philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

As AI changes how movies are made, Hollywood crews ask: What’s left for us?

• AI is reshaping roles across Hollywood, from makeup and editing to storyboarding and production design, raising urgent questions about authorship, labor and creative control.
• The fast-paced changes come as below-the-line workers grapple with production slowdowns and shrinking crews.
• AI may offer an avenue for new players with low budgets, but it may also threaten workers who’ve spent years honing their crafts. 
• From Oscar-winning directors, production designers and makeup artists to grips, storyboard artists and editors, behind-the-scenes players share their fears, frustrations and hopes.

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Tung, whose credits include “Twisters” and Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of “The Odyssey,” has spent the last two years tracking the rise of generative tools, not just their capabilities but their implications. As co-chair of the Animation Guild’s AI Committee, he has been on the front lines of conversations about how these technologies could reshape creative labor.

To artists like Tung, the rise of generative tools feels deeply personal. “If you are an illustrator or a writer or whatever, you had to give up other things to take time to develop those skills,” he says. “Nobody comes out of the womb being able to draw or write or act. Anybody who does that professionally spent years honing those skills.”

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Earlier this year, he submitted “LATE” to what was billed as the world’s first AI animation contest, hosted by Curious Refuge, an online education hub for creative technologists — and, to his delight, he won. The prize included $10,000, a pitch meeting with production company Promise Studios and, as an absurd bonus, his face printed on a potato. But for Watmough, the real reward was the sense that he had found a new creative identity.

“There’s something to the fact that the winner of the first AI animation competition was an editor,” Watmough says. “With the advent of AI, yes, you could call yourself a filmmaker but essentially I’d say most people are editors. You’re curating, selecting, picking what you like — relying on your taste.”

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See the full story here: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-07-31/what-happens-to-film-production-crews-as-ai-expands-hollywood-tomorrow