Happy (?) post-tax day Hollywood tech nerds!

In this week’s post:

🤖 Adobe Adds Generative AI to Premiere Pro

🕶️ Who Wants to Watch Video in VR?

🍿 Kernels: 3 links worth making popcorn for

Adobe Adds Generative AI to Premiere Pro

Big news for intense Adobe Premiere Pro users like myself via IndieWire:

The video accompanying the article shows some pretty amazing demonstrations of all the tools, although as with all tech demos they should be taken with a grain of salt; Juicero also had an impressive demo video!

OK, maybe “impressive” is the wrong word… “insane” is better.

Regardless, the tools as described do seem helpful for video editing! Generative Extend will use AI to provide more content at the end of a given shot, Object Addition/Removal allows you to edit the contents of a shot, and Text to Video will help you create B-roll, essentially generating new shots you can cut into your project.

What seemed a bit mysterious to me was Adobe including the ability to utilize other models besides Firefly. Editors can opt to use Sora, Runway, and Pika Labs. Firefly utilizes only Adobe-licensed content for its training data, while its competitors have been much more opaque about how they trained their models. If you’re working on any projects covered by SAG agreements or similar, caution is advised!

If you’re an editor who works with Premiere, how do you plan to incorporate these new tools? I would love to hear from you! Contact me at [email protected].

Who Wants to Watch Video in VR?

Well, the Vision Pro has been out for two months now. How do you feel about it? Are you immersed 24/7? Are your children begging you to pay attention to them? Are you making embarrassing viral videos for your bluecheck Twitter account?

I sort of feel like it’s… disappeared? I can’t explain it directly, but to me the Apple Vision Pro has little of the stickiness and anticipation of the original iPhone and its other product launches. As I wrote at the time, The VP’s various cumbersome qualities are unlikely to result in large scale adoption. My boomer mom loves the ease of use, photographs, and FaceTime qualities of her iPad and iPhone. My boomer mom is not interested in a weird, heavy helmet that might make her sick.

Relatedly, Variety conducted its own survey investigating the reasons consumers would or wouldn’t want to consume video content on a Vision Pro. Is this the new movie theater?

Well, no. There was a fairly even split on its appeal for watching movies and TV:

Those who were interested “cited the benefits of having a more immersive (61%), personalized (45%), portable and high-quality (33%) or private (33%) viewing experience.” Those who weren’t said “the biggest deterrents were discomfort (33%), redundancy with other screened devices (32%) and the cost of the hardware (31%).”

I would say this provides some indication that a future, more streamlined headset would find greater appeal as a consumer product. As it is, though, the Vision Pro is no iPhone, and it certainly makes sense Hollywood has yet to fully embrace it.

Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)

Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:

How corporate consolidation killed Hollywood. (link)

Fallout and the imminent victory of video games over superheroes. (link)

Watching sports at home is getting even more complicated. (link)