Artificial Intelligence

I wrote this article on my Linkedin page, December 4, 2024.

These are just my thoughts about AI and this historic moment of transition for many professionals like me. I hope you enjoy.

PS: All images on this article was generated by me with AI tools.

Click here to view directly on Linkedin.

AI will knock on my door and I don't care about that. I hate this! Wait...

Once upon a time...

Ok, I have to confess, I was one of those who didn't care at all about AI, I thoughtit was just something teenagers did, making funny videos with effects for TikTok to get millions of views.

But it's not quite like that, let me explain.

I am a Senior Flame Artist and VFX Supervisor with over 30 years of experience in post-production. I have worked with many incredible people, in the biggest and best studios you can imagine around the world, and I also had my own VFX company.

I made many TV commercials, maybe more than 1000, somemovies that you have already watched in the cinema, and some TV series that you spent the entire Sunday watching. After this friendly introduction of who I am, let's go.

Synthetic image generation for film production and VFX.

Just like most of my coworkers and friends , I hated seeing something that was generated by AI.
The arguments were many and all of them were valid in some way, such as: "Oh, this isn't art!" "That's not cinema!", "Thousands of notes!", "What garbage!", "Artificial!", "Banal", "Generic", "Impossible to be acceptable!", "The client will never approve this!". And as a final blow, one day I thought: "Hey, I spend weeks fixing and improving what was perfectly filmed, controlled environment, everything planned months in advance, a huge team, art director, cinematographer, scene director, creative, the best camera, the best lens, and so on... how can this work in the real world?" It simply won't work! It's decided, I'll ignore and speak badly whenever possible and that way I can sleep in peace.

Only 6 months ago...

One night I was sleeping, and I woke up around 1am and couldn't fall back asleep.

My mind wouldn't stop thinking, the subject: Artificial Intelligence.

AI has never been a completely new word for me; on the contrary, I had been

living with it for at least 10 years and sometimes didn't even know it. You may have

heard that your car uses AI and even airlines use it to determine the price of a

plane ticket... yes, it's true, even if some deny it.

Flame, Nuke and a lot of tools have been using AI and Machine Learning for a

long time... we didn't know exactly what it was, just that some tools made the

work better and faster. It was like magic, but we didn't understand how it worked

under the hood and that didn't matter... after all, I'm a Flame Artist, not a Flame

Engineer... I literally just pressed the button and boom... the magic happened, life

goes on.

Like a ghost, the subject continued to torment me. I became an avid observer,

without uttering a single word, only occasionally a short "cool" or a like here or

there... I just watched everything and everyone about AI, read everything, watched

everything, and always confirming what I and others said... What a mess this all

is! Leave that for playing around on social media.

That sleepless night was like a waking nightmare. I started connecting the dots A

with B. I was thinking about the new features I had seen out there that were still

somewhat primitive, low resolution with unforgivable errors to see on a big screen

outside of a phone where everything looks nice and acceptable. For those who

have done any work for cinema, you know what I'm talking about, a really

biiiiiiiiiiiiig screen, where just one pixel with a problem can be several inches on the

screen.

It was very easy to find reasons to destroy the AI and simply ignore it, and it still is.

Speed of light

I started to think about how fast the development of all this was. Chat GPT is only

2 years old and has become popular among all humans; anyone outside the High

Tech bubble we live in knows what it is and has probably used it. Wonderful and

terrifying at the same time.

"...world of AI, evolution is not measured in years or months

like a new cell phone or a new car model, it is measured in

hours."

Still awake that night, I began to draw some conclusions. Some of them was that

in this world of AI, evolution is not measured in years or months like a new cell

phone or a new car model, it is measured in hours. Yes, hours. What you see at

breakfast has already changed by lunch and is even better. Madness! There is

nothing like it in the world that has gone through something on this scale.

"What you see at breakfast has already changed by lunch and

is even better."

I realize that there were some tools that were improving a lot, I began to think that

I should give them a chance and believe at least a little in everything here that was

boiling in my head.

On social media, fierce attacks against AI continue from all sides, including

from VFX colleagues. But why? Insecurity about losing the job? They seem like an

army ready to fire at the enemy. For me, in a simple analogy, it would be like

selling a camera and determining what can be filmed. If the film doesn't have a

good story, the problem is with the script and not the camera.

Easy man, I remember a friend of mine, many years ago, director of photography,

one of the best in the industrie says about the first digital cinema camera began to

be launched like a Red One and Arri Alexa. "I'll never use that shit, 35mm is much

better and will never die" What happed with 35mm? The money went to Digital

and so did he.

I also remember, last year, some prime-time news reports on TV about the Unions,

claiming that AI would be the end of everything and so on. Do you remember?

Yes, that union strike that ironically created thousands of unemployed people,

shaking the entire industry here in Hollywood, and to this day we suffer the

consequences, with highly skilled workers still unemployed. The one to blame

for everything? AI, of course.

After that sleepless night and with all this on my mind, I decided to take action and

the question came like an avalanche. "Okay, how do I learn a bit about this?"

Let's get starting

After coming across thousands of cute AI websites that do cute little things, I

started discovering some tools that really seemed like they could develop into

something and that were taking all of this seriously. Everything seemed a little

better now. Okay, let's delve a little deeper, I say a little bit, because I still

thought all of this was a big shit for TikTok.

"...let's delve a little deeper, I say a little bit, because I still

thought all of this was a big shit for TikTok."

Weeks went by, and I used all my free time between Flame jobs to keep studying.

Suddenly, good results started to come out. I made a t-shirt website with all the

images on the site and products generated by AI, including the t-shirt designs

which were also AI. There everywhere, 100%, but that's another story I'll tell you

someday. Very simple work for you? Yes, I think so too, but the good thing is that it

actually seemed professional. Damn!!

With all this excitement that had caught me, I still, deep down, doubted or thought

it was something far from being used for film production and VFX. But as I said

before, everything changes in a few hours.

The big surprise

The other day, while browsing LinkedIn, I came across a post about a Coca-Cola

TV commercial. I thought, wow, it's already Christmas, let's see...hit the Play...

Cool images, snow, Santa Claus, people celebrating, illuminated Coca-Cola

trucks, everything fine, everything beautiful, maybe I would have done this or that

shot differently, but everything okay, an another cool Coca-Cola Tv spot was on

air, amazing! I wanted to know who had made it, the director, producer, post-

producer, and agency, to say hello and keep my network active, after all, I didn't

work on this film, that's just the freelancer life digging for a new job.

I started reading the text of the post, until then I hadn't read it, I went straight to

the play, straight to the point. The post was PJ Pereira, Creative Chairman at

Pereira O'Dell, He was congratulating the crew and the client, and he said that

everything was everything was made and created by AI. Whaaaaat? As if that

weren't enough, this guy founded a studio dedicated to generating AI-powered

films.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pjpereira_artificialintelligence-generativeai-advertising-activity-7262971821002575872-dRim/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

And everything make sense in my head. I said, "now the joke got serious."

"...now the joke got serious."

The knowledge of the new business format began to take shape in my mind. With

a google help, I discovered a few more companies that make movies ONLY with

AI. Wow where have I been the last few months?.

From that point forward, my understanding of AI shifted from sophisticated VFX

tools to real-world image generation.

l decided to get really good and study in deep synthetic image generation for film

production and VFX, I went after more professional tools, more robust where

stability and consistency were better. To my delight, they were based

on Node connections, like Flame and Nuke, which would make my adaptation

easier.

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New tools, new setup!

I encountered the first issue. Preferably in this AI world, it runs much better

on PCs, and I use Mac, my whole life. The software even runs on the new Macs

with the Ms chip, but nothing compares to having a dedicated graphics card

(GPU) for AI. I'm sure Apple is working on it. My current Mac is already quite old,

an iMac Pro, powerful and that has already had its glory days, but it can't run any

AI. The solution is to buy a PC and a good graphics card.

I couldn't believe or accept that I would have a PC running Windows at home;

Linux doesn't work, even though it's better and more stable, I would have to have

a contract with some engineer for almost daily help, unnecessary at this moment.

A tragedy for an Apple fan. After several days of research, videos, and benchmark

analyses, there was no way around it, all hope was lost, and I bought a PC.

"...I think I'm becoming a AI professional."

PC on, tools installed, accounts created on dozens of service sites, more than 10

monthly subscriptions, courses, tutorials, monitors that I already had and were

retrieved from public storage, bigger desk, pull the bike to the side, a lot of

willpower and done, I think I'm becoming a AI professional.

From that moment on, my vision of work and what I do expanded, and it expanded

quite a bit.

I haven't yet put to the test what I've learned, and there's still much to grasp, as I

said, new tools and models emerge all the time.

Next chapter

"...the same profession, the same care, the same

perfectionism, the same sensitivity to beauty, the same client,

the same director, the same agency, the same care with the

script, the light, the framing, everything the same."

Today I feel more capable, competent, updated, and ready (or almost) to

migrate... oops, I don't think "migrate" is the right word, deep down it's the

same thing, the same profession, the same care, the same perfectionism, the

same sensitivity to beauty, the same client, the same director, the same agency,

the same care with the script, the light, the framing, everything the same. What

changes then? The tool and the way to get there change. Better or worse? Just

different in my opinion and with much more creative freedom.

"...I think it's a nuclear bomb all these skills together."

I truly believe that my background as a Flame Artist and VFX Supervisor will help

me a lot with all of this. The same reasoning and experience used to solve a

visual effects scene can be applied to solving a scene created with AI. The talent

is the same, in fact, I think it's a nuclear bomb all these skills together.

I think it's time for some of you to stop whining and rethink, start connecting with

this world of AI. The sooner the better, think from the other side, this will open

doors and make you more complete, confident, and competitive.

The Coca-Cola Tv spot was just one, the first one I saw that was presented as

made in AI, but a series of other movies have already been made, various music

videos, and festivals and companies exclusively for AI-made films. Almost every

day a friend sends me something new with the message "Run Helder, Run." Keep

in mind that all of this is constantly developing, it's just the beginning and you

wouldn't believe the speed and where all this can go.

The cool thing is that all the work done in AI, when done by experienced

professionals who came from cinema and advertising, is treated as raw material

and goes through all the post and VFX processes normally, as if they were filmed,

from editing, color, post, effects, and finish to delivery.

"..."get ready to start hearing, the image is being generated"

instead of "the image is rendering."

Remember that the evolution of all this is happening very quickly, no one knows

for sure where we are going, so secure your place now and embark on this

adventure, and let's create spectacular things together and get ready to start

hearing, "the image is being generated" instead of "the image is rendering."

Helder Fagundes

DC - Senior Flame Artist - VFX Supervisor

and now AI Artist/Specialist/Enthusiast/Image_Creator/AIGen/Whatever_you_want to call it :)