Writer's Guild reaches tentative agreement with AMPTP

AI could certainly write the scripts for most any network tv show, superhero movie or Star Wars films (there, I said it).

The only good writing that turns into something I'd actually want to watch is all on streaming or pay channels. I don't think AI could have written "Ozark". 

Maybe it's really AI that writes Nicholas Sparks novels, because they are all virtually identical. I don't know. All I do know is most of the entertainment we are given is not particularly entertaining. Probably why I watch more YouTube channels than anything else these days.

superfund said:

In reply to Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) :

I don't engage with them. They get pushed no matter what because they're big names 

I watch a lot of Youtube, and I never see late night clips. Dunno what to tell ya. 

Related to the discussion, Martin Scorsese recently had an interview with GQ in which he explained some of his current frustrations with the industry:

What do you think changed with the industry that a filmmaker as talented and dedicated as you just can’t make the films that they want?

“Well, the industry is over,” Scorsese said. “In other words, the industry that I was part of, we’re talking almost, what, 50 years ago? It’s like saying to somebody in 1970 who made silent films, what do you think’s happened?” But, of course, Scorsese has theories. Studios, he said, are not “interested any longer in supporting individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts and personal ideas and feelings on a big budget. And what’s happened now is that they’ve pigeonholed it to what they call indies.”

(P.S., I haven't read the entire interview yet, but I plan to on my lunch break.)

Y'all give too much credit to AI. It can write a story line but certainly can't write dynamic characters. 

LLMs (it's not AI, not even close) will probably be useful for writing realistic dialog, because putting words together in a statistically likely order is exactly what it's best at. So you design the characters, come up with the situations, then tell the LMM to spit out a conversation about (whatever).

I respect the skeptics. I'm one too. 
 

Then my cousin demonstrated to me this weekend the power of the AI tools being used inside the industry. I was seriously shocked. 
 

It's much more advanced than I imagined. 
 

Colin Wood said:

Related to the discussion, Martin Scorsese recently had an interview with GQ in which he explained some of his current frustrations with the industry:

What do you think changed with the industry that a filmmaker as talented and dedicated as you just can’t make the films that they want?

“Well, the industry is over,” Scorsese said. “In other words, the industry that I was part of, we’re talking almost, what, 50 years ago? It’s like saying to somebody in 1970 who made silent films, what do you think’s happened?” But, of course, Scorsese has theories. Studios, he said, are not “interested any longer in supporting individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts and personal ideas and feelings on a big budget. And what’s happened now is that they’ve pigeonholed it to what they call indies.”

(P.S., I haven't read the entire interview yet, but I plan to on my lunch break.)

This is symptomatic of the industry as a whole, and why we see so many reboots. No one wants originality anymore. Why would we try something new and different when we can make 7 more singing shows and buy the rights to something that used to be on a different network? I know people joke about idiocracy being a documentary, but berkeley me that E36 M3's becoming REAL. most of MTV is Ow my balls. We cheer the lowest common denominator on a regular basis. Its a race to be as stupid as humanly possible as soon as we can get there. 

Take the two biggest films of the summer. Granted, Barbie was deceptively subversive and intelligent. Extremely well done. But it outsold what could have been argued as the deeper of the two on a nearly 2:1 basis- on being a commercial IP. "indy" films as scorcese put it? Dead and buried from a theatre perspective. Not to say they can't be done- some of the best media out there does not come from major sources these days. Anyone with a couple bucks and some time on their hands can put media in front of the public. More now than any time in history putting oneself onstage is accessible. It's not easy, and marketing is more mission critical than ever, but it can be done. 

yupididit said:

Y'all give to much credit to AI. It can write a story line but certainly can't write dynamic characters. 

I've been saying this for a while after we played with it in a meeting a while back. Although what we do is far more technical and even though the information is publicly available and indexed, ChatGPT was SO far off it wasn't funny. 

I can see it possibly being helpful for generic marketing writing with a few facts thrown in, but it's not nearly as powerful the media has made it seem. 

Mndsm said:

Colin Wood said:

Related to the discussion, Martin Scorsese recently had an interview with GQ in which he explained some of his current frustrations with the industry:

What do you think changed with the industry that a filmmaker as talented and dedicated as you just can’t make the films that they want?

“Well, the industry is over,” Scorsese said. “In other words, the industry that I was part of, we’re talking almost, what, 50 years ago? It’s like saying to somebody in 1970 who made silent films, what do you think’s happened?” But, of course, Scorsese has theories. Studios, he said, are not “interested any longer in supporting individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts and personal ideas and feelings on a big budget. And what’s happened now is that they’ve pigeonholed it to what they call indies.”

(P.S., I haven't read the entire interview yet, but I plan to on my lunch break.)

This is symptomatic of the industry as a whole, and why we see so many reboots. No one wants originality anymore. Why would we try something new and different when we can make 7 more singing shows and buy the rights to something that used to be on a different network? I know people joke about idiocracy being a documentary, but berkeley me that E36 M3's becoming REAL. most of MTV is Ow my balls. We cheer the lowest common denominator on a regular basis. Its a race to be as stupid as humanly possible as soon as we can get there. 

Take the two biggest films of the summer. Granted, Barbie was deceptively subversive and intelligent. Extremely well done. But it outsold what could have been argued as the deeper of the two on a nearly 2:1 basis- on being a commercial IP. "indy" films as scorcese put it? Dead and buried from a theatre perspective. Not to say they can't be done- some of the best media out there does not come from major sources these days. Anyone with a couple bucks and some time on their hands can put media in front of the public. More now than any time in history putting oneself onstage is accessible. It's not easy, and marketing is more mission critical than ever, but it can be done. 

What I bolded is probably the most disappointing thing to me. Ignorance and stupidity seem to be celebrated while being informed and intelligent seem to be derided. Obviously those are sweeping generalizations that don't apply to the vast majority here, but seem to apply to the "Ain't nobody got time for that" folks. 

HOMIES IMMA STOP YA'LL RIGHT THERE, CAUSE YOU'RE JUST DOING THIS RELEVANT XKCD COMIC

Mndsm said:

Take the two biggest films of the summer. Granted, Barbie was deceptively subversive and intelligent. Extremely well done. But it outsold what could have been argued as the deeper of the two on a nearly 2:1 basis- on being a commercial IP.

Assuming you mean "Oppenheimer", don't forget that it was also over 3 hours long and rated R. It was never, ever going to do the kind of business "Barbie" did. That said, it did extremely well. Much better than a lot of franchise films that were expected to beat it like Indiana Jones, Fast X, The Flash, Mission Impossible, Transformers, etc. All of those films underperformed. I think that indicates some franchise fatigue.

"indy" films as scorcese put it? Dead and buried from a theatre perspective. Not to say they can't be done- some of the best media out there does not come from major sources these days. Anyone with a couple bucks and some time on their hands can put media in front of the public. More now than any time in history putting oneself onstage is accessible. It's not easy, and marketing is more mission critical than ever, but it can be done. 

Agreed, and this is why I think Marty doth protest too much. The barriers to entry to making a movie and getting it in front of a bunch of eyeballs are much lower than they've ever been. Maybe they can't get into theaters, but people can see them, and do it much more easily than they could before.

And for that matter, it seems to me we are still getting plenty of good, original stories for adults. They aren't making a billion dollars, but they are getting made. I don't know why people E36 M3 on franchises. A rising tide lifts all boats.

I think it's similar to complaints about music, specifically when people used to complain about radio all the time before streaming was so commonplace. Like of course it isn't very good, you're not looking for it in the right place.

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

Agreed! There is great content out there, you just have to look for it.

It's the audience that sets the level of quality for the overall market, not the studios or writers. Media consumers get what they want...unfortunately mostly they want crap.

In reply to Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) :

Marty is 100% doin' the ol get off my lawn bit, ill give you that.

I was definitely talking about Oppenheimer- which I honestly didn't know ( or forgot, I been hit in the head a lot) that it was rated pirate. Even talking about Nolan's jacket though- and he's made some EXCELLENT movies, his most...known film stars a guy that likes to dress up in a rubber suit and chase a clown around fake New York. Another franchise. Another great film (IMO, if you don't like Batman.....eh whatever. ) 

You're not wrong though, the franchises are the ones keeping theatres open these days. I saw Fast XXXIV last night and...it was OK. Jason Momoa's androgynous bad guy was entertaining, Dom Cena is definitely better than Dwayne the Rock the Tooth Fairy Johnson as "featured wrestler #7"- it wasn't bad. Idk . I think we also have to explore the concept of- what's left of original content that people would even watch? What can we make that would work? Like most modern things, getting truly original media or design out in front of people and not getting absolutely blasted to the moon is a tricky proposition. I'm just as guilty as anyone though- my favorite bit of media out there right now is the Creepy Dave Animal Show on Youtube. It's dumb, it's 30 seconds long, and to me, it's funny as hell. 

In reply to SV reX :

AI is a very helpful tool to assist in writing for now. 

GIRTHQUAKE said:

HOMIES IMMA STOP YA'LL RIGHT THERE, CAUSE YOU'RE JUST DOING THIS RELEVANT XKCD COMIC

 

That's how folks on GRM sometimes behave, as if we are somehow a more conscious group of people vs the rest of the world. Thanks for bringing us back to Earth.

In reply to yupididit :

Yup. 

Writers are using it frequently to write drafts of ideas (which they later edit).

yupididit said:

GIRTHQUAKE said:

HOMIES IMMA STOP YA'LL RIGHT THERE, CAUSE YOU'RE JUST DOING THIS RELEVANT XKCD COMIC

 

That's how folks on GRM sometimes behave, as if we are somehow a more conscious group of people vs the rest of the world. Thanks for bringing us back to Earth.

Speak for yall selves- I'm watching a highly enlightening documentary on the state of crime and effect in america as it happens in real time.

 Ok I'm watching On Patrol: Live (Live PD after it was cancelled and rebooted in the wake of George Floyd)

In reply to Mndsm :

Marty I think also forgets that he was basically given 100K and an order to go nuts with Joker, which while it wasn't great it showed small and unique experiments can absolutely still succeed. Hell, I'd argue that Barbie could force hollywood to recognize that viewers WANT subversive and very intelligent movies, though it seems like they're just trying to instead harness the meme machines of the internet instead for the 5th unsuccessful time in a row.

And like, while I agree with him that things like Marvel movies aren't really movies, I also sometimes don't want to think. Sometimes I want to chill and shut my brain off, which really adds to the "get off my lawn" he's sounding like.

In reply to yupididit :

No problem dude, you'll do the same for me

Keith Tanner said:

LLMs (it's not AI, not even close) will probably be useful for writing realistic dialog, because putting words together in a statistically likely order is exactly what it's best at. So you design the characters, come up with the situations, then tell the LMM to spit out a conversation about (whatever).

The trouble is, that is terrible, boring writing.

Subtext is what makes a scene interesting and engaging. A really tense and engaging scene is always about what is NOT said. LLM's have no concept of subtext and are completely incapable of conveying an idea while not expressing it overtly.

Think of the best scenes in your favorite movies. Like the Coffee scene in Pulp Fiction (or most any scene in Pulp Fiction... or in any Tarantino film). The characters are standing around drinking coffee and talking about coffee. The scene is not about the coffee.

Ditto the big lightsaber battles between Luke and Vader in 'Empire' and 'Jedi'.

'Airplane'.

Look at the "pigs..." scene in 'Snatch'. All the important pieces are what's NOT said. Imagine an AI trying to write that scene.

'Bridgerton' is hugely popular. It is entirely about people not saying what they're thinking.

In case anyone is curious the WGA released the terms of the tentative agreement, which you can read here.

Alternatively, the WGA has a TL;DR version you can read here.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

superfund said:

Is there some way they can have this without it bringing back late night shows? I really haven't missed those clips flooding youtube

Gotta say, I've never understood this "I don't like this thing, so nobody else should be able to see it" attitude.

Youtube is going to feed you things you engage with, so, stop engaging with late night clips.

I engage with short videos that have minimal talking. Everything the algorithm E36 M3s at me is over 10 minutes long with some guy yakking nonstop.

The exception is "shorts", which are extra annoying because they are not only vertical video, they are vertical video with the bottom 20% or so cut off, and trying to see that scrolls you to another video instead of letting you see the bottom of the first one.