Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1382552
46 C I N E M O N T A G E T E C H By Jennifer Walden AI technology (probably) isn't the hu- manity-destroying rise of the machines that some fear — at least not in the world of post-production. It's showing up all over the film industry, from helping to cast actors to achieving incredible visual effects transformations, like turning actor Josh Brolin into Thanos for "Aveng- ers: Infinity War." In the world of post sound, sound designer Randy Thom on "The Midnight Sky" used artificial intelligence to study the characteristic vocal traits of George Clooney (who played Augustine) and then incorporate those into the voice of young Augustine, played by actor Ethan Peck, helping the audience to believe that these two actors were both Augustine, just at different ages. In our last issue, Flame f inishing editor Christopher Doyle spoke of the promising AI machine learning capabil- ity of Autodesk Flame 2020 in helping to remove unwanted objects from scenes. Colorists are also seeing the benefits of artificial intelligence. Time-intensive technical tasks, like matching shots between different cameras, can happen faster. That's what Color Intelligence's Colourlab Ai (https://colourlab.ai/) is offering with their standalone applica- tion for macOS. I n i t i a l l y d e s i g n e d to s e a m l e s s l y integrate with Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve Studio, a recent update now allows Final Cut P ro editors to simply drag-and-drop their timeline into the Colourlab Ai application and get to Making Color Easier work. While Colourlab Ai also supports workflows for other major major non-lin- ear editing (NLE) systems, like Adobe Premiere Pro and Avid Media Composer, their future goal is to have a deep level of integration with those, like they do with Resolve or Final Cut Pro. Colourlab Ai was officially launched in November 2020, but already v1.2 has been released with six new major features — like the aforementioned Final Cut Pro timeline drag-and-drop feature, a Camera Profile tool that automatically detects different media sources and ap- plies the proper color-managed camera profile for efficient camera matching, support for all ARRI's Raw formats so one can play any ARRIRAW file, and support for CANON Raw — and over a hundred other improvements. "Dado [Valentic, Color Scientist / Founder/CEO of Color Intelligence] is coming up with a lot of great new fea- tures all the time. It's like a continuation of learning on a daily basis for everybody. Dado and his development team are really creating something that helps us to be more creative a lot easier because there are a lot of really technical steps that need to happen out front before you even start pushing the knobs and turning the dials," said Eric Babinec, Digital Film Colorist/CEO of Colortime Pictures, Inc. in Los Angeles, CA. Babinec (who's been working as a colorist in Hollywood for over 30 years) attended Valentic's film masterclass at AbelCine a few years ago, where Valentic hinted at building an app for colorists that would use artificial intelligence. "I'm always looking to stay on top of technology so I automatically got involved with the beta programs. I felt like the writing is on the wall about our industry. Once you start introducing AI into a particular field, people start to kind of panic about those things. They look at AI and think, 'AI. That's a job killer.' Job security is a huge concern. But, I must say, this will not eliminate jobs. This will only create a smoother experience for colorists to help them get to the end game faster." Those sentiments are echoed by Nat Jencks, Supervising Colorist at Techni- color-PostWorks NY, whose recent work includes Steven Soderbergh's upcoming "No Sudden Move" and Lena Dunham's upcoming "Sharp Stick." Jencks said, "In general, the term 'AI' tends to conjure up an image of a machine replacing a human. That is not helped by THE LATEST AI IS HELPING COLORISTS DO THEIR JOB. 'THEY OPEN UP NEW OPPORTUNITIES? C O L O U R L A B A I A R T I F I C I A L I N T E L L I G E N C E F O R C O L O R I S T S L E G A C Y C O L O R G R A D I N G CONTROL PANEL IMAGE PROCESSING UNIT GRADED IMAGE SOURCE IMAGE