Mark Murphy, Director: How Is AI Changing Filmmaking?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Mark Murphy, Solar Productions company director, is a producer, writer, director and composer who has worked on numerous high-profile movies and television programmes. Mark Murphy wrote and directed the film The Comedian’s Guide To Survival. He also wrote, produced and directed the movie For Love Or Money.

In his role with Solar Productions, Mark Murphy, director and producer of Casanova’s Love Letters, spearheaded the making of a six-part television drama staring Patrick Bergin and Armand Assante alongside a plethora of A-list actors, with the series following the fascinating real-life exploits of the notorious Italian adventurer and seducer.

This article will look at the ever-increasing adoption of AI and automation in filmmaking today, exploring the many different benefits of using such innovative technology, as well as outlining industry concerns regarding AI solutions potentially rendering human writers and actors obsolete.

AI has a variety of different applications in the film industry. It poses potential for use in scriptwriting, analysing existing screenplays and producing new ones to create cost-effective and efficient writing. In pre-production, AI can be used to streamline various operational processes, from location scouting and casting to storyboarding.

One aspect in which AI is having a transformational impact on modern filmmaking is in the realms of special effects, with AI increasingly being leveraged to create more realistic and immersive visuals, reducing the need for practical effects and saving money and time in post-production.

AI can be used to analyse audience preferences and data, helping moviemakers to make better-informed decisions about which films to make and how to market them. It can also be used in distribution to personalise movie recommendations for viewers and optimise distribution strategies, potentially paving the way for higher ticket sales and revenue.

AI is already an integral component in the filmmaking industry, enabling moviemakers to take decades off Harrison Ford in some scenes in the latest Indiana Jones instalment, The Dial of Destiny. However, not all aging action stars are enthused with AI technology, with Keanu Reeves revealing in an interview with Wired magazine that he now includes a clause in all of his film contracts banning studios from digitally editing his performances.

ChatGPT has impressed many with its capabilities for writing news reports, poems and essays, and even passing law and business school exams. Experts anticipate that it is just a matter of time before it comes up with a reasonable script treatment or transforms a classic novel into a hit screenplay.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the idea of human writers being replaced by AI. The Writers Guild of America, the body that represents film and television writers in the US, may have stopped short of calling for an outright ban on AI, but there are significant concerns among writers and actors alike about how far the AI revolution might go, with LegalDispatch newsletter author Marc Guggenheim warning that he sees both promise and peril in the technology.

As Mark Murphy points out, it is not just the creative side of filmmaking that will change but storylines too. Today, the proliferation of smartphones has transformed many different aspects of daily life, affecting elements within storylines and plots and posing both challenges and solutions in various genres. As Mark Murphy suggests, Thunderball would have been a very different story if Sean Connery had a smartphone, just as Mission Impossible would have been different if Tom Cruise did not. AI has grown to become an integral part of daily life, and moviemakers will need to reflect that.

One aspect of AI that could potentially be very valuable to filmmakers is its potential to help combat challenges in production, where unforeseen problems frequently raise their ugly head, threatening schedules and budgets for moviemakers who do not have the luxury of time to find the right solution. Mark Murphy suggests that there is a good possibility that AI could work out which areas to redress, allowing the filmmaker to continue in the most efficient way possible.

Although there is a great deal of concern in the filmmaking industry about the scope of AI to render human writers obsolete, having tested an AI app’s screenwriting skills, Mark Murphy seems somewhat unfazed, describing a scene written by an AI app as ‘painfully horrible’, although the app did manage to produce this in less than a minute. However, as Mark Murphy concedes, this is only the start of AI. It is virtually impossible to predict how far AI technology will advance in years, or even months, to come.

Marc Guggenheim agrees that AI is not yet ready for primetime in terms of writing scripts and crafting stories. However, he admits he can see a world where it is able to do just that. Acknowledging how fast technology has advanced over the course of just a matter of months, Marc Guggenheim submits that, down the road, AI could be a real threat to writers.