All posts by Gary C. Woodward

The Broken Prototype of “The Best”

It makes no sense to ask a sentient person to choose one “winner” from a list of films originating out of different narrative forms.

Awarding “best” for this or that in the arts—including film—is beginning to seem like a tired fiction we should be willing to give up. Perhaps never winning ribbons in my grade school’s field days soured me forever. But the annual cycle of film industry awards that has just concluded with the Oscars seems out of wack.  The obvious reason we already know is that individual efforts that result in vastly different projects are not directly comparable. A person only allows themselves to swallow this fiction if they want to indulge in the fantasy that only one can be “the best.”  There may be justifications for defining winners in sports competitions and hot dog eating, but not in the arts.

There is simple solution that preserves the important function of celebrating outstanding work in film, theater, writing and music. As is usually done now, use ballots of professionals to vote on those five or six colleagues or projects whose efforts seem especially praiseworthy. That’s what yields the nominations that set up Oscar night run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.  Thousands of members in 18 separate divisions vote those they deem worthy of recognition.

At that point, the process should stop.

Build an event praising all of those folks who were selected. The remainder of the A-list party at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles could then celebrate the work of more of their peers. Among the advantages is that small-budget and outlier films will not suffer from expensive Oscar campaigns  to secure votes.

In simple terms, it makes no sense to ask a sentient person to compare and choose one “winner” from a list of films that function in different narrative universes, including from this year: Barbie (a deceptively warm thumb in the eye to patriarchy), Oppenheimer (historical biography), and Poor Things (revisionist science fiction). The final list of category nominees could still be honored with brief clips and a few words from one of the persons who helped guide the project to the short list.

The Oscars Presentation is a National Touchstone

The pressure to turn the Oscars into a winner-takes-all game show game show is beneath what a serious art form should want. The process lowers the proceedings to something akin to Family Feud in tuxedos. It also suggests that money matters to the Academy more than pure art: not quite the idea of Ars Gratia Artis emblazoned above the old MGM logo.

An altered format that shuns the idea of a single winner also means that as the evening progresses, more of the attendees will not have been identified as losers, in a ratio of about ten to one. To the credit of the nominated actors and the heads of crafts departments, most still manage to take their defeat with admirable grace.

There’s also a bigger point here. Organizations everywhere end up adapting some of the strategies and assumptions of the Oscars for their own dress-up formal events. The event is a cultural touchstone. I’ve seen the outlines of the template within the events of college organizations, national academic conferences, variety shows, and even grade school assemblies. The ersatz point in these events is to identify a stand-out “winner” who will carry home a new piece for the mantel, leaving those looking on to suppress their disappointment.

It isn’t that we should skip the idea of acknowledging great achievers. The more unchallengeable point is that we should not be forced to choose between diverse projects. If we really think the broken Oscars works as it is, then we should have no problem putting our stamp of approval on the single “best:

– Family member

-Round fruit

– Painting in New York’s Metropolitan Museum

– Jazz musician living or dead

– Scout in troop 25

– Faith tradition

All of these as singular choices are clearly absurd, even though there is a hopelessly flawed part of us that loves manufactured competitions. I know: as things stand, nothing will move  the Academy to change its rules for the next big night, other than to make it flow better as a game show. It is in the American nature to celebrate individuals over groups. In addition, film producers want to spend a big portion of their budgets on promotion. Since many have already gambled in spite of terrible odds, the chance to become a winner is too tempting to pass up.

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Sora Will be A Game Changer

I would love to be wrong, but filmed entertainment seems to be facing its own equivalent of the robotic assembly line.

A little-reported but hugely significant white flag of surrender surfaced a few weeks ago when the producer and actor Tyler Perry suddenly canceled a planned expansion of his Atlanta studios. A dozen new sound stages were originally projected, but that was before he saw what he considered a “mind blowing” demonstration.

Perry changed his mind after he viewed a collection of short videos produced by an A.I. program called Sora. On just verbal prompts to Sora, the name of an image generator from Open AI, a fabricated scene emerged as an instant “video” that was difficult to distinguish from a sequence that a Hollywood production company might take days to set up. The crane shots in some of these fake videos are stunning. The characters look like they have been groomed for their parts. Shadows are mostly authentic. And the live action from people and animals look mostly “real.” As the Washington Post noted in an excellent must-see article,  the images and actions are “shockingly realistic.”  The article and its examples are best seen on a computer screen. Here’s a sample of one of the videos with its text prompt that is cited by the Post.

[Verbal Prompt: A cat waking up its sleeping owner demanding breakfast. The owner tries to ignore the cat, but the cat tries new tactics and finally the owner pulls out a secret stash of treats from under the pillow to hold the cat off a little longer. (OpenAI)]

We expect that most institutions will evolve incrementally: slow enough to allow for adjustments to new realities. That may not be the case here. Every trade in the film and video industry must be asking how they will fit into a world of narrative storytelling when anyone without experience with computer generated images can “create” stunning video effects.

To be sure, things aren’t perfect in this early generation of Sora. Look at a sample of an invented scene from a 1930s movie, also cited by The Post.  It looks great, but Sora doesn’t know how to light a cigarette:

[Verbal Prompt: A person in a 1930s Hollywood movie sits at a desk. They pick up a cigarette case, remove a cigarette and light it with a lighter. The person takes a long drag from the cigarette and sits back in their chair. Golden age of Hollywood, black and white film style. (OpenAI)]

Hollywood is not alone in confronting technological advancement, but the ease of use of this technology makes it an existential threat to the film world as we know it. Producers and various content providers will love this tool. But it cannot be anything but a blow to artists and trades that usually make traditional film or video projects. No wonder actors were so concerned about achieving a new contract that would prohibit the use of their likenesses without their permission. I would love to be wrong, but the future of “filmed” entertainment seems to be facing its own equivalent of the robot revolution in the production of automobiles.

A colleague who knows about these things notes that crews have been dealing with Computer Generated sets and effects for years. As actor can now appear to be walking down a street in Prague while passing in front of a green screen in Burbank. And many are working these days. There’s also the example of recent films like Poor Things (2023), with actual Victorian sets on sound stages and the inventive use of crafts that go with a period piece. My colleague also wonders if many A.I. scenes aren’t essentially rip-offs of other location videos, slightly modified to seem more original than they are.  Newer generations of this software should help clarify the charge of “mere copying”.

To be sure, the future appears bright at least for copyright lawyers.  Then, too, actors in dense roles driven by dialogue construct screen personas carefully.  Performances come from assumed motivations and hard-to-fake nuances. Can a fully integrated performance like Emma Stone’s in Poor Things really be put together from just from verbal directions?  Even so, an upheaval is bound to happen as seemingly recognizable persons are placed in novel settings and given words that they never muttered.

A.I. appears to be a new and fearsome thing facing the film industry, but it is even more of a threat to the culture as a whole if journalists and public figures face an endless tangle of anger and confusion over real and fabricated words and images.

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