Zack Snyder Thinks Hollywood Needs to Get on Board With AI or Get Left Behind

Zack Snyder didn’t. It seems like all the worries AI It turned the world of filmmaking upside down and attracted many newbies to join. In Wired magazine large-scale interview activities Tuesday in San Francisco, director told editor-in-chief Hemal Jhaveri, “Everyone has a really good movie camera on their phone, but we’re not — at this moment, anyway — shooting from people’s pockets. Make millions of great movies.

That doesn’t mean he thinks Hollywood creatives can avoid artificial intelligence entirely. “It’s important right now to educate yourself and understand what it can and can’t do, especially when it comes to image-making and storytelling,” Snyder said. “You have to understand what it is and what it can’t do, and you have to be able to use it as a tool rather than standing on the sideline with your hands on your hips.”

While Snyder said he still sometimes questions the “why” of AI filmmaking – for example, what’s the point of using the technology if you just want to shoot someone sitting in a chair in their living room – he also acknowledges that technology There is potential to make some shots easier to shoot. “Artificial intelligence doesn’t care whether the house is on fire, whether it’s on Mars, whether it’s underwater,” he told Javeri. “Everything that might cost a filmmaker a lot of money to film is no different for artificial intelligence.”

Snyder said he’s particularly interested in the idea of ​​artificial intelligence that could understand the aesthetic core of a film or filmmaker, like if he could film an actor’s performance and then compare it to a set created by a production designer in some way. The world is in sync. If the AI ​​could understand what he actually wanted—the “dust particles,” the backlighting, the overall set design—rather than just convey its interpretation of what he was asking for, then, he thought, “the concept would be awesome.”

As a director who has worked on many movies, superhero movies and other films with extensive visual effects, Snyder said he is no stranger to “a very virtual world in filmmaking.” Still, he says, he always puts artistic performance ahead of what we ultimately see on screen. Everything that has nothing to do with the actors is just “background,” he said.

“My favorite movies are the ones where I can feel the director’s hand. I want the human perspective to be able to narratively push me through a story in a way that I wouldn’t have imagined or imagined what would happen next. The way what happened,” Snyder said. “As viewers, that’s what we pay and that’s what we aspire to. But how we achieve this very human thing…well, that may change.

The way audiences watch movies may also change, Snyder said, acknowledging that streaming media like Netflix Has become the absolute overlord in the film industry. He asserts that the films and shows he produces for the platform are seen by millions more people than they are in theaters, and that even films classified as “blockbusters” would undoubtedly be viewed in larger theaters. Attract a larger audience.

Snyder said that as a director, as long as he realizes he’s making something specifically for streaming, he’s up for the challenge. “If my films are not shown in theaters, it would be rude to say that I am not an artist,” he told Jhaveri. “If you’re a streamer, you’re paying for this movie, and if you say at the beginning of our conversation, ‘This is our format, 250 million people are going to watch it on their phones,’ then I have to know that. That’s reality. If that’s the case, then I should be able to accept whatever happens next.