Psychology for Screenwriters by William Indick

Tune in to learn how to build conflict in your film script.To learn more about Carole Dean and From the Heart Productions please visit www.FromtheHeartProductions.com. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Love Talk Radio.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Hi and welcome to the Art of Film Funding. I'm your co-host, Claire Capan. Along with Carol Dean, author of the best-selling book, The Art of Film Funding, Carol is also the founder and president of From the Heart Productions and the host of this show. Our very special guest, William Indick, earned his bachelor's degree in psychology in 93 and master's degree in music therapy in 96 from New York University. After working as a special education teacher and as a creative arts therapist, he earned his PhD in developmental psychology in 2001 from Cornell University. Dr. Indick is an active screenwriter, author, screenwriting consultant, and an associate professor of psychology at William Patterson University in Wayne, New Jersey, where he writes books and teaches courses in media psychology and psychology in film. His second edition of Psychology for Screenwriters, Building Conflict in Your Script, is now in release. And Carol, I understand also William is published by Michael Weesee Publishing, the same publisher you have used as well, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:40

Right, Claire. Michael Weesey has the best books for filmmakers. And thank you, William, for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Hi, it's a pleasure to be speaking with you.

SPEAKER_04 1:50

Great. Well, we want to discuss your book, Psychology for Screenwriters, Building Conflict in Your Script first, and then we'll review the rapid advancement of AI into the film industry and discuss how this will dramatically affect us. Now, your book is of great benefit to screenwriters for developing characters, and it is said that people's lives are made up of good and bad decisions, histories filled with triumph and pain, behaviors form from a lifetime of experiences, and your character should be no different. But writing psychologically complex characters requires an understanding of human behavior. And one reviewer said, Fortunately, you don't need a PhD in psychology to add complexity to your screenwriting because William Indick will help you. You can add psychological depth to your script with insights from brilliant psychological theorists like Fraud, Jung, and Adler. So get ready to create characters and conflict that will have your audience begging for one more thing. That's more. We want to hear more from you. Now, the book, Psychology for Screenwriters, can be useful at any stage of development, William. So tell us how you suggest that script writers use your book for plot structure and creating essential elements of conflict in your characters.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Right. Well, the psychological theories um that I use in my book and that I apply to film are basically just explorations of human behavior. So each model tries to understand what makes us tick, and by understanding that we could actually predict, you know, what someone may or may not do in a given situation. So that specific type of model is essential for a screenwriter because that's what we're doing. We're trying to figure out what are these characters going to do once we put them in the specific scenario that we're developing. And their actions tell us more about their character than anything they could say about themselves or any type of voiceover narration could tell us about the characters. When we're looking at the screen, we're looking at behavior and analyzing behavior like psychologists. So the best tool we could have is the models that psychologists created for understanding behavior.

SPEAKER_04 4:25

Well, um that's what gives us all of these multi-lay layered characters. And actually, when you look back, like the Sopranos, I mean that was that what had 50 shows or something? It was incredible. And even though this was a uh a killer, it was a terrible person, but we were all so totally engaged in him uh that it that we really loved the show. And he went to a psychologist, and we were all in that office with him, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Right. And so it was it was almost a sort of doubling up of this sort of psychological take is we're we're we're psycho we're sort of amateur psychologists already, just looking at his character, seeing how evil he is, yet also wondering, well, why am I so interested in him and why am I sort of connecting with him in a way? Uh so we're questioning the character, which makes us question ourselves, but then at the same time the character is questioning himself and his own morality and his ethics and his uh basic identity and character with a professional psychologist. So it's a sort of doubled analysis of this character. And you would think, oh, a doubled analysis, that sounds kind of boring. But in uh in actuality, it's twice as interesting.

SPEAKER_04 5:40

Yes, and you wanted to see how he would handle situations, and sometimes it was so out of the box that it was really uh interesting, it was creative, and I don't know, the more I watched it, the more I learned about myself, about him, and all these things that were going on around him and life and family life, right? He that was a lot that was going on your f his family.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah, and I think that that's why we watched anything, whether it's a show or a movie. We're we're trying to learn something about ourselves, and we do that by watching other people. And we could learn some extreme things about ourselves by watching other people do extreme things. Um so that's the benefit of film, is that it's sort of a a virtual reenactment of life that we could view and learn from, but not actually have to go through, you know, those mistakes and actually do those horrible things or have horrible things done to us.

SPEAKER_04 6:39

Right. Uh The Wire. I'm re-watching the wire, and I am so uh taken by some of the characters and the worst, the worst characters in there, you know, Omar and and Bubbles, those uh uh crack uh heads and everything. I mean, they are so interesting, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah, and then so it's um something we've learned certainly uh from hundreds of years of novels and uh over a hundred years of film is that we are attracted to these darker characters um because they allow us to explore our the darkness within ourselves. And that's why, you know, we've developed from sort of movies and shows where the characters are all basically good except for this one sort of villain character who you only see a little bit of. That's been flipped. And now we're just seeing mostly these villain characters uh with very few good characters, very few few pure characters, uh, because that's what we're really interested in. We want to get to the nitty-gritty of what makes somebody good and what makes somebody bad. You don't understand that by seeing somebody only do good things.

SPEAKER_04 7:46

Right. Magnulty is the only do-gooder in there, practically, and everyone is thwarting him, and so far uh he had win because of the politics and on all the blocks that are coming from every side.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Yeah, it's it's um it's it's a fascinating character study. And uh if I remember correctly, I haven't seen the wire since it came out, but uh eventually he has to start dealing with the darkness within himself as well.

SPEAKER_04 8:16

Yes, that's exactly that's what's coming up next for me. I'll have to go through that again. That'll be very interesting. Well, um, all right, so now back to your book. Um you s also say that if you're in full career of your writing journey, that this book may serve as a guide and an inspiration. So please explain how to use this book for ideas of character and plot for experienced screenwriters.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Right. And uh so when I speak to people who have read my book, uh the thing that they usually say uh is the major benefit is that it t doesn't tell you what to write or how to write it. It's not a book on how to be a screenwriter. It's a book about applying psychological models to the characters in the script that you're already writing. So it is written for someone who already understands formatting and the basic ABCs about how to write a script. Uh and what it does is by providing these models that actually do predict human behavior based on understanding what this person's personality is like, you can generate new ideas. Well, if if my character in this story that I'm writing, now I understand that character is having, say, an identity crisis. Well, what did Ericsson have to say about identity crisis? And what would Ericsson predict? Meaning, what would this person do to express their identity conflict? Uh what people would they seek out to help them? What um new behaviors or new ways of dealing with conflict will this person uh adopt? So it's uh kind of like an idea generating machine. Once you understand the model and how it works, well there's all different ways that you can express this conflict in this character through their behavior or through their dialogue. And that frees you up from having to explain what's going on in the character's head in a very cliched or hackneyed way, such as giving voice over narration. That literally tells the viewer what the character is thinking. And to me that's only you can do that sometimes, but if you're doing it all the time, then you're not really writing, are you? You're just giving us an expose of what this person is thinking. And what a films are supposed to do, what they're good at, is showing us the inside of a character's head through that character's action, through what they say, but they don't but what they're not actually telling us what they're thinking. Um so that that that's the benefit of understanding those psychological models and applying them to your characters, and that's the benefit that the uh book purveys.

SPEAKER_04 10:58

Yes, y uh you get more depth in the character, the more conflicts the person has. This is what I'm learning from a Kay, the more conflicts a person has has inside them, the more interesting they are.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Yeah, and I I think the good the good writers remember that and the bad writers either never learned it or they forget it. Um it's m when when a character does something that is inexplicable, that is fascinating for the viewer. And what the writer needs to do is keep it inexplicable in terms of you know explaining it exactly what's going on, but keep the mystery there and reveal little by little through action and dialogue what this cat what's going on, why they're doing this thing that seems inexplicable. We all love mystery stories because we like to figure out the mystery are for ourselves. And when you give away the mystery and voiceover narration in the first five minutes of the film or the or the show, then you're gonna lose the audience. The audience has no mystery to solve, and therefore they're they don't they're not interested any longer.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

Yes. Right. Oh, William, I would like to ask a uh a question also in this, if I may. Um you know, um I come from a film background and I've done on-camera work. And um when a writer, when I'm looking at a script and I see where the writer is taking this character, I also have to build the subtext within. I'm breathing life into this character through real human emotions and experiences that I've had in my life that I bring to this character that can relate, where the character can relate to those experiences and vice versa, in order to breathe life into the character. But the writers provide me the where I can go with it and the subtext that I have to build in order to make that um performance real and help the audience to feel along with me the character. Would you say that that is also part of what the screenwriter writers are thinking when they're writing uh about those characters and the dialogue, etc.?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Uh absolutely. So the trick of the writer is to purvey subtext through text. Uh so how do you do that? How how do you make something clear without actually writing it out in a way that makes it clear? And that's the screenwriter's task in particular. Because a novelist is free to go into the uh uh to go into the past and the future and uh and tell us exactly what's going in, the uh going on in the character's head, because that's the medium of the novel. Uh the medium of film does beg this uh more sort of passive approach, where the viewer looks and understands uh from what they see on the screen. And if you try to explain what's going on, if you say this character is doing this at this moment because they remember this from their past, then you lose the viewer. So the novelist and the screenwriter are doing the same task, but they have very, very different tools. The screenwriter, it for the screenwriter, it is incumbent that the subtext not be related directly through the text. So there has to be all these little clues and mysteries that the viewer is picking up on. Why did the character say that? Why did they do that? One of one of my favorite scenes is from the show Mad Men. Uh hopefully listeners have watched that show, The Classic Show. But there's a scene, uh there's actually a whole episode that takes place uh when it's um uh the lead characters, I'm blanking on his name right now. Um Don Draper. So Don So it's his daughter's birthday, and all this sort of nonsense, suburban nonsense is going on, and we can see he has little patience for it. At a certain point in the episode, he has to go to the bakery, get the cake, and bring it back to the party. He goes to the bakery, gets the cake, gets a bottle of liquor, drives somewhere, and sits there drinking it, and never brings the cake to the party. And the viewer is like, what the hell? Why why is he doing that? Why wh why is he purposefully ruining his daughter's birthday and making all these people angry at him? And it's never explained, but we know it because we understand this character and what he's dealing with. And I think that's a wonderful example of providing subtext with by giving us no text at all. We all we all the screenwriter gave us was this is what he does. And then the audience figures it out. But because the character is well developed and because he's written so well, it's not confusion, it's mystery. And mystery keeps us uh tied into the plot and tied into the character. Confusion pushes us away, but mystery leads us in. And the screenwriter has to master uh treading that line between confusion and mystery. The plot must never be confusing, but the characters until the end should always be somewhat mysterious.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

Wonderful. Always mysterious and never confusing. Claire, that that's really important what you said, because how do you make it so that the um what is your intent as an actor to understand that character? That's very important, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, but we have to also remember that characters are like people, and people inherently don't understand themselves. That's why psychology as a field exists. If people understood themselves, psych there would be no need for psychology.

SPEAKER_04 17:06

Exactly. Great. Okay, well, this book is available on Amazon and also on Michael Weesee Publications website, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Yes, that's MWP.com.

SPEAKER_04 17:21

Right. Okay, good. Now let's t uh get into uh the rapid advancement of AI into our film industry and tell us what you think are some of the main problems. And let's start with writers. How will they be affected? What do you think is going to happen?

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Okay. So first of all, I just want to focus on the word problem. So it's only a problem uh if if it's perceived as a problem. And there's certainly a whole generation of writers who are going to adopt AI, and it's not going to be a problem for them, it's going to be an invaluable tool. So uh uh I I would say, just starting off, if you're looking at AI, you're saying this is a problem that I'm gonna have to battle with, um, then you're taking the wrong viewpoint. AI is a tool just like the um the word processor is a tool, just like the iPhone is a tool. Uh and you could either uh let that tool serve you as a writer, or you could become a servo mechanism to that tool. I'm using uh the words of Marshall McLuhan here, who uh uh warned us all of becoming servo mechanisms to our own technology. But I think that's really the sort of key question is is AI going to serve us, or is the situation going to be flipped in a way that we're all going to be serving AI? Um and uh that's re that's really the big question um that I'm asking as I'm thinking about it. Um I would say in terms of the process of writing, AI is a tool. And it only becomes a problem when the tool replaces something that's irreplaceable, uh something that only humans can do. Um right now the problem is future oriented. AI exists, but we haven't really seen it applied full force process of filmmaking and screenwriting. It's presumed that um AI will make uh screenwriters and other filmmakers obsolete because it could do their jobs for them, but that presumption isn't necessarily correct. There's lots of ways in which this could um uh play out.

SPEAKER_04 19:30

Okay. That's a good place to start from.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

I didn't recon not clarifying, but saying it's not necessarily a problem. And I and probably certainly for the up up and coming writers, I want to stress that. It's not necessarily a problem, it is a tool. And mastery of the tool could be um or I would say will almost uh inde uh uh certainly be um necessary for future writers.

SPEAKER_04 19:57

Absolutely. That that you're absolutely right on that. I'm just afraid of losing um uh content, but I'll get into that. First of all, um I g I watched at home a panel discussion of the benefits of AI from Cannes from the film festival. And the opening words from the father of Pixar, Hovanis Avayan, said AI is changing the nature of our business models. And he said AI will make everyone creative. And he made AI sound like it's the best invention ever. So as a writer, what do you think are the pitfalls of AI for the millions of people in the various jobs that will be affected, like uh the camera uh department? I mean, there uh I saw one film that it uh an actor was on where it was all programmed, and there was no cameraman. They had just sat there and programmed what they wanted for the cameraman because the cameraman did it all. There was no assistant, no uh anyone but uh the original cameraman who programmed the cameras. So there were three jobs that were lost. Then we have editors, colorists, sound professionals, there are a lot of people out there whose jobs AI could do uh pretty much by themselves.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Mm-hmm. So um so you know, of the two statements um that Avoyan made, uh one of them is definitely true, which is that AI is changing the nature of our business models. Uh meaning that if s say you were going to make an animated film, the first thing you would do is sit down with a team of writers. Well, now the producer or director could just sit down with AI and have AI pitch constant ideas, and AI will be able to pitch more ideas than a whole room full of writers, and uh AI will never stop. And also AI is w will uh you can give AI prompts. That will change what it's giving back immediately, which is something you can't really do with a writer. You can't tell a writer, okay, completely change the way you're thinking about this immediately and give me twenty responses within five seconds. So, yes, uh w it is changing business models. And rather than seeing teams of people working at something, we're more likely to see an individual working with AI to produce a script or uh or a film. And to a certain extent, you might even see in the future the whole script process being sort of uh leapfrogged, and someone can go directly from idea to actually creating an animated film without ever having to actually bother writing a script. That seems um sort of incomprehensible, but if we take humans out of the factor out humans from the situation, it's perfectly possible for AI to both conceive of and create the film without having to follow a specific script. Um so uh so it is going to change our business model. Uh he but uh uh um Avoyan also said that AI will make everyone creative, and that's a presumption, and it's definitely false because of the word everyone. Human beings um tend to be rather passive, especially in our media consumption. So just giving people the capability to write their own scripts using AI and create their own movies using AI doesn't mean that we're actually going to do it. Humans by far prefer to watch movies than make movies. Um so I don't necessarily believe that AI will make everyone creative, and therefore it might not necessarily be the case that uh in uh independent films made by non-professional filmmakers will sort of take over the field. It's quite possible that it will just broaden the field, meaning professional filmmakers will continue to make professional filmmakers for all the people who want to watch films that have excellent production value and are uh written by excellent screenwriters and have excellent actors and cameramen and so forth. But then at the same time, there's going to be a blossoming, blooming uh industry of individual filmmakers writing and creating their own uh films using AI and posting them uh on YouTube uh and uh and other places where everybody in the world could possibly do that. So I see really at first and possibly perpetually a broadening of the field of filmmaking rather than uh constricting the field.

SPEAKER_04 24:34

Broadening, yes. I will agree with you there. So uh and and from what you said, we will be losing a lot of jobs in the film industry.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Pro probably over time, yes. Uh that that um yes. But but at the same time, so like let's say if you have uh um a person, a filmmaker, who wanted to write and direct their own film, and they would have to gather, you know, twenty or thirty people just to make that possible. Well now they can do it on their own with AI. They need they don't don't even really need a camera, they can just do an animated film. Um so now that person is making their film by themselves. So yes, the 20 people that they would need assisting them are no longer assisting them, but then what are those other 20 people doing? Well, they're probably doing the same thing. They're probably writing and directing their own films with AI and posting them on YouTube. So what we have is a broadening of again of the industry. We have now 20 independent filmmakers, each one making their own film, as opposed to one film being produced by 20 filmmakers.

SPEAKER_04 25:40

Um how would oh this makes yes, this is the picture I'm I think you're right. But then how do those 20 filmmakers monetize those films so they can live from that talent?

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Well, uh so YouTube has you know its own built-in monetization system based on views. So you know you create your content, you create your channel, once you get a thousand subscribers, you can monetize it, and so so that's how it how they would get money. So the question is, could people actually survive on the little little pennies coming in from their YouTube channels? Uh could you be uh uh a filmmaker who actually survives on the films they make? And that's not a new question, that's always been the question. The question is, can somebody survive as a filmmaker outside of the studio system? And that's a question that's been around for 70 or 80 years, and that will continue. Meaning lots of people will be putting films on YouTube. Some of them will be successful, some of them won't be successful. Uh it's going to be difficult to predict which films will be more successful than others because there's so many variables involved, but I think we're going to see uh a continuation of the blossoming of independent filmmaking, especially using AI. Um, but I don't necessarily think we'll see a huge constriction, at least not right away, of the professional filmmakers. They will continue to exist, but perhaps it might get harder and harder to break through into that industry. Because again, you have a producer saying, Well, why should I hire a dozen writers if I can just use AI and pitch AI and pitch back and forth between AI for all of my ideas?

SPEAKER_04 27:29

Right. Okay. Wonderful ideas you have. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

I did want to circle back just a moment uh because because you you asked uh about the pitfalls for writers using AI. Yes. And I think that's an important thing. Um so AI is a tool, and tools in general tend to enhance our ability to do things. So, for instance, if you give a mathematician a calculator, that mathematician is going to become more productive. They don't have to do all the calculations by hand. Um in media psychology, there's a basic principle that will come to play, which I I call the use it or lose it principle. If you have a function that you use, whether it's calculating things by hand or writing out sentences by hand, the more you do that, the better you get at it. But if you stop doing it, you lose the ability to do it. The brain is a very, very conservative organ. It uh and if you stop using a function or a process, the brain will forget how to do that. Uh you could relearn it, it'll be easier to relearn it, but if you simply stop writing, eventually you will no longer be a writer. Writers do one thing, they write. If a writer is not writing, but instead feeding prompts to a computer, the computer is doing the writing. So you might lose your ability to actually write or never actually develop the ability to write to begin with if we're depending on this tool that can actually create content just as well, if not better, than a human. So I think that's one huge pitfall is possibly losing the ability to write and never developing that ability to begin with. And that brings us to another question of, well, why is it important for us to know how to write? Why is it important even for writers to know how to write if they could just use this tool that will write for them? And um here from Edgar Allan Poe, who said, um, it is certain that the mere act of indicting tends in a great degree to the logicalization of thought. Uh and Poe, as a writer, caught upon something very, very important here that writing changes the way that we think. Our ability to think in long propositional phrases based on the logical connection between each phrase, that comes out of writing. The only reason we think that way is because we write that way. So if we stop writing, then we stop thinking in these long logical propositional phrases, and we actually change the way we think. We become much more simple thinkers, which may be better, it may be worse, but it certainly is different, and it certainly could be a pitfall for a person who wants to write a book, or somebody who wants to write an actual screenplay without AI helping them. It might become almost impossible for the average human being to write a novel or a screenplay if everyone is just using AI all the time to write anything longer than a ten-word text message.

SPEAKER_04 30:29

Wow. This is really important information, isn't it? Yes. I can agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

I don't think any anyone ever really asked that question. Um and that that's I I I I consider myself a media psychologist, and those are the questions we ask is how is this new technology going to change the way we think and interact with our own media?

SPEAKER_04 30:52

Right. And it will affect our thinking, just like you're saying, and our ability to critically think about something, which requires a lot of effort and time and uh focus. And so that may be gone with the wind. Um all right, so now I need to hear uh your comments on this experience I had. I was uh I was told to use GPT chat, all right, because I had to write something I had to um about what gather all my thoughts about um what are my tips for writing um uh writing uh um uh uh statements, uh let's see, developing your documentary film, right? So how do you uh write a proposal? So I ask GPD chat to tell me that and give me 10 tips about it and uh for grants. This time I asked, how about applying for grants by Caroline? Give me 10 tips and uh GPI came back and said, uh, oh, here's 10 tips from Carol Dean, and they were all part of my uh blogs and my book and other things I've written. So I thought, well, that's interesting. I don't have to go through my own notes, I can ask. So about a month later, I thought, well, I'll ask again, and I asked the same question for the second time, and they said, Here's the bio on Caroline, she's a presenter from the heart, etc. etc. We can't tell you what she said, but here are ten tips, and and it was my own information back, but it didn't give me credit this time. So so do they have the right to use my material is the question. And uh because after all, there's years of time and research and experience in the information that it now owns.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

So um anything you put on the internet is by default public property, regardless of the author's permission. Now that's not necessarily the legal way it works, but that's just the way in practice it works. Unless you're George Lucas and have a team of lawyers scouring the internet to look for violations of copyright protection, anything that anyone puts on the internet could be copied and pasted by anyone else on the internet, and they could either give um a credit to the author or they could not give credit to the author based on their own whim. Usually the decision of whether or not to give somebody credit is based on the sort of uh on the person who's doing the copying and pasting, meaning will I get more views if I cite somebody else, or will I get more views if I say this is um my own personal idea, or does it just not matter? And I would say that largely authorship itself is becoming more and more irrelevant in the age of the internet, and as we move into the age of AI writing, it's going to become even more irrelevant. Meaning, what does it matter who writes what if every idea ever written is available via the internet and then can be put together and even uh uh cre uh uh created in a original format and text by AI, it takes away the sort of uh cachet that authors used to have. It's no longer a big deal that you could write 10,000 words or 100,000 words about this topic. AI can do it in five seconds. So, yeah, uh uh it is sort of troubling after coming through centuries and centuries and centuries of this sort of idea of authorship as being this sacred thing, and that if you steal someone else's ideas, that is plagiarism. And especially in academia, that's literally the worst thing you could possibly do. It's theft. Um those ideas are becoming cliche and are becoming irrelevant in an age where all information is instantly accessible by everyone. Um other thing is no longer Oh, I'm sorry, William, continue. No, I was just saying, I was repeating the the the the line itself that authorship becomes irrelevant when it's something that AI can do and that anyone could um create.

SPEAKER_03 35:20

So I I there is one other facet of this that Carol had in her experience. And this is also uh a question for you. They uh Chat GPT said, I cannot tell you what Carol said, but here are ten tips. Now that was inaccurate. And the relevancy of this is this if the reader, the person reading this information from the chat is told, I can't tell you what Carol said, but here's ten tips, and they and they're sharing those tips anonymously, it is not doing a full service to the person who's reading it because those ten tips also lead to more information that the reader could learn had they known who the original author was. And so that I find that is a flaw in in this situation.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Uh yeah, oh uh it's definitely a flaw if you're looking at from the traditional uh authorship perspective, where there are authors who have ideas and those ideas belong to them, and then you and the reader should refer to the original author for more information. Um, in the sort of scattered uh decimated digitalized version of information that we all use on the internet, authorship is made irrelevant just by the process of all information being stripped from its original source, digitalized, and then sent in a billion different directions. So I agree with like certainly I don't like it when people you use AI or use some other method to take the ideas that I wrote and apply them to their own work saying, here are my original ideas, or here's some ideas that doesn't matter whose they were originally because they're mine now. I I resent that as a writer who has worked very, very hard to develop as a writer, but the fact is that the medium has changed. And if you want to be successful at all in any way by expressing your ideas and thoughts, you you must use the internet. But at the same time, the internet, now empowered by AI, is going to take your ideas, scatter them to the wind, break them up into a million pieces so that people can't really identify your work with your name, and that's just how it is now. So again, you can either sort of accept it and figure out how to work with it, or you can just sit you resign yourself and say, well, writing isn't what it used to be. I guess it's time for me to retire or do something else.

SPEAKER_04 38:09

Okay. Well said. Yes, it's uh it's what's happening. It's reality. Clara, what you said is so important, yes. Uh it doesn't it is unfair. But let's look uh at another thing. Um one of the things that uh avoyant showed us was a video, and this was animation, just like you said it, William. It was an animated film, a short film, and it came from a drawing that a child did. And all the characters that the child drew on this painting came alive, and then the child itself was in the film. It's as if the film was wrapped around the child. Uh and it was very innovative and compelling, it was wonderful. Now, so he said, look, you can what we can do now with AI, you can remove the background in a film without the need of a green screen. You can replace any enhanced area. You're a co-pilot in the creation of your background. 90% of what we're talking about is free, but there will be a small fee. But anyone can make a film with AI. This is democratizing filmmaking. That sounds beneficial. However, this means that Evarian wants everyone to become a writer, director, filmmaker, and it sounds appealing. So my question was, what do you see as the downside of this? Uh he said you uh 90% of what we're talking about is free. So they it was all animated, so probably like you said, they just fed in the picture and said, Tell me a story, make a story out of the images, and that's what they did.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Mm-hmm. Um yeah, so uh so uh obviously he has a product that he's interested in selling, and that product is intertwined with AI. Um and I I I think he's right in the sense that anyone can make a film using this technology, but I also just, you know, as the psychologist want to remind us that capacity doesn't necessarily lead to production. Just because we can do something doesn't necessarily mean we will do something. We all have cameras on our phones, but doesn't mean we're all photographers and we're all just out taking pictures all the time. Uh so we have tons of tools and most of them we don't use. Um humans as a species have a tendency towards passivity, especially in our media youth. We like to watch a movie that was made for us. And I don't think the average individual is going to come home from a hard day's work and sit down and write their ask AI to write them a movie. Um I think a lot of people will be engaging in it, but I don't think it's going to uh completely flip the cards so that the average viewer is going to become a filmmaker and there will be no more professional filmmakers. I think it's just going to broaden the field and there are going to be a lot more independent filmmakers, but there will still be the professionals doing the sort of professional grade work that people still want.

SPEAKER_04 41:24

So one way is to really create your YouTube channel, start developing followers, and be prepared for this massive switch so that you can have at least have an outlet for your creativity and hopefully make a little money at the same time, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:45

That would seem to be the future for like for up-and-coming filmmakers right now who are not in a guild, who are not on strike, who are not uh part of a studio system, say yeah, where in the past it was almost impossible to break into that studio system. In in in the near future, I would think it would be beyond impossible because those systems are going to be constricting. So if one wanted to simply create uh without being beholden to studios, executives, um, and and even other filmmakers, then the the totally independent individual filmmaker making their own movies with AI and posting them on YouTube, that's probably going to be not the whole future, but a big part of the future for the next generation of independent filmmakers.

SPEAKER_04 42:35

So you you really see the studios jumping onto this AI and using it for cut costs.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

Everyone's going to use it because it cut costs. Yeah, yeah. So if a producer can hire one writer and AI as opposed to a team of writers, well, that saves a lot of money. And that's what the writers are on strike at. The writers are on strike about a bunch of things, but that's one thing that they're on strike about. But it almost seems incomprehensible that a studio will give up this very cost-saving tool because a bunch of writers don't want to be um laid off. Uh it's going it's going there's going to be a constriction in the field for the studios. Um, and it's going to get tighter and tighter. Uh, so people who want to remain in the filmmaking industry are going to have to resort to making their own films independently to a large extent.

SPEAKER_04 43:27

Okay. Well, let's look at this. Um there were three people on the panel, William. There was uh Voyan, there was a a kid, twenty twenty-five year old maximum, from Facebook, and a woman who knew AI from the uh from the war zone. She was from Ukraine and she used it uh as security, and she's very familiar with it. So those were the three people on the panel, and they all said,

unknown 44:00

Look.

SPEAKER_04 44:01

Uh you need to join AI, embrace it, learn it, and make money from it, or you will be out of a job. Uh just what you're saying. Exact that's what you've been talking about. But here's another thing. Everyone on the panel explained that when the automobile came into being, people were moved from horses to autos, and new businesses were created. Travel, hotels, restaurants, all these new businesses benefit. So their attitude was join AI and find the benefits. We don't know what that is yet, but you the first ones out there will find this. And they wanted you to focus on the benefits and not really accept uh realize or think about this massive change. It all of those in charge wanted us to accept AI and to use it. So the question is, how do we stand up for our rights to own our own material or honor our own talent in photography, sound and editing? And that's where I am right now. I'm trying to understand how to do that.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Right. Um and so it is true that um uh with any new technology uh there comes an enhancement. And the new technology will not be adopted if it doesn't enhance your experience in some way. So AI is certainly an enhancement. The ability to tell AI, you know, write me a 100th about so and so and so-and-so, and it does it in ten minutes or less, um, that's a huge enhancement that can't be ignored. Uh now the people who sell the t the new technology only want us to focus on the enhancement. It's kind of like a magic trick with uh a bit of dece deception or distraction. Um focus on the enhancement, focus on this tool and what it can do for you. Well, uh don't focus on w on what it obsoles. And this is going back to Marshall McClun and his theory of the tetrad. The idea that there are some uh there are some consequences to the adoption of new media, some that are obvious and some that are less obvious. So uh uh in the case of you know uh of the AI of what we're talking about right now, the obvious thing is the enhancement. The thing that we don't see is the obsolescence. So if if we use the automobile model, yes, it created new businesses, restaurants and highways and gas stations and all that, but there are a lot of old businesses that it made obsolete, stables and riding teachers and horse farms and to a certain extent. Now, there are still horses and there's still still people who ride horses and sell horses, but we have to say that the industry was very, very, very much constricted by the growth of the automobile industry. And the same thing is going to happen in the riding industry. Uh meaning there go there's going to be a less uh uh a lessened demand for riders because this machine can write for us. Um now sh should we be afraid of that? Well, I would say that fear is an appropriate response when you're dealing with something that is inevitable. Technology is inevitable, and it moves forward at a pace that we are no longer in control of. When a new technology comes to fore, the entire global market force is behind it, and the whole inertia of the world is behind new technology. And there's no way that any company or any government or any organization could stop or even delay the uh uh the onslaught of new technology. That's where we are, and that's scary because it makes us answer the question well, if we're really not in control of our own technology, then maybe our own technology will destroy us, or it may take our jobs, which is what seems to be doing right now with AI. So the the inevitability part of it is the scary part. Uh the less scary part is kind of like what you said is how c how c how can I defend myself? Or how can I make myself still viable and still um uh uh uh important in a world where so many of the things that I thought could only be done by humans can now be done by AI. Uh and Marshall McLuhan would say, How do I make this tool become a servo mechanism to me rather than me serving this tool? Um so uh maybe I'll I'll go back to sort of uh uh the metaphor of the calculator, where if you give a mathematician a calculator, it enhances their ability to make these massive calculations. However, if you if you give a mathematician uh an artificially intelligent calculator, then not only does it do all the ca calculations for it, but it explains what the calculations mean. And it creates not just the the the uh solution, but it creates the problems themselves. In that situation, we risk a mathematician losing their ability to even understand mathematics because the AI is doing all the work for it. And I think that's the risk that we have with AI right now. How can we uh serve it so that it can help us in the writing process and help us in the filmmaking process, but not make us as part of the process completely uh unimportant? Um how does the tool serve us? And how can we avoid just becoming servants to the tool? So for instance, the pr a producer who tells a writer, here's AI, I want you to work with AI to write a script. Well, who's serving whom? Is the writer serving AI or is AI serving the writer? And that's the question that the writer and the producer and all of us are really going to be asking.

SPEAKER_04 49:51

Exactly. You've got this, you've this is well thought out. Well, let's just close with this. There was a document, they this is the moderator of the panel now talking to these three geniuses, saying, Look, uh, we have a document with 27,500 signatures requesting the you to slow down on developing AI. So what do you think of this? And everyone begged the issue. They went into the horse, into the car, they went into the fact that you you're gonna lose jobs if you don't uh join it, then you're out. You will be disappointed, you have to jump into the future. That no one even said, well, that's not to be worried about, or yes, of course that's important, and here's why. They ignored that. So it looks it just feels like this uh steamroller um that's just coming after you uh in a fish called Wanda when he was at the airport and he was standing in cement and he couldn't get out, the cement started to harden. And the steamroller was coming, you know, there was nothing he could do. And that this uh AI situation reminds me of that film. Uh it's here he comes, and we're going to have to figure out how to use it, I guess, like you're saying, make the most out of it.

SPEAKER_01 51:21

Um yeah, I mean, and you know, um what whether you support AI or not, it's coming. Uh so like a hurricane, regardless of whether you support it or not, you're gonna need to be prepared for it, and simply sticking your head in the sand and pretending it's not coming is not the appropriate response. Um I would like to end uh again referring to Marshall McLunan and his uh theory of the Tetrad, this model for how new technology changes us, uh, and and also just use uh a brief metaphor uh for uh between painting and photography. So, you know, about a hundred or two hundred years ago, there was a whole industry of professional portrait painters. Um when the photograph came along, when f when the camera came along, it became possible for people to simply take a snapshot, and now they had a perfect representation of themselves or their loved one to hang on the wall. So there was no no no more need for portrait painting. So the enhancement of the photograph was that it took no skill, it could be done instantaneously, and it made the artist, the creator, independent of other people in other industries. And that's what AI is going to do for screenwriting and for filmmaking. Uh it's going to let people with no filmmaking skills, no background in writing, no background in art, it's going to allow them to actually make their own movies, uh, which is a wonderful enhancement. Well what will it uh what will it obsolete? What will it make obsolete? Well, professional portrait art artists are not completely obsolete, but they're certainly only a fraction of the number that used to exist. And it's even the same is even true for representational artists. Why spend a year making a perfect represent representational painting of a landscape if you can just take a picture? Similarly, traditional art schools and art teachers are still around, but they're fa uh they're focusing on a much more broad range of skills rather than direct representation. So what does that mean? It means that uh if we adopt this tool for AI, we don't necessarily become obsolete if we figure out ways of use either using the tool for our own benefit or making ourselves different from the tool, providing something that AI cannot provide. And that's I think possibly the greatest challenge for writers in this generation is to say, how can I write a script that AI could never write? And that's a wonderful challenge. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 53:50

I completely agree with you. And you know, there's the other component, William, and that is heart and soul. And that creativity uh has no bounds. And when you put that into what you're doing as a filmmaker and you're using your own passion, which is another thing I AI does not have, then you can make some magnificent films. You can also be a part of building new platforms for films to be uh released on as well. So that it's not just YouTube or or Vimeo and all of the, you know, the the usual routes out there. New platforms can be built. But as long as we always remember that the heart, soul, and passion is what we have going for us that will never uh become obsolete, then there are some good potentials there.

SPEAKER_01 54:49

Mm-hmm. And I just wanted to may just take one minute to uh to wrap up this part of uh uh what McLuhan was saying with the tetrad, because the tetrad has four parts, hence the name. Uh because once the new medium uh does become part of uh of of society, it does change things. So the third step of the triad McLuhan called retrieval, meaning it brings something back that was lost in the old medium. So when people began starting taking photographs rather than hiring portrait painters, it gave back the active mode of engagement in visual art. People who are taking photographs are active. They're not simply passive people paying professional artists to do their work for them. And I think that personal, creative, active aspect of filmmaking is going to be the thing that does democratize it. I mean, there's going to be so many people who can make their own movies with just their phone, which is amazing. And that is something to sort of step back and say, that's incredible. And it is going to change everything, and professional filmmakers do need to be aware of that, but they don't necessarily have to be terrified because what photography did was not only change visual art, created a new media, the art of the frame, which is completely different from painting a portrait. And that's what AI is doing. The new art form is the art of the prompt. Which prompts should you give to AI, and then how should you edit and revise your prompts so that AI is giving you what you want to hear or what you want to see? That's a new art form that never existed before. And that's what we're dealing with. So it's both frightening and terribly exciting.

SPEAKER_04 56:34

Well said, William. Claire, do you have have any comments on?

SPEAKER_03 56:41

Oh wow. Uh this has really um expanded my view. And I also know that the conversation is going to continue to grow. There's so many other facets. Yes. And I hope we can have you back on the show again uh in the near future so that we can discuss some of the uh progress that is made and also some of the challenges that we can begin coming up with uh solutions on uh to make things even better for the people who want to make films.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

Yeah, it's a very it's very exciting to be on this cutting edge of technology, but it's frightening too because when you're on the cutting edge you can't see what's coming around the corner.

SPEAKER_04 57:26

Right. Well that's where the entrepreneur will blossom. When they can look out there, the when they jump in, start doing it, and find the need, and that's what I did early on. I found a need for short ends, and I created a business around buying the film left over from studios and selling it back to filmmakers. So maybe there's a new short end business out there in the future somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 57:54

Yeah, or I mean uh or a a a way of conceiving that in AI format um that was never conceived of before.

SPEAKER_04 58:02

Exactly. Right. So thank you. Uh these are brilliant ideas, and you've really helped me seek m a better, a better future for all of us, uh, because if we don't look at it l uh like the uh steamrollers approaching, but look like it's we're getting on a massive, uh really beautiful, like the the Oriental Express, only on the fast track, to see where we can go with this, then I think we'll be in better shape.

SPEAKER_01 58:34

Yes, terrible, terribly exciting and also frightening as well.

SPEAKER_04 58:40

Great. Thank you so much, and thank you, Claire. There's a wonderful uh amount, a large amount of information that we all appreciate, William. And yes, we'd love to hear from you in a year or so and see where we are and what we've achieved.

SPEAKER_01 58:54

Great. I'd I'd be happy to speak with you again.

SPEAKER_04 58:58

Okay, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_03 59:00

Take care and thank you. Thank you. All right, be well, everyone. Now, in its second edition, Carol Dean's popular book, The Art of Film Funding, has 12 new chapters to cover all areas of film financing and how to avoid expensive pitfalls. Learn how to start with an idea and end with a trailer, how to make an ask for money, create your story structure and your trailer, legal advice, fair use, successful crowdfunding, ask for music rights, and what insurance you can't shoot without. Available on Amazon under Carol Dean and at FromTheHeartproductions.com. I want to remind our listeners that David Raiklan is a brilliant and talented award-winning musician who scores films and can compose music for a trio or for a full orchestra. David is a very good friend to the independent filmmaker and comes highly recommended by From the Heart Productions. If you need music to help tell your story, please contact him at DavidWakeland.com. That's david r-a-i-k-l-n.com. And Carol and I want to thank you for tuning in to the Art of Film Funding. Please visit our website at FromTheHeartProductions.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Good luck with your films, everyone.

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