At Variety New Frontiers in Entertainment presented by Adobe during SXSW, innovators across different facets of the entertainment industry came together to discuss the futures they’re working towards.
The first panel, moderated by Variety‘s co-editor-in-chief and co-president Ramin Setoodeh, focused on new technologies and featured Blumhouse’s chief marketing officer Karen Barragan, Mattel’s chief design and innovation officer Chris Down, Adobe’s vice president of generative AI new business ventures Hannah Elsakr, Fox Entertainment’s president of marketing Daren Schillace and the NFL’s senior vice president of social and influencer marketing Ian Trombetta.
Barragan explained that as YouTube grows in cultural dominance, it has helped train a new generation of film directors. “Before, legacy media was a gateholder to who could make a movie. Now you look at someone like Markiplier who made his own movie, self-distributed and still got into 3,000 AMC theaters,” she said. “We have found a couple of directors on YouTube, and they’re making major studio movies.” Blumhouse has produced two movies directed by YouTubers coming out this May: Focus Features’ “Obsession,” directed by Curry Barker; and A24’s “Backrooms,” directed by Kane Parsons. “Where we have found a playground for directors is in a forum where they already have a following. They have an audience. People know them. So the hope is that they’ll migrate and help evolve how the studios have worked before.”
“People are greenlighting themselves, which is an incredible thing,” Elsakr concurred, adding that she believes AI will have a similarly democratizing impact on entertainment. Acknowledging people’s hesitations about AI, she said, “Photoshop, when it launched in the ’90s, people weren’t happy with Adobe. They felt like we were destroying craft. If you talk to the folks at Pixar, when 3D animation came out, that was really jarring for the industry. I think we’re at that [point] that again.”
Schillace spoke about experiencing some trial and error related to implementing AI ethically. “It’s about the transparency of it,” he said. “We’ve put things up on social that we thought were obviously AI, but didn’t say anything about it, and the immediate and vast rejection was surprising. It became about, ‘You’re taking jobs from artists.’ There were artists who actually made this. We didn’t provide any context or the transparency that we should have, and I think there’s so much misinformation out there. Everyone just goes with the headlines of, ‘You’re taking jobs’ — AI is also creating jobs. I understand the balance of that. Even internally, the transparency [is helpful]: ‘We’re now doing this through our operations team. None of you are leaving, but your jobs are this now. You incorporate AI into your job. It makes you faster. You can focus.’ The second I say ‘AI,’ people hear ‘headcount.’ I’m like, ‘That’s not what I said.’”
After the tech panel, Setoodeh moderated a fireside chat with actor and producer Mark Duplass, who gave an alternate point of view on AI. Though he emphasized the importance of democratizing the entertainment industry and how widening access to burgeoning filmmaking technology helped launch his career decades ago, he doesn’t have plans to incorporate AI into his creative practice.
AI “plays almost zero role in my work, and it’s not because I am coming from the standpoint of, ‘This is empirically, ethically wrong.’ But I just am such an analog dude that it’s the way that my brain works,” Duplass said. “The way for me to democratize my access to my art and […] make something with what you have available is not to go to AI and build the backgrounds. The way I do that is, ‘Well, I’m just gonna write for two or three actors, and I’m gonna set it in two or three locations, and build it in a way so I can shoot this comfortably in eight days.’ I’ve been sort of AI-ing myself in that regard and using natural, organic tools to do that.”
When asked for his thoughts about the future of indie filmmaking, Duplass said, “You have these things developing: people’s love for vinyl, people’s love for jazz clubs, people’s love for niche things that they want to overpay for to keep alive and nourish. I’m a big proponent and supporter of Vidiots in Los Angeles. And what we’re seeing there is two movie theaters that are full, and they’re showing movies that are available to stream at home for almost free, and they’re paying 14 bucks to see it in a community with people and talk to people at the bar afterwards. They’re also going into the video store […] to feel like it’s 1997 again. […] Is that affecting the larger economic plays of the industry? No. Might it get to the place where it’s strong enough and niche enough that somebody starts to pay attention and maybe they overpay to get a piece of that company so they can have that good look? We’ve seen things like that. So I’m not a nihilist. I’m a realist, and I have some hope.”
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