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Ed Ulbrich loved the days of the early ’90s and late ’80s, when visual effects meant sitting on set with filmmakers or in screening rooms in post-production, aiming laser pointers at screens and literally shaping the look of a film. But as CGI tentpoles dominate the industry — and he’s worked on a number of them, from “Black Panther” to “Top Gun: Maverick” to “Titanic” — a little bit of the fun has come out of it.

Suddenly, you have thousands of artists on four continents — many of whom will never even meet the director, let alone work beside them — working on a film’s VFX. It takes some of the personality out of the endeavor. And, as Ulbrich told IndieWire during a recent interview, his work became “factory work” and not what he “fell in love with.”

Ulbrich wanted something more hands-on, more personal, and something where he could solve creative problems through technology,...

“This is not your average AI panel,” Southhampton Playhouse artistic director and former longtime IndieWire editor Eric Kohn said at the top of a panel discussion at IndieWire’s Future of Filmmaking Summit at the American Pavilion in Cannes, presented by United for Business. “This is not going to be pure existential dread.”

It was a fitting way to kick off a panel titled “How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of AI.” No topic has produced more fear and anger among cinephiles and film industry professionals, many of whom worry that the technology will slash jobs and eliminate the things that make the creative process special. But the panelists, who included Fable Studios CEO Edward Saatchi, Prezense/Nvidia’s Seth Piezas, DoubleEye Studios founder Kiira Benz, Asteria Film Co. partner Paul Trillo, and Venice Immersive programmer Liz Rosenthal, offered a more nuanced take on the emerging technology. While...

IndieWire is proud to announce its inaugural Future of Filmmaking summit at the American Pavilion at Cannes, May 15-18. With four panels across four days, these lively conversations will speak to where the industry is going and the opportunities for emerging creatives at a time of unprecedented change. The summit is presented by United for Business.

Richard Linklater will be our keynote chat in conversation with Eric Kohn, artistic director of Southampton Playhouse. The ultimate outsider-insider, Linklater has been a celebrated filmmaker for over 30 years. Before he became a Cannes regular, he was a cinephile who worked tirelessly to build a film culture in Austin, Texas.

The “many hats” ethos he brought to the early days of the Austin Film Society — funding it with money earned on an offshore oil rig, and later as a bellhop — still reflects the kind of “get ‘er done” scrappiness that filmmaking demands today. With...

Exclusive: AI film and animation studio Asteria has appointed DreamWorks Animation vet Don Allen Stevenson III as Creative AI Pipeline Director.

Stevenson, a former artist trainer for Dwa, is a prominent voice in generative AI. His new post will involve combining artistic talent with AI-powered tools to fill the company’s animation pipeline.

The hire follows that of filmmaker Paul Trillo, who came aboard last December as a strategic partner to lead Asteria’s artist-focused approach to incorporating AI into the creative process.

The emerging company, founded and led by documentary filmmaker Bryn Mooser, owns documentary outfit Xtr and Fast channel Documentary+. It recently expanded and rebranded after a previous iteration when it was known as Xtr, signaling a shift in focus toward AI. Last year, the company acquired Late Night Labs, a firm launched last spring with an advisory team including Poker Face star Natasha Lyonne and Blue Beetle director Angel Manuel Soto.

The Variety & Adobe The Future of AI Filmmaking panel at the Sundance Film Festival featured a conversation by film executives about how AI is currently being used in entertainment as well as how it will shape the industry going forward.

The panel, moderated by Variety’s executive editor Brent Lang, featured Meagan Keane, director of product marketing at Adobe Pro Video, Dave Clark, The Promise co-founder and chief creative officer, writer and director Paul Trillo, who is also a partner at Asteria, Jason Zada, founder of Secret Level, and Angela Russo-Otstot, Agbo chief creative officer.

Keane explained the two different types of AI that make up this industry conversation: assistive AI and generative AI. The company is considering how AI can expedite filmmakers’ and artists’ workflow. “At Adobe, we’re still thinking about generative in ways of like, how do we remove pain points? How do we help sort of...

Exclusive: AI film and animation studio Asteria has added filmmaker Paul Trillo as a strategic partner.

In the post, he will lead Asteria’s artist-focused approach to incorporating AI into the creative process.

Asteria owns documentary outfit Xtr and Fast channel Documentary+. It recently expanded and rebranded after a previous iteration of the company was known as Xtr, as it shifts its attention to AI. The company earlier this year acquired Late Night Labs, a firm launched last spring with an advisory team including Poker Face star Natasha Lyonne and Blue Beetle director Angel Manuel Soto.

Trillo’s work spans short films, music videos, and interactive experiences. It includes the upcoming short film Etherea, as well as The Most Perfect Perfect Person, a film exploring an artist’s agency in the AI era, created in collaboration with music artist Poppy. He produced the award-winning music video for Washed Out’s...

Companies and creatives are waking up to the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and worriesare easing about the negative impacts of the technology on the film and TV industry, according to delegates at this week’sAI Creative Summit, produced byScreen Internationaland its sister titlesBroadcastandBroadcast Tech onNovember 6.

However, there remains acute concern about AI’s impact on jobs and the environment.

The overwhelming message of the day was that the technology is too big and fast-growing to ignore. Analyst Cyrus Mewawalla, head of thematic intelligence at Screen’s parent company GlobalData, described generative AI as “one of the fastest growing technology...

AI animation company Asteria insists that it’s not a tech company; It’s a film studio. Founded by Bryn Mooser, head of documentary banner Xtr, Asteria wants to use AI tools to solve problems and get stuff made. Mooser believes the tech companies have severely undervalued filmmakers and approached Hollywood all wrong.

“Even with all the AI tools in the world, it’s hard to make stuff. It takes a team of people, capital, dedication, and love to make stuff,” Mooser told IndieWire. “There’s a potential of a return to independent filmmaking through this technology. That’s exciting.”

Mooser says just as YouTube disrupted the way people distribute content, AI can disrupt how people produce content. “If you put this in the hands of filmmakers, they have the advantage. Then the studios actually are in trouble, because they’re built for the old world,” he said. “But the narrative among filmmakers was,...

Exclusive: Daryl Dixon and AMC are stepping inside the UFC Octagon tonight.

Two weeks before the new season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol debuts on the cabler and its AMC+ streamer, the Norman Reedus fronted series is going to be in front of all those watching UFC 306 tonight from Las Vegas’ Sphere.

To be specific, the logo for the September 29 premiering Season 2 series is going to be right on the canvas for Saturday’s pay-per-view extravaganza out of Sin City, I’ve learned – as you can see here:

Going straight for a core Twd demographic, like AMC did in many ways during the heyday of Mad Men, the promo will be in the paid center of the octagon for the entire evening. Preliminaries for the $79.99 priced UFC 3036 start at 4:30 p.m. Pt/7:30 p.m. Et on ESPN+ and the night’s main event...

When Washed Out frontman Ernest Greene agreed to collaborate with filmmaker Paul Trillo on the world’s first music video to be made entirely using OpenAI’s video-generation tool Sora, he didn’t quite know what he was getting himself into. “To me, this is just a brand-new tool to explore,” Greene tells Rolling Stone. In his mind, the video — a dizzying, surreal, uncanny valley-ish tour through the life of a couple — was simply the boundary-pushing modern equivalent of, say, the early computer animation in Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” video.

In 2023, generative artificial intelligence company Runway launched its AI Film Festival and received about 300 short-film submissions. A year later, the festival received over 3,000 and its 10 finalists premiered May 1 at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles.

In the last year, AI also has become a major point of contention in Hollywood, a topic of several labor strikes, and multiple panicked headlines. Meanwhile, filmmakers are using it.

“Among my peers, the reality is there’s more people using it than they’d like to admit,” said Paul Trillo, an AI filmmaker who spoke on a panel discussion at Wednesday’s Aiff moderated by IndieWire editor in chief Dana Harris-Bridson. “I’ve even seen people that pretend to be anti-ai, and they are using Midjourney, ChatGPT, they try and take a stance, but I know people are using things.”

Joining Trillo on the panel were Emmy-winning animator Joel Kuwahara, tech writer, artist, and...

Prompt: Hollywood loses its minds over an advanced new generative AI model called Sora that can create lifelike, movie-trailer quality videos from a few short lines of text in minutes.

That scenario unfolded last week when OpenAI, the San Francisco-based tech company behind the text-generating app ChatGPT and the image-generating tool Dall-e, teased its latest project, text-to-video AI model Sora. (The name is a Japanese word meaning sky that the creators chose because it “evokes the idea of limitless creative potential.” Or maybe they’re “Kingdom Hearts” fans).

After seeing what Sora could do, Tyler Perry was the biggest name to sound the alarm. He told THR he put an $800 million planned expansion of his Atlanta studio space on hold. “Jobs are going to be lost,” he said.

The Sora videos are striking. Woolly mammoths march toward you in cascading snow. People walk through a snowy, bustling Tokyo street as...

Can Artificial Intelligence help better restore and preserve heritage cinema?

That was the question asked to a high-level panel on Thursday at the Classic Film Market, which runs alongside Lyon’s Lumière Film Festival, dedicated to heritage film.

Struggling to override the clatter of the heavy downpour hitting the ceiling of the tent set up next to the Lumière Institute for the duration of the festival, participants took part in a heated debate entitled Artificial Intelligence: A Tool for Heritage, in front of a packed room of industry professionals.

Opening the discussion, Barbara Mutz, in charge of legal and regulatory matters at France’s National Audiovisual Institute (Ina), said AI algorithms developed in-house hugely facilitate the archiving and location of its huge catalogue.

“We can index images and sound in a way that allows us to locate them [more easily] at a later stage, both for our own use and that of our users.

The Shins have returned with “The Great Divide,” a timely new single out on frontman James Mercer’s label, Aural Apothecary/Monotone Records.

The band released a video for the track — directed by Paul Trillo with creative direction from Jon Sortland — as well as a “Flipped” version on Amazon Music. It features trippy images floating through time, interspersed with deserted grocery stores and isolated streets. “Now an age has come out of the loneliness,” Mercer sings. “Your hand in mine/The great divide.”

“The Great Divide” was co-written by Mercer,...

Short of the DayA breakdown with extreme consequences.

We’re going to finish this week with something really, really neat, and a filmmaking first. The short in question is called At the End of the Cul-de-Sac, and it comes from executive producer-writer-director Paul Trillo.

First let’s elaborate about that “filmmaking first” comment: this is the first short ever, Trillo says, to be shot in one take, from a drone, with dialogue. That’s right, the entire short was filmed by a hovering camera controlled by remote and zipping around a group of actors as they performed the scene. As if all that wasn’t impressive enough — and it very much so is, especially when you watch the short — the story at the film’s heart is a chilling social fable that would turn Shirley Jackson’s blood cold.

Without dipping into spoiler territory, the basic plot involves a man having a meltdown in the middle of...

Citing no shortage of innovation in the film festival space in the New York City area — with the Brooklyn Film Festival and Art of Brooklyn Film Festival also occurring during the same week — Williamsburg’s annual Northside Festival, the music and innovation conference phased out its film section in favor of “content.” Content, though, seems to be a rather loaded proposition and Northside’s Content Festival offered a glimpse inside how indie filmmakers can make a living.

The content side of the festival, making its debut in advance of the festival’s music and innovation portions, seemed more like a direct offshoot of innovation rather than the evolution of what had been the film section. Innovation in the content space seems to be defined by virtual reality and branded content. One thing the talks were short on were independent content makers, apart from Lex Dreitser, an independent Vr maker who...

Read More: Watch: Why Shooting 'Tangerine' on an iPhone Made Perfect Sense To prove the functionality of Vimeo's free Cameo app, which allows cinematic editing and sharing easily from an iPhone, filmmaker Paul Trillo made a short film (above) solely using the app. In it, he shows the life and death of an iPhone, though with an interesting spin: it's all from the iPhone's point of view. The short provides for some very relatable and comical moments as it follows the phone and its owner. Watch as he tries to take a selfie but instead finds out he's recording video, when he nearly gets the iPhone ripped from his hand in Grand Central Station and even when he drops it in the toilet. The dialogue proves relevant too, including a discussion on how no one can have a conversation anymore since everyone is constantly staring into a screen, all while...

In honor of Vimeo’s updated Cameo app, filmmaker Paul Trillo created a short film entirely shot and edited on an iPhone, appropriately titled “The Life and Death of an iPhone.” Trillo utilizes the phone’s Pov to create the illusion of a constant “feed” between cuts, which he accomplished in camera: Believe it or not the transitions are deceptively simple like a slight of hand. At the end of each take, we just did a quick wipe into black. The key is to do these moves at the same speed each time and make sure you’re cutting on precisely the right frame. I found that […]...

In honor of Vimeo’s updated Cameo app, filmmaker Paul Trillo created a short film entirely shot and edited on an iPhone, appropriately titled “The Life and Death of an iPhone.” Trillo utilizes the phone’s Pov to create the illusion of a constant “feed” between cuts, which he accomplished in camera: Believe it or not the transitions are deceptively simple like a slight of hand. At the end of each take, we just did a quick wipe into black. The key is to do these moves at the same speed each time and make sure you’re cutting on precisely the right frame. I found that […]...

Hp has joined forces with presenting partner Made in New York Media Center by Ifp (Filmmaker‘s publisher) to present Power Up, a five-day festival of new work and discussions centering around technology and creativity. Of particular interest to Filmmaker readers are events feature 25 New Faces Jessica Oreck and Andrew S. Allen; Paul Trillo’s short, A Truncated Story of Infinity, recently featured at Filmmaker; and a screening of director and Film Fatales founder Leah Meyerhoff’s debut feature, I Believe in Unicorns. Other notable events include an discussion on architecture with Daniel Libeskind and a panel on the VFX of James […]...

Hp has joined forces with presenting partner Made in New York Media Center by Ifp (Filmmaker‘s publisher) to present Power Up, a five-day festival of new work and discussions centering around technology and creativity. Of particular interest to Filmmaker readers are events feature 25 New Faces Jessica Oreck and Andrew S. Allen; Paul Trillo’s short, A Truncated Story of Infinity, recently featured at Filmmaker; and a screening of director and Film Fatales founder Leah Meyerhoff’s debut feature, I Believe in Unicorns. Other notable events include an discussion on architecture with Daniel Libeskind and a panel on the VFX of James […]...

Paul Trillo’s A Truncated Story of Infinity considers the limitless schema of possibilities that unfold over the course of a series of moments. The eight minute film — recently featured on Short of the Week — also boasts some pretty impressive practical effects for a budget of $10,000. I asked Paul to break down the means behind each technique, which he notes may not “the correct way” to render an effect, even if they look pretty fine to me. Hall of Mirrors at :00 “Our ‘mirror’ was just a framed piece of green on a wall. We did a simple dolly into the green so it […]...

Paul Trillo’s A Truncated Story of Infinity considers the limitless schema of possibilities that unfold over the course of a series of moments. The eight minute film — recently featured on Short of the Week — also boasts some pretty impressive practical effects for a budget of $10,000. I asked Paul to break down the means behind each technique, which he notes may not “the correct way” to render an effect, even if they look pretty fine to me. Hall of Mirrors at :00 “Our ‘mirror’ was just a framed piece of green on a wall. We did a simple dolly into the green so it […]...

Why Watch? Imbued with Eternal Sunshine‘s DNA, this fantastic short film from Paul Trillo makes repetition interesting and vibrant by framing a single, unimportant man on an unimportant day faced with unlimited possibilities Gorgeously dynamic visuals are to be expected from Trillo (see his previous work Salience), but not only do we get abstractions like an Escherian tea pot eternally pouring into a never-spilling cup, we also get to see the banal made fresh. Sometimes that’s through the subtlety of fingernail polish colors shifting, sometimes from a television smashing to the sidewalk. There’s also a hint of Stranger Than Fiction here, as the narrator for A Truncated Story of Infinity discusses his generic subject with dry witticism and flatly offered profundity. It’s the blend of those sweeping, plain as day observations and the beautiful photography of common paradoxes that makes this short film a wondrous delight. What...

Why Watch? An experiential short to be sure, this work from Paul Trillo combines humanoid silhouettes with smart camera work and a bunch of colored dust to create some stirring visuals. In the deep description, it’s a potent force arising from figures who seem to evanescence right as they’re coming into focus. In the crude description, it’s like a few slender Predator’s walking through the loneliest Holi Festival. The point being that, even at the surface level, the effect is mesmerizing. What Will It Cost? About 5 minutes A New Short Film Every Weekday...