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Welcome to The Vermilion Podcast, a free audio library of business strategies, creative inspiration and industry knowledge for actors, filmmakers, writers, and anyone looking to activate their creative potential. I'm Misha Calvert, a writer-director who helps artists build the careers that they dream of. I really hope that this podcast inspires you in some way. Thanks for tuning in.
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Should we be worried about AI? Short answer. Yes. Also, no. I'm going to explain. I'm in the film and TV industry, and AI is a huge concern for everyone in the industry. Actors, writers, directors, producers, crew.
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AI is a serious threat to every single one of those jobs.
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Why? Well,
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by the time this episode airs, there will already have been advancements in the ability of AI to generate non-human content that looks as real as anything that I could shoot myself.
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So the ability of AI to create things that never happened, that look perfectly real. It's already here, but it's just going to get more and more accurate and more and more available to individuals, the public, to basically create video content or film content of whatever they want. So obviously, this is a serious concern for people who want to make film and TV for a living.
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The networks have already proven they don't care about replacing or cutting costs with regard to human labor.
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They have no issue with moving their productions overseas. If it's going to save them money and make the shareholders and the executives richer and
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going from millionaire to billionaire or from billionaire to trillionaire, like they don't care about that. So
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why would they?
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Without any sort of regulation, wouldn't they just want to make as much money as possible? Because
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these companies have proven that they don't really have an ethical basis. Their basis is to continuously expand and continuously make as much money as possible. So yes, AI is an extraordinary way to make a lot of money, with very little labor actually done by humans.
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This brings me to a really good question though. Why are you wanting to make film and TV?
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Are you not just wanting to make money yourself?
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Why are you here? The answer is going to be different for everybody. But if you're in film and TV to make as much money as possible. Is it 100% fair to be angry with the studios and the networks for also wanting to make as much money as possible? Now, sure, we could talk about fair labor laws.
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I
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believe in people being paid fairly for the work that they do. But if there is no more work, then, you know, we're in a different, different conversation here. But I think it's really important philosophically to come back to why are you here to begin with, why are you even in the industry trying to make film and TV?
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Because if
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you're here and you're trying to make money and you're trying to make a lot
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of money, that's only a question of degrees of separation between you and the people running the studios, who are the ones deciding whether to use AI or not in order to replace you. Now, yes, a big difference of degrees, but it's still the same conversation.
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You're both trying to make money. I encourage people, and I myself have
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gotten to a place where I do not expect the entertainment industry to pay me. I do not expect money from film and TV.
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And what do I mean by this? Because it is a nuanced conversation. Do I expect to be paid for my work? Sometimes. When there's money available.
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But there's not always money available, especially because I like to make my own work. And so a lot of that is on spec, meaning it's speculative, meaning I don't get paid until it's demonstrating that there's a market fit for what I'm creating. So I think in a lot of ways it comes down to are you providing value in the market?
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And if AI is forever changing the market, then you might need to forever change your approach.
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I have
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become a lot happier since I've structured my life in a way that I am not dependent on my work as an artist to pay the bills. It takes a lot of pressure off of my creativity, because if it were a
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relationship and I was expecting my partner creativity to make me happy, be there for me, fulfill me, be interesting, be exciting, be funny, and also pay for everything.
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And also keep me engaged for the rest of my life. I don't know, I mean, I know a lot of people talk , like a lot of women, talk about wanting their husband to make them fully, fully happy and also fully, fully pay for everything. I don't know how realistic that is. So if I'm not going to put that on a person in a relationship, why am I going to put that on creativity?
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It just doesn't seem fair. It's asking too much.
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So
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really, I've taken the money out of it for now, and
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I've
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never
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been more satisfied creatively. I mean, I just, I have three projects finishing right now. I'm in development on two features. I'm not dependent on it to financially feed me right now,
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and
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I
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am so
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fulfilled.
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And I'm also making more money than I've ever made, because I shifted the way that I think about film and TV, I've I've shifted it to be focused on the art. Now, if you've spent 30 years working in film and TV and your resume doesn't really have anything else on it, and you don't know how to make money moving forward, well, yeah, that that's a problem.
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That's a problem. But also you would not be in the minority.
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You would be in the majority of industries who are reckoning with AI right now. So please know that I have a lot of empathy for the film and TV artists that are already becoming redundant and replaced in this new wave of AI, but you are not the only ones.
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you must understand that it is most industries and
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there's a temptation to really be in the pain of it and in the contraction and, you know,
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in the emotion of.
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Fuck, what am I going to do? This sucks. Fuck you. I. Feel your feelings, but also don't feel too sorry for yourself because you're going to have to take action. If you want things to change, you're going to have to change with the changes and you have to pivot. You have to be resourceful and you have to move.
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Move on. Move on to something else that is going
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to financially sustain
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you, even if it's growing a garden or a farm in the woods so that you can eat, if that's what it takes. You just do what you got to do. And you know, I've had to make some very hard decisions in my life. I came into New York very starry eyed.
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I thought I was going to be an actor. I thought I was going to be like, you know, Oscar. Emmy, like the traditional magazine cover. Like
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I had
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to make
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some really tough calls about what I want out of being an artist and how to go about that and how to survive. And it took me a long time to figure it out.
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And now, finally, I'm starting to
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really feel like it's all coming together. So I think start sooner than later to understand how you can survive what's coming. Because what's coming is a lot bigger than the film and TV industry.
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I think there's nothing wrong with wanting success. It's more satisfying if you're chasing devotion versus validation. But there is something to be said for the success of having an audience. Like there are some works that just need more audience. And so I just want to make that delineation, because I think that ultimately you're going to be happier if you're chasing the art versus chasing fame.
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But there's a difference between fame and platform, and certain messaging and certain works of art do need a bigger platform. So I
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think, you know, as you're deciding how you want to move forward in the age of AI as a film and TV professional or, really, really any kind of artist, consider that if you are chasing success, maybe a big metric of that success is audience size, as opposed to fame as opposed to money.
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because of course you can use audience size to get money. And then audience size is pretty much directly related to the quality of
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your content, the quality of your content, and
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to a certain extent, the quality of your marketing quality and content of your marketing.
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So no matter where you are in the industry, you
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can use that principle of creating quality and quantity content. Distributing it and building a platform, building your voice, feeding into your art, and getting your art out there, even if it's as a, crew member. Like you can do so much with talking about what it means to be a sound designer, or what it means to, appreciate lighting or
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costume or set design.
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You know, there's still people who are going to be making for the sake of making. And in fact, because production will become so ubiquitous through the use of generative AI, the experience of making might take on a whole new meaning for people. It might become what was before a hobby and now a sacred calling. So the experience of making
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might
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be the answer to a
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lot of the questions that
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we're asking right now about AI, not only in terms of how you fit in and how you interface with your your craft as a professional, as an artist, but how other people experience your work as an artist, if you bring them into
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the experience of making, you're serving them in a whole new way.
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So
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this is
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why I
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say the short answer is
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yes,
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AI is a threat. Like obviously yes. And we truly have no idea what's going to happen with the regulation around AI. It's new enough that we're only just starting to hear
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the murmurs of climate destruction that's occurring as a direct result of AI data centers.
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The UN just declared that we're in water. Bankruptcy,
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and this is very serious, because those AI data centers require vast amounts of water
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and to cool the servers. So that they continue to run. Why they
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need drinking water and not salt water or toilet
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water. I don't understand,
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and there's a lot of talk also about nuclear fusion
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as a solution to a lot of our energy problems, or just the increasing demand for energy.
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so if that happens, then we may be able to no longer use up all of our drinking water to cool these AI data
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centers. But until then, it's really bad. It's really bad. It's turning communities into deserts, literal deserts without any water. It's polluting the air to the point where it will make you sick to even live nearby a data center, poisoning the soil.
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Poisoning the air, poisoning the water table.
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right now, these data centers are going up in communities where not a lot of people care. of course, that's usually how it goes, but I think soon enough it will damage and kill enough people that we as a nation, we as a planet, are not going to be able to ignore it anymore.
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Unknown
And that's when regulation will start to occur. there's a lot of AI experts that, well, they're fascinating. The people that are that have really done a deep dive are foundational in creating AI. But there's, an opinion
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that the best case scenario for AI is that we have some sort of small disaster, a contained disaster, like a Chernobyl that gets a lot of press and a lot of splash, and people get really scared and really, like, freaked out.
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And this wakes everyone up to the dangers of AI. And then we start to roll out the regulations. That's a best case scenario. So given the very serious ramifications of what's occurring with the industry at large, we have no idea what could transpire in even three, two, one years from now. There could be a lot more regulation now, of course, right now we're in an administration that doesn't like regulation.
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It is rolling back basically every single protective regulation we've ever had.
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I love regulation. I think it's here to protect people. It's here to help us. It's here to protect our planet. Because the planet is very precious and very finite. So.
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We don't know what's going to happen
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in the long term, but in the short term.
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I think it's important to ask yourself, what do you want out of art? And if it's about the experience of making it and of sharing it, then you need to continue to do that. And you need to triple down on your devotion to your craft.
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make art and make it good
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Because I don't think that you got into this to sit alone in a room. I think you got into this because you like sharing. You like the experience of collaborating and making something with other people, or seeing the thing that you've made then taken by other people and turn into something even bigger and better.
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We're not here because we want to be alone. We're here because we want to be with each other. And AI cannot be there with us. As convincing as it may be when you chat with it and
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it sounds like a real person, it is not. It's not a real person. So keep making the art because you enjoy the process and the experience of making art, and you enjoy the process and the experience of working with other people and continue to build your platform.
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Continue to share as loudly as you can and try to extract the financial responsibility from your art. You probably get a lot more enjoyment from it
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If you do, and, you know, like I said, it took me about 15 years to figure out how to do that. So. Oh, boy. It is really a lot to contemplate, and my heart is with you in the journey of all of this.
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Hopefully we have more regulation soon. I wish you luck and I wish you joyful creation in your work as an artist. See you next week.
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The Vermillion Podcast is sponsored by Vermillion, a home for artists. We offer classes, coaching, and community for creatives and innovators in the arts. If you're ready to find your voice and build the life of your dreams, we are here to support you every step of the way. Check out Club vermillion.com and schedule a free call today.
