→ Customize what you receive from Ankler Media. You can keep what you need, skip what you don’t. AI Wars Hit Film School: Profs Teach It, Students Rage. 'What About Our Jobs?'At USC, Dodge and other top programs, the next generation fears being left in the dust, alarming the elders: 'Participate in the revolution or sit it out'
Matthew Frank previously wrote about where Participant execs have landed, one year after the company’s implosion, the viral trends behind A Minecraft Movie’s success and L.A.’s Democratic donor rage. You can reach him at matthew@theankler.com
At Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, seniors in the creative producing program have the opportunity to make a 15-minute short film, shot either on location or on Dodge’s sound stages, as their thesis project. Betsy Siegel, who graduated last month, opted to go in a different direction. She pitched a film that would use AI from top to bottom — a script from ChatGPT, Dream Studio to generate images, LTX Studio to turn those images into video and Kits Voice Studio for the lead character’s voice. Last November, Siegel began speaking about her thesis project at AI film festivals, and her LinkedIn inbox started filling with inquiries — mostly from Gen Xers — about her experience with the tech. This response tracked with the encouraging feedback she received from her professors at Dodge. In Siegel’s experience, “people within the industry” or “people who have established careers,” she says, “tend to be a lot more interested in AI.” Siegel adds: “They feel a lot more secure in their positions and see AI as a tool that they can use to then move forward.” Her peers, however, are a different story. In the wake of her short film being announced in the fall, about 30 of her classmates “said really nasty things to my face,” Siegel says. Then, in April, she posted her thesis on Instagram, setting off another wave of peers and strangers who commented or DM’d hateful epithets.  Siegel grew up in both New York and Los Angeles — her father worked in cybersecurity and early AI development, while her mother was a writer who later earned a master’s degree in AI ethics. During her time at Chapman, Siegel worked for two different AI startups in entertainment and acted as a freelance AI consultant, helping the likes of an Emmy-winning director and a three-time Tony Award-winning producer sharpen their pitch decks.
After posting her thesis film, she was told that her parents “must be so disappointed” in her after “spending a quarter of a million dollars on her film degree” for her to “only make AI trash.” (Siegel received a full ride at Chapman.) On the night of her film’s premiere — an open-admission event on the school’s campus — another peer told her that they didn't understand why she ever would have made it since it “wasn't actually cinema,” that it was “crap” and that the school “never should have actually funded it.” Two or three people, she says, told her she should kill herself because she was “taking jobs away from people who deserved it more.” Though Siegel, who will head to the University of Georgia’s law school in the fall and specialize in AI/NIL contract law to give herself a “global knowledge” of the industry, was taken aback by just how vitriolic the comments became, this dynamic — students perturbed and resistant to AI, professors and professionals ready and willing to adapt — was not a surprise to her: students fear AI will erase their futures; the adults in the room see it as the key to surviving the industry. For this piece, I spoke with the people training Hollywood’s next generation in their roles also teaching classes at top schools — including CAA’s Alan Braun, top entertainment attorney Ken Ziffren, Lionsgate’s Michael Burns, and deans at USC, AFI and Chapman — as well as students caught in the middle, to find out what AI is really doing to entry-level jobs, who’s adapting, and who’s getting left behind. Says Burns of how to “jump several rungs on the ladder” today at a studio or production company: ... Subscribe to The Ankler. to unlock the rest.Become a paying subscriber of The Ankler. to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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