As we power into another year, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the recent CES gathering in Vegas and some thoughts on the state of our industry – media production.

TeamPeople returned to fabulous Las Vegas to attend our first CES show since before the lockdown. It appears that CES has returned itself to the pinnacle of Las Vegas conferences. It’s hard to imagine more people assembling in the desert for a single purpose. Oops, there was that thing called Coachella, but let’s focus on CES, and the elephant in the room. Two short years ago, if you attended a technology conference of any kind, AI was a thing. Now, it is THE THING. Every session I attended, had something to do with AI and its impact on our business. Starting on Monday with Digital Hollywood, session after session addressed the effect that AI is having and will continue to have on content creation and the production industry.

You can read plenty of articles about the many products shown at CES, the ones that are real now, the ones that are maybe coming soon, and others that may be a bit further out in the development cycle. After all, this is the consumer electronics show. It used to be focused on consumer electronics, but now, according to many tech pundits, all companies are tech companies. This treatise is focused on the two things that left their mark on me.

How The Sphere and Hypervsn Are Redefining Visual Experiences

I arrived in Vegas on Saturday with a ticket to visit The Sphere . In addition to the high-profile residencies we’ve all heard about, The Sphere hosts other immersive experiences, and in my case, I held a ticket to the film “Postcards From Earth.” I could write paragraphs about the features you move through in the atrium area before moving into the theater, but I’ll mention the holographic displays by Hypervsn are amazing. This was the first of my two big takeaways. Seeing this tech in action was a case study for what Hypervsn showed on the floor of CES. As companies seek more ways to wow their customers and create more immersive experiences and activations, Hypervsn’s holographic screen technology has raised the bar to new heights. As you stare at their screens, you will find yourself wondering how they work, and that’s the best kind of magic!

Inside the theater, Postcards From Earth is a film directed by Darren Aronofsky and designed to be experienced in the grand immersiveness* of The Sphere. I’m joking here, and I may have made up a word*, but without causing too much vertigo, the sweeping vistas and grandeur of the earth are center stage throughout the film. I recall a similar feeling the first time I viewed an IMAX film at Washington, DC’s Air and Space Museum, but in this experience, you have the benefit of being surrounded by the images. The Sphere also makes a lot of the fact that the audio experience being delivered to each seat in the house, is uniform and perfect. I couldn’t test this statement by moving around, but I’ll take them at their word, the sound clarity and volume were perfect. The Sphere really delivers!

The New Reality: AI as a Production Partner

The second thing, and to me, the biggest wow of the show and a clarion call to our industry and the people who create content, is how far, and how fast Generative AI has come in producing fully finished content. There were many opportunities in sessions and on the floor to see examples of AI-generated content. I’ll focus on one session I attended featuring Jason Zada from Secret Level, a company that says this about themselves, “As the first AI-native production company, we create groundbreaking content across commercials, TV, film, gaming, and immersive platforms. By blending generative AI with human creativity, we deliver innovative campaigns and original IP that redefine what’s possible in modern production—fast, efficient, and endlessly imaginative.” Jason Zada showed two fully finished shorts that were created utilizing generative text-to-video AI. The first piece, a two-minute action short called The Heist is described as follows, “Every shot of this film was done via text-to-video with Google Veo 2.” According to Zada, “It took thousands of generations to get the final film, but I am absolutely blown away by the quality, the consistency, and adherence to the original prompt. When I described “gritty NYC in the 80s” it delivered in spades – CONSISTENTLY. While this is still not perfect, it is, hands down, the best video-generation model out there, by a long shot. Additionally, it’s important to add that no VFX, no clean-up, and no color correction has been added. Everything is straight out of Veo 2 from Google DeepMind.” All sound design, editing, music, and the mix were generated through prompting by Jason Zada. This is the clarion call to the industry that I mentioned. There was no cinematographer/videographer, no lighting people, no location sound, no PAs, no editor and assistant, no colorist, no sound designer, and no mixer.

The Human Touch: Where Creatives Fit in an Automated Industry

If production is your job now, or your dream job, start by looking at this piece , and contemplate the future. Google’s Veo 2 is not the only program pushing these boundaries, but future creatives may be those who can dream up the scenarios and provide the best prompting to the AI being utilized. I sat in a session that included Duncan Crabtree-Ireland on the panel. You may recall that just last year he was the chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA during their strike against the studios. The final roadblock to a deal was the language on AI. SAG-AFTRA was rightly concerned about the effect AI could have on its members – on-screen and voice talent. Seated right behind me in the session were several of Crabtree-Ireland’s staff members. As the session wrapped up, I turned and asked them if when they were wrapping the negotiations just over a year ago, and accepting the new AI language in the contract, did they see its development moving this quickly? Their answer was no.

Wrapping this up, my advice whether your role is creative craftsperson (camera, editor, etc.), or writer, producer, director, educate yourself on this technology. The best way to future-proof your job, or role in the industry, is to see it coming. Understanding how to use generative AI to do your job is Step One to keeping it.    

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Is there ever such a thing as too much pre-production? In an industry where the only constant is change, we have all had to learn how to have a plan A, B & C ready to go. In my experience the secret to success is thorough pre-production and planning along with a clear strategy to reach an aligned goal.

This summer I really put this theory to the test while onsite in Paris capturing content for a TOP sponsor at the Olympic Games. Here are my top takeaways.

Schedule

Plan your scheduled filming days around Olympic events, break it right down into minutes, work through a variety of shot list requests – remember these are Olympic venues that 100,000’s of people will be passing through. Security is tight, access is limited and the normal ‘throw money at the situation’ does not buy you anything. Be prepared to compromise, be creative around how you visually show your narrative and get to the venue two hours before you need to be there. Nothing happens quickly.

Culture

Content at Olympic venues can only be captured by the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) and that is no different for sponsors. The IOC established OBS to serve as the permanent host broadcaster for the Games, so there is no need for each host city to rebuild the broadcast operation which allows the highest standards to be maintained from Games to Games. But what does that mean for production and content capture as a sponsor?

As you can imagine many TOP Sponsors are used to choosing their own production houses and crews for any sort of content capture and creation and suddenly this is taken away from you and you are provided with a crew of three individuals for either 4 or 8 hours a day, depending on what your needs are. There is no choice of who the crew are, what equipment they have and what their previous experience is. As an ex-Global Studio Director who handpicked every production house and freelance crew member, I’ll be honest it gave me a few sleepless nights lying awake wondering how I could guarantee top quality content without understanding who I would be working with. I was sure the whole team would be very talented, but would they understand how to capture content that worked for our client, something that we had established with a specialized team of individuals over many years. What sort of equipment would they have? Will the content captured onsite match the aesthetics of the brand work meticulously captured pre-games? And perhaps most challenging of all was in the age of the influencer, how do we control the fact that NO capture can be made on handheld devices (yes, phones I am looking at you!!!)… SO MANY QUESTIONS…!

And what was the answer, on reflection it was simple. It was about providing your OBS team with all the information you had, bringing them into the fold of your vision, your goals and what you need from them to help achieve those things. And most importantly setting a culture of trust and respect from the minute you meet them. The OBS teams wants success for you as much as you do, so lead with open communication, clear daily objectives and a creative vision for content capture that everyone can get on board with. Grabbing your team a coffee, making sure they have water and food on breaks goes a long way too!

Types of Content

Don’t underestimate the power and beauty of a timelapse. At an event where you can’t capture the individual rights of every attendee and as a sponsor who is using the material for commercial purposes, you must be so careful of what you are showing and what is recognizable. Here enters the timelapse, it shows a buzz, an excitement, a feel of the games, without anyone being recognizable. Our wonderful OBS team soon got very used to me requesting at least one a day and the post team were incredibly thankful to have b-roll they could use without cropping or blurring individual faces.

So as we look back and reflect on Paris 2024, we can hold our heads high. At the end of the day the Olympic Games was broadcast to billions of television viewers worldwide with over 350,000 hours of TV broadcast and millions of spectators over 35 venues. Yes, you are there at the Olympics with a job to do, so with all of the uncertainties my advice is to plan, plan, plan. Thank goodness for those 6 years in Live TV production and being able to adapt literally in the moment – I think it saved me!

Behind the scenes at the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) where all the feeds and streams came in to be shared with Media Rights Holders.

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