FRIDAY'S ESPRESSO - 8th December
SPECIAL CONTENT LONDON EDITION
1. CONTENT LONDON - AN INTRODUCTION
Chiara Duranti, Founder & Chief Editor of Formatbiz, journalist, member of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (International Emmy Awards), reports:
“London's most anticipated event week of the year, especially for its glamorous and chic aura is undoubtedly Content London, which takes place in London before Christmas and attracts many producers from all over Europe.
Once again this year, the event took place during the week of Nov. 27-30, when Christmas lights covered Covent Garden and the magnificent Renaissance hotel in St Pancras adorned with elegant festive ornaments. The event was located in several venues, starting at Kings Place where a number of panels dedicated to fiction and TV industry’s trends were held, one of the most interesting conferences was dedicated to AI, while at Gas Station, The Lighterman and The Standard many International distributors (Warner Bros., Asacha, Universal, Keshet, All3Media etc.) organized their meetings to present the new formats and series .
Among the countless parties and cocktails we can’t not mention the Rose d'Or ceremony that honoured formats and series, among which the lion's share went to the company Be-Entertainment with its two formats Destination X and Justice in Jail.
There was also a day dedicated to AI with many experts talking about the various applications that can be used to improve our work. In particular the panel titled ‘AI: your new creative partner’ presented by Dan Taylor-Watt a digital expert was focused on the impact of AI as a positive and creative partner as there are many tools, that can be adapted in the TV industry professions from the creation of deck and presentation to all the production's process (dubbing, cutting & editing, setting, music’s production etc.)”
2. CONTENT LONDON - AN ANALYSIS
Josetxu Palenzuela, Rainmaker on TV Land, reports:
“Another market in which everyone travels (producers, distributors, creators and network executives) but the most important protagonist of all does not travel: money. Attending Content London produces the same feeling as that experienced at Mipcom and makes you wonder: but... where is the money? Is it really so cowardly facing the 2024 and 2025 years?
However, in my opinion, the most striking thing about this occasion is that a disturbing sense of conformism has emerged among the participants. A spirit very contrary to our future as professionals in the audiovisual sector. The EFM (European Film Market - Berlin) is already seen as proof of cotton that may be endorsed with pessimism in the face of some years that can be considered lost for business purposes.
Of course, apparently, the closing of 2023 does not invite the greatest optimism. But the inhabitants of TV land are used to navigating in adverse waters and I dream that we will know how to find the exit at the end of the tunnel that both Content London and Mipcom have drawn.”
3. CONTENT LONDON - AI TOOLS
And finally Jason Mitchell, founder of The Connected Set, kindly made available to Friday’s Espresso his very useful and practical speech titled “AI tools to supercharge development”. If you’re interested in this training, or learning more about how AI can help your development or productions, you can reach out to him on jason@theconnectedset.com.
“Artificial Intelligence was a major theme at this year’s Content London. I counted no less than ten sessions across two days, plus the separate inaugural AI Academy and an announcement that at next year's Content London AI will have its own standalone three day AI event.
It's remarkable that it was only one year ago ChatGPT was released to the masses, and yet now there's literally hundreds of AI tools in the market, and with that AI's become an obsession for our industry: from finding the right tools to drive up productivity and profit, to providing creative inspiration for formats, to being seen by some freelancers and businesses as an existential threat to livelihoods, copyright and format protection.
I've been taken with AI since I first played with ChatGPT earlier this year, and for the last six months AI has been quickly adopted and deeply integrated into my production company.
As a producer using these tools day-to-day, I was invited to Content London to deliver a practical 30 minute presentation showing off some of the AI tools producers can use in their development process. It was a full house, and certainly a strong indicator that our industry is keen to benefit from this transformative new wave of innovation.
So, if you’re looking to get started in AI, here’s my ten favourite low-cost and easy-to-use AI tools to play with:
1. ChatGPT
Why I picked this: “A tool for idea generation, talent suggestions, writing pitches, scrutinising your work, writing taster tape scripts, research, and much more, this is the original and the best AI chatbot. It’s available as a website and smartphone app where you write out any kind of question or instruction in a natural conversational style, and it answers you in text. It’s most recent update also allows image, video, PDF and audio input. ChatGPT generates answers based on its almost infinite knowledge on the web, and no two answers are ever the same. “
Website: chat.openai.com
Price: ChatGPT3.5 is free, more advanced ChatGPT4 is $20 per month.
Alternatives: Bing AI, Bard AI
2.Gamma
Why I picked this: “A brilliant and fast way to create any kind of deck that looks like you’ve had a designer labouring away over it for days. This tool uses simple text prompts, like in ChatGPT, with more manual toggles, to generate and customise pitch decks.”
Website: gamma.app
Price: Free with watermark, up to $20 per month without
Alternative: Canva
3. Midjourney
Why I picked this: “To bring an idea to life it’s good to include mock imagery or photography of how the show, once filmed, might actually look. Midjourney is a tool you can use to conceptualise set designs, art, drawing, graphics, and even photorealistic images, all based on the text prompts. To access this tool you need a very basic understanding of Discord - you simply start your prompt with “/imagine” and then write out what you want to see - the more descriptive the better. It will generate four images, and then you can continue to refine it with your prompts”
Website: midjourney.com
Price: basic plan $10 per month
Alternative: DALL-E, Imagine AI, Getty AI
4. Runway
Why I picked this: “This is another text to image based prompting tool but instead of just creating still images it can create moving images/video. It does this by creating a series of stills and then punches through them at speed. It’s not the smoothest video yet, but this will get better as processing power improves. It’s great for visualising shots, creating animations, mock title sequences and much more. It’s particularly good for taster tapes in my experience.”
Website: runwayml.com
Price: approx 5 cents per second of video generated
Alternative: Pikalabs, TopazLabs
5. Pictory
Why I picked this: “This video transcription tool does a lot, but one aspect we love it for is editing casting tapes. You know when you’ve just got off a one hour casting call and your client asks for a 1 minute cut down? With this tool you upload the video and it will automatically transcribe it using voice recognition, then it outputs that transcript into what looks like a Word doc or Google Doc, and here’s the really smart bit: you select the bits you want to cut out, or you can move text around, and that directly feeds through into the video, significantly speeding up the casting tape edit process”
Website: pictory.ai
Price: 3 x 10 minute videos free then $19 per month
Alternative: Descript and Adobe Premiere
6. Kapwing
Why I picked this: “It’s a quick and low-cost way to find footage for your taster tapes. On this website where you can feed-in or type in a script, and then it will source footage from the web that matches your script, pulling it all into a single timeline, selecting footage from video sites like YouTube and stock footage libraries.”
Website: kapwing.com
Price: $16 per month
7. Tom’s Planner
Why I picked this: “This is really useful for Production Management. Tom’s Planner is a project planning tool we’ve used for a long time in The Connected Set that helps teams create project schedules and Gant charts. Now they’ve added a really powerful AI extension which is in beta phase but is pretty cool. It can help you quickly set up a new project and automatically generate milestones. You enter a short description of your project, and the planner creates a ready-to-use / end-to-end project plan.”
Website: tomsplanner.com
Price: $10 per month
Alternative: A different use case, but Motion is a good AI powered personal assistant (meeting scheduling etc)
8. Opus Pro
Why I picked this: “Opus Pro automatically repurposes long videos into social clips to share in places like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts and so on. It can take one video, automatically select the best bits for social, and output up to 10 clips all in one click. The tool will also give you an indication, based on the content of the video, of how well it’s likely to perform on socials.”
Website: opus.pro
Price: $19 per month for up to 200 upload minutes
Alternative: VidYo AI
9. AutoPod
Why I picked this: “This plugin integrates with Premiere Pro, so you do need basic knowledge of Premiere to use it. There’s loads it can do but we love it for multi-camera editing. This AI editing tool uses voice detection and silence to automatically select shots and can sync pull in faster than real time. It’s a great tool for a first sync pull to handover to your editor to then finesse”
Website: autopod.fm
Price: $29 per month
10. Play HT
Why I picked this: “This is a voice cloning technology. To use it a real person has to read out a bunch of words for one minute on the play.ht website - all the kinds of combinations of sounds you’d expect in natural speech. From that one recording the tool can then replicate your voice and any words from any script you input. It’s great for guide voiceovers on your taster tapes or first cuts of shows.”
Website: play.ht
Price: $39 per month for up to 50,000 words
The 10 tools I’ve selected here are from a list of 40 AI tools we cover in a longer 90 minute training session we regularly deliver to broadcasters, distributors, producers and freelancers, and recently as part of C21’s AI Academy. There’s never been a better time to upskill, and the best way to begin is to play with some of the tools above. Good luck!”
