philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The AI magic behind Sphere’s upcoming ‘The Wizard of Oz’ experience

philNote: the story quotes Buzz Hays,

“The Wizard of Oz” may not be the first film shot in color, but many people remember it that way because of how director Victor Fleming cleverly used black-and-white film for the scenes set in Kansas.

Likewise, “The Wizard of Oz” may not be the first film to be reconceptualized with AI, but it may soon be known for that, too. ...

 The team also had to account for all the camera cuts in a traditional film that remove characters from parts of certain scenes, which wouldn’t work at the new, theatrical scale that was envisioned. ...

Yet for all the powerful new technology at play, one of the biggest breakthroughs comes from following the traditions of cinema: having plenty of extra material to work with. In addition to old footage, the team scoured archives to build a vast collection of supplementary material, such as the shooting script, production illustrations, photographs, set plans and scores.

Through a process known as fine-tuning, these materials are uploaded to Veo and Gemini so the models can train on specific details of the original characters, their environments and even elements of the production, like camera focal lengths for specific scenes.

With far more source material than just the 102-minute film to work with, the quality of the outputs dramatically improved. Now, Dorothy’s freckles snap into focus and Toto can scamper more seamlessly through more scenes. Every change, Hays notes, was made in close collaboration with Warner Bros., to ensure continuity with the spirit of the original. ...

See the full story here; https://blog.google/products/google-cloud/sphere-wizard-of-oz/