after 25 years - a potential shift in studio-filmmaker power dynamics.

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In this episode of the Denoised Podcast, what Netflix thinks of AI, do people really like AI-generated stories and what Ryan Coogler's special Sinners deal means for Hollywood? Let's get into it. Hello, Addy. Welcome back, Joey. Thanks. Good to be back here another week. You see this story about a humanoid robot, half marathon in Beijing. How could I not see it? It's all over the internet. Yeah. Yeah. They ran a race with a variety of different humanoid robots. 21 robots ran along with thousands of people at a half marathon. In Beijing, the winning robot came in at two hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds. That's pretty good, right? Uh, if you compare it to a human runner, uh, I think, I don't know, average. I mean that this was a half marathon, not a marathon. Oh, half marathon at two hours is probably not that great. I mean, I'd say like decent ish. Yeah. You know, for a, uh, a casual runner. Good job on the robots, but good job on the people that had to like, basically run with the robot with a leash. And kind of keep up with them. Also, apparently there was a battery change as well. Okay. I was just gonna ask. I was like, that's great battery technology right there. Yeah. Yeah. What do we think of all this, Joey? I mean, it's just progressing, you know, like it's a humanoid thing that can move. I, I would say a marathon's not the, I don't know what it's really testing it along from durability and endurance. Yeah. And even with that, the battery power wasn't long enough to keep going, but, um, why do these things happen in China and not here? I think that's a better question. I think. Yeah. Why are we not just having, uh, fun robot marches? Uh, the closest thing we had was like deadly robots that fight each BattleBots. BattleBots. BattleBots. Yeah. Like after BattleBots, like, what, 10 years ago? We had, well, we saw the, the Vegas show. There was the Vegas show with an AI. They have a, not a dinner show, but a Vegas night show. Now that spun off from the reemergence of the TV show. But I, when I was watching it, I did feel a little like. Ai the movie when, you know, in that scene when they have like the robots like fighting each other. Yeah. And you kinda just feel bad for the robots and like watching this now after with like AI and robots and everything, I'm just like. Feel kind of bad. I, yeah. And then, uh, did you see that video of like a humanoid robot that a bunch of office employees are kicking around? Oh yeah. I was like, what? Yeah, that's me. I see. That's a trade shows too, with the robot dogs and like, they're like, they look how durable just me. Like they're kicking it in the hot, in the, in the, in the aisleway. And it's like, I get, you're showing the durability, but I still, still, I still feel bad. Yeah. Also, I'm just trying to keep in mind that, you know, in the future with the robot overlords that, you know, they remember that I did not kick the robots, the memory. It's all in cloud storage somewhere. It's not going anywhere. Also. Yeah. Speaking of that, the, uh, you see the other story about Please and thank you. Oh, it, uh, Sam Altman and ChatGPT? Yeah. That he was saying that people saying Please, and thank you in the chat, is costing them millions of dollars of compute power. Okay.'cause I, well, yeah, that's probably in the millions, if not billions. Yeah. But I just want the doorbell to know that I was Nice. Yeah. And polite. In the future. Again, like, sorry, it's costing more compute power, but I want them to know that I was being, you know, polite. Couple of things here. First, do you think there will be a PETA equivalent for robots? Human and robots. When like in a society, we have enough robots and you see mistreatment on robots, you think there'll be a bunch of humans that are like. Yo man, stop kicking those robots. That's a good question. Yeah, probably. I mean especially too as like with the rise of AI and these like kind of AI relationship Yeah. Chatbots like her happens and people will fall in love with ai. Mm-hmm And you know, if you put the AI in an actual like Yeah. Then you robot and then real connections. Yeah. I could definitely see a little creepy robot pita. On the flip side, do you think there will be the sort of destroyer of robots? Society. Yeah. That will never go away. Yeah. It's 100% if it, if it's, if it's not robots fighting each other or some like mex suit kind of thing. Yeah. I mean that same thing with humans. We have MMA, you know? Yeah. Okay. It's like chicken, uh, cock fighting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess maybe that's like arguably worse because it's like, well, you know, in dogs and that stuff, they're not consenting to, you know, wanting to be in a fight. Yeah. So, yeah. You know, the humans, it's like, well, they. They know what they're getting themselves into. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah, it's a big deno tangent. Feel free to edit this out. No, we'll keep, we'll keep the riffing in here. Okay. But, uh, all right. Let's go to our actual first story. Netflix Q1. They came, they had their earnings call. You know the numbers and stuff, but the interesting thing. Was a couple of comments, uh, from Ted Sarandos. Mm-hmm. So in the earnings call, someone did ask about AI and what their thoughts about ai and they also referenced the James Cameron. Um, okay. I see the quote here. Yeah. They referenced the James Cameron Yeah. Podcast interviewer. He said, you know, he wanted to use AI to reduce costs by 50%. Not reducing staff, but just reducing overall. Production costs. Yeah. Ted Randall said, I remain convinced that there's an even bigger opportunity if you can make movies 10% better and use AI to make movies. Mm-hmm. 10% better. That their talent today is using AI tools to do set references or previs. Mm-hmm. VFX sequence prep, shot planning, all kinds of things that make the process better. And he also gave an example of, uh, Rodrigo Prieto on the, uh, de-aging and face swap. Yeah. Yeah. And how when they did it with the Irishman Yeah. Five years ago, it was extremely cumbersome, expensive. Yep. And then now they just did another shoot. Was it probably Metaphysic AI? I'm guessing I don't, or I don't know if they're just their own process or something. Yeah, that. It was a fraction of the time using AI power tools. Of course. And I think the 10% number is such an understatement for an organization like Netflix. They can easily achieve a higher efficiency number with the in-house investment in AI that they already have. You know, you talk about, we talked about just like assembly cuts. Being put together by ai. Yeah. I think just that in itself will get you like a few percent efficiency. Yeah. Especially for ES show, like they're big marquee shows, you know, like Love Is Blind. Yeah. Or Love Island is not enough feature. Yeah. Whatever. They have a lot of uh, reality shows. Yeah. Yeah. Which those shows shoot tons of cameras, tons of footage all day long. And so like being able to. Sort through that faster. Yeah. Saves production costs. And then, uh, yeah. On the more sort of nuanced complex VFX work, I think the jury is still out on what the actual number is. And a lot of VFX artists will push back and say, okay, AI is not the answer because how do you clean up AI versus you have full control over traditional computer graphics.'cause you can go back to the geometry, adjust the geometry, go back to the shader, adjust the shader. Mm-hmm. But if something is generated. How do you regenerate it with that fine small control nuance? Yeah. The jury's still out on the VFX side. Uh, but I will say there is so much tedious work. Like I talk about rotoscoping all the time and relighting, uh, there's room for a few percent efficiency in VFX. Few percent in pre-production and a few percent in editing. Yeah. And ultimately, I mean, it's interesting, his argument is like, he wasn't talking about numbers. He was talking about like it'll make it better, but I think what he means is like we can make either the same or better films. Yeah. And reduce our costs. A hundred percent. And then, uh, you know, tying it back to what James Cameron said about making movies at 50% of the VFX cost. Mm-hmm. Like that is so accurate, unfortunately, in today's landscape where we just don't have a box office, right? So everything overall has to just come down to a new ceiling. However, the audiences are really acclimated to the quality we've been delivering as an industry for the last 30 years with traditional VFX. All of a sudden we can't have a 50% reduction in quality. We need to have the same output. Right? What the exact, yeah, we're expecting the same. Yeah. But the money's just not there to spend on the same output. And it also ties into what we talked about last episode too. When of the, uh, Davy Jones Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and people being like, you know, look, this looks so great. Why does it not, you know, this was 10, 15 years ago. Why does it not look like this today? You know, CG, and it's like lower budgets. Yeah. Not enough time. Exactly. Not enough time they gave them to do to do that. Yeah. I mean, you go back and look at the box office for Paris of the Caribbean, like the first or the second one versus like the latter ones. I'm sure there was a little bit of mm-hmm. Drop off there and as the market was adjusting during that franchise. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the other thing that made me re. Maybe think of too, 'cause you can make the same film maybe with a smaller budget, but hopefully that also opens up opportunities if they're still doing the same annual spend, that they can make more content or acquire more content. Yeah. And one interesting note that they dropped in the call, they said the most buzzy titles that you're hearing, tons of conversation around those still drive less than 1% of viewing. On Netflix. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And so that sort of led into, you know, the discovery recommendation abilities are really critical, you know, for them to surface content to people and what they wanna watch. Yeah. But I thought, yeah, that's interesting that like everything that's still just how massive their library is and how Yeah. Varied the viewing is. And that even the big title films projects a hundred percent the series that you hear of is 1% of their viewing. Yeah. If you look at. The latest, like whatever, Stranger Things, newest season or you know, one of their big original properties, newest season, people will binge through that in a day. Mm-hmm. A few days. And then what? And then you have to still fill their plate, if you will, for the next 29 days of the month. And so Netflix just needs to just keep feed and a lot of people won't watch the same film twice now that there's so much selection. Yeah. Netflix is known about the turning game. Yeah. For a while. Yeah. And you know that's why they built up so much content.'cause it's like, yes, they need to, yeah. Keep people sticking around after they watch Stranger Things or whatever new season is out. If something they wanted to see that they don't cancel their subscription and wait until. The next time, which I think is an issue that like Apple TV had where it's like, you know, people wanted to see Severance, but it's like they don't have enough stuff to keep people sticking around. So, yeah. So people cancel their Apple subscription. Mm-hmm. And then now Apple, I don't know if you saw this, it pops up on your iPhone Apple's like bring, bring us back sale or whatever. It's like 2 9 9 9 a month for three months.'cause it knows you canceled. You watched that last show? No, I didn't get that. I didn't, I I didn't cancel Because you're a subscriber. I supported, but they also got me with the bundle. They got me with the bundle thing. The one Apple TV or Apple One. Yeah. Know the music, the tv, the, it was like enough, like I don't use the fitness app. It was like enough things bundled in it where I was like, eh, it seems like it, you know the iCloud storage. Yeah. It was like enough things where it's like, okay, you got me with that. Where it's like, yeah, it makes enough sense. Uh, rather than. Buying each thing individually. Uh, just a quick shout out on the bundle. Verizon has a amazing bundle for I think$20 a month where they put in like Hulu, Netflix, and a couple other things, so, oh, that's pretty good. Check it out. If you have Verizon. Shout out to your former, uh, you still, you're still on the Verizon mode. Yeah, I think I still have the employee discount and, yeah, there's a couple other interesting things too, just talking about acquiring video or if they would get into the video podcast space. And yeah, they also, uh, said some interesting stuff about, uh, YouTube.'cause they're asked about. Kind of creator led content and what we've talked about before with, uh, YouTube. Yeah. Over taking watch time on tv, you know, versus Netflix, but it's not necessarily Netflix versus other streaming platforms, but Netflix versus YouTube. Yeah. It's an interesting, uh, delineation and I think Ted Randalls is so smart to draw just a clear line in the sand saying that, hey, YouTube can have the user generated content. Mm-hmm. That's their game. And that obviously it's gonna be bigger. Because there's just a ton more UGC out there, but we're gonna stick to premium storytelling, you know, stuff that's made quote unquote professionally. And that is our game. Mm-hmm. And it, it, you know, we always wondered like, you can put premium content on YouTube as a creator. You can charge subscriptions for it. YouTube tried their originals uh, once or twice. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. But then, yeah, YouTube red, you don't, you don't see it the other way. Like, Netflix is not experimenting with user generated content. No, I mean, they're in that. Space more purely from a marketing perspective. Like same with their kind of podcast. You know, they have podcasts, but they tie into Netflix series. They have. A variety of YouTube channels. Yeah. Kind of focused on verticals and niches like anime and maybe true crime comedy. Yeah. They have a platform, big comedy. Yeah. Platform. Netflix comedy platform. Yeah. But it is content in itself, but it's like it is only serving the purpose to drive people to the full platform. Yes. On Netflix. Yeah. And uh, I think it's called Tudum. They have like a whole Yeah. They're like newsletter and, uh, yeah. Like that's its own YouTube. Mm-hmm. Like universe. And by the time a podcast like- maybe one day we'll be on Netflix. By the time a podcast gets to Netflix, it is no longer user generated content. It's polished as heck, you know? Yeah. It's a production. It's as professional as it gets. Yeah. Yeah. It still feels like YouTube is the feeding ground. You can, yeah. Launch, you can generate, I think there'll be more opportunities because the tools and what you need to make something look professional. Yeah. Is getting more and more accessible. Yes. Obviously, as we're talking about with AI and all that. Yeah. The tools that are being available, so you know, if you have a good story to tell, if a good storyteller, you don't need to have a huge budget to do cool things. Yeah. But I still think it will probably be like. You could prove yourself on YouTube. Mm-hmm. There are definitely plenty of monetization options to build a full fledged media company and survive on YouTube slash You could never have to touch Netflix. Yeah. You could just be on YouTube. And then when it makes sense. Yeah. You know, if Netflix does come knocking or something like Amazon with Mr. Beast. Yeah. And it's like, oh well we'll just give you like more resources or bigger platform then, you know, you'd normally have. Yeah. Then, you know, maybe that makes sense. Yeah. Like there is, uh, Ms. Rachel, which went on to Netflix. Yes. Makes sense. You know, li Lily Singh. Was it Netflix? Uh, yeah. Was she Netflix? Yeah, she had a show. She had a late night show. Okay. Like a A Box. Might have to fact check that one. I know she definitely did do like, I think it was like one season. Yeah. It just didn't work out. But it was like a late night talk show. Maybe she had a standup special or something. Okay. So. I mean, with everything Ted Sarandos said and what James Cameron covered in the Boz Podcast, what are your thoughts on where we're heading? It's more of the acceptance of AI as a tool and yeah, figuring out how this can fit into existing pipelines and how it could be used to speed up artisans. Yeah. You know, I don't think anyone wants to replace or like lay off people, right? They just wanna make more. More the same resource. Yeah. Cost. I mean, some, maybe it just is like less work time or production time, but there's still kind of similar size crew. Yeah. But yeah, it's like all of the talk, none of the talk is like, no, nothing that anyone is saying is like, oh, we're, you know, we're gonna use AI to, you know, generate a fully personalized short form series on Netflix, like just for you, and it's just gonna be a AI-generated program just for you. You know, none of the talks around that. It's all just like, how can we fit this into our existing workflow? To just make things run more efficiently. Yeah, it feels super, uh, short term and financial goal oriented, which is I think, very in line with what the technology can do today. And then speaking of AI, our next story. Okay. It's interesting. So there was a study, uh, we're basically, they are asking people, do, would you prefer a, uh, human written short story or an AI-generated short story? And people overwhelmingly said. They would prefer a human-written short story of course, but when tested and given short stories, uh, blind sample studies and not told which one was AI-generated and which one was human generated, yeah. They could not tell the difference and did not have a preference. Yikes. Yeah, I mean, uh, depends on the level of storytelling and the type of, yeah, there's a lot of caveats here, but I think like our, like those romantic novels that are just. The authors are just pumping out one book every week, or the real short stuff, the vertical cinema stuff. So, uh, telenovela stuff like Yeah. That can, can be written by ai. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I know those are, I still, I believe human ridden, like you need that, uh, yeah. You know, you need to make sure you nail those hooks and get people, uh, sucked in correctly. There's definitely an art to making it really well. Mm-hmm. But at the very basic level, for me, it just doesn't say necessarily anything about the story itself. It just feels like this negative bias around anytime people hear something like AI was used in something. Yeah. Like we saw with The Brutalist and Respeecher. Yeah. You know, like we've seen with other things and I think. What the just quarter confirms and what I think is gonna happen is just, you know, like the Netflix and the, you know, they're going to keep experimenting and trying to use AI tools. They're just not gonna talk about it. Yeah. Because why are they gonna talk about it if like you people have a very, just them bad press, little understanding of how this stuff actually works. And if they just hear AI and then they instantly have a negative reaction to it and are like, nah, you know, this must be crap. AI slop. It's like you don't know what you're. Talking about. Right, right. No, they, uh, that's, it's like a, almost like a cultural bias that's prevalent throughout society at the moment, I think. Yeah. There's just this sort of, yeah. Backlash against it without understanding any. Anything that's going, like what? What the actual process was. I mean, I'll say like there is a lot of AI slop out there and Yeah, for sure. There's a lot of AI theft out there. All the Studio Ghibli stuff just didn't do AI any favors. No. Yeah, no. And that, yeah, that doesn't help either. But it's, and I think that, you know, it comes back to something I've been saying a lot where it's just like, you know, we also just need better language to clarify like, you know, AI-generated where you're studio gify something and it's just like a complete. AI output. Yeah. Versus you used it for rotoscoping, you used it for, you know, modifying some speech. Yeah. Or you used it. Pika Additions. Pika Additions. Right. Where it's like, like just, yeah. You know, this thing in VFX, like the octopus thing we did on the table, like I went over this, like that would take somebody weeks. Yeah. And Yeah, it still tie, I mean, it was a demo, like test shop, but like Yeah. If you're like actually filming your story or doing something, it's like, oh, well I need to add a spaceship here. Yeah. And it's like, I, you know, I could not afford to do that. Yeah. You know, it's like I'm using it as a tool as part of my bigger story. Exactly. The whole film is not AI-generated. Yeah. Or taking an existing story and using AI to accentuate, uh, you know, our act two, add an extra character or like modify things that you otherwise wouldn't. Have time for, or just need to hire more people to do, I don't know. Yeah, and I mean, I've talked about this too, where it's like, I think a lot of times when it comes down to like smaller productions or other things and it's, you know, using. AI and the process, a lot of times it's not like, oh, it's like, uh, are we using AI or are we like gonna hire someone to do it? You know, a lot of times, like there is no money to hire someone. No. And so it's either like, yeah, we either don't do it at all. Yeah. Or we, well, we can't hire someone. And so, you know, I think like AI, I see it as like, like a solution for a lot of things where it's like you just couldn't afford to do it any other way. Yeah. It goes back to the Robert Rodriguez,$7,000 budget, for El Mariachi. He was on the Lex Fridman podcast. He talked about it again. He was like, I only shot one take. And I had no idea what the exposure of the film looked like, and that's all I had the money for. So you have indie filmmakers that are literally put into a corner. They either make this movie and make it. In general or they burn out. Right. Or it doesn't exist. Yeah. So those, for those folks, I think AI is absolutely gonna be embraced. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, I think across the board it's just like the very, like high scale. It's like we have this stuff, you know, Cameron and, and Sarandos were talking about. Yeah. You know, but yeah, for on a, on a more accessible scale for the YouTube creators or even just independent filmmakers. A hundred percent. And you know, a movie studio business like Netflix or you know, Disney. Like it's still a business and businesses still have people that look for efficiencies and reduce costs, and of course they're gonna look at it at, in that lens, right? Mm-hmm. Which is the 10% number and the 50% number. Yeah. I would rather we lean into AI more and figure out a way to use that to also bring back production to la then have some complete anti-AI stance, and then also watch all of the productions leave California because they're going to cheaper tax, uh, incentive havens. Yeah. That, that's such a good point you bring up. I think the only way we'll be able to do that is if we have true AI movie leadership here. Mm-hmm. In as far as like, you know, the, who's the Ryan Coogler of AI movies in the next 10 years? Mm-hmm. Is that person here in LA now, are they talking about their ideas, exchanging information here in this town? Yeah, I'm sure they are. I mean, we probably, we've seen a bunch of AI-centric studios. I know AI LA had a whole report released of like AI-centric studios and. I mean, a lot of them, I think the ones that are gonna work are people that came from a more traditional background, you know?'cause it's like now it's like the AI tools are getting good enough, but you need to bring in that traditional understanding of just, you know, good storytelling and good, you know, being able to direct using the cinematic language. Yeah. To make a film and you're just, you know, instead of filming or you know, creating every shot and blender or something, you are, you know, using a combination of AI to help. Speed up the process. Yeah. LA is by far the Silicon Valley of the movie industry. And what I mean by that is like we're technologically. Like years ahead of any other region in the world as far as m and e tick goes. Mm-hmm. That's why you and I are here. Mm-hmm. We're doing this podcast here. So I remember riding this wave in virtual production back in 2020, right before the pandemic, even end of 2019 when the Mandalorian season one was being built out. Mm-hmm. They were putting up the stage in Manhattan Beach. Um, I remember a few of my friends leaving their current jobs going to ILM for this new thing that they weren't able to talk about. I mean. We were like two, three years ahead of, you know, somebody in South Korea getting a stage, somebody in London getting a stage and all that stuff being built out around the world. I see. The same with AI. You know, we have the AI LA, we have like guys like Dylan and the Wizards that can actually make AI movie making happen. The Netflix AI engineers, I'm sure a lot of them are around here. We're gonna be a few years ahead and then that'll get scaled and deployed to the rest of the world. Yeah, I think AI itself is such a broad category, broad applications. Yeah. Obviously it applies to way more stuff than m and e are a little tiny like bubble, but I don't think the productions are coming back. I think the ad, the adaptation of AI in a professional filmmaking workflow and to make it work is gonna happen in la. I agree with you a hundred percent. Just like you know the automotive industry, like once the factories leave Detroit, it's not coming back to Detroit. But Detroit is still the epicenter of the automotive industry. Like have you been to the Detroit Auto Show? Like that is the number one auto show for the industry. And then all like even Hyundai Kia. Whoever develops, uh, prototypes and cars, they always have Detroit plates on them. Mm. Because they're registered to Michigan, you know, all of the RDA lot of the RD is there. They're still doing it there. Yeah. Yeah. So I did the Ford Factory tour when I was there. Yeah. Like they have a tax track, so I, yeah. I, I, I like, you can't fight the tax incentives by putting on our tax. It'll help. Mm-hmm. But it won't bring it all back cat's outta the bag. Yeah. But I would still rather fight, but it's okay. I would still rather fight for that to like a hundred percent come back. Like it shouldn't be, uh, an unfair fight. You know, like we should have equivalent tax credits and the production to choose Yeah. Smash it. Right. And like it's an option. Sure. A lot of times it won't make sense to film here. Right. But some, you know Yeah. Like the Rob Lowe thing, don't price yourself out is just crazy. Yeah. Like that shouldn't happen. Yeah. Where it's cheaper to ship the entire team to Ireland to shoot something. It should go shiny floor show, where that has absolutely nothing to do with any, where production, uh, any location, geographic location. It's just, you know, physically cheaper to be there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The one other, the last thing I. That has come up with me with AI too. On the flip side is, or two things, one is general public now, just groups AI with CGI. I've talked to so many, like a handful of people, just like non film people. Okay. And you know, whenever they're talking about an a visual effects scene or something, they're just like, yeah. You know, I don't know. There's like ai, CGI thing like, uh, Wild Robot, you know, like, oh yeah. Was that ai? Oh no. And so, um, that was so handmade. I think in our industry, you know, we do get very tied up on the specifics of the lingo and, you know, AI and what, you know, where the artistry comes in, but. General population Yes. Does not know or care. Yeah. I mean, did they enjoy the story? You know, did they like the movie? Yeah. It still comes down to like, oh, did you enjoy it? Yeah. Cool. Did they really care how it was made? Eh, not, not so much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I think as we transition into more AI tools, I. The general public honestly won't know the difference. Yeah. So, you know, maybe the AI label does, I don't know, affect some people's projection. But on the flip side, on cases where there is no AI involved at all, uh, people think there is ai, which has also happened on some, a project we're working on now, some client projects, and we just use some stock footage for like, uh, placeholder for something. Sure. And then we get a comment like, uh, remove this AI image. And it's like, mm, it was just a stock photo. Yeah. But now people, you know, now like perception of like what's real, what's, what's, what's generated is just completely going out the window. It's wild. Yeah. We need, we need like a label, like fair trade AI, whereas like a little beautiful sticker like Starbucks has on their coffee or something. This is originally, uh, human generated. Human created. I mean, that's what Asteria is doing, you know, Moonvalley yesterday, like. They're calling their model clean AI like that, that's a thing that they're rolling out as a marketing thing. Oh, yeah. Or like you're talking like Firefly and Yeah. Uh, I don't know what Firefly, they don't call it clean ai. They, they say commercially safe. That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like all those things could be bundled into like Yeah. Or on the flip side, the adobe, the, uh, content, uh, authenticity program to like verify that things were actually shot in a camera. Yeah. There was another company we interviewed. Videos coming out or is out OpenOrigins. Okay. Where they're like basically same idea, like run images or run, you know, pictures that you take out of a camera tied into the blockchain. But ba but I think that stuff will come back into play like we've talked about with NFTs. Yes. And some of these ideas from Web3 that were kind of like crazy ish and didn't really take off. I think some of 'em will come back. And this was Open Origins was a company that you can run your images or photos through, uh, their platform and it gets tied to the blockchain. So then you can verify. Yeah, it does like a. It creates like a 3D depth map. You can fake an image, but you can't generate the depth map from a fake image as well. You can generate a new depth map, which will match the open, but that sort of becomes the signature, yeah. Of verifying the image and then it gets tied to, it's a water blockchain almost. Yeah. Yeah. And that it gets tied to the blockchain and, okay. So. And people are trying, you know? Yeah. It's a good attempt. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, we're gonna need it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, especially for journalistic uh, endeavors and stuff, ultimately, like an AI authentication mechanism will have to be rolled out by a giant player in the VFX ecosystem, like Autodesk, Foundry, Adobe, which ties into the tool sets that everybody's already using. Yeah. And then goes also back to the camera manufacturers. Yeah. Right. And yeah, I mean, it's gonna need to be an industry-wide Yeah. Adoption of, of, of protocols to, you know, everyone to be on the same page. So maybe it's like a same page or an HPA mm-hmm. Or industry body like that. Mm-hmm. That just kind of pushes it up. Sure. That was, I hope that will be coming in the next few years. Awesome. We're gonna need it. Okay. And then the last story probably to continue our Sinners trilogy, we probably keep, I mean. We're gonna watch Sinners Soon on this show, and we're gonna talk about it. I have been holding out for, uh, to, to see it in 70 millimeter imax. Okay. I'll just see it in general. I don't care. Yeah, no, I'm being, um, yeah, I'm being picky about this one, but also I was texting some friends and they're like, oh, you know, it's, we're gonna, we can see it here, 70 millimeter. And then he is like, I watched the Ryan Coogler, you know, 10 minute Kodak film, like. This is what he recommended. And I was like, wait, no, but that one is a 70 millimeter cropped. The IMAX is the 70 millimeter uncropped. Yes. And he is like, wait, what? There's two different, like it's not as wide, it's more of a, uh, four, three aspect ratio if four, three combined with the widescreen Panavision. So it, different sequences will like cut between Yeah. The, the aspect ratios. But yeah, there is a second version of 70 millimeter, but the entire film is cropped. Cropped to the, yeah. 2, 4, 8 or whatever the No bueno. Why it's me. Yeah. But I, like even my friend who is in the industry got confused. He is like, this is the most confusing way to figure out how to like, watch this film as far as all the million different format options. I just love that it, the movie switches from like a four, three box to a 16, nine box to a one. You know, it's like I've, I've never seen a movie do that. Even more narrow than 16, nine. Yeah. I mean, um, the bat, the No and the Batman films do it. Oh yeah. But not the pan vision wide, which is a much more like an anamorphic. I don't know if it is anamorphic, but it's a much more narrow 2, 7, 8. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, the story has nothing to do with that. Brian Cooper's deal when he sold the script to Warner Brothers basically says that he gets to the copyright of the movie, reverts back to him after 25 years. That's cool. I've never seen that crazy deal. Yeah. I think there are a handful of people, I think, uh, Tarantino Okay. Had some early deal deals with the Miramax and then that maintained through, uh, when he did once upon time in Hollywood. Okay. But besides that, extremely rare. And I mean, the reason is like the studios, they want this, their money by building up a library. Yeah. And owning the rights to these films forever and monetizing these films forever. That's kind of their business model. And so there's like some freak out of, is this the end of the studio model? Because come on. Because Ryan Coogler is getting his copyright back to his films. How many Ryan Cooglers are out there? Uh, 25 years. Yeah. There, uh, there's only one Ryan Kler. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think this is a deal that only a handful of hop a-list directors could even get. And a lot of studios turned this down. Yeah. Because they didn't, you know that they didn't. Want that part of the deal. Warner Brothers went for it because they, yeah, I, I think they're in a position they outweigh, you know, they did a calculation. They're like, we need this big box office hidden now. Forget. Yeah. They needed the something, you know, they needed a good hit. Yeah. A good film. Yeah. And we're willing to take to do that. So, yeah. I don't, what do you, yeah, I think, uh, what do you think about it again? I see a lot of doom and gloom, Hollywood reporting, which, you know, of course has its grain, you know, truth. All embedded in it. Like yes, the industry's in a downturn. Yes. The overall financial model of the studios are in limbo. Yes. People have been laid off. Yes. Jobs have been reduced. Having said that, like filmmaking is not dead. There's still tons of films being shot, even here in la like you can drive around, you see production trucks everywhere. I was just at a big, uh, studio back lot last week and uh, they were shooting another big Amazon show there while I was like, it's still happening. It's maybe not to the capacity'cause everybody is used to. Being overworked, being on two, three projects at the same time. Yeah. Or I, it's not the boom days they're used to. Right. When all the streamers are trying to get off the ground. Yeah. And throwing tons of money because they need to produce stuff and everything is cyclical. I think the industry is at like the lowest sort of point, or maybe unfortunately might go even a little bit lower in the next couple years. And then the financial model and how much a movie should cost those answers will come to us and then the new movies will be made within those ranges. By then AI tools will be more efficient and, you know, we'll have a more distributed, uh, global production network. Mm-hmm. As it's happening now, those things will all contribute to a lower cost of production. And then we'll have great films again, and it, look, we have sinners today. Like that's a great film that was made in the last, what, a year or two. Mm-hmm. Hollywood is not dead, folks. No, of course not. Yeah. As far as the expectation of. Of, you know, I'm thinking, going back to, you know, rise of creator economy and YouTube creators and then, you know, maybe making the shift to a Netflix or getting a movie deal or something. Yeah. If, you know they're a YouTube creator, they're coming up from this background, they own everything they, you know, built out a brand, or is there gonna be more of an expectation or some difference in who owns the copyright? Especially if they built up a brand. So like Ms. Rachel, like I don't know what the deal details of that branded, but, but is it, you know, I'm gonna guess that Netflix does not let her own the copyright of the shows that she produced for Netflix. Right. So is it like a license with Ms. Rachel Brand, but they own the episodes that were produced for Netflix? Yeah. You know, like, I think this will get, I don't think. Every director is now gonna demand, or actually, or maybe they'll, I'm sure they'll ask for it, but they'll probably not get, they won't get it. The ability to get the copyright back to their film after a certain number of years. But I just wonder if the deals are gonna shift, especially if working like, or like Mr. Beast, you know, does Amazon, Amazon paid a hundred million dollars for a show? I'm gonna guess they own the copyright to the show, right? But I, you know, I mean, I think the, what the terms of the deals look like will probably Yeah. Change, I think, uh, because extreme, that's like the ultimate level, but you're absolutely right. Like not everybody can have this sort of power that Ryan Coogler has, and rightfully so, like he's, I. Just not here overnight. He's made Black Panther 1, 2, Creed. Mm-hmm. Like, he's been doing this for his whole life. He's at the top of his game and there's only a few people on the planet like Denny V and you know, just a few filmmakers that could really command this level of control from the studios. Having said that, it also shows how flexible things are right now. Right. They're willing, they did do this. Yeah. Our brothers in a tricky spot and yeah, they needed, I, I think it was around the time of covid and they kind of had backlash from like Yeah. Other filmmakers when they released all the films Yeah. On streaming that year instead of doing theatrical releases. Yeah. Or holding them until, uh, things reopened again, like when doing one went on straight to streaming and they got a lot of backlash for, look, I, I tell you, like from the filmmaker, this probably would've been impossible in the 80's and 90's because the windows were such money makers. Yeah. That's how the studio would never give this up. Yeah. But now they're like, oh, 25 years. Uh, I don't see us making much money off this film in 25 years. Just, just, or we just, we just need to have this. Yeah. Now we need to like hit our quarter numbers. Right. And. Forget it. This is a problem 25 years from now. Yeah. It's like taking a really high interest loan. It's like I just need the money now. It also kinda reminds me of, uh, of like the Lucas deal with Star Wars, where when he kept the merchandising rights Yes. And the studio didn't think anything of it.'cause there was like, oh, no one, we don't do anything with this. Like Sure. Whatever. Now it's like billions of dollars raked it in with all of the, uh, all of the Star Wars products. Right? Yeah. So, you know, maybe they'll realize later it wasn't, I don't know the best deal, but I, I, I think they did the best deal at the time to get this project. And yeah, I think for our viewers, the big takeaway here is that, you know. The industry is truly changing from underneath, like the building blocks of what makes a Hollywood studio run and how the deals are done, and how it's made. Everything is in flux, which means you should be really, uh, dynamic as well and be aware of what the. Big moves are, and this could be a good time for a lot of our viewers to make a career change or think about doing something else or get into that passion project they've been always wanting to do. Now is the time to really strike it, like, as doom and gloom as it sounds. It's really not. It's just a very flexible time. Yeah. Or use this time to retool, figure out some of the new tools out there. Yeah. And yeah, I, I messed around with, uh, runway gen four. Nice. And the Chachi BT. Image editor this weekend. Okay. Extremely impressive, right? Yeah. Right. Like crazy the how like fast things have changed and how easy it was to like throw together a film and be, and just direct it and be like, I need you to change this image or change the angle here. Yeah. And the chat g BT operator. And I'm just like, shift the angle. It was like, what? Yeah, I dropped the n bump. We'll bleep that one out. Okay. Good times. Yeah. So. As usual, I'm still optimistic and excited. The future. Same here. Yeah. Look, the future won't be without some pain and some adjustment. And there are a lot of people out there that will not see the other side of the industry because they're so locked into what they do now. Yeah. And the old look, the old system's just, you know, not the old system from the last 20 years is not gonna exist anymore. Yeah. But there's gonna be a new system. Yeah. And something different. It's just a transition period right now to figure out. Yeah. But I, I think a lot, most people are able to adapt and sort of be on their feet and. There's a, there's just a lot of resources out there for you to do that right now. Yeah. All right. Good place to wrap it up. Yeah. Speaking of resources, denoisedpodcast.com, we got links to everything we talk about and also tons of articles and videos on that website as well, which ties into VP Land, VP Land. Everything we talk about we're usually, I. Ahead of the game. So check it out if you want resources on how to learn and utilize all this stuff. Yeah, we get a lot of comments like, this is the best source of industry information. All the AI tools. We love that 'cause that's exactly what we want to be. Mm-hmm. Uh, leave us comments like that. It really gives us positive feedback and sort of direction which we should be going. And also if you don't like to hear something, let us know as well. I mean, either way we'd love to hear from you. Yeah, we wanna make it useful show. Well, uh, thanks again for everyone for watching and, uh, we'll catch you in the next episode.