Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Godzilla Minus One’ Director Takashi Yamazaki; ‘Here’ VFX Pros Weigh In on AI at VES Awards
Takashi Yamazaki, the Oscar-winning writer, director and VFX supervisor of “Godzilla Minus One,” was among the honorees who shared their views on AI at the Visual Effects Society Awards on Tuesday. The filmmaker – who accepted the Society’s Visionary Award – also confirmed that he’s currently working on the screenplay and storyboards for the new Godzilla movie.
Last year’s VFX Oscar winner “Godzilla Minus One” was made for under $15 million, and he added that he expects to have “more” budget this time around from Toho, though he didn’t have an exact figure.
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Speaking with a translator, he was one of several honorees who talked about the potential of AI at the event. “It’s a very capable assistant or tool, as it stands right now, but it is not at the point where it can kind of take center stage and generate what humans can,” he said. “Right now, it’s not in any of our pipelines because of that reason, but the speed at which AI evolves is just so immense that where it goes from here remains to be seen.”
The filmmaker predicts that he will be a late adopter of the tech. “Until recently, I’ve been still shooting on film and I like to use miniatures,” he noted. “So I know that someday we’re going to have to embrace and kind of work with AI, but I’m probably going to be one of the later ones because I do like working with older technology and techniques.”
There were numerous notable uses of AI this year in the visual effects world. In fact, during the evening, the VES emerging technology award went to AI startup Metaphysic’s neural performance toolset as used by artists to age and de-age Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in Robert Zemeckis’ “Here.”
Backstage, Zemeckis’ longtime VFX supervisor Kevin Baillie was asked about the news that the Motion Picture Academy is exploring a new rule that would make it mandatory to disclosure AI use in Oscar submissions, which Variety first reported last week.
He reflected that it could become a rule that “will date itself very quickly,” adding “without a really clear definition, every single project that is Academy Award eligible will be using artificial intelligence of some kind, whether it is in upscaling or color grading all the way through to rotoscoping, to things like what we did on ‘Here.’ which is digital environments and deaging and face replacement.”
He added, “I personally think that the benchmark really shouldn’t be whether we used AI or not, but how the artists were involved in the use of the AI. And that is a judgment call.”
As the Metaphysic team accepted the award for ‘Here’ on stage, honoree Jo Plaete said, “While our tools may be driven by code, algorithms, machine learning, AI, the soul of the visual effects remains fundamentally artistic. The most powerful innovations are those that empower the artist’s vision and creative craft.”
Backstage, he elaborated, that the AI tool “empowered this story [of ‘Here’] to be told. I think there is a hell of a lot of applications like that. And instead of replacement, it’s rather displacement, where a lot of repetitive activities in the visual effects pipeline, for example, can be optimized and give these artists more time to focus on storytelling — on making good projects, good films.”
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