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Lights, Camera, Generative AI!
How generative AI can be your creative muse
Introduction
As a struggling screenwriter living in Los Angeles over a decade ago, I spent countless hours searching for literary material I thought was filmworthy, adapting that material, then submitting my completed scripts to financiers and distributors as well as venturing to foreign film markets in search of funds and tax breaks to make my movies. Sadly, it was often a fruitless endeavor. Seeing the book rights revert to the novelist after three years of hard work and, usually, little pay, made me quite jaded about the industry. Each failure came with the knowledge that all the work I had done on the project amounted to pretty much nothing.
Today, I write novels because it’s much easier to get a book published than a screenplay produced. I adapt my own novels so I don’t have to pay out the table stakes in option money adapting other writers’ work requires. this still doesn’t solve the major problem that plagues all filmmakers, i.e., how to find the funds needed for production. However, I have recently discovered some new technology that has the potential to fundamentally alter the film business — generative AI. It came in riding on a horse (with an astronaut) about a year ago and has sent shockwaves through the creative community ever since.
