Every time I open LinkedIn, it’s a wall of “Look at this amazing AI breakthrough!” videos and images 90% of which are half-baked, misinformed, and so far from production-ready it’s laughable.
While Disney is busy suing Midjourney for copyright infringement, they also quietly teamed up with AI company Metaphysic to deepfake Dwayne Johnson’s face onto a stunt double for some shots.
Then quietly scrap the footage because they’re scared of bad PR. Sure, whatever.
Now, let’s talk about actual useful AI. Not the viral eye candy, not the “Look what I made in Runway” fluff I’m talking the workhorse tools that make a real difference:
Mocha ML mattes
Cattery tools
Mask ML in Syntheyes
Copycat in Nuke
Silhouette ML roto tools
These things can save you hours of work if you don’t need pixel-perfect edges for things like color correction or slap comps.
Then there’s Scott Ross. The man went on Film Talk Radio to promote his book and ended up dropping the kind of truth that everyone in VFX already knows but rarely says out loud.
Clients have always been obsessed with getting the highest quality for the lowest possible price.
The biggest cost in VFX isn’t the tech it’s the artists. And the industry has always tried to reduce that cost.
This isn’t new in the early 2000s, studios chased subsidies like moths to a flame. Then they set up shops overseas to get cheaper labor. Then they opened studios in India to pay even less. Now? AI is just the next stage of the same game.
Good news? They’ll still need some of us.
Bad news? They won’t need all of us.
That’s the reality.
