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IATSE on AI: It's a Tool

IATSE on AI: It's a Tool

🌐 Introducing the VP Screening Room

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Welcome to VP Land!

Just another quick reminder. If you have 60 seconds, can you please fill out this form about your interests.

In this edition, I’m excited to roll out a new section - The Screening Room.

I always see great BTS clips online, either on LinkedIn or Facebook or TikTok or elsewhere. They’re too quick to post in video village but still super interesting.

So now, every week or so, we’ll share the most interesting ones in a roundup in the new Screening Room section.

Let me know what you think (and send over your own clips if you have any you want to share).

In today’s VP Land:

How IATSE is handling AI in their new tentative deal
How some companies are pushing back against AI data training
The screening room - including the tech behind the TukTuk experience at Cine Gear
Canon shares a VR music video

And more - let’s jump into it!

IATSE Deal: AI as a Tool, with Limits

IATSE released a draft of its tentative agreement with the major studios, which includes a whole section on AI.

The gist: AI is a tool and should be treated as such when hiring someone who uses/brings their own AI tools/models/prompts.

The Breakdown

Workers can request a "consultation" about AI use and charge a "kit rental fee" for using their own AI systems.
AI use cannot be outsourced to non-union labor, and no employee will be forced to input prompts that displace other union workers.
Existing contracts provide severance pay and retraining for job losses due to "technological change," which includes AI.

Scanning the Gaffer?

The one that’s a bit head-scratching is about employee scanning. “Any request to scan an employee must be clear and conspicuous through a separately signed statement or writing. Consent to scanning cannot be made a condition of employment.”

What type of role covered by IATSE would potentially need to be scanned? If you have ideas, let me know.

Introducing the Atomos Ninja Phone: Your iPhone's New Superpower

Transform your iPhone 15 Pro into a professional monitor-recorder with the revolutionary Atomos Ninja Phone. This compact 10-bit video co-processor brings cinema-quality capabilities to your smartphone.

Key features:

Record ProRes or H.265 from any HDMI camera
Stunning HDR monitoring on iPhone's OLED display
Zero-latency performance
Vertical and horizontal shooting modes
Seamless integration with Atomos Cloud Services
Whisper-quiet operation
Robust locking cable system

Perfect for content creators and filmmakers alike, the Ninja Phone bridges the gap between professional cameras and the convenience of your iPhone. Enjoy unparalleled image quality, efficient Camera to Cloud workflows, and instant social media publishing.

Watch our video from NAB about the Ninja Phone.

Available June 2024 for $399. Learn more at Atomos.

The Push Against Subscriptions and AI training

Few things popped up on our radar that seem to be trending: people don’t want their data being uses to train AI models and everyone’s getting tired of subscription pricing.

Keeping AI Local

Since Adobe’s disastrous and confusing TOS update, competitors have been highlighting how they’re different.

Blackmagic now has on their sales page that Resolve and Blackmagic Cloud do not use any user data to train their AI models.

iPad editor LumaFusion has also highlighted how their AI features take advantage of Apple’s built-in hardware and don’t require any user data for training (features that will probably expand as Apple continues to build AI features into future devices).

We’re also seeing solutions where human generated data might not even be needed to continue to develop models. There’s synthetic data, which can work just as well.

New Tools Pushing Against Expensive Pricing

Photopea has long existed as a free, web-based alternative to Photoshop.

Now, video is getting some free, open-source tools.

Pikimov is a web-based motion design and video editor that provides media professionals with a free, feature-rich alternative to After Effects without compromising privacy.

LosslessCut aims to be the ultimate cross-platform FFmpeg GUI for extremely fast and lossless operations on video, audio, subtitle, and other related media files

This seems to also be tracking a trend of returning to one time payments for software.

Jason Fried, the creator of 37signals and project management tool Basecamp, launched Once, a platform that builds and sells software for a one-time fee. Their landing page essay is worth the click.

I’m excited to introduce the Screening Room, a new section showcasing all the great BTS clips we see on social media of the great and inspiring work everyone is doing. If you have any clips of your own, you want to share, just email us.

Shawn Herold gives a gear breakdown of the awesome TukTuk setup at SISU’s booth at Cine Gear.

Capturing low light process shots via Brompton and 4wall

— Mad Max 2⚡Les Guerriers de la route. (@MelvinZed)
7:59 AM • Jun 26, 2024

Kourtney Day demos Jim Henson’s digital puppetry system.

Home-made VFX on a tiny green screen

Whiskeytree’s demo reel of their VFX work on Masters of the Air

🧿 Canon released a new music video shot on their new RF-S 3.9MM F3.5 STM dual fisheye lens

🥽 Meta is focusing on developing three distinct categories of smart glasses: AI-enabled glasses without a display, glasses with a discreet heads-up display, and full AR glasses with sophisticated holographic capabilities

🕺 Move AI's Move Live solution streamlines motion capture by eliminating the need for mo-cap suits, extracting natural human motion from video using AI-driven post-processing

🌌 Samsung's 'The Wall for Virtual Production' delivers unprecedented picture quality and flexibility for virtual content creation, making the process easier, faster, and more cost-effective.