The use of Generative AI in the creative field, a long-drawn strike in Hollywood and marked slowdown in the Indian film industry is impacting business of visual effects (VFX) companies
As the collapse of VFX company Technicolor India has set off alarm bells in the field, industry analysts and executives note that AI is not yet a major threat to creative work yet but the overall slowing business in Hollywood and Indian film world is impacting projects flow.
“The writers’ strike has had a major impact in Hollywood It has completely starved film production. The financial struggle of Technicolor and many others is more due to this than AI,” an executive at a leading VFX firm said. “This was followed by two sets of elections -in the US and India- leading to further dip in business,” the person added.
The rise of image and video generation as the most popular use case of Generative AI has added to the industry’s worries. Executives however say that companies which invest in the right tools and plan hiring accordingly can benefit from productivity gains.
“AI is democratizing video production by empowering creators worldwide to produce high quality content with minimal budgets. This is particularly impactful for faceless videos, where narrative driven content is layered over stock footage,” R Raja, MD of Chennai-based TrendLoud said.
Traditional roles such as basic video editing, voiceover artists for standard dubbing and manual transcribers jobs will be impacted but it’s giving rise to new job opportunities like prompt engineering, a quality control person to check AI content, and others, he added. TrendLoud is leveraging GenAI to reduce equipment costs and using it for voiceovers and multilingual dubbing among others.
Bejoy Arputharaj, founder and CEO, PhantomFX argues that AI is still not at a point where it can replace VFX professionals. “AI can generate realistic looking output but you can still clearly differentiate it from real VFX work,” he said.
However, PhantomFX has invested in GenAI for use in non-creative and routine tasks and are seeing a 40-60% productivity gains. As per Arputharaj, rotoscoping (tracing over live-action footages frame by frame to create animated sequences) is one area where AI is assisting them. It is also being used for clean up works and creation of concept art.
“We have been seeing a reduction in manpower requirement in the last 2 years,” he said. We continue to hire based on capabilities to use these tech, Arputharaj said. However, turnaround is in sight, he says with production flow picking up from OTTs and the film industry.
The Telangana VFX, Animation, and Gaming Association (TVAGA) Vice-President Sridhar Muppidi says AI helps in creating more content. “One can make sequels for super hit movies from the black-and-white era without much difficulty. Digitisation of those movies can also happen very quickly,” he said. “Adopt AI tools as early as possible to remain competitive. It is not an option,” he advised companies.
Suresh Daggubati, Managing Director of Suresh Productions, one of the oldest film productions in the South said the industry is watching the space closely. “For now, we can use it for a ‘second opinion’ on scripts. We can ask for the optimum lighting arrangements for a specific camera angle. Or, we can ask AI what could be the best camera angle(s) for a specific scene in the script. The scope is immense,” he said.
An industry expert, wishing anonymity, said that AI is already leading to large-scale job losses in the sector and Technicolor was just the beginning. “Work that required 100 people to do for one month can now be handled by AI in just a few hours. This would mean less or no requirement for people with low-end skills,” he said.
