The 97th Academy Awards ceremony occurred on March 2 and was filled with great wins and controversies. Anora was the big winner of the evening, taking home five Oscars, including the award of the night, Best Picture.
The divisive international film Emilia Pérez took home two Oscars, one of which included a very awkward and strange speech where the film’s songwriters sang the name of the movie on stage, and not very well at that. However, another win and speech has also sparked outrage among viewers.
Adrien Brody took home an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his part in The Brutalist. This is his second Oscar win in this category, the first being for his role in The Pianist in 2003, which also included a controversial speech moment when he kissed actress Halle Berry on stage as she presented him with the award.
This year, Brody’s speech has upset fans for another reason: being too long. Brody started by spitting out his gum and throwing it to his girlfriend Georgina Chapman, ex-wife of Harvey Weinstein, so things were already not off to a great start. Each winner is allotted 45 seconds to accept their award, and Brody shattered this by speaking for five minutes and 40 seconds. He even told the orchestra to stop playing him off, continuing to speak about essentially nothing.
His long speech also caused the show to go over time, causing millions of viewers watching it live on platforms such as Hulu to miss the final awards as the show ran over and cut out.
While Brody’s speech has caused controversy, his win holds many more implications for Hollywood. To develop his character’s Hungarian accent in the film, Brody and the filmmakers decided to use artificial intelligence to enhance his use of the language. This was also done for actress Felicity Jones, who was nominated for her role in the film for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
The use of AI in Hollywood has been a topic of conversation for years, often with a negative connotation. However, Brody’s win with the assistance of AI may show that Hollywood is more accepting of it than many may think.
ai and acting
Adrien Brody’s win has shown that AI is present in acting and is approved by voting academies. He won the award over four incredible performances, a few of which had to change their voices to become their characters but didn’t use AI assistance.
Timothée Chalamet and Sebastian Stan completely changed their voices and mannerisms to portray Bob Dylan and Donald Trump, respectively. Stan is also a Romanian immigrant who was told he had to eliminate his native accent to be successful in Hollywood. This has caused lots of controversy and even tension between the two actors, with Stan losing to Brody, who was given a cheat sheet for something the former had to work hard to unlearn when he never should’ve been asked to in the first place.
All five performances from Adrien Brody, Timothée Chalamet, Colman Domingo, Ralph Fiennes, and Sebastian Stan are incredible, and anyone could have taken home the Academy Award, but why is the one using AI to enhance his performance being rewarded? Turns out that award academies are giving a thumbs up for technological performance enhancement.
Emilia Pérez also used AI for its actors’ performances. AI technology was used for Karla Sofía Gascón’s performance, blending her voice with another vocalist’s to hit notes that weren’t in her register. While she didn’t win, Gascón was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role, just another example of how the Academy Awards praised AI-enhanced performances this year.
AI and production
In terms of film production, AI has been used for a while. This is mainly done in a post-production manner, being used to speed-track repetitive tasks such as color grading, sound editing, and object removal. While this is useful for making things simpler, it can also cause job cuts for those who have these specific roles.
So far, it hasn’t been heavily used in creative aspects, such as production or costume design, but there’s a possibility that this could become a reality in the future. If AI technology is used for a film that wins Production Design at the Oscars, who will go up to accept that award, since it wasn’t done by a person?
AI and screenwriting
If there’s one group that has been strongly against the use of AI, it’s screenwriters. In 2023, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) went on strike for five months, halting television and film production. This was done to demand a more livable wage for those in the screenwriting industry and also to protest the threat that AI poses to their careers.
The strike was somewhat successful, with many companies promising to increase wages for their screenwriters, but the AI aspect of the strike was left largely unanswered. Many companies that were a major target of this have used AI in writing recent projects, but most of these films have received very negative reviews from both fans and critics alike, showing that real screenwriters may be the best option in this debate.
The difference between screenwriters and A-list actors using AI in their fields is that writers don’t make nearly as much money as the stars of a film, so even if AI is used to enhance performance, the actor will still be present on set and be paid generously for it. If AI is used in writing, it can completely remove the need for a screenwriting team, causing writers to no longer be paid for projects.
AI is yet to be used to write an award-winning or nominated film or TV show, but when it’s inevitably introduced, the WGA will be sure to make sure everyone knows about it.
With thousands of employees losing their positions and job security due to the development of AI, it’s a scary reality for many. However, with this technology being present in nearly every field, it’s something we will have to accept, but that doesn’t mean it’s a better alternative to true, genuine work.
Will we continue to see AI in filmmaking? How will this affect the movies and TV shows we watch? Does this eliminate the credibility of award shows? Well, only time will tell, and with the steady growth of AI, that time is certainly soon.
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