What Does The Future Hold for “AE’s” In the Age of “AI”? | LACPUG Panel

Zack Arnold

I'm very excited to talk about this topic tonight also a little terrified. This is a very, very divisive topic that has certainly got very, very fiery opinions on all sides. And in order for us to cover all of the conversations that have to do with artificial intelligence would take us literally all night. There are ethical considerations. There are legal considerations, there are copyright considerations. There's talking about the economic impacts, there's the technological impacts, there's no way that we can cover everything. But the reason that this panel exists tonight is actually from a panel that I was a member of I did moderate, but I was a member of a panel for edit fest, talking about AI a couple of months ago. And it was specifically about the way that we look at it from the creative process of editorial. And I felt the need for many other people expressed the need for Well, what about the assistants? How do the assistants factor in all of this, and that was kind of the the genesis of this. And Michael was kind enough to reach out and ask me to moderate after I had been a part of that panel for edit fest. So I want to do my best to cover the topic from, you know, the areas that are going to be the most interesting and relevant and necessary for the Assistant Editor, I'm going to do my best to stay out of my own way, anybody that listens to me knows that I have a tendency to stand on a multitude of soap boxes, I have not brought any of them, I would like get into TED talk mode. And I want to hear more from these three. But there is one thing that I want to start with, which is an opinion that I'm very, very strong, I very strongly believe in. And that is that the role of the assistant editor is absolutely vital to the creative process, both technical and creative. And and I think that what what we've seen over the last 10 to 15 years is a lot of the erosion of the relationship between the editor and the assistants. And it's largely become a very technical job very much about data management. And one of my hopes, I have no idea where AI takes us more than anybody else does. One of my hopes is that it does give us the opportunity to bring back the mentor mentee relationship and brings creativity back to the assistant editor role. So that is one feeling that I am very, very strong about is the fact that we have to do whatever it takes to protect the job of the role of the assistant editor and their role in the creative process. Outside of that, and I'm going to do my best to hear from what everybody else has to say here. And you'll notice if you saw in the name of tonight's panel, it was very, very intentional, that this is called the future of the AE's in the face of AI. And there's a reason that AE is in quotes. And I want to start with Ashley as a matter of fact, because this is something that she brought to my attention that I believe Scott also has some, you know, some opinions about. But Ashley, you had brought to my attention the difference between the AE and the assistant editor. So before we even talk about AI, I want to talk about the term AE, what are your thoughts?

Ashley McKinney

Well, I think that using a term like AE really eliminates the creative part of our name, it removes the editor classification. It also kind of I think the language language is important language is very important to me. Words matter. And being able to say, Assistant Editor really gives you the weight and the know the correct way of explaining to somebody what you do and who you are, to, especially to a producer who I feel like producers sometimes want to devalue the work that assistants do, because they don't really know what we do. Like, really, I really don't think a lot of people sometimes know what we do. And that's part of the job is stressing how important our relationship with our editors are, but also our relationship to the work and to the craft and to our creativity.

Zack Arnold

Scott, I believe you, you too have some thoughts about the term AE.

Scott Jacobs

Yeah, but I actually agree with everything that actually because it's I mean, I'm, I never really tried to say this publicly. But considering that amount of pretty big public forum right now. I'm just gonna say it anyway, because it just needs to be said when I was coming up in 2009, you never heard AE all of a sudden it started developing and sprouting more and more, but I always would hear it from my friends that are unscripted. And I'm not here to put down on scripted television, or programs by any stretch of the imagination. I actually think it's harder than working in narrative. So don't kill me here but to Ashley's point, I feel like it really developed in the unscripted world and then as those assistants who wanted to transition from unscripted to narrative? You know, they brought along what they knew. And that was the term AE. And I think as more and more people started coming from the unscripted world, it started catching on a little bit more. But again to Ashley, Ashley stated in it perfectly how I feel about it. It's, you know, we're not AE's, like an assistant director, we are assistant editors. And that means something that means something to me, you don't hear about it in the future world. And now you do, unfortunately. And I've grown to just accept it. I've given up standing on my own soapbox about it. But it's always been. I'm sorry, I keep referring to it. Because she said it so eloquently. And I can't say it better. But yeah, I just kind of feel it just came from the unscripted world where producers treat it in editorial as a kind of more of a cog in the machine, then in the narrative space, and it just kind of evolves from there. And it is what it is at this point. But it's nails on the chalkboard for me.

Zack Arnold

Yeah. So Richard, I know that you have a whole, you know, slew of monikers, Assistant Editor only being one of them. But what are your thoughts on this? Is it okay to call you a VFX Editor? Please. Okay, so I just didn't ever know, it just wanted to double check.

Richard Sanchez

Actually stating that really well, where words do matter. For me, it's never been a term that bothered me. I think really what it is always come down to is if people have used it respectfully with me, because people have used it respectfully, and people haven't even respectfully. I mean, the fact of the matter is, even the term assistant editor, we get lumped in at times with people who get coffee, which is not what we do. And so I mean, to be totally honest, I think the term assistant editor can also be used with disdain. But I do find, by and large, there is to Ashley's point, there's a gravity to it. And so I think there's something to be said about calling it, I'm not going to, I'm not going to bite off someone's head, if they call me an AE. Now, if they treat me like an inferior, we're going to have problems.

Zack Arnold

But not that anybody's ever treated in an inferior way and postproduction, right, ever. That never happens. Why I think that was an important place to start the conversation because I literally thought it was way too short. And and and have an abbreviation. And I had no idea that it had so much weight and understanding the value of it in the way that you can be seen or devalue. There's no reason not to call you an assistant editor versus an AE. And you're right, it is it's After Effects. That makes sense. So moving on to the next topic, I know that everybody here this audience is very much tool driven, and tech driven. And we are going to get there. But I think we have to set the stage a little bit first, rather than saying, what are all the AI tools we should be learning? What's the latest? I think that in and of itself is a huge topic. But I think one of the many divisive topics that I've seen about artificial intelligence is should we even be learning it at all? And should we be allowing it into the industry. So before we talk about the tools, and the tech and the strategies and the tactics, I want to talk a little bit more about the politics of it, because I know the right now, this is one of the two main talking points with the SAG AFTRA strike, it was one of the main talking points for the WGA strike. So I'm actually going to go back and start with you, Richard, and then maybe come back in reverse order. And by the way, you guys can go off of each other at any time, you don't need my permission to talk at all. But if we're looking at this idea of whether or not we should even be allowing all of these tools and versus note, we can't have aI part of our workflows, and we can't let this in, it's going to take our jobs, like how do you feel about this idea of you know, AI is something we should or should not embrace, because I know you have very strong feelings about this.

Richard Sanchez

I mean, I think starting AI in Pomona is a losing battle. It's coming into the 100%. I think much like we're seeing with the WGA. And the SEC after strikes, it becomes imperative that we put in place structures that can protect our work within that the the genie is not going back into the bottle. And so I think the biggest concerns we have are I don't see the large scale job elimination, but I do see job erosion. And so just to answer succinctly, can we stop it? Absolutely not. Should we try to stop it? Absolutely not. Should we try to limit how it encroaches upon us? Absolutely. And we should be deliberate and thoughtful about that.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, I agree with that as well. But I'm going to defer to either Ashley or Scott to see what your thoughts are about whether or not AI belongs in the cutting room and the assistant editor Bay and if so, like how are we going to approach this?

Ashley McKinney

I think as long as it remains a tool, yes, it's important to learn new tools and always be learning and always As be open and evolving, no matter what, like I'm working on a project right now that we're cutting in Resolve. And I've never done that before. And that's scary. But it is giving me new knowledge and new ways of doing things. So I think that is important. What I think we also need to be aware of is the idea of those around us of what they think AI can do, and make sure that we are making the air communicating correctly what it can do, because there's an idea that AI could completely take our jobs. But that's not where the technology is, right now, it's really not that close. When you really look at it, most of the time, AI is just the language models, spurting out, you know, random strings of text of being run by people in Ethiopia, which is a whole other conversation around AI. But so we have to be mindful for those around us. Because I've worked unfortunately, in situations where I was devalued by producers, where I was only brought on for dailies, and then kicked off the project for however many months it was until luck. And then they called me and we're like, are you free to do turnovers for this project? And it's like, well, no, I had to go and find another job. And then they wanted me to basically replaced myself, in a sense. And I just think that that mindset, that bottom line, you know, budget cheat is where AI is the most dangerous, it's what people think it can do versus what it can actually do. And that's where our role comes in of putting those guardrails down and really making sure we're communicating effectively what it can do.

Zack Arnold

So bringing it to you now, Scott, there's a buzzword or report that's been going around this thing that's called Movie labs. 2030. Anybody heard of this, this initiative where the studios have gotten together, and they're trying to figure out what oh, I think Michael Kammes might know something about this, he might have a five things video about it, that I watched today to cheat and learn more. So talk to us a little bit more about this movie labs initiative and how we see that potentially affecting the world or the Assistant Editor.

Scott Jacobs

Yeah, so I'm on the emerging technologies committee through the editors guild. And it's essentially just a fancy way to say we're keeping an eye on AI, and all the tools, how it's going to impact all of us. And that was the first place where I learned about movie labs, and I kind of kept it under my head. And I actually applauded Michael, on Facebook, when he finally posted about it, because it needs to everybody needs to understand what the studios are doing. And, essentially, you know, I definitely encourage you all to other than watch Michael's video, things like 2030 minutes long, integral to your education, trust me. In summary, it's essentially the studios are streamlining the workflow and the pipeline for making content in a way that they'll be able to pump out significantly more content, potentially with less people. I think there's a lot of positives that can come out of it. I actually, I keep wavering back and forth about what AI can mean to all of us. And I really feel that there is a world in which Yes, absolutely. Cutting rooms can get small, right? Yeah, but there is a considerable chance that the cutting rooms will have to expand because the amount of work that will potentially be placed onto the post production crews will be pretty significant. To the point that where you know, on a feature, you have a first and a second, maybe an apprentice, if you're lucky, we will now need several seconds to help in mitigating the amount of content we're getting. Now to that it does create an AI that can do scripts, and I'm all for it. Because I mean, I'm totally

Ashley McKinney

Real script sync, real script sync

Scott Jacobs

to work around actually working with narrative structure. Once they pass that, they'll be great. However, it does a good job for apprentices. Yeah, I mean, look, there's there's a lot of negativity, a lot of freak out. But honestly, stay educated when you stay informed and you can stay ahead of what these tools are going to do, then it's not so scary. And it's not scary for me, especially learning about what everything can do. You know, to actually look at scoring, you know, it's it's only an understanding that

Zack Arnold

Yeah, the the one thing that I'll add to that really, really quickly, where I'm going to second what you said Ashley about The idea that it's the bottom line on the spreadsheets where this is actually the scariest. And I think the conversation is going to really come down to efficiency versus effectiveness. All of my students are like, Oh my God, here he goes, again, about efficiency versus effectiveness, they're two very, very different things. bringing in more technology and advanced technology and AI is going to make cutting rooms more efficient, it doesn't mean they're going to be more effective. And my argument is that they're going to be vastly more ineffective. Because if there is a shrinking of the workforce, which is very much yet to be seen, it means that there's less collaboration, it means that there's less human intelligence that's telling our stories. But to me, the thing that we need to pay attention to the most is not just the erosion of the bottom line. The other thing for me is the idea that I'll just ask you a quick survey, raise your hand, how many of you are enjoying all the extra free time that you have, because you no longer have to beat your clothes against a rock to wash them? Anybody you like I've got a washer and dryer, I have so much free time in my life, you just filled it with more stuff. Right? So the fear that I have is that if we have a i o think of all the extra time we'll have to be creative yoink, we just took it out of your calendar. That to me is what we need to protect, we need to set boundaries around our creativity and the value that we bring the collaborative process. TED talk over moving back on, the next thing that you brought up that I think is really important, and I want to hear this from all three of you, because you both had very different paths in the industry. You mentioned the idea of the The Apprentice editor, or a second assistant editor. And this idea of the team actually expanding. I know one of the big fears is if there is a lot more automation and technology, what's the path to becoming an editor? So I know that the guild has had some conversations about that. So whether it's from the guild's perspective, or just in general, there are fears about if the technology is doing so much of the work, what is my path to creatively becoming an editor?

Scott Jacobs

Well, I think the path to becoming an editor is someone's own tenacity to become an editor. You can't, if you want to get in that editor's chair, and believe me, I want it. I'm not gonna go through my whole career path, I had a fork that I had, you know, a fork in the road, and I had to choose a direction. And I did and that meant being an assistant for a little longer. But I'm working on projects that I'm gratified by, you know, but communicate with your editor, it doesn't matter how, how much AI is doing our job, or what else we need to be doing. If you don't communicate with the people that you're working with, that you want to be editing, then you're not going to get it. It doesn't matter what the work load is, how little or how much we have to do. You just got to communicate and make sure that people know what you want. That's fine.

Ashley McKinney

I think that yeah, that's important. But also, I do think that there is some credence to that fear of losing that pathway, because I do see an erosion in what assistants have the workload just in general, just in the last man five years, you know, you go on a TV show, and they're like, we only have 23 VFX per episode. And then suddenly, that becomes 200 VFX per episode. Just because they paint outs are cheap, and they can send them off to India and have it done. But that's still more work for us. And most of the time, those kinds of shows don't have the effects team. So it falls on the assistant editor. And we're also doing paperwork that maybe we shouldn't be doing it in television, and sometimes features sometimes in features. I've been my own post supervisor, and talking to vendors and all of that. But that erosion, I think it's something where we can stand up and stop it we can we need to be more vocal. I think assistants definitely need to be more vocal. I mean, that's one of the big reasons why I wanted to run for the board for impact, because I just felt like sometimes assistants can get forgotten because we want to move into the editor chair. But while we're here, we need to make the position and the career. I think it's sustainable for the next generation.

Zack Arnold

Similar question for you, Richard. But for you, I guess it's maybe slightly different in that you've gone both the Assistant Editor path but although the also the visual effects editor path. So how do you see AI both kind of changing that that path, but also, you're in a more specialized area where this is something I've talked about a lot in the podcast is this idea of specialization versus generalization. And the more generalized our skill sets and our knowledge becomes the more we can future proof ourselves against the highly specialized nature of AI. But you're in a that the visual effects editor per se a specialized but a lot of the tools like for example, you can now click a button boom rotoscope The mat is done right That's where it gets a little scarier as far as like full on replacement. So talk a little bit about that, in conjunction with this idea of how the path might change with all this new technology,

Richard Sanchez

you know, did to be totally honest, like, you know, looking at both, you know, the general aspect of the Job Editor versus the specificity of each editor, each editor works in such a specific way. And I think that's why I'm not overly worried about how that's going to change as the Assistant Editor yet it will eventually but Ashley touched on it earlier in that these, these generative of the Chat GPT are based on pre trained models that then replicate language that we've set before. I mean, GPT three was trained on I think, 100 billion sources. And then GPT 3.5, which became challenging to not GPT Four was given I thought, I thought I read like 2 trillion.

Zack Arnold

1 point 7 trillion parameters,

Richard Sanchez

The problem is I have not met an editor that was willing to reiterate the process 1.7 trillion times.

Zack Arnold

I still cut on Avid 2018. So.

Richard Sanchez

You know I look at the I look at the list of the current integrations, we now have a i Right now, I'm not opening Bernie because of the source data that's required to create this replication, whereas with the standard assistant to editor relationship, you know, some of the more organized editors I've worked for have like a Google Doc, where they'll say, Here's a screen grab of my bins, these are how I want my groups laid out. And this is how I really like my screen, my scripts color, these are my color dimensions. Great, I can do that, you know, but you only have to show me one document. And if I have, if I have the document, I have my own unique human ability to ask an insightful question to say, your document does not cover the exact situation that I'm running into. I think if I were you, you would want it this way. But let me just check with you first. And until an AI can do that, I'm not overly worried about how that how that relationship is going to come in. Like most of the examples I've seen thus far, they're really useful for digital asset management. But even with the most significant example, to Scott's point, when it comes starts stepping in with scripts, and I think now we're starting to look at now we have an entry point, the apprentice editor, which often gets stuck with scripting, I think that is the first step when you look at the erosion starting. As far as visual effects editing goes, there is a world where I do see a tool that could use something that say, compare my cuts for now, I also look at that, I think that'd be pretty cool. If I could just take two sequences and go, just tell me what's changed. Because you know, I can do this all day. And I'm human, I make mistakes, you know. And there's a lot of good that can come out of that. But now we're talking about a show that might have four VFX, editors having three. And that's a concern, you know. So, I mean, I the the relationship between the assistant editor and the editor was irreparably changed when we stepped away from the movie over and the assistant editor was no longer in the room, reconstituted trimming trends, you know, and trimmed it. And we went into separate rooms. And some people have said that that was the beginning of the destruction of a relationship between the two. I mean, I wouldn't say it was the destruction, it was the change. We were in different rooms. But I think that then becomes incumbent on both of us, the assistant to be proactive, and like, Hey, I finished my work and I want to work. You know, some editors are amenable to that some editors aren't. And some editors are also pre emptive in their own way. This is really beaten me down, can you just take a look at it, you know, and I just think this, all the more emphasizes the need for us to take a proactive stance in our respective jobs. The Veterans giving the next generation, their opportunity to step up in the next generation to be hungry, up and comers to be vocal, I want to do what you're doing, and I want you to work. Can you show what you did?

Zack Arnold

Yeah, of course, please.

Scott Jacobs

Because something else that's important with what we're saying, you know, first of all, I do want to say that I I don't want apprentices to lose the opportunity to do scripts, like if they you know, it's a very powerful tool. And it takes a lot of time, but it does allow apprentices to become extremely familiar with the footage and they can be integral into the process. One thing that I think needs to happen, especially as we approach the negotiations coming up in July, is when our contract demonstrating for the first is really considering staff Minimates something to the effect of what the WGA was able to do On the impact on their contracts, I think we need to be able to as well, you know, so in your point, Richard with the effects, heavy film, say if there's 2000 shots or more for VFX editors are required for this project, you know, some something to that effect. That's how we also can protect what will happen with with AI and everything. And quite honestly, artificial intelligence, I swear, it's some of the dumbest stuff. Like I don't know if any of you have played with a generative fill with. Sure when they demoed it with very clean, geometric shapes, it worked beautifully. You go ahead and you try to remove a camera, like remove this camera in front of my face as you took a photo. Good luck with it. regenerating my things. Doesn't work. So yeah. Case in point, I was able to, you know, create a get a little mountain cap that looked like a volcano had blown out. Okay, fine. Yeah, worked with that. But in complex photos, it's not there. It's cool. There's a lot of cool stuff with it. But I'm telling you, there's no reason to be afraid of it.

Ashley McKinney

Yeah, it's more you have to be afraid of the people. The people who think they understand what it is, you want to play? Yeah. Well, I think it there's a similar at least in my career, I used to work in reality, and we had to use synchronize or not synchronize for whatever allies. Sometimes.

Zack Arnold

Did you hear the groans.

Ashley McKinney

Um, the best thing about pluralize was it had the real try really hard button and I carry that on in my soul every day.

Richard Sanchez

In my day, we have multicam a bit heartburn.

Ashley McKinney

But there was one instance where we had put a GoPro on the side of a boat to try and catch a crocodile eating a chicken. And they did not sleep the GoPro and this was before the GoPro head timecode. So you hear in the production, audio, BAC, should I sleep this and somebody in the background goes, no, that's what Pluraleyes is for. And I'm like, I don't want to swear, but there were swear words that night. So I think that's that's where my fear comes from is just the people not really understanding our work, and then also how AI can play into that. And I do think that the the 2030, white paper is a really good place to start just to kind of see what they're thinking. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's their end goal.

Scott Jacobs

It's not the end goal. And it's like the thing that too is when I was at Marvel, studios are going to be going about things in a sneaky way. Because I was pulled into a meeting with myself and two other firsts. And we're sitting there, I think there was a representative from Avid and someone from Marvel it, and they were showing us this new database of how you know, because in the MCU, how everything kind of used to in a better way, integrated with itself. But, you know, it's, you know, take from other films and projects, and so on and so forth. And so it was a test to go ahead and say like, oh, you know what, we're using this scene from this movie in here. Can we get that and if it was something that was on fire, it would take one to two weeks to tween going through all the channels, the getting the rights or whatever else needs to happen. But there's development what I thought was a proprietary library of sorts. There, they're getting all of their films, their days, everything online in the cloud. So that when it came time, especially for the travel editors within Marvel, because they have their own marketing team, or whatever else you can search, so you need a Doctor Stranges, caper, whatever, to me, I can't remember. But it would then go ahead and pull up everything and they were asking us questions about what we would need what would be more beneficial this and that. And then later, like a year and a half later, I ended up scene that I had inadvertently contributed to moody labs 2030 And it's bad to me, I think it's great that they're trying to get the input so that at least the tools that they're going to make will be beneficial for us. But the studios are actively working toward this 2030 And again, like seriously guys listen to Michael's posts and just get familiar with it because that is definitely happening. Maybe not everything that they want. It's gonna happen and the way that they want it to. But it is progressing in that way.

Zack Arnold

Well, let's let's dig into this thing because we obviously want to talk about some of the shiny objects and some of the tools. And one of the classes of AI would be facial recognition or just image recognition. There's image recognition, there's image generation, there's large language models. I mean, we could go on for hours and hours about just the different types of AI. But this is one that would be image recognition. So one opinion could be well, doesn't that make it so much easier? Now, you don't have to spend days and days randomly going through bins finding footage, you can say Doctor Strange escape, there your shots. So explain why that's potentially not a good thing.

Scott Jacobs

I don't think it's a bad thing. Yeah, I mean, I think

Zack Arnold

Well, if we're leading into what the the movie labs 2030 could be, for anybody that either isn't familiar with it, or just kind of as looked at it on a, you know, a superficial level, what's the part of it that we should be concerned about?

Scott Jacobs

Honestly, it's kind of what I said before, and it's going opposite of where Richard feels things are, I think it's going to expand the cutting rooms, because there's going to be so much more that's put on our plate, and more things will have to get done in a shorter period of time. So these tools will actually be beneficial in order for us to accomplish our jobs. And again, as long as we have the staff minimums in there to protect us to not be abused and say, Well, if you can do it this fast. And since we helped develop this, we know how long it's going to take you to do this. You can do it on your own. It's like no, that's not how most production works. So as long as as the union was able to protect us from that happening, then we're on a good path. You know, we can't we just have to be careful about it. It's not, I don't see it as a catastrophically bad thing. It's going to hurt more people in sound and unscripted, sooner than it's going to hit those of us in the narrative space. Because so much can be done with sound already. It's been demonstrated here with Premiere and resolve avid doesn't do things as fluidly yet, but I know it's coming. Release feature. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, case in point, the new there's new function, and 23.8 that will allow the integration of third parties to communicate with Avid, like pics is on the verge of coming out with things in a few years time, something that was kind of a pain in the butt to have to export out of avid and ingest into pigs and upload and everything, it will not be fully integrated within that. So you know, there's good.

Zack Arnold

So then in a way, you're kind of looking at it as with the more tools and the faster things work, we just fell deeper and deeper down the hole of today's miracle becomes tomorrow's expectation. Well, this shouldn't take that long. Right. That's what that's one of my concerns, as well, like I talked about with that efficiency, we need to protect those boundaries. It's already happening now anyway, right? Well, it's I mean, it's been happening for decades, this is something that we've been dealing with just the erosion of time to be creative. We've dealt with this for, you know, multitude of years and decades. So that's nothing new. But this is gonna get in my opinion, it's going to happen even faster than it has in the past, which is why we need to be so conscious of it now. I think the probably the most common question that I get are the most common frustration that I've heard. And I wanted to get a sense from everybody out here, when it comes to AI, if we're willing to embrace it. It's where the hell do I start? There is so many different tools to learn and so many different companies. And how many of you just feel this frankly, like, I don't even know what I'm supposed to be learning or I'm supposed to be spending my time. Is there anybody that feels that way? Yeah, I'm seeing quite a few hands. I get this question all the time. So because you're the tool, man, you're Mr. Master the workflow, which anybody that doesn't already know about master the workflow, that's, to me, it's just standard operating procedure if you want to be a great assistant, but there's going to be a huge transformation in the way that assistants do their jobs. And I would guess that you've you've probably done some dabbling. So what what should we be paying attention to if we want to start learning the right tools and not spinning our wheels?

Richard Sanchez

Well, I mean, if I may offer one opportunity to share an AI tool that I think is really cool, that could potentially expand work. So it's not all Bucha AI. There's two and all this to say, on the most fundamental level, where to start. For now, just have fun with it, because there's some tools that are pretty fun to just play with playing with the tool the other day, which is called lalal Lal L A L A l.ai. And what it does is you upload a song, and it will separate the instrumentation from the vocals, and I did a couple of tests with it. One was a song with had just vocals and piano, and it did a pretty good job, then I had another one that had accordion. And a lot of those tones were pretty close to the you know, the vocal range. And you could really hear work pulled out sound, but it's one of those things you know, nowadays I you know, in most cases, you need a song from a popular artists, you can reach out to the record company, your music supervisor will do that, you'll get an instrumental version, and that's great. But let's say you're trying to pull a song from like the 60s, and those things don't exist anymore, you go, Hey, if this AI can create an instrumental version of this song that I really want to use in this movie, does that create an opportunity for that rights holder to get paid. And so now there actually, there might be some cool things, I think it is important to be mindful of that. And that's the kind of stuff that I've been playing with, you know, the kinds of things like, you just kind of keep it in your back pocket. And I go like, again, for me, like Scott mentioned, you know, it's going to affect music first. So it's kind of one of those things where, as assistant editors, we are often doing temp music and temp sound effects, which already ventured into those waters where we're encroaching upon someone else's job. But I think it's something interesting to have in my back pocket to go, Hey, we don't have to de say like, we want to use this song. A, there's this tool, and then I can get on the phone with music editor and say, this is something you might want to check out. Because there is one great way for you to just play with it's just play with AI, and you know, start on your own level. And there are cool things that will open avenues that are not currently open.

Ashley McKinney

Oh, yeah, I mean, play around with chat GPT just asking questions. I, one of my editors used it to get just alternative music choices. asked for a good, like, I'd List of 10 songs that sounded like that and whether or not it gave a correct answer, I don't know. But, um, that's kind of where we are right now I feel like I've got from playing with the generator fill with Photoshop, and also the magic, whatever they call it in After Effects where you can track something and trace the body and separate everything. I don't remember what it's called. Sorry. So, yeah, there's definitely room to play, I think it's playing so that you as a individual, as a creative as someone who's going to be employed, know the tools so that you can make sure that there are these guardrails that we're talking about, because a lot of this is communication. And a lot of it is, you know, what can be put into a contract with the Guild, and what can't and what is going to be regulated by the government. But you know, that's not where we are right now, we don't have those. So it's kind of up to us to do that in this path.

Scott Jacobs

So that in playing around with some of the AI tools, probably something that I will never do just because of where I'm at in my career right now. But if you're earlier in your career, and you don't know coding, or like Python, or something to that effect, I highly encourage you to start training yourself with that, I should probably do it. And stop making up excuses, like kids and family and whatever.

Zack Arnold

Who needs work life balance?

Scott Jacobs

But I had a second man who, you know, I mean, we're all nerds, but like, he took it to the next level. And like, he astounded me by what he was capable of doing with coding in Python, and it's way beyond anything I'll ever be able to do. But that will be a very integral part of the cutting room. I think. So that's it. You know, back in the day, when I started, it was like, no After Effects, no Photoshop. Now? Absolutely. If you can start learning how to code and get that under your belt. Like, I mean, Richard would be able to answer that more with following the progress and everything but very important.

Richard Sanchez

If I may actually visiting, that's a really good point. With chat GPT, I have to find McGraw two pretty fast part earlier. But actually, that's that's a great example of an area where you can play with AI is if you ask Chat GPT to write to a FileMaker script in FileMaker syntax, it will actually do it. And it's actually a really great way if you say I want to learn FileMaker scripting, but I don't know where to start, I have found that on average, it tends to be corrupt about 80% of the time. So you need to know a little bit about how to fix it. But what's also really cool is if you are experienced with FileMaker scripting, it might lead you down a path of using tools that you don't traditionally learn so many ways it can kind of open you up to different ways of working. And to Scott's point about Python. I've been slowly learning Python and until really interesting because same deal is I'm in kind of in my infancy, but I'll kind of go on there every now and then and say, write me a Python script to do this, and I'm gonna go, well, it didn't work, but actually kind of see what it was doing. And I kind of see how I'm gonna get there. So there's a lot of really cool things you can do with it to like to, to jumpstart your education in encoding that kind of syntax.

Ashley McKinney

One, it's kind of like what we already do, right, we break things down into tiny little pieces, and we learn from those tiny little pieces, and then build up everything as we go. I mean, I think automation is great. And I've use Chet GPT, to kind of help me with some of my keyboard macros, and just trying to get trying to get markers on subclipse, from groups and as. So there are benefits to kind of learning the the stuff, I just I really think that we really have to be very strong and like, in one unified voice, saying, This is what it can do. This is what it can't. And this is what I can do to help or assist that as a tool.

Scott Jacobs

And I guess we're triggered on a thought that I had that I wanted to bring up earlier, when we were talking about a good amount about AI and everything is that the thing as well that I feel with AI and why I feel the cutting rooms will expand it is because right now you've got tools. Even in Avid, they, I don't know when it was introduced. But when you're doing a change list or an EDL, you have the option now to have avid automatically collapse the tracks for you. So I when I saw that, I was like, Oh, wow, that's really cool. I would love to help speed up the changeless process so much. And, you know, I can already do it pretty fast. But I was like, you know, let's give it a shot. And what I feel is going to happen is that AI will go ahead and be able to do things. I don't know, obviously this changelist thing, this tool is

Ashley McKinney

Obviously it can do things

Scott Jacobs

When the planes but it's it'll do things faster, but then we're still gonna have to check it to make sure that it's right, because AI is not as smart as we are. And I know that's a bold statement to make. But who are the people developing the media? We are now obviously James Cameron might have a different view on that. But at this point in time, we're you know, we're developing. But the fact the matter is, is that I went ahead, I was excited with this change in this idea of auto collapsing, and it didn't, it didn't do it the right way. And so it could be dangerous, and therefore your spin Yes, it will frontload quickly. But then the back end is where you're going to still catch up on all the time that's needed to be able to make sure that everything is correct.

Zack Arnold

And that's been my argument. And the reason why I'm not really fearful about it, because when all this first started is Oh, artificial intelligence is going to replace the assistant editor. And my very simple argument for that is if it does, script sank, and it organizes bins and all these other things, do you think that I, as the editor want to monitor all of these tools and make sure that they're working, I barely have enough time to cut dailies and deliver my cuts, I don't have time to monitor the technology, somebody still needs to be monitoring and communicating with the technology. So that's why again, we don't know if it's going to shrink the workforce if it's going to transform it, but the outright replacement of an entire job role. I just I personally don't see that happening. But we're going to look at this in five years and say, Oh, my God, he had no idea what he was talking about, because this is changing so fast. But what I want to focus on next is a continuation of this conversation about tools. There's a couple of statistics that I heard recently that I thought were really, really interesting and apropos for this conversation. For anybody that hasn't listened to the Edit fest panel that I did, I brought up this thing that's called the Gartner Hype Cycle. And with any new form of technology, there's this huge upswing of hype about how it's going to change the world and change everything. And then all of a sudden, it kind of crashes back down to earth. And if you go back to when the car first came out, there were 200 car companies that were making cars. And if you look at how many there are now it's consolidated. I don't know with all the vertical integration, maybe 10. Right? And if you look@the.com Boom, I believe it was either 98 or 99% of the.com companies that came out in the late 90s and early 2000s. All went out of business. Right now we're seeing the AI technology boom. So my feeling is that focusing on very specific tools. That can be a little bit if you don't know if that tool is going to be around but I think that the most important thing to do is focused on skill All development. Because if you develop the skill like if you learn storytelling and working in a timeline, you have to learn different buttons in Premiere versus avid versus DaVinci. Final Cut X is a different conversation. But in general, you know, you understand the basics. But if you can tell a story and navigate a timeline, you're you're you're developing a skill. So I want to talk a little bit more about skills development with all of you. From my perspective, I think the most important skill that we need to learn to develop is prompt engineering, learning to communicate with the technology. So it doesn't matter what the tool is, we know how to communicate with it. So I'm curious what you believe. If you want to be an indispensable assistant editor, and you want to future proof yourself, what are the skills that we need to be learning so that we can then decide how to prioritize potential tools that allow us to develop those skills?

Ashley McKinney

Anticipate, that's the biggest one for assistance is just always kind of trying to be ahead of your editor at hand, your producer sometimes, yeah, you never want to do things twice, you want to anticipate for something to go wrong. I think, for me, that's the biggest one and then communication.

Zack Arnold

And to me, these are the human intelligence skills that we need to focus on, not the artificial intelligence skills. And I think that's absolutely vital as an assistant, being able to anticipate the needs of everybody around you when you have to serve a multitude of different bosses. So I think those are, those are great. So what are some of the other human skills that we need to develop to future proof ourselves against all this technology?

Richard Sanchez

You know, to them that I feel like adaptation is really the name of the game, you know, and, and with all of this automation and AI, not losing sight of the fundamentals, you know, I think I think what's going to happen with with it, that the hype cycle you're talking about is, I always feel like there's this fundamental battle between marketing and engineering, the marketing puts out, you know, the video, and the engineers are going, don't tell them that it doesn't do that. So and so what I think is gonna end up happening is we're gonna get these tools in in a flood, the cutting room, and some overanxious producer, supervisor, something that uses consistency of a bunch of time. And we're going to find that it's not ready for primetime it's going to take, and we're going to be, you know, we're going to have to think on the fly. And I think invariably, and it will get better in time. But you know, we'll also have to realize what has just been called gets me to go get that to get it out of here. We're doing it all away. We have to do that now. Next year. Let's bring that thing back in. Is it any better? It is? Okay. Cool. You know, but I think, you know, thinking on your feet and adaptation, and just really strong familiarity with the fundamentals, which is why for anyone who's coming into the field fresh, do not start with AI, don't learn the chainsaw, before you learn how to use an axe.

Ashley McKinney

Oh, yeah. And learning the history of where editing kind of kind of comes from, I mean, I was lucky to host a AES intern last week, and I was kind of going over the history and the difference of what where avid kind of came from, like the structure and everything and explaining, well, a bin came from trash cans. And that's what they held the film in and like that, that language is kind of built into this industry. And I don't think that part is going to go away. And I don't know how well any type of AI would be able to understand that. And having that foundation just lets you know, where the software's thinking. And if you can kind of understand where the software is thinking, you kind of can wrestle it to do what you want it to do. Eventually,

Scott Jacobs

I would say, you know, on top of those comments, which were awesome, you know, carry a pad of paper with you everywhere you go. Be ready to take notes, no matter what the conversation might be, because you never know when something's gonna come up. Leave your home drama at the door. Don't bring that into the cutting room. Just try to stay focused. I know it's hard to do, sometimes. Things happen. People smile on your face. We're gonna be stuck in a room together for 12 plus hours a day. And I want to know that I'm going to have fun hanging out with you more than my family.

Ashley McKinney

But try not to just suppress and hide your emotions as the as someone who really focuses on the mental health side of it. That kind of attitude, just kind of keep a smile on your face. And I'm not saying no, I just want to make sure that you know that is conveyed because that is something that I think at least a lot of women are told to smile more and be expressive more. That's we're human. We're not always you know, bright, shiny, happy people. We You can say, hey, I'm having a bad day today, like, just leave me alone. If you have a request, like slip it under the door or something so that I don't bite your head off, but yes, yeah.

Scott Jacobs

Which is 100% True, yes. I'm kind of getting a little pokes here at this point, because anticipation and communication are my two biggest things. You know, because, well, it's true, because you need to know how other people are going to affect your day. And what you can do to get ahead of that is best, you know, I would say things like a computer, when it comes to a tech problem. I can easily overthink a situation, and then it ends up just being like, oh, did you shut down habit and then open it again? You know, I mean, it's basic, but it's true. You know, or when, when you think, you know, if there's a folder, that's not important to look for the slash in the folder name buried somewhere, you know, like that sound effects, you know, it's just trying to think like a computer as much as possible when it comes to some of the tech problems that you might incorporate. But, yeah, you can't get better than anticipation.

Zack Arnold

And yeah, and we could easily have three, four and five part panel on all the things brought up in the last three minutes for sure. But to wind it down, I guess the place that I want to end it, and then I least want to take a few minutes to open it up to questions is that I just want to remind everybody, that the reason that we tell stories is that helps us understand human existence. Artificial intelligence does not understand human existence. And it's the collaborative process that is that allows us to tell the stories that we tell, and at least for the time being, artificial intelligence does not have empathy. So my feeling is and it sounds like everybody in this panel agrees and most people in this room at this point agree that artificial intelligence is probably not going to replace the assistant or the editor or fill in the blank. But people using artificial intelligence are going to replace them. So my feeling is that, like Richard said, one of the most important qualities is being adaptable, and being willing to learn new technologies, but I personally more excited about this than scared. I know that there's a lot of fear around it. And there are very different conversations about the fear side of it. But as far as the technology, the workflows, I am very cautiously optimistic about how interesting this transition is going to be.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai