Luma Labs might just have taken the lead in computer generated video with their Ray2 model.
It now uses image to video, an update from text to video.
See Theoretically Media for more.
My take: wow. Just wow! (How about lip sync next, eh?)
Riffusion has just opened a public beta and it rocks!
Riffusion is the brainchild of Hayk Martiros and Seth Forsgren.
“Our goal is to make everyone into a musician and bring a future where music is interactive and personalized.”
TechCrunch reported their $4M seed funding in October 2023.
My take: damn! Not only will this create full songs, it will also create stems you can download for further modification in your DAW of choice.
Elaine Low writes on The Ankler that Indie TV is a viable model to self-finance shows.
She writes:
“In Park City for the (Sundance) festival is Cooper Raiff, the writer and director of Cha Cha Real Smooth, which just three years ago was a festival competition title that got snapped up by Apple TV+ for $15 million. This year, he’s shopping Hal & Harper — not an indie film, which would be a tough enough sell in 2025, but rather an independently financed TV series, whose path is even less clear.”
Zack Sharf quotes Raiff on making Hal & Harper in Variety as saying:
“(Selling your second movie for $15 million to Apple) makes you too confident. Because of that deal, I thought, ‘Let’s just do it with television.’ That’s what I told everyone. We’re really braving the storm with the series. ‘Cha Cha’ was sold on the backs of so many indie movies. With this, we’re trying to sell this show… so it has to be this undeniable thing to these streamers and these networks. But it made me too confident.”
See the Collider review.
My take: this seems extremely risky, unless your budget is practically zero, you have all the locations, and everyone is volunteering their time. Or, you’ve made so much, you need write-offs? I mean it’s a great way to keep total creative control — until Season Two, that is.
There is a new open source Text to Speech generator in town called Kokomo-82M.
As far as I can determine, it’s being developed by one person, Hexgrad, based on earlier models.
Apparently, this is something you can install and run locally on your own computer.
You can try it out online here. You can also compare various open source models at the TTS Arena.
My take: note that this does not clone voices or emote (at all.) Perhaps in the next version?
AiMation Studios has released the first feature fully made with AI on YouTube, Where the Robots Grow.
It took the crew of nine ninety days to create it. They used Wonder Dynamics to motion capture actors, replace them with assets, and then skin the assets, backgrounds and skies with AI generated replacements.
Haydn Rushworth interviewed Tom Paton, the director, in Coventry, England. Here he explains how he finances all his self-described “shitty” movies:
Watch Part One, Part Two, Part Three and a bonus studio tour.
My take: the feature definitely has some rough spots. But the democratization of production using AI to assist in all areas is something only those with vested interests will resist.
Edward Vega posts on Vox “Why your favourite movies fake their locations and why so many of them are shot in Vancouver.”
It all boils down to money.
Some of the reasons he points out:
btw, the whole video is sponsored by Destination Vancouver.
See also:
My take: Another reason is that British Columbia and California share the same time zone. And a further reason is the exchange rate — the Loonie is worth 69 US cents, so every dollar Hollywood spends automatically goes over 40% further north of the border. (btw, you get even more tax incentive to film in Victoria or on Vancouver Island!)
Alex Nino Gheciu of The Canadian Press reports that TV seasons are getting shorter. Canadians who rely on the industry are nervous.
In summary: the Canadian television industry is experiencing a significant downturn, with domestic TV production falling 13% and foreign production dropping 36% between April 2023 and April 2024. The industry faces multiple challenges, including shorter season orders and smaller writing teams. This transformation is affecting employment opportunities for Canadian creative professionals and raising concerns about the future of Canadian storytelling.
He quotes ‘Murder in a Small Town‘ series creator Ian Weir as saying:
“Most Canadian shows used to have at least five writers on staff, now the norm is the showrunner plus one other full-time writer.”
He also quotes ‘The Sticky‘ co-creator Brian Donovan as saying:
“Everybody in this environment is looking for less and less risk. Money is tight and people don’t want to throw out huge orders because it’s really expensive.”
My take: The challenges facing Canadian television mirror trends in the United States, where average season lengths have also decreased. However, Canada faces unique pressures due to our regulatory environment and smaller market size. And yet the situation in the UK offers an interesting contrast, as British television has historically operated with shorter season orders (often 6 to 8 episodes) but has maintained strong creative output through robust public funding and clear content quotas. (See Understanding the UK’s TV Production Sector.) Canada’s attempt to implement similar protective measures through the Online Streaming Act faces resistance from major streaming platforms, leaving our industry in a more precarious position. Stay tuned!
Alex Ritman reports on Variety that U.K. Indie Film Distribution Hits Breaking Point as ‘Santosh’ Saga Exposes Market Crisis: It’s an ‘Utter S—-show’.
The article discusses the latest crisis in the UK independent film distribution market and highlights the struggles faced by films like “Santosh“, a Hindi-language crime thriller, which despite critical acclaim and international recognition, had difficulty finding a UK distributor.
It points to several factors contributing to this crisis, including:
The result is a highly cautious market in which distributors are hesitant to invest in arthouse or foreign language films.
He quotes an executive who confided to him:
“Nobody’s buying and everybody’s terribly cautious. It’s an utter shitshow.”
The British Film Institute (BFI) offers support for indie film distribution through various initiatives to bring film to a wider UK audience. They also publish a spreadsheet of the weekly UK box office.
My take: different continent, similar story. In Canada, we simply don’t have access to cinema screens. In the UK, attempting to make money from independent films faces this plus other barriers. Is it simply that stories are not connecting with their audiences? Or is the problem something much more complex about scale, awareness and access?
Haydn Rushworth has just released COMPARED: 10 AI Emotions – Minimax / Hailuo.ai 12V-01-live vs KLING, VIDU, Runway.
He compares Minimax with Runway, Vidu and Kling.
His conclusions?
Runway was the most sedate whereas Kling was all over the place. Vidu was good, but Minimax was his favourite.
Tao Prompts also compares Sora, Kling, Minimax and Runway.
He concludes that Runway doesn’t tend to add much emotion at all.
My take: it appears that Minimax may be the best platform to generate video from images at the close of 2024. What will 2025 bring us?
Caleb Ward of Curious Refuge has released 2024’s best summary of how to Create Consistent Realistic Characters Using AI.
He suggests using Fal.AI to train a custom LoRA ( fal.ai/models/fal-ai/flux-lora-fast-training ) with at least 10 images of the subject. Then use this model to generate images ( fal.ai/models/fal-ai/flux-lora ) and increase their resolution using an up-res tool. Finally, you can now move on to animating them.
CyberJungle, the Youtube channel of Hamburg-based Senior IT Product Manager Cihan Unur, also posted How to Create Consistent Characters Using Kling AI.
He details how to train a LoRA on Kling using at least eleven videos of your character. Admittedly, this pipeline is a little more involved. He also suggests FreePik as another option.
My take: basically, if you can imagine it, you can now create it.