In a world where movie the­atres are full of re­boots, re­makes or lega­cy se­quels, Amer­i­can film pro­duc­er Jonathan Yunger is sure that AI tech­nol­o­gy can help cre­atives from the Caribbean buck the trend.

Yunger, as pres­i­dent of Mil­len­ni­um Films, has worked on over 50 movies that have col­lec­tive­ly earned over US$2.5 bil­lion in the glob­al box of­fice in­clud­ing ma­jor box of­fice fran­chis­es such the Ex­pend­ables, the Hit­man’s Body­guard, and the Has Fall­en tril­o­gy.

But he has seen the cre­ative well run dry in Tin­sel­town.

“Be­cause the truth of the mat­ter is, Hol­ly­wood is not just bleed­ing, it’s haem­or­rhag­ing,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view via Google Meet­ings last week.

How­ev­er, in the past three-years, Yunger and his team has stud­ied gen­er­a­tive AI and its po­ten­tial for the movie busi­ness, not­ing that the tech­nol­o­gy has de­vel­oped a plat­form that com­ple­ments work­flows and low­ers the bar­ri­er to en­try for young film­mak­ers.

This led to the launch of Ar­cana Labs. Yunger, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Ar­cana Labs, said he is aim­ing to work with as­pir­ing film­mak­ers who recog­nise that through AI there is a chance to make pre­vi­ous­ly un­fi­nance­able projects pos­si­ble.

“My hy­poth­e­sis was, can you cre­ate a plat­form that’s mod­el ag­nos­tic, where you can put AI in­to a sand­box, where it can ac­tu­al­ly com­ple­ment work­flows and low­er the bar­ri­er to en­try to the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try for peo­ple try­ing to en­ter the busi­ness, like young film­mak­ers, sto­ry­tellers, peo­ple who don’t have the same op­por­tu­ni­ties as oth­ers? And the an­swer was yes. So here we are, about three and a half years lat­er, we launched Ar­cana Labs, a plat­form about 120 days ago, and we’re do­ing re­al­ly well.”

Yunger has seen some of that po­ten­tial come to light in Trinidad af­ter work­ing with Ver­e­na Boodoos­ingh on some of her lo­cal projects. Boodoos­ingh be­came a fan of the plat­form af­ter us­ing it to cre­ate con­tent for her Cir­cle Ar­mor film project. She has since reached out to Ar­cana as she start­ed us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy as part of an ed­u­ca­tion­al se­ries fea­tur­ing AI, which pro­mot­ed the his­to­ry and folk­lore of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Boodoos­ingh ex­plained Ar­cana Labs had al­lowed her to main­tain the au­then­tic­i­ty of her char­ac­ters, as typ­i­cal­ly oth­er plat­forms would de­fault to Eu­ro­cen­tric fea­tures.

“He saw some of the ed­u­ca­tion­al stuff I was do­ing in the Min­istry,” Boodoos­ingh ex­plained.

She con­tin­ued, “It gave me a lit­tle more con­trol, I was able to ac­tu­al­ly specif­i­cal­ly tell my tool what I want, and it main­tained that au­then­tic­i­ty. This is a game chang­er. It helped me to main­tain that vi­sion I had in my head, es­pe­cial­ly with re­gards to the Pa­pa Bois char­ac­ter. And I guess just saw that I too was aligned with ed­u­ca­tion, and very much with re­gards to ed­u­cat­ing, es­pe­cial­ly the next gen­er­a­tion.”

Yunger said, “If you think about that, it is re­al­ly amaz­ing. I think with these kinds of tools, we’re go­ing to be able to ex­pose the new Dar­ren Aronof­sky, the new Quentin Taran­ti­no, the new Mar­tin Scors­ese. And, you know, and that’s why we’re ac­tu­al­ly very ex­cit­ed to be work­ing with Ver­e­na and what she’s do­ing over in the Caribbean, be­cause I be­lieve that there’s so much un­tapped tal­ent in the Caribbean, and I think that with hav­ing ac­cess to AI and the way the world is mov­ing and be­ing ear­ly adopters, I think it re­al­ly sets up the pop­u­la­tion for suc­cess in what­ev­er cre­ative field they want to be in.”

The Amer­i­can film pro­duc­er not­ed that the plat­form re­moved sev­er­al bar­ri­ers to en­try for many in the cre­ative sec­tor. He felt many in small­er mar­kets or re­gions could ex­plore the film­mak­ing process. In par­tic­u­lar, he ex­plained that the tech­nol­o­gy could sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the cost of mak­ing a movie.

He said, “Some­thing like Lon­don Has Fall­en, or An­gel Has Fall­en, you still have to pay the ac­tor their fee, the movie star. But, I mean, the bud­gets for those movies were US$60 and US$70 mil­lion, but to­day, with the tool you could have prob­a­bly shaved that bud­get in the vi­su­al ef­fects stuff. Maybe you could have prob­a­bly done it in half, $30 mil­lion.”

He said the Ar­cana Labs team had al­ready achieved suc­cess with the Echo Hunter project.

“That was made on our plat­form, which was 100 per cent gen­er­a­tive AI movie that we used re­al ac­tors and got a SAG con­tract for that ... it took about three weeks to make, and the cost of it was less than US$50,000 in the prac­ti­cal world of vi­su­al ef­fects to­day, that would have cost US$3 to US$4 mil­lion just to give you con­text,” he said,

“What’s cool is that the IP went vi­ral and a ma­jor stream­er made an of­fer and bought it from the cre­ator for sev­en fig­ures. Yeah. And so that’s an in­ter­est­ing use case. So the truth is, you’re talk­ing about cut­ting costs any­where be­tween 70 to 80 per cent to­day, as far as pro­duc­tion costs, now. That’s go­ing to be­come more and more de­pend­ing on what it is you want to shoot. I think mak­ing ful­ly Gen AI movies is go­ing to be much more preva­lent, and that’s where the puck is go­ing, and it’s im­por­tant that we are at a place be­fore the puck gets there.”

Yunger said the plat­form did not mean that there would be less work for ac­tors, but could in­crease the range of work that could be done in the in­dus­try.

“We’re not here to re­place cre­ators. We’re here to sup­port them. So we’re all about like, artist-dri­ven AI, not AI-dri­ven art. And I think a re­al­ly im­por­tant point of what Ver­e­na was say­ing. I had my idea. I knew ex­act­ly what I want­ed to do, what I want­ed to cre­ate, and then I used the tools in Ar­cana labs to help me ex­e­cute my vi­sion,” he said.

“So many peo­ple have the vi­sions and stuff that they want to do, and they don’t have the means and the ways to ex­e­cute on them, and then from then, no­body ever knows about them.

“So I think be­ing able to sup­port cre­ators in this sort of way, it’s go­ing to pave the way, like Ver­e­na said, for the next Mar­tin Scors­ese or who­ev­er, or even, and, by the way, the next fash­ion pho­tog­ra­ph­er, the next graph­ic de­sign­er, the next artists. It’s mul­ti­ple ver­ti­cals, any­thing re­al­ly cre­ative. “

Boodoos­ingh sup­port­ed this as she felt the tech­nol­o­gy could al­so give greater ex­po­sure to lo­cal ac­tors as well as the cre­atives.

“I think even for ac­tors, it’s sure to open doors for ac­tors lo­cal­ly and even in the Caribbean who nev­er had op­por­tu­ni­ties to act in movies. It re­al­ly brings cre­atives to­geth­er,” said Boodoos­ingh, who ex­plained her work has caught the at­ten­tion of oth­er lo­cal film­mak­ers.

Yunger is hope­ful that T&T will be an ear­ly adopter in this re­gard and help un­earth valu­able sto­ries and screen­plays that could re­vi­talise the movie in­dus­try.