Northern Ireland's film tech revolution / Three pieces worth reading this week
Hello
This month I did a radio report for NPR and BBC on how the film industry has helped rehabilitate Northern Ireland’s economy and the potential of AI technology to further change how films and games are made.
You can listen to the report here on the NPR Marketplace site.
For the NPR report, I spoke with former film director and tech entrepreneur Hugh McGrory who since 2008 has been based in NYC with his wife Debbie. Together, the couple run Kinetek. You can read our interview below.
Some pieces worth reading and listening to this week:
Have a good week,
Hannah
Interview with Hugh McGrory
When you left Northern Ireland in 2008, what was the film industry like?
I used to teach the film course at Queen's University in Belfast. A lot of the students that I was working with and a lot of the people that were making short films, ended up getting world-class experience by working at high levels on Game of Thrones - there was a lot to learn from.
Game of Thrones was a kind of economic miracle where they were able to take an old dock and transform it into a world-leading production facility in Northern Ireland by making that happen.
Northern Ireland Screen deserves a lot of credit for pushing forward the vision of that. And what we're seeing with Studio Ulster now is an attempt for Northern Ireland and its talent and facilities to lead rather than follow. It's a very forward-thinking, radical proposition that Northern Ireland can position itself at the forefront of how cinema can be reimagined.
Northern Ireland seems to have learned a valuable lesson from Game of Thrones and the impact that it had on its community and society in general, the economic impact but also just the impact on tourism, and just general self-esteem. You have to remember that we're coming out of a long period of conflict.
There always was an untapped, almost bursting well of talent in Belfast and Derry. You can see it in electronic music people like David Holmes and Phil Caron and that whole underground that was emerging. The arts are not a hobby. The arts are so important to the fabric of growing a 21st-century society.
If you look at what's happening in Silicon Valley at the moment with the impact of AI, they're no longer telling us that we should teach our children how to code because AI can code itself. They're pushing for liberal arts, critical thinking, and creative thinking, as we move forward into a future where humanity can provide the creativity and AI can provide the tools.
Could you describe what change you see the film industry going through in the next few years?
The way we've made films has changed incrementally. Films are less than 150 years old. The whole idea that we can capture still or moving images is relatively new, and it's still a bit of a marvel. What's happened in the film industry, as things have progressed, is that there have been incremental innovations.
There are two types of innovation: incremental and disruptive.
An incremental just means a better version of what was there before. Disruptive means something that tears up everything and launches something new. Historically, films have incrementally added things like sound or colour, and things like computer animation, visual effects and various incremental things.
AI is disruptive, so it's not kind of like when movies went from film to digital. That's the most recent one that everybody got upset about and started arguing 10 years ago that a digital image could never be the same as a film image - we've moved on from that right now.
But what's coming is artificial intelligence. The CEOs of Google and Microsoft are comparing the impact of AI on humanity as being as important as fire or electricity - so this isn't an incremental shift. This is a radical shift that will impact society in many, many ways.
When we look at film, the film industry hasn't changed that much. They're still packing a bunch of light stands in the back of a truck and driving it up the side of a mountain. They'll take a shot, then they'll have lunch, then they'll drive up the side of a hill and take another shot and that hasn't changed that much in decades. And they're still trying to fit everything inside a rectangle - what I mean by that is that is the way films are made for a single screen.
And what virtual production is gonna do is replace locations with virtual environments so that it can all happen inside a studio, but it all still looks like it's up the mountain - but you don't have to drive up there. It's being generated.
That is such a radical way to rethink how we can make films. It changes the language of filmmaking. It causes a rethink: what are we trying to do? What are we trying to say: it enables a much wider canvas for artistic expression and storytelling.
We're on the cusp of what economists call a super cycle and the last super cycle was the industrial revolution. So you know, you can compare people's nervousness about AI with people's nervousness about trains and the steam engine where they thought you know, if you went above 35 miles per hour, you would die and things like that.
If you think about the parallels with fire and electricity, both of those things are incredibly dangerous, but we also know that they can be harnessed in the service of just making the world a better place.
How do you envisage AI being used in the creative process?
There are a lot of different kinds of AI and there are a lot of different purposes for AI. What's happening with AI is a radical democratization of the production process. If you think about photography, that's already happened. 15-20 years ago, people needed a lot of money to be a photographer. They needed chemicals and film and laboratories and it was beyond the reach of most people who grew up, like I did, in a housing estate. But now photography is something everybody can do. And I don't see democratization as a problem. I think it's very, very healthy that people have access to being able to express themselves creatively.
AI kind of supercharges that and takes what used to be an entire visual effects company and shrinks it down into a single laptop. So it provides this incredible opportunity for new voices to come through more diversity of different kinds of stories that can be told so that there are different ways to think about AI. I'm not at all interested in AI that aims to replace artists. I'm interested in AI that aims to kind of liberate artists and allow them to express themselves in ways that would not have been possible just a few years ago.
Do you have any examples of how AI technology has helped an artist in that way?
There was an artist in Belfast called Glen Marshall. And Glen won the Cannes Short Film Festival in 2022 with an AI-generated film - I think it was the first time that ever happened at a major festival.
What Glen did was he took video footage of a dancer in an existing short film and used AI to change the dancer and to grow in a desolate landscape. It was an entirely new way of creating. Glenn is an accomplished computer animator for many decades who’s won Or’s Electronica and made videos for Peter Gabriel and things like that. So this was an example of a master creative who deeply understood the limitations of previous systems and then was able to use them to create something entirely new that people hadn't ever seen before and that happened in Belfast.
Will AI bring about an end to location shoots?
I don't think it's going to be the end of real-world locations. I think it's going to be the beginning of a hybrid where that's a choice. But then other parts of the production can happen in a virtual production facility. But again, it's going to change how you approach making a film and when and where you can shoot that film.
It's going to make Belfast an attractive option for interiors and various things. So it's like, just like, you know, you can still go out and buy a film camera and run a roll of film through that camera. It's still there. I mean, we've still got radio that hasn't gone away. So it's not a matter of that like a new way kills the old way. It's just the old way kind of becomes a more expensive and more laborious artistic choice.
How is Northern Ireland developing a talent pipeline for the next version of the film industry?
What we're seeing is that the University of Ulster and education in Northern Ireland in general are embracing this opportunity, and they're beginning to introduce very sophisticated courses in virtual production and designing environments in game engines, and virtual reality AI. It's not just a black box set of equipment that's coming into Northern Ireland. It's an entire ecosystem of people being trained at a very, very high global level, to be able to operate these technologies and reinvent how films can be made.
What technology are you most excited about, or what do you think is going to be the most interesting change for film in the next couple of years?
There's a kind of convergence of multiple technologies. You have virtual production facilities like studios and then you have generative AI. Generative AI is such a radical way of creating moving images. That is the most exciting part of how I see technology developing. It’s interesting if you look at where things like this have happened before, like when I mentioned photography.
We're interested in the top of the pyramid. We're interested in the best artists and the most accomplished creatives using these tools. And you shouldn't be threatened by democratization because even in mathematics, the best way to strengthen the top of a pyramid is to widen the base. And hopefully, the arts can move in the direction of sports, where everybody gets a chance to play but that doesn't mean you're going to make the Olympic team.
We're not coming from a place where everybody got a chance - and that's what I think is the most interesting thing about changing how we go about making things - it's kind of less elitist, it's less prohibitive. Hopefully, that will lead to new types of storytelling. Ireland has such a rich tradition of storytelling that if that becomes a currency then that should be very good for everyone.
You're based in America where there was recently a strike by actors and writers over pay and work conditions. Part of the negotiations revolved around this point of AI. For example, how actors' images would be used or script writing programs. Have you had any conversations with anxious writers or anxious actors who feel threatened by AI?
Yes, we've had lots of conversations with anxious writers, anxious actors, anxious directors, and anxious artists - and they're only hearing one side of the story. They're only hearing what I think is a disservice that this is a bad place for artists and that's not true.
It’s like saying, don't use the Internet. The Internet has lots of dark corners and lots of unethical things but it doesn't mean that artists shouldn't be in there. It doesn't mean that artists shouldn't be kind forging a new future because the new future is coming, whether artists are there or not. It's a much weaker statement to say that artists shouldn't be working on the inside.
What we see is that when they see what's capable, and when they see how this can disrupt, enhance and supercharge the creative process, then they get a different view of AI.
The ethical concerns are legitimate. Some of the AI generators stole the output of a lot of artists - that's not what we do. But the ethical concerns are legitimate. And there will be lots of people coming into AI who want to replace actors with virtual beings because virtual beings are easy to pay for. They don't go on strike and all of that stuff, but I don't think we're going to end up in that world. There's a deep artistry to what the people involved in film do.
I think we just need to rethink the system, but I don't think we're going to be getting rid of actors and set makers and people doing hair and makeup and that kind of stuff. We're just going to bring AI into the mix as another set of tools the way previously digital tools came in.
Can you give an example of any project your company's working on at the moment?
Right now we're developing a project called ‘Underscore,’ where we're developing an immersive experience that is delivering the message of climate change in a new way.
Immersive experiences like Van Gough which travelled all over the world have left in its wake hundreds of venues that are fully equipped and allow us to think about storytelling and film and moving images in a really interesting way. When David Hockney, the British artist, had an immersive experience in London, he said: if it's got three walls and a floor, it's not cinema, it’s something new. And that's what we're building.
We have a development fund from Northern Ireland Screen to develop the project. We're hoping to go into production early this year in 2024, with the major talent and the majority of production happening in Belfast, and the project that we're making is a two-part series of two immersive media projects. The second one in the series is called Astra and Astra will use live actors in virtual production.
When you say live actors in virtual production what does that mean?
What it means is that you have two actors sitting at a table and behind them is a window looking out at a forest.
In a virtual production environment, the tables are real, and the actors are real, but the rest of the room that they're in and what you can see in the windows have all been generated in a game engine, but it looks exactly like it would do if you took them out to a location.
I used to work with actors a lot. I taught actors at the Gaiety School in Dublin. In the theatre, an actor can run through a scene, but on a film set, they’re constantly being interrupted. They're like ‘We need a wide shot’ and then stop; ‘We need a close-up’ and then stop. Virtual production allows us to rethink that process to give a lot more creative freedom to actors. Also compared to regular film production, it is also really close to net zero in its environmental impact. Because there's a lot of environmental impact around driving trucks all around the country or having people fly on planes from one location to another.
If there was an 18-year-old in Belfast who came to you saying I want to work in the film industry, what would you tell them to do?
Well, the good news now is that when people were entering the industry, there used to be a lot of nos when you were coming up with an idea. Like, you're never going to have the budget for that or, or don't set it in New York, you're never going to have the budget for that.
All of those nos are going away right now because of AI so there's less of a barrier to taking ideas out of your head and rendering them in some kind of form with freely available open-source AI tools.
Now, you're not writing stuff on the back of a napkin anymore. You can create the basis of audio-visual scenes quite quickly with available tools. And that's where I think people should start messing around and experimenting and trying to understand what the tools will allow them to do to say what they want to say. This isn't about the tools - the tools are just ways for you to communicate and connect to other people.
How has the growth in the film industry impacted Belfast?
You wouldn't even recognize Belfast 20 years ago compared to the way it is now. The ripple effect is not confined to where the studio is for Game of Thrones. There was a massive draw for international tourism in Northern Ireland. and the effects of Game of Thrones were spread out across the whole city. Their hotels made a huge impact; the nightlife scene was positively impacted; it was hiring drivers and caterers and hairdressers and all of these different things. So yes, you will see that docks look nicer, but the impact of projects like that is much deeper.
Do you think the film industry can be a meeting point for different communities in Northern Ireland?
I hope it's gonna be like in electronic music in the '90s and early 2000s, and punk rock before that - they had a tangible effect on communities in Northern Ireland. Both of those scenes brought the two communities together.
Kneecap just won the award at Sundance and they're controversial and they're not shying away from their political backgrounds, but they're also finding audiences across the UK. They're doing sold-out shows in cities in England and Scotland. There's such creative potential. When you bottle up creativity and don't let people express what they want to express, it’s going to come out somewhere. Until very, very recently, there wasn't a way to get that out and I think that it'll have, hopefully, a positive societal effect if people get to express what they want to say.