I really hemmed and hawed about whether to put this topic here or CCD. But I opted for here so it's more open for discussion ideas aside from the ones I'm about to make.
AI is an interesting thing, it can either be used as an incredible tool for creating things, or it's used as a way to steal someone else's stuff that you can't come up with on your own. But as I'm certain our current crop of filmmakers is creative enough to use AI as an enhancement and not a crutch, I thought it would be fun to discuss ideas and ways AI can be used nowadays to make Narnia an even better film than what could be produced before.
I have two suggestions that immediately come to mind. The first is adding an animal flair to the actors voicing the roles of the talking beasts of Narnia. This could so easily go overboard, but at the same time, I think just adding a bit of an animal sound not made by humans could be very cool.
The second one is the white witch's white skin when we get to the end of MN and all throughout LWW. In my memory (though I'd never be able to find this article nowadays), one of the reasons they didn't make Tilda Swinton white was because it looked so fake when they put makeup on her, so they opted for really pale instead, much to the consternation of fans. But, they have a point, because Barbara Kellerman sure looked like she was completely pasted with makeup, which she was. And that's not just her, it applies to every interestingly colored creature an alien I've seen in a movie recently (especially Star Wars and Marvel).
When you put makeup on someone, it covers up EVERYTHING and therefore looks like makeup. It also reduces the natural movement of skin. But if you are able to leave behind some of the variations of natural skin tone (ie, freckles, veins, wrinkles, etc), but change that melanin color to white with CG/AI, we might get our realistic (if you want to use that word) white witch, but not loaded up with makeup.
Thoughts?
This is an interesting topic.
On the one hand, I can see why Hollywood is in a bit of a panic right now about AI, because it (theoretically at least) has the potential to make certain creative roles (such as maybe concept artists) somewhat obsolete in the future. I can also see from the way the industry treats VFX artists right now, that's a potentially dangerous route to be going down.
However, I think there has to be an acknowledgement that the majority of "Ai" applications these days are simply extensions of existing computer based augmentation, which has been used in filmmaking for decades.
For example, on the Lord of the Rings, well over 20 years ago now,.Weta used a custom Ai programme they developed called "Massive" which individually animated every single orc at the Battle of.Helms Deep, ensuring that no two orcs were ever performing the same animation.