Welcome to Now, Now, the Future. I’m Naila Mir and we’re joined by Britt McTamney, a creative director and award-winning filmmaker. Welcome, Britt.
Britt McTammany (01:04.558)
Thanks for having me.
HDco (01:06.373)
And I’m Quinn Harrington. Today’s topic is the evolution and future of AI and filmmaking. Britt, you’ve been a pioneer in digital filmmaking since the early days of Avid. What AI tools are you currently using in your workflow and how is it affecting how you work from day to day?
Britt McTammany (01:24.463)
I, well, let me talk first about some of work I do. It’s pretty varied, but in terms of filmmaking, I’m a cinematographer, so, or director of photography. A director of photography’s job is to help the director visualize their frames, right? And that includes production design and camera selection and lighting and a variety of things. So.
A big part of that is visualizing what the world looks like. And that’s where I’ve found AI to be the most helpful for me in my work, is helping me to visualize what those worlds look like. It’s important for not only the director and the DP, but the production design team, G &E, which is Grip and Electric, all the different…
skill sets that come into filmmaking to be on the same page and if you can show them an image that really helps with that process. So that’s what I’ve been using Mid Journey specifically to help me do that stuff.
HDco (02:36.721)
So can you explain a little bit about how you’re using Mid Journey for your ideation and visualization process?
Britt McTammany (02:44.909)
I’m going to share some screens with you guys.
HDco (02:48.08)
Great. Britt brought examples today. Did you bring any examples, Naila?
Naila (02:52.159)
I should have.
Britt McTammany (02:56.762)
with pictures worth a thousand words. In this case, this is a futuristic film world that I’m building with my good friend, writer and director Franklin Ridge. And these are actual examples of some architecture that we like. This is considered Soviet brutalism, which is very angular, very geometric, concrete and cold.
Now this was just a component of what we wanted this world to look like. And as often as possible, I try and find real world examples of stuff because I just think it feels best. But sometimes when you’re building a world, it may be one that doesn’t exist in our current world. So we go and find examples of real stuff.
And a lot of times we will go and find examples of our frames from films that have been made that kind of echo the sentiment or the feeling or the mood that we’re trying to get. And I want to shout out my friend Lawrence Schur who runs Shotdeck. He’s a great cinematographer.
He did the Joker and several other films, but he started this resource for filmmakers. And these are, I don’t know how many, 1.5 million shots currently. It grows every week by a few hundred thousand frames. So he goes through and finds clips from films that filmmakers can use in creating their vision for their films, their new films. It’s great because it has a lot of technical information. So that’s just a quick little shout out.
The Hudsucker proxy has these films or these frames are from that film But they help to inspire this Which was generated in mid-journey So the challenge is discovering the correct prompts Which if anybody’s used AI of any sort, you know, that’s you’re asking the question for AI to kind of respond to right?
HDco (04:52.21)
Wow.
Britt McTammany (05:11.272)
and the concept that we were trying to get across here and it took a very long time actually and these still don’t echo it. This almost looks like Babylon actually now that I’m looking at it again. I’ve looked at these frames in a while. We had finished this process about eight months ago.
Naila (05:26.611)
Mm.
Britt McTammany (05:32.337)
in terms of visualizing the film because that’s what goes into providing a pitch to a production company is like they you know they want to see a script of course but they also want to see visual examples at least that’s how we do it I’m not sure how most filmmakers do but I mean you have you have to do everything at your disposal to try and get funding for a film and this is a multi-million dollar film so we went kind of all out but just through probably months of experimentation
to try and figure out what this world looked like. And we knew that we had this central tower. Loosely, I can’t talk a whole lot about the film conceptually or specifically. I NDAs and so forth and we’re still working on it. But it deals with the concept of teleportation and the moral.
the moral dilemma when it comes to that. Like what happens to your soul when you get teleported? Yes, we put all the pieces back together again, but it’s a sampled representation of a human being. to get a little nerdy, people say records always sound better than CDs. Well, that’s true because a CD is taking parts.
it’s called samples right and it’s a lot of samples and it sounds really good and most people can’t tell the difference but it’s still sample so that’s kinda what we borrowed for our concept in this film is like when you get teleported what gets lost because something has to get lost so we follow this woman who gets teleported and she has a terrible moral dilemma so
That’s why we had to build this world that was futuristic, we wanted it to be a little gritty, but also a little stylized. So these are just frames of various iterations of this tower, which is this laboratory, which has this teleportation device in it.
Britt McTammany (07:44.194)
And honestly, I don’t think that we ever got exactly what we wanted. And so we took, we were, I can’t show you the frames, but we would take these frames, steal pieces and parts from them, go into Photoshop, which thankfully is a skill set of mine, and piece and part things together, and just a continuous refinement. But it didn’t, you know, the work on this film didn’t end with just exteriors or…
global world building, we even went into interiors. Now some of this stuff that I’m showing now has been created by designers on a website called ArtStation. And ArtStation is a resource, it’s for a lot of things, but I use it as a resource for production design and…
These are wonderful artists. This is my friend Nick Stoth who worked on Alien Romulus, but you can see how some of these visuals
are in keeping with what we wanted to do for our film. In doing research for our film, would explore venues like ArtStation to try and get inspiration. And I found when I was building a repository of images and video content that…
Inspired me that Nick’s name kept coming up. So I said, I’m just gonna reach out to him and he lives in Australia He’s super nice guy. And when we first talked he could he didn’t tell me anything about the alien Romulus because of an NDA it hadn’t been released yet, but Eventually did of course, I’m a huge alien fan Ridley Scott. I mean, it’s just visually stunning But the nice thing about artists like Nick is that you can see here. He’s built this in blender so
Britt McTammany (09:40.689)
My hope is, once we get our funding, is I’m going to reach out to Nick and his team of folks that worked on Romulus and other projects, and I can give him the inspiration I’ve derived from Mid Journey, and he can turn it into reality. So…
HDco (09:59.149)
It really is amazing. You know, when I think back to when I first met you, when I was a young art director at an ad agency and you had DVA, you would be presented with essentially storyboard sketches that someone hand was hand drawing. And they were basically like sort of almost like fancy cartoons in a way. And to evolve in the last
Britt McTammany (10:00.923)
Yeah.
Britt McTammany (10:10.93)
Yeah.
Britt McTammany (10:18.981)
Mm-hmm.
Britt McTammany (10:23.6)
Yeah. Yeah.
HDco (10:27.281)
25, 30 years from that very accrued technique to this is, I don’t know what you think, Naila, but it’s pretty mind-blowing to me. I this is, I mean, it really takes me there as if I were that level of executive producer.
Britt McTammany (10:32.207)
Mm-hmm.
Britt McTammany (10:38.075)
Yeah.
Britt McTammany (10:46.191)
Mm-hmm.
Naila (10:46.761)
Yeah, I mean, I always, you know, the teleporting one was interesting because I always, when I was watching Star Trek saying, what happens when they get teleported? So I think I’m going to be watching what you’re doing, but yeah, it looks so real. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between an AI. Well, maybe I’m not into it as much, but the difference between what’s real and AI. And there’s all this dilemma sometimes, like when you’re on Instagram, people are showing
images that look like real people but they’re actually not. And that for me, I don’t know if that’s a problem now in the industry as well when it comes to AI and what impact it’s having on the industry. Because does that mean everyone’s now can do AI so we don’t have a role to play as filmmakers?
Britt McTammany (11:20.167)
Yeah.
Britt McTammany (11:38.994)
Well, I think that’s the fear, Is that you’ll be able to one day type in a prompt, you know, make me an action film starring so-and-so and all this happens and so forth and it just spits out a feature film in its time.
I learned a long time ago that if you can dream it, it will happen eventually. Yeah, I won’t go into that story maybe on another podcast, but I think it’s true. mean the things that I’ve seen happen over my lifetime in this industry, as Quinn alluded to, I had a production company years ago and we did a lot of broadcast commercial work.
Naila (12:05.331)
Yeah
Britt McTammany (12:20.954)
I just I’ve lived through the evolution of going from tape, analog tape to digital tape from standard def to high def to ultra high def and now even 8k, 12k, I mean it’s just insane. I’ve gone from editing with two, our edit suites were huge and it
took up two rooms and it cost three quarters of a million dollars and now you can get a MacBook Pro and a DSLR camera and if you have some talent and some perseverance you can go and do whatever you want. You can make a full length feature film and it looks amazing. So you know that that whole technology I think we’re just in a different phase of that evolution now with AI.
I do want to say this, whenever possible I would much rather use an artist. But I don’t like to get in the habit of asking artists to do a bunch of work that I can’t pay for. Because I don’t think it’s fair to them. But a lot of times artists just want to work. They just want to create. So that’s kind of a dilemma that I’ve been having to deal with actually my whole career is like, know, getting that funding, paying artists what they’re
talents are worth and making that whole balance work. It’s just a big challenge. And filmmaking is such an interesting art that, you know, if you’re in the independent film tier, which is where I like to be actually, I prefer more of a guerrilla approach to filmmaking, you might not have money. And so…
coming up with the necessary funding to art direct this particular film, it’s gonna be hundreds of thousands of dollars probably. Because there’s so much that has to be built, especially with some of the new tech that’s coming out with virtual sound stages and stuff like that, you need something like this. This will have to be built. I mean, even if you have the most amazing,
Britt McTammany (14:41.618)
this is this is mid-journey it looks awesome but i can’t use this in a virtual production
HDco (14:50.023)
Right.
Britt McTammany (14:50.322)
I, you know, we do, in our film, we do have call for a sound stage that is some sort of a control room. And we want it to look gritty and analog. Think Chernobyl. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it’s amazing. I highly recommend it. But the feel of that film was wonderful. The production design, art direction was all wonderful. But in order to get from concept to reality takes a lot of work. Like to, if I could show this to somebody and say, build it.
HDco (15:02.919)
I have.
Britt McTammany (15:18.022)
They say, okay, I can do that because now I can start breaking it up into materials, I can break it up into time, I can break it up into personnel, and I can make it happen. But until you show them something that’s rock solid, this is exactly what the director wants to see, you can’t do anything with it. But in a nutshell, AI is something that I use for visualization.
and for helping my team understand what my vision is and being beholden to what the director has communicated with me. I do really enjoy working with directors. I would rather work with an artist. Like these, you can tell the difference, at least I can. This feels a little bit sterile, whereas this has heart. And these were designed by Nick, actually. His name’s right there.
HDco (16:05.607)
Right.
Naila (16:08.401)
Okay.
HDco (16:09.405)
Gotcha.
Britt McTammany (16:10.01)
and they just have a different feel to them. It’s like there’s a story behind it, right? This is wonderful for the technical end of it, but when it comes to the heart behind something, I would much rather use an artist. I’ve gotten some flack about using AI from some of my collaborators, and I’m like, I don’t feel right asking an artist to spend.
for months working on stuff for no pay. in the beginning, that’s what you’re doing. You’re trying to build some sort of a presentation so that you can get funding for it. And the more you can do of that, think, makes it a stronger presentation and makes your chances that much better. So that’s…
HDco (16:53.681)
Yeah, I feel like that’s a bogus argument that we can’t use the latest and greatest tools, especially for visualization. Because essentially it’s an output and a way for you to explore your creative ideas and expand your creative ideas in ways that you couldn’t before. Naila, do you have a question before we formally introduce Britt?
Britt McTammany (17:02.268)
Yeah.
Britt McTammany (17:15.376)
Yeah.
Naila (17:20.039)
Yes, and we’re going to come back to this heart part in the future as well to bring back some of that thinking around human aspect. But I recently heard and you recently shared your work around the artifice girl. So I wanted to ask a bit more about, you know, share the plot of the movie. What insights did you gain with AI from working on that project? How and. And how did it become a reality today? Some of that insights.
Britt McTammany (17:24.454)
Okay.
Britt McTammany (17:32.21)
Mm-hmm.
Britt McTammany (17:49.456)
Okay, sure. Well, Artifice Girls is film that Franklin Rich again wrote and directed and the concept, well, it is based around AI and it was just so serendipitous that it all timed out the way it did, quite honestly, because he wrote this in 2019. So that’s five years ago and AI was just like, okay, there’s a thing. You know, no one really was…
It wasn’t anything what it is today. But the concept behind the film is that this programmer is basically trying to build an artificial intelligence to entrap sexual predators in chat rooms. Kind like a chat room we’re in right now, right? So this AI is supposed to be a lure basically for these people, these evil people to
get suckered in and then they get apprehended and taken off the street which makes the world a better place. But it was it was the question of sentience that
really drove the story and made it unique, right? So sentience is basically self-awareness, right? When does an artificial intelligence know what it is? And basically is it able to be its own thing at that point? know, non-reliant on programming or…
anything else. And so we explore that concept in the film. so it’s 2019. Franklin had been had written the first act.
Britt McTammany (19:40.926)
and concepted the film, but a lot of times writing takes a long time, especially a feature length script, usually a hundred something pages, right? and it’s not so much the writing that’s difficult, it’s the arc, it’s the story arc, you know, you’re developing what’s the conflict, what’s the resolution, you know, what are the beats and the story and so forth. So he had written it and was doing table reads.
And he was putting them out on Facebook and I saw one and I’m like, wow, this is really interesting and compelling. And actually most of the actors that were in the table reads ended up being in the film. they, and they’re friends of mine and they’re great actors. And David Gerard, Cindy Nichols and Tatum Matthews. Tatum plays this young girl named Cherry, who’s the artifice girl basically. And then Franklin plays the fourth role who’s Gareth, the programmer.
So I saw these reads and I’m like, wow, this is incredible story.
And I called him up and I said, dude, let’s do it. And he goes, do what? I said, let’s make a movie. Cause we were dying. mean, you know, COVID had hit and everybody’s just going nuts because they can’t, you know, see their friends and we can’t go on set. And it’s just, you know, really you guys know, you lived through it too. And so I said, we can do it with a really small crew. We’ll just find a little location and we’ll keep it really safe. We’ll all wear masks all the time and let’s just see if we can pull it off. And so we did some research.
Naila (20:44.895)
you
Britt McTammany (21:09.62)
and we had 40 pages. It’s very much like a play structure, a three act structure. So the first act is 40 pages, which is almost half the film actually, but it was required to set up the story. So we spent five days and shot the first 40 pages. And so the concept was
HDco (21:34.492)
That’s amazing.
Britt McTammany (21:38.416)
that this piece would allow us to put it in front of people and they would understand. We’re talking about visualizing worlds here or visualizing stories. And if you give somebody a script, that’s one thing. But if you can give them what we call a proof of concept, which is…
Flesh and bones, what it’s gonna look like, what it’s gonna feel like, how the dialogue is gonna be paced, who the actors are, what their backstories are. It makes it that much better. And we spent, I think, three grand to do that proof of concept. Of course, nobody got paid. I those are like food costs. But…
Naila (22:11.647)
You
HDco (22:12.563)
You
Britt McTammany (22:14.362)
It helped us get $100,000 for the project, which is still incredibly low budget and no one really got paid everything hits are worth, but our goal was to have a feature film under our bill and neither Franklin nor myself. I’ve done documentary film, but I’ve never done a narrative. we just, everything kind of hit at the right time. We shot the first act in a week, then we waited six months.
Naila (22:17.907)
Well.
Britt McTammany (22:43.236)
So during that six or seven months we were able to get financing from a production company. Then we shot the second act. The first and second act are in the same location. The production design is a little bit different. I wish we’d have more money because I would have done something a little more elaborate, but we just did the best that we could with what we had.
HDco (23:01.012)
I mean, honestly, I don’t know that it really needed it. You know, I saw it when you debuted it in Jacksonville and, you know, I was just really taken by the story. And sometimes I think that over directing a piece can take you out of that narrative.
Britt McTammany (23:04.657)
Well…
Britt McTammany (23:11.826)
Yeah.
Britt McTammany (23:19.538)
Sure, I think the only thing that maybe bothered me a little bit was it was supposed to be in the future probably 15 or 20 years. it was, this is a tech, it is part of this film is a technology film, right? And I just felt that it should have been more tech. Not in your face tech, but like if you watch the second act again, there’s no monitors. No monitor is on, there’s no computers, but this is all on a computer. So we had done a lot of research.
Naila (23:26.847)
Mm.
HDco (23:40.128)
Gotcha.
Britt McTammany (23:48.946)
very similar to what we’ve done with this this next film and conceptualized all that stuff but in order to build the set that we wanted was going to be 50 grand and we just that would have been half our budget and There was no way you know a 30-year budget in my experience goes towards your actors
And even though we had Relative Unknowns, we did work hard to get Lance Henriksen, speaking of alien fame, he played Bishop in Aliens and a couple other films. he read the script and was enamored with it. And such a great dude. He agreed to come to Florida. We shot it down in Green Cove Springs in this really cool…
like a craftsman style home. All wood paneling and just had a really cool vibe. And he came in for three days and we shot the third act, which got us the rest of the film and put it together. And through great luck, we were able to premiere at Fantasia up in Montreal for our international premiere and South by Southwest for our North America premiere.
and it was a really cool experience. And that’s paved the way for the next film.
HDco (25:15.204)
Well, I saw lot of laurels up on the credit screen, so you got some really amazing attention from it, so kudos to you on that. So let me formally introduce Britt. Britt McTaminy is an award-winning filmmaker and creative director with over 25 years of experience shaping visual narratives. As one of Florida’s digital pioneers, he helped introduce nonlinear editing to the region while working at
Britt McTammany (25:19.586)
We got a few.
Britt McTammany (25:25.862)
Thank you, appreciate that.
Naila (25:27.455)
Hmm
HDco (25:43.457)
White Hawk Pictures and later at his own studio. His work spans multiple disciplines, including cinematography, editing, animation, and sound design. Over the years, he has witnessed and adapted to many major industry transformations, AI just being the latest. Today, Britt continues to push creative boundaries, recently serving as cinematographer for the aforementioned critically acclaimed film, The Artifice Girl, while developing new
projects that explore the intersection of traditional filmmaking and emerging AI technologies. Britt, quickly, where can we find you on social?
Britt McTammany (26:24.018)
We can go to McTaminy.com. That’s probably the main place. I think I have a… I am trying to remember what my Instagram…
HDco (26:29.155)
Are you on Instagram or YouTube?
Britt McTammany (26:38.29)
Yeah, think it’s.
HDco (26:40.42)
If it’s not available, I’ll just put it up in the lower third for everyone to see.
Britt McTammany (26:43.71)
I’ll find it now. Now. I want to know yeah, Britt make Britt McTaminy DP So that’s my Instagram and I have stuff on YouTube, I should know that off the top of my head shouldn’t I?
Naila (26:46.949)
D.F.E.
HDco (26:50.062)
Great.
HDco (26:55.914)
Excellent. Well, you know, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. You did such a great job with all the other questions. So before we go to the next section, the next the near segment, I’d like to go around the room a little bit and just find out what everyone’s been up to lately. Could be professional or personal, whatever’s on your mind. And let’s start with you, Nailah.
Britt McTammany (27:00.663)
That’s okay. That’s okay.
Naila (27:02.825)
Yeah
Naila (27:20.735)
So as you know, I just had a baby girl seven months ago. So she’s keeping me up busy and trying to now balance that with going back to work and all these ideas that I have in my mind and how to bring them. One of them of which by the way is working on children’s books because I’m in the field of purpose and sustainability. So I wanted to work on a few children’s books.
bringing that to the child. So you know caring for your community, respecting one another, diversity, inclusion but from a kid’s point of view. And this is why I want to learn so much about AI so how can I use some of that for the books that I want to write. So yeah that’s what’s keeping me up.
HDco (28:10.765)
Awesome. I don’t know that you told me that you were looking to do children’s books, but I think that’s amazing.
Naila (28:17.107)
Yes, I am. And I think that was the thing I was talking to you about, you know, how much should you rely or use AI and how authentic can I make it, you know? Otherwise, AI can write the whole book for me. But is that the right approach ethically? So, yeah, I’m thinking through all of that.
Britt McTammany (28:17.336)
That is cool.
HDco (28:35.431)
Yeah, I just had a potential client approach me about doing illustration for a book that he came up with. And he had very detailed images with likenesses of real people. And he’s like, I’m sure that with CGI and AI and all this technology, we can just do this on the cheap, right? And I was like, well, not the way that you’re talking about it. I mean, you want to put like 10 different
people in an image and you want them to have a likeness that’s similar to real people but also in an illustrative style. I was like, that might be too much to ask AI to do this today. there’s not really as much flexibility in how you would approach that as you might think. So I bet there’s a lot of people who are thinking about that same approach to creating art that we use to hire people and pay people a lot of money for.
Britt McTammany (29:33.708)
Yeah, not to mention the… ethic. Sorry, go ahead.
Naila (29:34.355)
think it goes back to… Yeah. No, I was going to say I was going back to the point, Britt, that you were making about the right prompts. So I’m not sure. I was trying, I was testing it after talking to Quinn about how I can create graphics, but it wasn’t giving me what I wanted. And at the end I said, you know what? It’s given me a concept. I might just go to a real person and ask them to create it for me and give me what I want because I don’t have the patience and nor do I have the hours to go through prompts and prompts.
Britt McTammany (30:03.586)
Yeah, well I think that’s the approach I’m taking is it’s gonna be an inspiration for a real artist to kind of make it happen. And to your point, Quinn, yeah, the prompting, yeah, I mean, I can take you through my mid-journey, which I probably, you know, it’s just trying to, I’m working on some concepts for three other films actually, and this actually,
I actually delete them, but a lot of times, or I hide them or whatever it is, you go forever. Like, I just wanted a guy with a knife running down a hallway. You can see how many images I had to go through. I never got it. I never got what I wanted and I ended up, I think, using this one. And it still wasn’t what I wanted. So…
Naila (30:47.977)
Yeah.
HDco (30:57.403)
It’s good, but if that’s not what you’re envisioning, it’s really not that helpful. You know what I mean?
Naila (30:57.832)
Jason.
Britt McTammany (31:01.482)
Exactly. you know, yeah. well that’s what I alluded to earlier. So sometimes I remember when, so for our new film that we’re working on right now, we want an ensemble cast and serious, serious actors. And what I ended up doing was
I want to say it was eight people. I wish I could show it to you because it’s really cool. But it was it’s eight different actors and they’re in this Chernobyl esque control room and it’s like a group shot basically right. They all have their own wardrobe and their own vibe and all this other stuff. So I used mid journey to get the basis for it. Then I went to Photoshop started putting the people together.
Like I did the background separate, then I started doing individual people, and then I would go and get the person’s actual face and then Photoshop it on there, then kind of blend the style and everything. And it came out really cool. And I think that would be just a tiny part of what it takes to get an actor’s interest to work at something. If you present that to an actor and say,
HDco (32:18.985)
Right.
Britt McTammany (32:23.386)
So and so. Look at the ensemble you could be working with. Aren’t you excited? I mean, I would be excited, right? So I think that was the concept behind doing that. yeah, mid-journey is something or any of these AI image tools or… I mean, you can tell chat GPT, write me a script that’s that and the other thing. And then we’ll write you a script, but is it good? In my experience, not usually. It gives me some great ideas though.
You know, I think at the end of the day, AI is not going anywhere. It’s here, right? I mean, what are you gonna say? It’s illegal. Well, that’s just gonna make it even crazier, I think. So I’m just trying to take the perspective of embracing it and, you know, letting it be a part of my creative process as much as I can. But as I said earlier, I would much rather work with an artist. But if I can streamline…
HDco (32:56.001)
Yeah.
Naila (32:58.345)
Yeah.
Britt McTammany (33:20.823)
The way I communicate with that artist, I think it’s better for everybody.
HDco (33:24.98)
I totally agree.
Britt McTammany (33:27.843)
Yeah.
HDco (33:27.96)
So.
know, Nile and I, recently started this podcast and this is our third episode and we’re happy to have you on it. I was looking to get some tips from my friend and client, Vera Jones, about how to improve our on-screen presence. And she said, I can do that, but you get a lot more out of it if you joined my Speakers Academy. And I said,
Okay, so what’s all involved with that? And she said, well, we meet once a week and we work on different topics, how to create a speech, how to deliver it. And I think you would get a lot out of that. And I was like, okay, sounds good. What’s in it for you? And she said, that documentary that you pitched me about six months ago. And I was like, okay. That sounds like a fair trade to me.
So I’m excited to be able to be telling Vera Jones’ story and we’ve did a full day shoot and got some amazing insight into her story, which is absolutely incredible. But as a byproduct, I joined her Speakers Academy and so I thought I was just going to be getting tips and techniques to improve my performance and Nihilus’ performance in this new format. But instead,
I’m now writing a keynote motivational style speech that I’ll be delivering to a live audience in the next month or so. So that was a plot twist I wasn’t quite expecting. But it’s been a really great experience because I’ve never really documented my story starting back from my college days to today. And what I’ve ended up with I’m actually pretty proud of and have gotten really good response from.
HDco (35:27.886)
You might be seeing that in an upcoming podcast.
Britt McTammany (35:31.332)
That’s exciting.
HDco (35:34.413)
So Naila, you want to push us to the near segment?
Naila (35:37.011)
Yeah, and I think just carrying on with the mid journey conversation that you’re using for storyboards and building concepts. How has that changed the way you do, has it changed your pre-production process and the ability to communicate your vision to producers?
Britt McTammany (35:57.85)
absolutely, 100%. I mean it’s so much faster now. A lot of times we wouldn’t be able to do anything because we had no funding. Like I said earlier, I don’t like hiring artists if I can’t pay them. A lot of times they’ll say, well I just want to do it for points or I want to do it for the experience or I want to do it just to be involved in the project, which is wonderful, but still in my heart it’s just like, hate doing that. yeah, it’s gone from…
Naila (36:00.424)
Yeah
Britt McTammany (36:27.96)
rather not the greatest, you know, illustration work because it’s usually a rush, right?
Yeah, we don’t have a lot of that talent, at least not at my disposal, that’s willing to do it for a very low amount of money. So we’ve gone from that to being able to type something in the mid-journey, and if we’re lucky, we get something really cool. I think that there’s a big wow factor when it comes to trying to pitch something. It’s like if it looks impressive and…
glossy and exciting, well that’s going to pique the interest of a production company or a director or people that you want to act in it or work on it or whatever. that’s it’s yeah it you know it’s it’s been such a massive transformation at least when it comes to the visualization of stuff which I like because like I said I’m working on pitching six films right now. Normally yeah and
HDco (37:29.861)
Six? I thought I was just one.
Britt McTammany (37:33.659)
Well, the one is the big one, but in this business, you can’t rely on just one thing. You’ve got to have backup plan, and you’ve got to keep a lot of irons in the fire, right? Because you never know which one’s going to hit.
Naila (37:34.495)
you
Naila (37:48.852)
Yes.
Britt McTammany (37:50.682)
this one that we’ve been talking about primarily is a 15, 20 million dollar project. But a lot of times, production companies, that’s terrifying for, especially independent production companies, they don’t have a lot of money. Or even if I’m going directly to philanthropists and people that wanna support the arts and say, hey, I’ve got a four million dollar film on my due date, that’s a lot more palatable than saying I got a 20 million dollar film. Because usually you have to get more people involved. That’s one of the things that I’ve been trying to work on in the Jacksonville area is just trying
to foster more of that and it’s challenging because Jacksonville is really not a film town. We don’t have the resources in terms of like sound stages. We have a lot of natural locations that are wonderful.
But really without a sound stage, you’re not gonna bring in the talent, like the crew talent. Like if I wanted to build one of these sets, I have to go somewhere else. I mean, there’s no one here that can do that, nor is there anywhere that I can put it. And it’s a shame. I would love to stay in my hometown and support film and bring more work to all the friends that I have here.
So that’s kind of a goal. But yes, there’s no way that I could be conceptualizing six films at the same time without something like this. It’s just, it’s too much. Even using like ChatGPT or a language model, I can throw in, like, give me a list of the top 12 philanthropists that support the arts in Jacksonville. And it spits out a list.
Is it perfect? No, but it’s given me some ideas. And I know, you know, probably half of them and I don’t know the other half of them. So it’s been a wonderful tool just to help me educate myself as to how I’m going to approach that part of the process. Trust me, I don’t want to deal with financing and all that other stuff, but sometimes you got to do what you got to do to get it done.
HDco (39:42.58)
Well, now I understand why you’ve been so busy lately and haven’t been able to take on some of my projects, but I’m still very happy for you, Britt. Looking at the next three to five years, beyond pre-visualization, what aspects of filmmaking do you think AI will transform next? And, you know, right now, AI is trained on
Britt McTammany (39:47.557)
You
Britt McTammany (39:51.419)
I’m sorry.
HDco (40:12.188)
language, know, the encyclopedia of everything, images, but what’s stopping AI from being trained on all the Pixar and Disney films that have ever been created or all the sci-fi films that have ever been created and then therefore being able to create the kind of level of detailed scenes that you’re seeing in your images and that were created inside a blender.
Britt McTammany (40:27.737)
Yeah.
Britt McTammany (40:40.624)
Yeah.
HDco (40:40.747)
I imagine somebody’s working on that now. you know, if you think about the volume of information that a large language model is trained on, it’s almost kind of insignificant to the volume of every film that’s ever been created. We’re talking about multiple petabytes of information. And I’m not sure we have. I mean, if you were to pull all of Amazon’s web services, yeah, you could pull that off, but
I don’t know that we have the infrastructure yet to create that kind of model and to be able to execute on that.
Britt McTammany (41:22.501)
Yeah.
HDco (41:24.0)
But do you think that that will be something that we’ll be seeing in the next three, five years? Or is that more distant future?
Britt McTammany (41:31.942)
Well, you’re seeing it now. I mean you’re seeing video. mean Go look at something that was created two years ago versus something. I there’s something on the internet It’s who is it Will Smith eating spaghetti. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this but it was done a few years ago and it’s horrible I mean, it just looks like what is happening like some sort of a you know a horror film and then they redid it recently and it’s like Wow
HDco (41:45.547)
Mm-hmm.
HDco (41:51.413)
Right.
Naila (41:51.647)
you
Britt McTammany (42:00.474)
that actually looks believable. They’re all over the place. I wish I should pull some examples, but I do think, as I said earlier, I do think you’ll be able to put a prompt in and it’ll create an entire feature film and it’ll probably be okay. It’ll at be entertaining.
I mean I actually kind of like some of the weird stuff that happens when you type in these prompts and it just doesn’t make any sense. It’s hysterical. But I do think that in the future people will be able to do that and I don’t know that I agree with that. And I think that’s where actors who are on strike were so concerned about AI using their likeness. And I’m not sure exactly how…
HDco (42:43.776)
Right?
Naila (42:44.095)
Hmm.
Britt McTammany (42:49.255)
this is going to be controlled. I will, however, something that’s made with heart by people definitely has deeper meaning, at least right now. Now maybe these engines will be able to replicate that in some way, which is kind of scary to think, right? But…
Pixar, you brought that example up earlier, mean their films have heart. mean it’s wonderful stories, wonderfully voice acted. I mean that’s something that’s gonna be really difficult to replicate, but it’s the heart that goes into that, right? And then all the artists that spend so many years refining their craft, you’re just talking about like,
HDco (43:21.195)
Right.
Britt McTammany (43:41.861)
Illustrative you know animated stuff that there’s so much behind that that’s that’s that’s even automated I Wouldn’t necessarily call AI I think I asked kind of a weird buzzword, but it’s it learns how to do these things right To streamline the process. I mean you look at any modern-day Sci-Fi blockbuster film. It’s just chock-full of CG
HDco (44:05.956)
Sure.
Britt McTammany (44:06.77)
I if you tried to do that same love of CG that was in one of the latest Marvel films 10 years ago, forget about it. It was impossible. But they built these models that learned how to do certain things to streamline the process. I mean, I don’t have a silver ball and I’m not going to pretend that I know what the future holds, but…
I I think there’s a lot of possibility out there and I’m not sure who’s going to be the one that’s going to reign all that in and set some rules and boundaries because I think that’s going to probably be necessary but I don’t know in my experience if you put too many rules and constraints on stuff people are going to go around all that and do it anyway. Even though it’s right or wrong, usually wrong. So I don’t know, that’s a dilemma.
Naila (44:47.581)
Hmm. Yeah.
HDco (44:52.378)
Well, Brett, we specifically asked you to bring your crystal ball. So and Naila said that that was going to happen. So next time we have you on, please bring that with you. Just conjure one up on mid journey while we’re working on this podcast. So before we move to the future segment, I’d to go across the pond and lighten things up a little bit. So Naila.
Naila (44:59.775)
Can you imagine him actually sitting there?
Britt McTammany (45:01.918)
Okay.
Britt McTammany (45:10.781)
Yeah, sure, I’d do it right now.
HDco (45:23.153)
We often ask each other questions because you’re based in London and I’m based in Florida. And our cultures and our language are very different. One thing I’ve always wondered is why do you call cookies biscuits when they’re two completely different things? And what do you call actual biscuits?
Naila (45:43.741)
Okay, that’s a good one. So you know what? It’s a bit like soccer and football. So why do you call soccer, why do you call soccer, soccer and not football? It’s the same with the biscuits and the cookies for me. We, I think you call cookies biscuits. They’re the same thing, right? For me, biscuit is the thing that I can have with my tea, right? So I think biscuit comes from a Latin word or.
yeah, a Latin word and it’s got to do with two baked, something to be baked twice or something. So for us, it’s the biscuits that are hard, sweet, and you can dip in your tea and cookies are the chewy ones like the chocolate chip cookies. That’s the difference between the two, but I think we’re interchanging now. So what you call cookies is biscuits for us. So what you call soccer is football.
HDco (46:30.684)
Gotcha.
HDco (46:34.65)
And biscuits are flaky and have a different dough texture and the ratio of butter and flour and water are like completely different. So I think that’s fascinating.
Naila (46:45.393)
Yeah, they’re definitely… Yeah. Yeah. But I think they’re the same thing at the end.
HDco (46:48.839)
And as for the soccer versus football thing, because football is mostly done with your hands and you only kick it when you’re punting, kicking off or trying to score a field goal. Maybe soccer was taken. So that’s why we didn’t call football football. It’s hard to say, but I will work on that answer for you for the next podcast.
Naila (47:11.219)
and footballers.
Naila (47:15.613)
Yeah, because football is rugby, right, for us.
HDco (47:18.522)
Right. Exactly. Well, you know, as Americans, we always like to do everything different from you all, even though we are essentially England is the motherland. So since I dominated last section segment, Naila, I’m going to let you take the future segment and you can ask whatever question that you want to ask him.
Naila (47:20.457)
Yeah.
Naila (47:24.275)
Hahaha
Naila (47:43.593)
So let’s go back to that human aspect, the heart part, And with all the future that’s happening and with AI and how it’s going to go into the future, what aspects of filmmaking do you think will need to or will still remain human?
Britt McTammany (48:05.82)
Hmm. Well, I think the ideas, the writing, definitely need to remain human. I think a lot of it depends on how much is virtually created or not, but you still have to have someone to create the prompt. And that’s, well, I guess AI could create its own prompts at some point, right? That’s sentience for AI, which is kind of interesting to think about, but
Naila (48:33.951)
Mm-mm.
Britt McTammany (48:36.748)
the performances, know, the actors. I think that’s something that’s really challenging. I haven’t thought of implications of AI actually on set, like if it was operating a camera in some way.
HDco (48:53.95)
I don’t see any reason why couldn’t.
Britt McTammany (48:56.263)
Yeah, well mean you see, you see like motion control rigs, or maybe you don’t, but a motion control rig is basically an articulating arm that you mount a camera to and you program it to do the stuff. A human programs it to do something that it wants, but I guess at some point, you know, a director could just visualize.
HDco (49:03.39)
Right.
Britt McTammany (49:22.771)
what they want the camera to do, communicate that to the camera, I guess that’s a form of some sort of prompt, and then it does it.
HDco (49:33.728)
So imagine we’re shooting a chase scene for, you know, Mission Impossible 35 or, you know, the next evolution of Top Gear. And so you have your AI powered Tesla or Ferrari in your AI powered, you know, Porsche chase car. And chase car is a car that has a big camera rig on top of it with like a big arm that comes down.
Naila (49:34.333)
I guess also…
Britt McTammany (50:03.956)
Yeah.
HDco (50:04.135)
And I know, Brett, you have a little bit of experience in that world. But from my point of view, trying to operate, you know, a hundred fifty thousand dollar camera inches away from the ground and feet away from a million dollar car is terrifying. I would much rather let. A.I. handle that and like, here’s the camera move you need to make. Go for it and keep everyone safe and alive. So I could see.
Britt McTammany (50:18.239)
Yeah.
Britt McTammany (50:22.162)
It is.
HDco (50:33.3)
some benefits from a safety point of view, maybe a cost point of view, things of that nature. But that does put like five or 10 people on that one scene out of work, essentially.
Britt McTammany (50:38.098)
Mm-hmm.
Britt McTammany (50:50.855)
Yeah, well those chase cars usually require at least five people to run it. And you know, at least on the projects I work on, and I think a lot of people in the film industry would agree, there’s a lot of happy accidents, you know, and there’s a lot of fluidity. Like what you’re alluding to, we’ll continue with that example. A lot of times those moves, there’s a lot of serendipity. It’s like where did, you know, where was the camera boom?
HDco (50:54.24)
Right.
HDco (51:07.298)
Mm-hmm.
Britt McTammany (51:20.267)
How was the framing when we were hitting this particular curve when the light was doing this special thing that you can’t plan for? It just happens. And it’s just like, I think as a filmmaker, a lot of times I try and put myself in a situation that has the potential for the most magic, right? So you assemble all of these pieces and parts together, actors, sets, wardrobe, cameras, crew.
HDco (51:38.359)
Mm-hmm.
Britt McTammany (51:49.171)
They’re all working towards a singular goal and that’s to create something that is emotional and it touches its audience in a special way, right? And there’s a lot of luck in that. A lot of luck. And that’s, I don’t know that you can program that. So, I don’t know, maybe our jobs are safe after all. unless AI learns how to make magic, yeah.
HDco (52:10.457)
I mean, I think so. I think our jobs are safe and Naila, certainly yours as well, because dealing with that human element and we’re kind of more on like a management level, even though we still do things day to day, you know, we’re responsible for big vision, you know, big picture and making sure that the concept is effectively communicated.
Naila (52:22.409)
Yeah.
HDco (52:41.145)
In a lot of ways we’re curators, we’re tastemakers, we’re the ones who decide what’s good. So whether I’m doing the logo, you know, a team of art directors or designers is working on a logo project or whether AI is working on it, in the end if we end up with something that’s amazing, you know, my job is still intact. But I do worry about people who are more mid-level who are
Britt McTammany (52:46.858)
Yeah.
HDco (53:11.511)
averse to learning new technology and staying ahead of the curve that it’s kind of like the old buggy whip makers complaining about this newfangled automobile that has an engine, we don’t need horses anymore. Well, you can’t stop progress. So either you learn to adapt to it and honor your own
set of ethical values and morals and how you treat people or you completely ignore what’s happening and someone above me, know, a client or whomever will simply find someone else who is willing to do that. And so we all kind of have to make those those difficult choices. And it seems to be that those choices are accelerating on a on a rapid basis.
Naila (54:10.523)
I think everything is just going to have to work in balance. So you know like with the writers and the actors, there’s always going to be a need for a conversation where there needs to be a law or you know some kind of policy or regulation that be put in place so that things do work in balance and people are not losing jobs but maybe there more jobs created or roles don’t change or are secured or protected. So I think yeah operating in balance is going to be the key thing.
HDco (54:40.049)
You know, Britt, and you might laugh at this, but I think the one role that will always and forever be safe, at least for the next 50 years, will be the production assistant, because it’s just not gonna make sense to have AI go get you coffee or pick up lunch or, you know, go to Best Buy and get a hard drive or whatever that may be. So production assistants, if you’re in the film industry, you’re safe.
Naila (54:56.767)
Yeah.
Britt McTammany (54:57.173)
Yeah.
Britt McTammany (55:02.401)
Sure.
Britt McTammany (55:06.463)
You’re good. Yeah. No, they are incredibly valuable. Very underrated, for sure.
Naila (55:12.575)
So
HDco (55:14.183)
So moving on to our final thoughts and let’s try to wrap this up in about 30 seconds. My final thoughts are that in kind of recapping what I was just saying earlier is that as our roles evolve and we see technology that can aid us in our creative process and make the work better,
Naila (55:18.066)
Yes.
HDco (55:44.293)
I think that it’s incumbent upon us to embrace that for the benefit of our clients, but maintaining our own set of ethical and moral values in terms of how we treat human beings. What about you, Britt?
Britt McTammany (56:01.234)
I agree.
Britt McTammany (56:07.137)
Humans are the common element in all of this stuff. They’re artists. think we have to, and then to Nana’s point, the ethics of everything. It’s like, my concern is, know, who are the people that are gonna be in charge of defining what that means? And I think it’s just incumbent on us as artists and creators to kind of fight for…
Naila (56:26.911)
Mm.
Britt McTammany (56:35.487)
the right way to do things.
HDco (56:39.402)
Nile, your thoughts?
Naila (56:39.679)
My final thoughts is this weekend I’ll be watching the artifice girl. So that’s what my final thoughts are basically and I’ve learnt a lot.
Britt McTammany (56:45.218)
Aww.
HDco (56:50.388)
Well, you’re really going to enjoy it. It’s a it’s a I’d say it’s a surprisingly good film because I work with Britt and I know he’s such a great director of photography in this this role. But having it being done on such a micro budget, I really expected a lot of compromise in the overall narrative. And that just didn’t happen. So I think you’re you’re going to enjoy that. You want to.
Britt McTammany (56:50.786)
you enjoy it.
Naila (57:16.447)
Yes. So thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Britt, for… Yeah, I do. And thank you for joining us, Britt, and giving us perspectives, which are different because I come from the communication sustainability world. So I’ve got to learn a lot more about film, filmmaking, how you use AI in the process. So that wraps up our episode for Now, Near, and the Future. As always, you can find us on the web at nownearfuture.com.
Britt McTammany (57:18.882)
Yeah, I hope you enjoy it too.
HDco (57:21.194)
Do want to wrap this up, Nyla?
Naila (57:45.051)
or on YouTube and Instagram at Now and in the Future.
HDco (57:48.446)
And Britt, tell us again where we can find you on social.
Britt McTammany (57:51.778)
Britt McTaminyDP on Instagram and Britt Thomas McTaminy on YouTube. I’ll get you the links that way you have everything.
HDco (58:01.93)
Great, thanks.
Naila (58:02.473)
Perfect.
Britt McTammany (58:04.61)
Thanks. I appreciate it. It was fun.
HDco (58:07.004)
Absolutely. As always, stay curious and keep dreaming.
Naila (58:08.127)
Thank you.
Naila (58:12.093)
and we shall see you in the future.
April 1, 2025