Hacker News

I Work in Hollywood. Everyone Who Used to Make TV Is Now Training AI

38 points by joozio ago | 18 comments

orsorna |next [-]

> I too needed cash to pay rent, to buy food, to pay Maggie—the human still charging me a flat rate of 150 bucks

I really found it hard to sympathize with the author at this point. If you're in a crunch you don't need to pay a maid to clean.

aleph_minus_one |next |previous [-]

archive.is: https://archive.is/m19Zd

Imustaskforhelp |root |parent [-]

with the recent google captcha requiring phones and some people facing this issue and multitude of other issues with archive.is

here is an archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260511122830/https://serjaimel...

(Side-note: I have created htmlpipe which archives archive.is pages on archive.org so I am more than happy to answer if someone has any questions about it and I have an submission of a blog regarding it too if someone is interested but yeah, enjoy the article now!)

trollbridge |root |parent [-]

yes please!

ffsoftboiled |next |previous [-]

Mirrors my own experience doing this type of work (only made it two weeks before I gave up) and my partners. Excellent piece.

amazingamazing |next |previous [-]

It is interesting to see how all of these folks are out of main work and doing gig work instead, with productions being moved to Canada and other places abroad. I wonder why. All of the strikes?

|root |parent |next [-]

spwa4 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

The writer's guild and other striking organizations put it to:

1) general decline in wages

2) only short-term work being available

3) streaming platforms never pay the way Hollywood/Broadcast TV did: bad pay, but with a share of show profits for decades afterwards. Now just bad pay

So it was generally about getting their pay increased. Instead, the strike lead to a big decrease in pay that Netflix and Skydance (Paramount) are blamed for.

ido |root |parent |previous [-]

Cost

mkzet |previous [-]

I've stopped watching movies and shows since CGI is so obviously worse than it was 10-15 years ago. In the moment you notice AI slop everywhere and the void of any human touch, it's impossible to enjoy it anymore. I'm not going to talk about the fact that half of the actors have hideous aesthetic interventions, wigs, makeup, and so on. Now it's normal for me to watch something again that came out before 2010.

bsenftner |root |parent |next [-]

Maybe this is relevant? I worked in animation and VFX for an Academy Award winning VFX studio and several well known animation / game studios, starting around '90. I formally left the industry around '04 to work on my own tech startup. When I left, there was a lot of R&D work surrounding the huge amounts of data that an animation studio generates and works with; I was one of those people creating early deep learning systems for production forecasting.

Anyway, right around '10 the industry was really stressed. The financial crash was 2 years in, and the recovery was more propaganda than reality. The productions were chasing a Hollywood market that the population did not have the disposable income to support. Then in all that stress, the Me-Too movement starts. Rumors and murmurs at first, but soon a tsunami of women from the entertainment industry sharing their institutional abuse and choosing to leave the industry entirely. My wife was one, an Academy Award winning filmmaker, famous for children's media.

That line in time of Hollywood films going bad? It is when the women that were silent in their abuse chose to leave the industry enmasse. What replaced them were clueless men and women okay with the abuse, and the reduced quality of Hollywood is a reflection of the quality of their intellects.

torben-friis |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I mostly skip triple A hollywood movies, but the bulk of movies being made nowadays don't make use of any of that, mostly because it makes no sense in their genres.

Many european countries are constantly releasing movies with low budget but far better in terms of character work, plot, etc.

Asia is killing it as well, with south korea having golden era hollywood quality, Japan being consistently decent and China starting to develop a world-friendly industry...

kylecazar |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I share your feelings, but the title is confusing... this is actually about people using gig AI training platforms for extra income (instead of bussing tables like they used to). Not building AI for cinema.

herpdyderp |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I, however, do look forward to a time when we can prompt our own TV shows. That second season that ruined your favorite show? Fix it. The second season that never happened? Create it. Of course AI needs to get better still for that to be bearable for many of us, but I'm still excited at the idea!

trollbridge |root |parent |next [-]

I want to watch things that expand my imagination, rather than being limited by it.

voidpointer |root |parent |previous [-]

Isn't the scenario you are describing the ultimate collapse of art and culture as we know it? If everyone sits at home and creates the content that they want, what do we talk about? How do we engage in shared culture if there is nothing to experience together?

toyg |root |parent |next |previous [-]

> half of the actors have hideous aesthetic interventions, wigs, makeup, and so on

I mean, I understand and somewhat share some of the criticism, but it has to be said that Hollywood used "wigs, makeup, and so on" from its very beginning. Movie stars were always supposed to be "more" than everyday mortals. The only real aberrations of modern hollywood are plastic surgery and deeply unnatural body types (stick-thin women and dehydrated steroid-pumped men), mostly because they are abused to the point of absurdity.

vasco |root |parent |previous [-]

There's so many indie movies without much cgi, or good old movies that you'll never live long enough to watch. Writing off a whole art form is a bit weird.

hnthrowaway0315 |root |parent [-]

I think OP was saying that he/she only watches movies made before 2010.

Coincidentally, I'm doing the same thing with movies, TV shows and games, and 2010 still feels too modern for me. I try to make it before 2005.