Hollywood, as we see from the outside, is not what it is. The world of Hollywood is very risky and it is full of intriguing what-ifs. Decisions are made on a daily basis in Hollywood various stars are cast down and some are called upon urgently. Nicolas Cage was cast as the lead in Tim Burton’s Superman Lives. But he only had time to try on the costume before the film was dismissed. Actors and directors get their dreams shattered for the projects that were never made. And many fans just have to satisfy themselves with their imagination.
For filmmakers and producers, it is a very bad sign. They are never sure of what the movie will yield for them either they will incur loss or get a blockbuster. The filmmakers want to know if casting Alicia Vikander instead of Gal Gadot is the difference between a flop and smash hit. They want to know if their movie will perform well or not. They want to know if their movie bombs in the USA will it perform better in Europe or Asia. And now, artificial intelligence can clear all the above doubts of the filmmakers.
The heart of the matter.
Due to instability or inconsistency in the movie market, many producers incur a lot of loss. Therefore they always want to have safe forecasting before making any movie. Many companies have suggested that AI could lead to a safe forecast. Los Angeles-based startup Cinelytic is one of the many companies promising that AI will be a wise producer. It licenses historical data about movie performances over the years. It then cross-references it with information about films’ themes and key talent. For that, it uses machine learning to tease out hidden patterns in the data. Its software lets customers play FIFA 19 with their movie, inputting a cast, then swapping one actor for another to see how this affects a film’s projected box office.
Cinelytic co-founder and CEO Tobias Queisser says that if you have a summer blockbuster in the works with Emma Watson in the lead role. And if you have insecurities regarding the role you could use Cinelytic’s software to see how changing her for Jennifer Lawrence might change the film’s box office performance.
Other firms like cinelytic.
As we mentioned earlier that there are many firms trying to assure that AI could lead to safe forecast. There are many other firms in the market similar to cinelytic who assures of determining the success of a movie under certain conditions.
ScriptBook is a Belgium firm founded in 2015, The firm says that its algorithms can predict a movie’s success just by analyzing its script. Another such firm is Israeli startup Vault, founded the same year. It promises clients that it can predict which demographics will watch their films by tracking (among other things) how its trailers are received online. A similar company called Pilot offers similar analyses, promising it can forecast box office revenues up to 18 months before a film’s launch with “unrivaled accuracy.”
The topic of AI is so hot right now that many of the established companies are also jumping into the conclusion of AI prediction. Even 20th Century Fox explained how it used AI to detect objects and scenes within a trailer and then predict which “micro-segments” of an audience would find the film most appealing.
How realistic is it?
Today the movies we see are very high tech. We get to see drone shots, High definition cameras and also movies in 3D which almost feels real. But as the movies are developing, the industry and the business still use Excel and Word. They are fairly simplistic business methods. The data is very siloed, and there’s hardly any analytics.
And the above-mentioned reason is why technologies like Cinelytic has come from outside the world of the movie industry. Cinelytics never released the forecast of their movies and neither do they aim to do so. But ScriptBook shared its forecast of movies released in 2017 and 2018. ScriptBook’s algorithms, by comparison, correctly guessed whether a film would make money 86 percent of the time. As compared to the industry which has only 44% accuracy in their forecasts.
Is Hollywood really using AI?
Till now there is no such information if Hollywood is using AI or not. Although AI has been used in predicting but it is also seen that filmmakers do not fully trust the algorithms. They just think that they have expertise in that field of work. And they know the market conditions, also they know about the emotions of the consumer. So, these are the reasons why we don’t see AI coming in the forecasting business very soon.
Even though the industry is very skeptical about the algorithms on the other hand streaming firms are very much dependent on the algorithms to determine things such as which thumbnail will best convince someone to click on a movie. And in giving the consumers choices like Choose Your Own Adventure-style tales like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
“We have one big global algorithm, which is super-helpful because it leverages all the tastes of all consumers around the world,” said Netflix’s head of product innovation, Todd Yellin.
Conclusion
Even though we don’t see the use of AI in the movie industry too often. But in the near future, it would be the next big thing. As Hollywood has slowly started to trust the algorithms. Looking at the success rate or the correctness in the predictions the industry has started to pay attention to the technology.
