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AI Movies

Indonesia's Film Industry Embraces AI To Make Hollywood-style Movies For Cheap (restofworld.org) 34

Posted by msmash from the escalating-matters dept.
Indonesia's film industry has started using generative AI tools to produce films at a fraction of Hollywood budgets. The country's filmmakers are deploying ChatGPT for scriptwriting, Midjourney for image generation, and Runway for video storyboarding. VFX artist Amilio Garcia Leonard told Rest of World that AI has reduced his draft editing time by 70%.

The Indonesian Film Producer Association supports the technology. Indonesian films typically cost 10 billion rupiah ($602,500), less than 1% of major Hollywood productions. The sector employed about 40,000 people in 2020 and generated over $400 million in box office sales in 2023. Jobs for storyboarders, VFX artists, and voice actors are disappearing.
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Indonesia's Film Industry Embraces AI To Make Hollywood-style Movies For Cheap More

Indonesia's Film Industry Embraces AI To Make Hollywood-style Movies For Cheap

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  • where actors, writers, others don't have an union (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2025 @03:37PM (#65724848)

    where actors, writers, others don't have an union

    • What good does a union do for them exactly? They're not in control of who can produce movies any more than Fox, CNN, ABC, et al. can prevent someone else from starting a new news station. Do you believe that if the telephone switchboard operators had formed a network union that they'd still all have jobs or even consider the notion that they might a good thing.

      Is this a troll post? I can understand why a poorly programmed autocorrect would use "a union" instead of a union, but mine doesn't and I can't im

    • The AI/VFX may be unionized. Wikipedia lists several Labor Unions to which Indonesian workers can choose to adhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Academic studies report a percentage of unionized worker of 11.76% (2022) (source: Ikde Farida, "The State of Indonesian Labor Unions: Navigating Dynamics and Challenges"; Japan Labor Issues 8:50, pp. 60-72, 2024 https://www.jil.go.jp/english/... [jil.go.jp] )

    • The country most famously known for railway unions successfully insisting on the retention of the "second man" (the Fireman) long after steam was replaced by diesel and electric locomotives was the United States.

      Powerful railroad brotherhoods argued the position was still necessary for "safety "and as an "assistant to the engineer."

      This led to a decades-long labor dispute over "featherbedding" that was ultimately resolved by federal arbitration in the 1960s, finally allowing the railroads to phase out the p

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ocker3 ( 1232550 )
        That's one example of defending jobs where they probably shouldn't have, compared to the decent pay, safety protections and things like weekends off that Unions have fought for. Every organisation needs oversight and rebuilding from time to time, but the existence of Unions is quite necessary to counterbalance the hyper focus on profits at the expense of all other factors that so many business owners/shareholders have (which actually hurts the business in the medium to long term).

        • "PROBABLY shouldn't have?"

          They had no competition, that's why they could get away with it, at the expense of the customers.

  • All right, but is it any good? (Score:3)

    by kbrannen ( 581293 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2025 @03:37PM (#65724850)

    All right, that's nice for them, but is it any good? I listen to some AI generated stories on youtube sometimes. They're fairly short and confined to a single topic. They are usually "fine" as I don't have high expectations for them. Are they great? Heck no! I'm glad I didn't have to pay for them. So if the Indonesian movies are like that, I'm not going to be wanting to see them. I hope he's doing that for his own people who can't pay much.

    • I've seen some documentaries on YouTube that are narrated and probably at least partially produced with AI. They might have been interesting, but I would never pay to see them. Most video I see made with AI is just short clips generated from a still frame. Not long enough takes to really see it as "video". Reminds me more of animated gifs.

      If Hollywood studio heads think this is the future and they will someday be doing the same thing, I hope they are prepared to start making the same salaries their Indonesi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      I think that if they're actually generating feature length films, they'll probably be decent...well, not much worse than what they've been doing. Films are expensive not just to shoot, but also to make, so I expect there'll be lots of steps where "editorial judgement" is applied.

      OTOH, I'm not a movie goer. I don't know the current quality. And Ed Wood is a level it's pretty hard to go below.

  • Netflix filler (Score:3)

    by TJHook3r ( 4699685 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2025 @03:41PM (#65724872)
    Netflix is full of cheap Asian action movies, or just cheap action movies full stop. The sort that get a solid 5.8 on IMDB. With so many channels and platforms to fill I have to wonder who is actually watching some of this stuff

  • Only problem is the dialog is in Klingon (Score:3)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2025 @04:01PM (#65724958)
    With subtitles in Dothraki.

  • "Hollywood-style Movies" (Score:3)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2025 @04:38PM (#65725046) Journal

    I'm not really seeing a problem with AI-generated superheros, wisecracks, and explosions.

    Nor how we will tell the difference ...

  • I don't see how chatGPT for scriptwriting, Midjourney for image generation, and Runway for video storyboarding can possibly extrude out more shat than Hollywood's never ending, plotless remakes.

  • There's always some other place that isn't so restrictive, that is happy to offer their AI-generated services.

  • It was good up to the point they forgot how to pool-chalk their unicorns.

  • This is the future of film making. No more $250 million budgets to hire 20 FX houses in 12 countries to make a movie based on tired IP. AI is going to let small budget movies made all over the world compete with the biggest movies from Disney and Warner. This is going to be great in the long run. You know all those sci-fi and fantasy novels that you wished would be a movie but they just never made it past the Hollywood gatekeepers? AI is how those movies will be made.

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