I started writing this last year. I guess I was ahead of my time. (Well, actually behind it, as people have been working on AI for years now.)
But I can see advantages of AI for scheduling and script breakdown.
I’m not talking writing scripts but what happens after they are written and prep begins.
There is a lot of tedium in breaking down a script when you are an assistant director, or production manager, especially scripts by beginning writers (and some veterans.)
Inconsistent sluglines, no Day or Night, one long “CONTINUOUS” from scene to scene with no Day or Night so you have to keep flipping back and forth to figure out where this “Continuous” started.
Note to writers, if I can’t figure out that the next scene flows from the scene before you need to work on your writing.
What does ”Later” mean? Later could be 5 seconds from now or 5 years. If it’s a day scene before, than Later could mean Night, or Day. Maybe AI can help me with that. Writers…
But I digress. Let’s get back to breaking down and scheduling a script.
Couldn’t an AI program go through a screenplay and see a dog and add it in as an Animal in the breakdown? and add an Animal Trainer? Isn’t a gun always a prop?
I think so.
AI can have that part of my job - going through line by line and adding elements to scenes. It can be a slog.
I would love to be able to put a script into a program and get a basic breakdown and schedule out of it.
I’m not threatened.
And, I don’t mind if ‘they’ use my schedules to train an AI program to make better schedules.
Again, I’m not talking about the creative element of the process. Let writers write, and not put Day or Night in their Continuous scenes …
I just want the best most current tools I can find. I’m not worried about being replaced (In part because of my sparkling personality…)
But in order for that process to be effective, they should also train on production reports as well to see how the schedules they’re training from panned out.
Did the company make its days? Did they make the least amount of company moves and hair/makeup/wardrobe changes?
I’m not sure how you train in the particular quirks of our business and the many personalities you interact with, but maybe that’s what we need, a dispassionate computer algorithm to figure us out.
No good schedule ever survives contact with a director anyway, a DP, or a lead cast member who has a lot of conflicts, or a special location only available at the least efficient time for the least efficient amount of hours. But that is part of the fun and the challenge of what we do.
Machines will figure that all out eventually, though from the glacier-like pace of software updates for filmmaking software to date we probably have another two decades before it’s incorporated (yes EP, I’m looking at you.)
It’s fascinating and terrifying to see the world advance around you and reflect on how far it has come (and how far I have come since my early days learning how to schedule.)
I will miss that tedious but satisfying first pass of breaking down a script and strategizing how to schedule it — and figuring out whether “EVENING” means Night and what is up with “CONTINUOUS”?