{"id":111354,"date":"2025-09-01T18:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T18:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/111354\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T18:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T18:22:07","slug":"australian-film-maker-alex-proyas-broken-movie-industry-needs-to-be-rebuilt-and-ai-can-help-us-do-that-artificial-intelligence-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/111354\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian film-maker Alex Proyas: \u2018broken\u2019 movie industry needs to be rebuilt and \u2018AI can help us do that\u2019 | Artificial intelligence (AI)"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a time when capitalist forces are driving much of the advancement in artificial intelligence, Alex Proyas sees the use of AI in film-making as a source of artistic liberation.<\/p>\n

While many in the film sector see the emergence of artificial intelligence as a threat to their careers, livelihoods and even likenesses, the Australian film-maker behind The Crow, Dark City and I, Robot, believes the technology will make it much easier and cheaper to get projects off the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe model for film-makers, who are the only people I really care about at the end of the day, is broken \u2026 and it\u2019s not AI that\u2019s causing that,\u201d Proyas tells the Guardian.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the industry, it\u2019s streaming.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says residuals that film-makers used to rely on between projects are drying up in the streaming era, and the budgets for projects becoming smaller.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to rebuild it from the ground up. I believe AI can help us do that, because as it lowers the cost threshold to produce stuff, and as every month goes by, it\u2019s lowering it and lowering it, we can do more for less, and we can hopefully retain more ownership of those projects,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Proyas\u2019s next film, RUR, is the story of a woman seeking to emancipate robots in an island factory from capitalist exploitation. Based on a 1920 Czech satirical play, the film stars Samantha Allsop, Lindsay Farris and Anthony LaPaglia and has been filming since October last year.<\/p>\n

Proyas\u2019s company, Heretic Foundation, was established in Alexandria in Sydney in 2020, and Proyas described it at the time<\/a> as a \u201csoup to nuts production\u201d house for film. He says RUR can be made at a fraction of the US$100m cost it would have been in a traditional studio.<\/p>\n

This is partly due to being able to complete much of the work directly in the studio via virtual production through a partnership with technology giant Dell that provides workstations that allow generative AI asset creation in real time as the film is made.<\/p>\n

Proyas\u2019s 2004 film I, Robot was made when AI was much more firmly in the realm of science fiction. Photograph: 20 Century Fox\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n

The production time for environment design can be reduced from six months to eight weeks, according to Proyas.<\/p>\n

In Proyas\u2019s 2004 film I, Robot \u2013 made at a time when AI was much more firmly in the realm of science fiction \u2013 the robots had taken on many of the jobs in the world set in 2035, until it went wrong. Asked whether he is concerned about what AI means for jobs in film, particularly areas like visual effects, Proyas says \u201cworkforces are going to be streamlined\u201d but people could be retrained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe there will be work for everyone who embraces and moves forward with the technology as we\u2019ve always done in the film industry,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The Guardian is speaking to Proyas in the same week Australia\u2019s Productivity Commission came under fire from creative industries for opening discussion on whether AI companies should get free access to everyone\u2019s creative works<\/a> to train their models on.<\/p>\n

Proyas argues that \u201cyou don\u2019t need AI to plagiarise\u201d in the \u201canalogue world\u201d already.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to think of AI as rather than artificial intelligence, it\u2019s \u2018augmenting intelligence\u2019, because it allows us to streamline, to expedite, to make things more efficient,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will always need a team of human beings. I think of the AIs as one of the part of the collaborative team, which will allow smaller teams to do things better, faster and cheaper.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the internet floods with AI-generated slop, Proyas says he is working to bring his skills in directing over the years to get the desired output from AI, refining what it puts out until he is happy with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy role as a director, creator, visual guy has not changed at all. Now I\u2019m working with a smaller human team. My co-collaborators, being the AIs, have got to service my vision. And I know what that is,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t sit behind a computer and go, \u2018funny cat video, please\u2019. I\u2019m very specific, as I am to my human collaborators.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a time when capitalist forces are driving much of the advancement in artificial intelligence, Alex Proyas sees…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-111354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}