So this is a set for a piece of test content we're shooting.
It looks a lot like a normal set, lights, set dressing,
but the difference here is we are filming content
that is intended to be edited by a machine
learning program or an AI.
Just checking Twitter.
We are right at the beginning of the day, it is quarter to nine
I think we start shooting at half nine
and we are going to do the quiz section first of all.
Stevie with the buzz! Sodium?
AI is going to be hugely transformative
for the media industry as a whole.
It's the next stage of automation and we think it's going to be transformative
for TV production in particular.
So what we're doing here is we're doing a professional
TV production with a professional script, actors and crew,
but we're doing it with the full on set input from our research teams.
So that we make sure we capture the material
with the exact characteristics that we need.
We are about to film the first scene of the day actors on set, crew are ready. It's exciting!
Quiet on set please. Recording as live.
Standby to record, and Tommy you're on camera three.
In five, four, three... Action!
Welcome to Old School, the gameshow where we...
We already have developed in house algorithms
that can do the most straightforward of automatic edits,
but in order to edit anything more complex
or that's trying to tell a story, set a scene
You need a greater understanding of actually what is going on and
those programs don't exist yet
that research is still happening
and one thing that would assist that research is good quality test material,
training data. that simply doesn't exist yet.
So we're hoping to create that.
Instead of having camera operators operating all the cameras
to get the different shots
what we do is we put in place a bunch of static cameras
that are shooting very, very high resolution, they're shooting at 8k and
they're all to wide angles, so within each cameras shot
there are smaller individual shots
that a camera operator would normally get.
So the idea is that we use some AI to then try and pick those shots out
and automatically edit together a piece of content.
We've just wrap part two the script
and this next section is intended to be more challenging for the AI
because the actors are moving around and talking over each other
and they'll be crossing the line of the camera.
So as a filmmaker, this has been a really interesting project for me
because we are teaching computers to help us with our work.
It's always easy to ask the question of, what if it replaces the people,
but machine learning algorithms could help us for example,
make a first pass edit or go through footage and say this all looks good,
this does not look good. At the moment
you can't replace having a skilled crew create this stuff with intent,
but you can hopefully in the future, make their lives easier.
Class dismissed.
Don't touch this! Can I ring you bell?
Cut! Oh my god, well done!
That's a wrap, that went really well
that was the last scene of the day
it was beautiful, pasta everywhere.
We have existing partners from academic institutions
around the world who are interested in this footage
and have plans for things to do with it.
We believe that by getting computers to start to understand those aspects
of the craft of cinematography,
we can produce systems which are the best combination
of technological automation and human creativity.
So, having access to this kind
of raw unedited material could be a huge step forward.