Is Sinners The Savior for Movie Theaters?

0:00In this episode of Tenoised, is the movie theater experience back? James Cameron's latest on AI adoption. And Netflix is testing search with OpenAI. Let's get into it.

0:13All right, what's up, Addy? Hey, we're still remote. I know, we're still remote. If you're listening to this, then you hopefully won't know a difference. But yeah, we're still remote. But hopefully next episode, we will be back together at the round table. Yeah, I've been in a week-long shoot, so I just got out. Lucky to see daylight here. And it's unfortunately not the best time to be on the road here in LA. So we're doing it remote. All right. So a couple whole grab bag of interesting stories happening around the movie theater experience. And I feel like it's timely as well, because we have been talking about both the cinema experience and the actual film shooting on film celluloid experience.

0:50First up, there was a big video going around that has made me happy to see how popular it's gotten. It was Ryan Coogler talking about his upcoming sinners. and it was a 10-minute video by Kodak of him basically talking about film formats, perfs, and how he shot the film and basically all the different options on how you can see his film coming out. They shot in 70 millimeter, but they shot in both IMAX and Panavision 70 millimeter. Yeah, I thought that just having such a tier one level director go through the technicalities of film aspect ratios, film formats, perforations. I mean, all those things I'm always curious about.

1:28So really timely on Kodak's part to make this video and drop it on us. And these perforations have a particular meaning because we shot the film using two different camera systems. One proprietary to Panavision is called Ultra Panavision 70, used on films like Ben-Hur and most recently The Hateful Eight. But another format we use is IMAX, IMAX film cameras. Those cameras spin the film in a horizontal fashion and they spin it using 15 parts per frame. So the film was shot with two different aspect ratios. And this is the first time ever that a film has been released combining these two. So it was a pretty complicated process to shoot.

2:07We had a lot of fun. But when it comes down to the release, there's a lot of options for you guys. We'll talk about that. Yeah. Really fascinating. Yeah. And also cool. First off, I didn't realize that Panavision had their own method of shooting 70 millimeter natively. So that was new to me. That was interesting. And you're telling me for 100 years of shooting film, this is the first time you've matched a vertical perf with a horizontal perf. So that's amazing. Yeah. Or that's super wide. Because I mean, obviously, like Christopher Nolan does this a lot, but he's never shot in the extreme wide format, which then cuts to the more square format.

2:38So it feels like it's gonna be a very dramatic shift, you know, when you're going from like one scene to the full IMAX ratio. Yeah. And I just love when he's holding the IMAX film. It's so gigantic. Just like the role of film in a camera that you'd expect. I'm excited to see that film is back and he was explaining to because it's exciting that he shot it this way it's exciting that he's explaining it also it's exciting that the video has been doing so well it's like over like 100 ,000 views on YouTube and on X where it was also posted some of the shots became memes but the crazy thing is there was a post from IMAX and also he goes into detail too of like where you can see it you know as it was shot in full IMAX and And there are only 10 movie theaters in the entire world where you can see it as it was shot and intended to be seen, which is kind of sad.

3:31Yeah, two of them are here in LA and then you got New York. You got my old theater in South Florida, which is not even in Miami. It's in Fort Lauderdale. It is the museum IMAX theater, but it is the only remaining true IMAX screen with a 70 millimeter projector and then a handful of other theaters. I think one in London, one in Louisiana, one in Texas. Yeah, it's a philosophical debate. You know, what is film? What is cinema? And I think the reason why we're getting a lot of traction, I mean, we covered film episode last episode. And so we were right on top of this trend. And I wouldn't even say it's a trend.

4:07It's rather a reawakening. what was once great. The reason, in my opinion, is that there is so much content out there, whether you're talking about film, TV shows that are quote unquote cinematic, right? They're shot at the highest level with the best cameras and the best light. But then what is truly authentically cinema? What was it at 50 years ago, 100 years ago? What is the origin story? And I think this is the part that is kodak is playing to and sinners is going to dominate on is this is as authentic as a cinema gets because it was shot on film it will be shown on film on a projector and so if you want to relive the experience of what was once the most grandeur of all cinematic experiences then this is the way to do it so i think it's like a nostalgic itch that is now all of a sudden a really interesting topic and something that gives you a reason to like go see it in the theaters and not, you know, wait for streaming.

5:05Yes. To like have this, this experience that you, you know, you can't really see it this way. You can't experience it this way. Yeah. Like you can listen to like somebody like Quentin Tarantino tell you to go to the theaters and see a movie, you know, sitting in that chair, but then what does it mean for you? So I think this is more of a quantifiable thing that is more relatable for most people right now because we're immersed we're literally drowning in a world of digital content whether it's the streamers you know or youtube or whatnot so what is not digital what is that analog format centers is not just content it is elevated and the movie has got 100 on rotten tomatoes as of i know i mean yeah and on top of this like it has excellent reviews which of course you know as we talk about a lot it comes out to like it's got to be a great story you know to start with yeah and everything else is extra.

5:58And I think you're a big fan of Creed. I'm a big fan of Black Panther. So like... Yeah, I love Creed. And Black Panther is great too. But yeah, Creed's one of my favorites. Yeah, I got another soundbite too from him too, just talking about the magic of the theater experience. Let me just play that right now. The reason I fell in love with theaters was because I came up, my parents was working class in Oakland and it was the most affordable way for us to go out and have a good time and have an experience. I still believe in that communal experience of going to the movies. This version right here, we worked especially hard on to make sure it tells a story, to make sure all the story is there for you guys.

6:32And speaking of the theater experience, another film that has sort of revitalized the theater experience is a Minecraft movie, which I have not seen, but it has done way better than I think anyone expected it to do. Have any of your kids seen it? Have you gone to see it? They really want to go see it. I think we're going to go this weekend. That is not surprising at all. I would imagine if there was a Roblox movie or a Fortnite movie, it would do equally as well. There's just such a massive cultural momentum around this game that, you know, all you have to do is not mess up the story, really. Yeah.

7:08And it's so great, too, that it's like, you know, young people going to the theater when there's so much talk of like the theater, you know, experiences Jeff is dead with like Gen Z and stuff. It's like, no, maybe they just haven't really been films or movies that were made for them or connected with them. And this is something that has and we've been seeing clips of to an extreme level kids going crazy in movie theaters during the climax and like cheering and borderline causing a disruption. But I mean, there was one, I think, kind of crazy story where like police were called for like throwing popcorn and stuff.

7:37But I mean, for them to be that excited and like that together, I think overall is pretty cool. I don't know. Jared has the director thought, you know, it was like great to see that excitement. I remember when Star Wars 2 came out and like people brought lightsabers to the movie theater and like busting them out during like a duel of fates and the other battles in episode two. I know duel of fates is episode one, but yeah, you know, it's just like, it's great to see that come back and that has not, you know, that's not dead that, you know, have fun with your friends and see some awesome movie together.

8:05I love your insight on sort of giving the younger audience the thing that they want in a cinematic rapper. Right. And it's essentially what Minecraft is doing here. If you go back to like previous video game movie adaptations, like the recent Mario Brothers animated film, I mean, Mario Brothers is really not a Gen Z thing. It's maybe an elder millennial Gen X IP that has hit the theaters recently. So still not something super relatable for them, although they're familiar with Nintendo and the IP. But Minecraft is like right down the pipe. This is very relevant for the youth today. So yeah, it just goes to show that if you give the people what they want in a timely manner, it'll absolutely do well in theaters.

8:50And, you know, especially with the age and if they're even younger and you kind of wrote them off as not going to the theater, it's like, no, there just wasn't stuff for them or a reason for them to get out there. Speaking of film two, we didn't cover this on our NAB roundup, but in our film episode, I did mention like, oh, right, by the way, remember Blackmagic still makes a film scanner, the Sintel film scanner. One of the other updates from Blackmagic was an update to their Cintel film scanner. There's now a Gen 3 of their film scanner. I believe the main updates were that it has more improvements for scanning 8 and 16 millimeter film.

9:21So fun to see that they're still updating that. And I don't know if the reason for going to smaller formats is that there's also resurgence in smaller formats coming through. But yeah, film is not dead. Film is quite the opposite, having a second life. Yeah. Another sort of side story in the group of movie theaters. This one's an iconic LA one. So don't really know how to describe it but if you see the outside of it i'm sure it will look familiar it's i think it's been in tarantino films if you watch like licorice pizza or once upon a time in hollywood really any movie that was quote unquote shot in og la cinema ramadone is most likely going to be in that film it is the quintessential cinema theater in la for you know i'm i'm guessing close to 100 years so sounds like they're facing some difficulty at the moment yeah it shut down it was run by arc light i believe and arc light was a great chain super high quality projection and just movie theater experience but they sadly did not survive covid i think it was covid that yeah that put an end to them and that building has been dormant for a number of years and it's been shocking because it's such a it's probably one of the most iconic theaters in la and you know it's just always like well why doesn't just you know a tarantino or spielberg just come in and buy the building and reopen it.

10:39And I believe that like just the owners aren't selling or some kind of weird reason. I'm not entirely sure why, but there was a rally this weekend with a bunch of supporters to save, revitalize, reopen the movie theater. So it's been getting a lot of support, but still no word on like what's going to happen. I don't want to decouple the two things, the resurgence of film and sort of the uncertain future of cinema and theaters. Both of those things really depend on the health of Hollywood in general. I would really be bummed, as many of our listeners would be, if either of those things go. And I think we need both of them in addition to the newer tool sets like AI and newer VFX tools and all the new camera sensors and lenses.

11:22We need all of the above. But what makes film and theater so valuable, in my opinion, is the need for authenticity and the need for a truly unique experience that you can't replicate at home. So I think both of these things together are obviously more powerful together. And yeah, also, you know, we should point out too, like that besides Sinners, you know, we've talked about original films and stuff coming out. Like the next two weeks are, you know, kind of a really interesting time because there are four original films coming out that, you know, are not based on any IP. Besides Sinners, there is a drop, which is sort of that like suspense film where i forgot her name but the actress from white lotus uh gets like airdrops that she has to kill her date turns into looks like a kind of crazy suspense uh film the amateur which is like seems like a kind of assassin film and warfare warfare is not getting the same amount of love that civil war got unfortunately uh but it is ultra realistic depiction of a battle in iraq i believe Yeah, except I think it was done on, if I saw a blurb, it was done on like a$20 million budget and already made$15 million in opening weekend.

12:33So still, you know, I mean, we've talked about like mid-level budget films, and it definitely seems like it'll at least make its budget back in the box office, which I think is deemed a success, because obviously there's a lot of additional revenue streams. The middle has been hollowed out, so it's nice to see movies in the$15 -$20 million budget range. I mean, that's a rarity in today's world. yeah and especially for something that seems so via vex heavy for a war movie you know the other thing too with theaters that you know we haven't gotten into and that i know hurts the theaters a lot or just makes it difficult for them is the windows and how long the movies are out in theaters before they go on streaming which again gives people you know it's like well why am i going to go to the theater if i just literally wait like three weeks and this movie is going to be streaming i'd be curious what the window is for sinners i imagine probably at least 45 days which is I think what the theaters are fighting for as a minimum.

13:21But yeah, I think that's another big factor as well. And we've talked about this in the past too, where there were movies I'd tried to see and then they end up not being in theaters anymore and ending up on streaming pretty soon, even though I've tried to see them in the theater when they're coming out or shortly after their release. Speaking of movie theaters, did you see that Cosm is about to drop the Matrix on a limited run i did see that and with some edge enhanced what was it described as like immersive enhanced uh borders or something yeah i'm not sure was it yeah i'm not sure what that is uh just to wrap the movie in a sort of 180 format i think is difficult enough but they're adding stuff on top of it it feels like i mean it sounds like they're not going to try to wrap the entire movie and 180, but probably box it and then, but add a dish something outside it to, so it's not just black, but to feel more immersive.

14:14I'm curious how they're going to do that. Also, the sphere is doing a plane of the Wizard of Oz, uh, and they're using AI to, I believe up res it, but I don't know if that also means to additional enhancements to make it fit the sphere better. I did hear that, a lot of AI was used for Wizard of Oz. I'm not sure what extent and if it's even like true one to one with the original film, or maybe perhaps there's added content or anything like that. But this is a great example of bringing people back to the theaters, you know, using ancient IP. Yeah. And I mean, especially with the sphere, like even the tickets for Postcards from Earth, the ongoing Darren Aronofsky film that they shot for the sphere that is like their filler when they're not doing a concert.

14:58Like even just to see that tickets are like 40, 50 bucks starting at, you know, if you want pretty good seats, 100 bucks. So, you know, I imagine they're going to charge a premium for something that is almost 100 years old. So a good box office number, same with the Matrix. I'm sure that's gonna be charged a premium too. So yeah, it's another kind of similar thing with 3D, which, you know, they realized, oh, they can add 3D and charge a premium ticket price for that. And kind of a win win gives people a reason to go to the theater to see something different and theater owners are able to charge a premium for something that people can't get that full experience in their house.

15:31That story actually ties into our next story, because I heard this story from the podcast that we're going to be breaking down in our next story with James Cameron. This one has been going around mostly because of one quote he said about visual effects and cutting budgets. Let me play that. Let me play that quote first, and then we could break that down. So this was on Boz from the Future podcast, which when I saw the article and that his quote came from a podcast was like what podcast got james cameron on their podcast and i realized it's the uh cto of meta so that that's how you get him on the podcast his name is andrew bosworth yes and my goal was to try to integrate it into a vfx workflow yep right and it's not just hypothetical it's we have to we we if we want to continue to see the kinds of movies that I've always loved and that I like to make and that I will go to see, call it Dune, Dune 2, something like that, or one of my films are big, big FX heavy, you know, CG heavy films.

16:29We've got to figure out how to cut the cost of that in half. Totally. Now that's not about laying off half the staff at a VFX company. That's about doubling their speed to completion on a given shot. Right. Cutting time in half. Exactly. So your cadence is faster and your throughput cycle is faster and artists get to move on and do other cool things and then other cool things. On that count, he's absolutely right. We talked about this on our Technicolor episode after the massive layoffs. What is the future of VFX? It's a lot of the smaller contracts because the big contracts are going away. The movies are just not making the money that they used to.

17:04I would even go as far as to say that it's perhaps a near-term 50 % reduction in budget and a longer term more across the board, maybe 70 % or 80 % reduction in budget with the same level of expectation. Yeah. We talked about this in Technicolor and yeah, the preface to this was, you know, his involvement in stability AI. And that was where he was like, yeah, I'm coming from this to figure out, you know, to be involved with the people tackling these, these problems. And because we have to cut these budgets to keep making the films that, that we want to make. I don't think there is a lot of VFX artists that are not going to be welcome to maybe not doing so much rotoscoping or not doing a lot of tedious work in VFX.

17:49Fluid simulation is something that's really difficult now. It takes a lot of hours. There's promising technology in AI that is making any kind of simulation a lot easier, computationally less expensive. I think he's talking about those things where it's not an entire frame generation. it's little bits and blocks that are replaced out. The things where you'd have to throw people at it to just like nudge and tweak and fix to not, you know, to have algorithms figure that out so that they could actually spend time doing the artistry and the stuff that they, you know, most likely signed up as a VFX artist to do.

18:25Yeah, the other example he gave was cleaning up mocap suits where like the hand moves from like the suits and, you know, someone has to come in and like frame by frame, like shift the hand back to where it should be. did you enjoy it it was terrible i mean look i we keep going back to black magic on this but like a good example of ai efficiency is the stuff that result 20 has right like the magic mat the magic power window feature that they have you click on a person and you instantly draw a rotoscope around them you know it it's these you know adobe has the same features in photoshop yeah final cut has yeah yeah just yeah instead of rotoscoping a mat around the person it's just like up it's this thing and it knows what that person is and that shape and can like do a pretty good job of making a mask around them.

19:10Yeah. And then relighting is another one that's really difficult. You need high quality HDRs from the set. If you don't have it, then you're approximating with, you know, virtual lights. Relighting technology now we saw with Bebel, it's close. This is something that could also save a lot of time. So when you combine AI powered rotoscoping, AI generated backgrounds with AI powered relighting. You're talking about a lot of VFX right then and there. Yeah, yeah, completely. And yeah, the interest of going back to the 3D thing, because it was in this, it was a good podcast episode, only about an hour or so.

19:43You know, I encourage people to listen. The interesting thing was him talking about the theater experience and theaters switching from film to digital projectors and that they didn't have any incentive to change because they were like, how can we sell this to the audience? like from the audience perspective it's like uh you know the thing you used to see before it's going to be in digital but it's pretty much going to be the same experience you know you're not it's like from your end it's like not really going to be that different where it's worth the capital investment for them to upgrade but then when avatar was coming out and 3d and then it was like oh you could charge a premium and you could only really see this in a theater like it with the high quality 3D, that was the motivator that helped shift everyone to help move movie theaters to shift the digital projection.

20:31I mean, those are both of those things are happening around the same time during Avatar One release, you know, movie theaters transitioning out of film into digital. And then the reason for big digital being that this massive, the biggest movie in the world will be supported by 3D. The other interesting thing from that interview that I thought was more interesting than his initial AI VFX comments was his opinion on AI and the copyright debate. And I will say we have sort of been in line with James Cameron about his opinion and what we've talked about before. And he was basically saying we should be focusing more on what comes out of the AI versus the inputs.

21:11So let me play the clip first and we can talk about it. My point is, as a screenwriter, as a filmmaker, if I exactly copy Star Wars, you know i'll get i'll get sued that's right right actually i won't even get that far everybody will say hey it's too much like star wars we're going to get sued right now i won't even get the money and as a screenwriter you have a kind of built-in ethical filter that says i know my sources i know what i liked i know what i'm emulating i also know that i have to move it far enough away that it's my own independent creation right so i think the whole thing needs to be managed from a legal perspective as at what's the output yeah not what's the input the input you can't control my input yep you know you can't tell me what to view and what to see and where to go yeah the preface to that and you put the whole clip in but he called humans uh i believe he called us um meat computers meet something and that we were uh basically we were we are we are walking around LLMs ourselves.

22:15And yeah, the gist is, you know, from a human perspective, like we get all sorts of inputs, we get all sorts of things coming into our brain. We can't, sometimes we can control that and other times we can't control that. But the responsibility is up to us to, you know, create something that is not a copy of something and have that judgment, you know, to be like, oh, this feels too similar to, you know, Star Wars or Superman or Batman. Like I got to shift this, you know, make this a little bit more original. And that goes, I forgot a few episodes ago when we were talking about AI and copyright and outputs.

22:46And, you know, it's like if you spit out a Batman, you know, you're trying to make a Batman cartoon, you know, you're crossing the line. he also was talking about like that there should also be more control over when you call up a specific style which we've also talked about too where you know there should be lines between you know give me something that is like whimsical and animated versus you know give me a picture style or give me studio ghibli style i totally agree with him on this point coming from ai as a tool perspective right it's like look don't worry about how i'm making this thing i won't even make it in the first place if I knew it was a plagiarism which I think most artists would agree no no artist wants to 100 copy somebody else they want to be inspired by previous art and create something new having said that I think like on the visual side of AI we just saw the whole Studio Ghibli meme thing happen over the last couple of weeks like how can that not be an input issue right like of course, whatever model that was built was using Studio Ghibli material.

23:51So now it can recreate that material so, so well. So there's definitely an issue there, right? Because that was not permitted. You know, Miyazaki obviously wouldn't allow for something like that to happen. But I also get Cameron's point that, you know, nobody is being stopped from creating Batman from scratch in Maya and then rendering in Arnold and putting it on the screen. The issue is AI makes it so much easier to do that, even though it's the same output. Right. Well, yeah, I mean, also, where's the line between fan art and, you know, monetary damage, you know, so it's like so much of the Studio Ghibli stuff was just, you know, people having fun.

24:27And I would say probably, you know, 99 % of everything going around, it felt positive and raised the brand of Studio Ghibli and the awareness. And I wouldn't really say there was much damage. And no one was really, aside from if someone, I don't know, was getting some money off of a picture that like got a lot of views, Maybe they made some money off that, but that should arguably, you know, not be able to be monetized. But, you know, when you start going into commercial territory or you're like, I'm going to use these tools and make a cartoon that is in the Studio Ghibli style. And I'm going to try to, you know, sell this cartoon or like make a movie in that style.

25:00Then, you know, I think that's when it starts getting into your, you know, crossing the creative ethical line. I think the Studio Ghibli thing is just disrespectful. I think, you know, somebody like Miyazaki is not going to, like he said, you know, this is a crime onto life itself along those lines. Like he is not wanting people to use this style that he created over decades to then make something that totally doesn't belong in the universe of Miyazaki stories. Now, having said that, that's him, right? So if we take another style. I would be curious what he did think of that because I don't really know if anyone got a quote from him about the X thing because the quote that was going around, you know, this is an insult to life, was from a video from I think like five or six years ago from like an early demo of some AI tool that they were like, oh, it could speed up your animation process.

25:55And that was where the quote came from. So it wasn't about this itself. So like, you know, I don't know if it's because like I said, it's like so much of it was just people having fun and just, you know, turning their family photo into a Studio Ghibli thing. And it was, you know, harmless and fun. And they just really, you know, enjoy the style that he created. And, you know, it was whimsical. So I would be curious if for the most part, he was, you know, flattered that, you know, it resonated with so many people versus, you know, feeling like there was brand or, or. Yeah, I think we can all agree that the style of Miyazaki and Spirited Away is universally loved.

26:28Like all of the terrible images that were converted into this style were instantly more fuzzy and warm and likable. Even the White House used it for something awful. Yeah, that was the 1 % I was thinking of. Not the best use. Yeah. And so then our last story came out that Netflix is testing new search technology that is using OpenAI to help power their search to give better TV and movie results in the search. I wonder what the licensing cost on that is and how much money OpenAI made on that one. Wow, nice. Yeah, this is a very tire-hits-the-road true real-world application for something as powerful as ChatGPT.

27:14You know, I think most of us are using ChatGPT at like 1 % or 2 % of its strength, right? Like we're doing basic searches in there trying to find stuff that you could otherwise Google search. We're not really problem solving with it, not everyday basis. Take something like Netflix's search engine, which is probably used by millions of people at the same time, every day, all over the world in multiple geographic regions. I mean, this is an exercise where this model will truly be put to the test. You know what? I'm sure they've done a lot of testing. And if it's already deployed at this level, then the age of AI has truly arrived because this is a true revenue model for ChatGPT and OpenAI to be married to Netflix at this level.

27:59For me, I feel like the issue with Netflix and a lot of the streaming is not necessarily search because I don't really if I'm searching, it's like I'm searching for something specific. It's the recommendations. And I would be more interested if OpenAI, if there's a chat GPT integration that surfaces better films on the homepage for me, because I feel like a lot of times, you know, I go to the homepage. And if I'm like in the mood for like just kind of something in the background, like not something specific, like I'm going there with something specific in mind. I feel like it's just like the same handful of films that show up in the different, you know, niche genre recommendations.