Episode 67
Filming with Robot Arms: How AI is Changing Creativity Forever with James Pierechod
James Pierechod, a creative technologist, reflects on his extensive career journey that spans over 25 years, beginning from an engineering background and transitioning into the world of CGI and creative content production.
His insights delve into how generative AI has emerged as a transformative force in the creative industry, offering unprecedented shortcuts in production processes that have long been a bottleneck for marketers.
Pierechod emphasises that AI brings agility and personalisation to content creation, allowing marketers to fulfil their long-standing demands for tailored campaigns without the traditional lengthy planning stages.
The conversation highlights the symbiotic relationship between creativity and technology, where AI is posited not as a competitor but as an essential collaborator that augments creative processes.
Takeaways:
- AI is revolutionising the creative industry by streamlining production processes and enhancing personalisation.
- The integration of AI within creative workflows is seen as an augmentation, not a replacement.
- Future creatives should embrace AI technologies while maintaining strong traditional storytelling skills.
- Agencies are adapting to AI at different rates, with smaller agencies often leading the way.
- The ability to create contextually relevant content is becoming more efficient through AI tools.
- Students entering the creative industry must learn to leverage AI alongside traditional methods.
Links relevant to this episode:
- James Sommerville
- Midjourney
- Canva
- Leeds Video Production Company | Tungsten Media
- Visual Content Consultancy – Marketing Consultants specialising in Visual media
Thanks for listening, and stay curious!
//Lena
Transcript
Hi, everyone.
Host:Welcome to Creatives with AI.
Host:Today we have a very special guest, somebody that I've known for a couple of years now, I think met in the creative advertising marketing agency world as a consultancy client of mine.
Host:This is, and correct me if I get this name wrong, James Pichard.
Host:Hopefully I've got that name close enough.
Host:Who is a creative technologist and founder of the visual content consultancy.
Host:Welcome, James.
James Pichard:Hello.
James Pichard:Thank you for having me.
James Pichard:Thank you.
Host:That's cool.
Host:It's very exciting to have you on.
Host:I really want you to.
Host:The technology side is something I haven't been talking enough about with some of my others.
Host:They've been more the artistry side.
Host:So I'm really excited to have you on.
Host:Do you want to tell us a little bit of your background and tell us why you're here today and what you've got to talk about with regards to AI and creativity?
James Pichard:Yeah, no worries.
James Pichard:Well, I suppose my journey started, God, 25 years ago now from an engineering background.
James Pichard:So I moved from engineering into CGI when we were first doing things like CAD cAM software and we were doing things with automated cutting tools and everything.
James Pichard:And I used to.
James Pichard:My first initial role was looking at oil rig components and things like that.
James Pichard:And it was quite boring and it's quite, quite specific and quite detailed.
James Pichard:But I was always fascinated by CG.
James Pichard:So the CG element, when you apply it to filmmaking or creative endeavors, that was in its infancy.
James Pichard:That was kind of like at the time where Toy Story first came out.
James Pichard:That was my first introduction to quality CG done from a storytelling perspective.
James Pichard:And I think that was the key jump for me, where I went straight away from there into a creative position, really.
James Pichard:And then for the past 20 years, I've been agency side, I've been production side, and I've kind of built myself into a position where I'm helping to support that content generation, that content production pipeline for advertising and marketing purposes.
Host:So the AI then was not a weird jump then, for you to go from what you'd been, what you've been doing into.
Host:It's almost like the CGI was the prequel part of what we now know AI to be.
Host:So talk to me about, you've obviously been in the industry of creating amazing content for a really, really long time.
Host:To tell me a little bit more about how you're seeing the impact that AI is having on your industry at the moment.
James Pichard:Well, I don't think it'll be any surprise, but AI is the word of the day, the word of the year, the word of the last two or three years.
James Pichard:And that's all based on generative AI, specifically generative AI as of the last three to four years.
James Pichard:But the biggest thing for my industry, for the creative industry, but also like sales and marketing and advertising and marketing industries, is how that is shortcutting so much of the production process.
James Pichard:It's shortcutting that it's creating the agility and the personalization that marketers have been screaming for, for decades, really.
James Pichard:But it's also shortcutting that time to delivery.
James Pichard:It's creating something that is going to be demanded by marketers constantly, without the usual or the traditional approach to planning.
James Pichard:That carries a huge amount of risk as well, to be honest.
James Pichard:But it's also the lowest barrier to entry.
James Pichard:A good example of that is something like when I first started in agency, we used to have head shots done.
James Pichard:We'd have head shots done almost every six months because the agency was growing that much that you had to basically set up a studio, bring in a photographer, that photographer, run that for a multi day scenario, bringing in people every 15 minutes and doing that kind of thing.
James Pichard:These days, you must have all seen, whether you're really adapting AI or whether you're just dipping your toe in, you must have seen things like professional headshot or something like that.
James Pichard:And these things are being taken over by that, not because of the fact that it was a creative endeavor.
James Pichard:It's because actually, when you weigh up the cost of the staff for 15 minutes, each one going in there, the cost of setting up that, the faff of doing it, it is much quicker.
James Pichard:And if it hits about 80% of its value in terms of the quality of the shot, then it's fit for purpose.
James Pichard:And that's the key differential that we need to start, or we will talk about later on today, I'm sure, is kind of the differential between true creativity, true advertising, above the line beauty, and the below the line fit for purpose that needs to be there at that point.
Host:It's interesting because it's a question that I've had in conversations, not just on here, but in general, with that fine line between using AI from an efficiency perspective and what is the, I guess, the balance of making sure you're still being super creative, because sometimes people are questioning, can efficiency still ensure creativity?
Host:What's your view on that?
James Pichard:Yes, but I have to say that everything I say with AI is always an augmentation.
James Pichard:It's always part of the process.
James Pichard:And a lot of the work that I do with the brands and specifically the agencies on how we sell or how we integrate AI is it becomes a hybrid part of the creative process.
James Pichard:It's not the replacement of displacement of, it's part of the rollout.
James Pichard:It's part of the pipeline of delivery.
James Pichard:And that's kind of the bit where when you start to look at it a little bit deeper and why I absolutely love it.
James Pichard:When you start to look at it really deeply, you can kind of say, right, I can replace that component of the creative process, that component of the production process with an automation.
James Pichard:Rather than thinking about an AI as like a robot or anything, it's an automation process that used to take me that long to do.
James Pichard:And now if I can get it to there, that means I can spend more time on the creative or on the other part.
James Pichard:It's a way of speeding things up.
James Pichard:I've got great examples of that.
James Pichard:Really, when we think about the production process of film stuff, we're literally working on a project now.
James Pichard:Wherever there is a huge recolor of an object, and the recolor of that object used to be done by something called rotoscoping, which anybody in the industry that's from a composition, a compositor, or an editing standpoint, their first move into the industry will be as a rotoscoper, which is basically just masking out every frame of something, 25 frames a second, for as long as that piece is.
James Pichard:Whereas for the last five years we've had machine learning tools and now really good AI tools that are able to segment and essentially rotoscope content for us, which means that we're offsetting those components that were hella boring, really, to the AI and spending our time where we ought to be, which is getting the recolor right, making sure that the narrative is consistent, and making sure that that continuity carries on throughout the piece.
Host:That's quite interesting, because it brings up a question then, which I think we were going to talk about a little bit later on, but I'm going to ask it now because it's come up.
Host:Does that mean that if those roles, rotoscoping, you said ones that you go in as an entry level, what's going to happen in time to those rolls up?
Host:What will be the new entry level?
Host:Do you think.
James Pichard:That is a bit that, you know, as a consultant, I can kind of do what I, what I want.
James Pichard:I talk in with brands and agencies and production companies and kind of help them get ready for it.
James Pichard:But what I've noticed is I'm spending a lot of time with universities, colleges, and actually helping them framework better modules on integrating not an AI module run by a guy who understands AI, but a creative, a production, a content generation, a filmmaking module, that instead of just teaching how to handle a camera, it's how to handle a camera and how to integrate an AI framework into that.
James Pichard:Because I 100% agree that irrespective of whether people adapt and adopt it or not, it is coming.
James Pichard:And if the creatives that are coming into the industry now are not able to adapt to that, or at least integrate it into their workflow, they are behind.
James Pichard:And when you look at it from an uneducated mind, like a marketer, not an uneducated, uncreative mind, someone who basically needs social content.
James Pichard:Yeah, I need something in my feed.
James Pichard:That's usually where the new creatives and the new producers and new content generators, the new marketeers, that's where they start with creating stuff that is feed content, that is kind of just scroll through the always on the evergreen stuff that we do that's perfect.
James Pichard:That's the stuff that in agencies, you put all of the guys as they start.
James Pichard:Because the risk value to the agency, the risk value to the brand and the client is quite low, we can always fix it, it's fine.
James Pichard:But it's a good way to get your head into the, into the space.
James Pichard:And if the more and more of that content that is now automated, whether it's AI or not, the more that becomes automated, even with personalization and everything else, the less there is for them to do.
James Pichard:Therefore, the runs of those ladders where I first started, where many students are now entering the industry, where they first started, it's just not there.
James Pichard:It's not going to be there.
James Pichard:It's there now, but give it another couple of years, probably not.
James Pichard:And so that's kind of where we need to either with the universities, jump them a few runs, or change the way that we handle things like apprenticeships, work experience and things like that, and almost give them a really regular kick up the bum in terms of how you, how you handle AI and creativity, it's definitely not the end of creativity, it's the acceleration, it's the evolution into something else.
James Pichard:And again, it's just shortcutting.
James Pichard:If you look at another good example for that is something like canva.
James Pichard:Some of you, whether you're techie or not, may have heard of canva.
James Pichard:Now, canva is newish to the scene.
James Pichard:Five years maybe, but before that, you'd have to have waited for me to do it in Photoshop or somebody else to do it in after effects.
James Pichard:Canva has shortcutted so much of that and without AI, and now with AI, canva shortcut all of those components.
James Pichard:But it's not the creative east thing, it's not the most original thing, it's template driven, but it is short cutting.
James Pichard:Those actions that used to be handled by junior members of staff and new work experience and stuff like that.
James Pichard:So that's kind of where universities and people joining the industry at route 16 to 18 really have to get their git acting in order and reach out to places, smaller agencies, bigger agencies and production companies to get immersed in what's that next run afterwards and how they can run the machine.
James Pichard:In the last month or two, we've managed to teach 24 year olds how to do commercial lauras and fine tuning in AI models in like a week.
James Pichard:It's lovely to see because they're basically just, they're using the frameworks and it's basically just teaching technology, but it's teaching how and why to use that.
James Pichard:And I think that's quite key.
James Pichard:So contiques alongside it.
James Pichard:Creative thing, yeah, yeah, the context of it, but also allowing them to just, it's almost like it's another how to use a camera, it's another how to light a scene.
James Pichard:But alongside their skill set, are you.
Host:Finding that smaller businesses are picking this thing up quicker than the bigger ones, or are they kind of both at the same time, or is there a lag?
James Pichard:Well, interestingly, if you ask me as a consultant to agencies, I would say that the bigger ones are hamstrung, certainly by literally their scale, by the fact that everyone can be an expert in AI and very few really are.
James Pichard:When you start talking about how to integrate it properly, everyone can copy and paste.
James Pichard: back to my early days of like: James Pichard:And I knew of them all.
James Pichard:And I could say, right, you've basically just copied that tutorial.
James Pichard:If you'd applied some inspiration, some aspiration, some creative endeavor to ithood, yeah, okay, that's cool.
James Pichard:That's how you learn.
James Pichard:If you just copied it, if you didn't know that that was a tutorial, you'd think that guy was a genius.
James Pichard:But because you know it's a tutorial, you know that actually it's a step by step process and there's not so it's realizing and recognizing those components in there as well and saying, right, get that person to understand the framework and then use it from a creative perspective.
James Pichard:Break it, re engineer it.
James Pichard:And smaller agencies are able to do that quicker.
James Pichard:Smaller agencies are able to do that for their clients quicker than the big network agencies.
James Pichard:At the moment, I'm not, you know, throwing, throwing daggers at big network agencies, but they hide under a shroud with this AI stuff.
James Pichard:Don't get me wrong, there'll be teams of them there working on it.
James Pichard:But how that properly integrates into their service offering is still a little, a wee bit murky, whereas the smaller guys are able to adapt this and align and apply that to client briefs and client campaigns much, much quicker.
James Pichard:So I would say that the gap is shrinking between those, but only because that proprietary software that as a big agency man from back in the day, our agency has proprietary tools to do this, this and this, those are more available now.
James Pichard:I literally have said those lines so many times in pictures.
Host:I'm laughing because.
Host:Me too.
James Pichard:Yeah.
James Pichard:And all it's done in the last 510 years is enable us to remove those proprietary tools, those things that were out of the reach of so many of us, and say we all have a level playing field now.
James Pichard:So if you're from, if you've got the best creative or the most efficient, this, or it's built on, like starting to be built on a relationship game, it's built on how you deal with the client, how you deliver the best creative, how you deliver the best results from an agency point of view.
James Pichard:And that's quite inspiring.
James Pichard:That's, that's one of the reasons why I think, for me, consulting is the way forward because of the fact that I can, I can help multiple agencies, whether it's pr, whether it's SEO, or whether it's just integrated to get to that level quickly and understand why.
James Pichard:And, you know, the big agencies are doing that, which is slower.
Host:Yeah, I think what's really exciting about that is that, and I've talked to some of my other guests about this already, is that it allows, because there's a little bit of a fear of, oh, the AI is going to, you know, take away my creative role, actually.
Host:But what you're saying is going to enhance anybody.
Host:That is super good.
Host:It's going to.
James Pichard:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Host:Which I think is quite exciting.
James Pichard:You don't, you don't really.
James Pichard:We don't really know what else is going to come from it.
James Pichard:There's a good analogy that I sometimes use when talking to agencies, which is in the early forties, the displacement of sewers, because machinery came in to change.
James Pichard:So the fashion industry didn't die.
James Pichard: into areas that in the early: James Pichard:I feel like that's quite similar here.
James Pichard:We don't know what automating those phases will do to how people experience and engage with content.
Host:Yeah, I think I love the idea.
Host:And this gives me, again, I'm quite excited about this and gives me hope that we've seen this pattern before.
Host:It happened in photography, it happened when we came along.
Host:There's all these things, the smart people, the people that will probably come to you and go help us get to the next stage.
Host:They understand that it's a change in adjustment rather than a.
Host:Because there's still a lot of rhetoric out there about my job is going to be done, and actually you just need to adjust rather than thinking that's it.
James Pichard:That's usually driven by necessity.
James Pichard:That's usually driven, for me anyway, from agencies, is driven by, we've had a briefing from an agency who we work with who said, how are we handling AI?
James Pichard:Or how are we doing this?
James Pichard:Can we AI this?
James Pichard:And invariably the agency will look at it and go, I don't know.
James Pichard:Also, should we be doing that?
James Pichard:And I think half the time, half of them are no, at that stage, should we AI this, should we automate that process?
James Pichard:And a lot of the time, if you are in the weeds, climbing through and actually trying to do it, you don't look above and go, actually, there's not really a point in doing it unless it hits that critical volume or that critical mass of why we're doing it.
James Pichard:Then a manual process or just a machine learned and automated process is better than applying a proper AI to it.
James Pichard:It can shortcut, you know, it's shortcutting so much of my outreach, of my initial integration and stuff, and my interpretation of data, but it's only then giving me.
James Pichard:It's like a member of staff giving you.
James Pichard:This is what I think.
James Pichard:What do you think?
James Pichard:You still have to make that, that interpretation for yourself and stand behind what you're saying as well, which is quite unnerving for some of the smaller agencies to do happening, isn't it?
Host:It is happening.
Host:You have a strong focus on the visual elements of AI, obviously, tell me more in detail what that actually means to you and sort of what that focus is making you focus on.
James Pichard:Well, I think, yeah, it focuses me because of the fact that I feel like AI is discussed, certainly in circles where, you know, people are just talking about AI for the, you know, like they talk about the weather or something like that.
James Pichard:AI has this concept of, right, it's GPT, it's this, it's this, it's this.
James Pichard:And realistically, there's a lot of people building AI agents, there's a lot of people doing these things.
James Pichard:What's interesting is how the technology is kind of the same.
James Pichard:But when I focus, and I focus specifically on visual components, that's kind of the back end understanding of how diffusion tools work, how we can cross pollinate different technologies that, for all intents and purposes, are still the exact same technologies.
James Pichard:From when I was doing CG way back in 20 years ago, the way that I would approach a CGI brief and the way that I used to do it with the agency was I'd send around a couple of apples and I go, which one's real?
James Pichard:And that kind of thing is still happening now.
James Pichard:It's just with AI, this is a real apple, this is an AI apple.
James Pichard:But I used to do that 20 years ago.
James Pichard:And when I look at how we integrate CGI into video production, into creative campaigns and stuff, the way that you integrate them together is actually the exact same as the way that you control AI integration.
James Pichard:So proper hybrid integration, and that's also the way that you control it.
James Pichard:So one of the big things I always talk about when we're talking about integrating into proper commercial use cases is that controllability, that consistency and that continuity, consistent character, things like that, all of those components that you can't get from third party tools mid journey is great.
James Pichard:Please get involved in it.
James Pichard:It's brilliant.
James Pichard:But what happens when we want to sell on those components?
James Pichard:What happens when we want to integrate that into a very specific campaign?
James Pichard:And that's where I'm actually pulling a lot more from the heritage of CGI as to how we need to block that off, create this depth map, then do this, then do this.
James Pichard:And it's all just a node based framework.
James Pichard:And all the way back to engineering days, it comes into something called the innovation pipeline.
James Pichard:CI cd constant iteration, constant development.
James Pichard:In a normal project, there's a start point and an endpoint.
James Pichard:In this sort of thing.
James Pichard:I've done away with the start point, done away with the endpoint, and we have this middle modular thing that is built to change.
James Pichard:It's constantly changing and constantly iterating.
James Pichard:When a new toolkit comes out, when we need something else from, we need it to do something else.
James Pichard:It's basically a homogeneous living node based framework.
James Pichard:And that's the bit that means that if a new model, a new LLM comes out from, I don't know, meta or this or that or, or any one of them or a client comes with a very specific LLM that they've developed, then by integrating that in, you're using the LLM as the brain but not the eyes.
James Pichard:And that's kind of key from a visual perspective, is the brain.
James Pichard:The ability to process and diffuse is not the bit that we're using the LLM for.
James Pichard:It's just the ability to power is the engine.
James Pichard:Everything else is all controllable and slightly smaller.
James Pichard:So it's still got elements of AI in it, but they can all therefore then be local.
James Pichard:Which is the key for when you start doing it commercially, is being able to control those pipelines and deliver the consistency, which I think for brands, for agencies, that's kind of a little bit like the future.
James Pichard:That's like if you are an agency person, how do you onboard a client?
James Pichard:Usually one of the first points is brand guidelines and how we interpret those brand guidelines that are written out.
James Pichard:I've written many of these before and we've added in components to brand guidelines for brands because movement has a brand style, a momentum and things like that, acceleration, deceleration, all of those sound sonics, all of those things have key brand capabilities to trigger something in your mind.
James Pichard:And so therefore they go in the brand guidelines.
James Pichard:But when you start to use AI to augment that, you're basically training the AI to deliver that consistency.
James Pichard:And when we see the brand guidelines, I look at a page that says this is the photography style.
James Pichard:Well, I think in the future this is the photography data set.
James Pichard:If we start at that point, then we can either generate new datasets to support the activity that we've been brought on to do, or we augment their actual data set to apply context and variables like Christmas, Easter, the summer campaign, things like that.
James Pichard:So there's ways that it kind of overlaps and it works the exact same.
James Pichard:It's just a little bit different and it's a little bit like right where the interpretation was is now a data set where you can still do the interpretation.
James Pichard:There's just more data to play with.
James Pichard:I think that's probably quite deep, but.
Host:Anyway, no, no, I love that.
Host:I mean, you know, you and I in the past have talked a lot about data.
Host:I love data.
Host:I think what's exciting about that, and I do, you know, over the years, having worked in the agency world for several decades now, I know that consistency is often a challenge.
Host:When you've got, uh, marketing directors, changing brand directors, changing managers, whatever, then you've got the agency, you know, you've got designers change and you know, there's always a.
Host:Do you think that that then fixes that whole issue of different humans coming in and out?
Host:Does that ensure the consistency much more, do you think, from a visual encoder?
James Pichard:And I don't want to be, I don't want to be the guy that sticks to the brand guidelines all the time as well.
James Pichard:We want an evolution of the brand.
James Pichard:We don't want to stay the exact same.
James Pichard:We want that personality.
James Pichard:It's more the mistakes that often happen from human briefing that this will very quickly solve in terms of.
James Pichard:There's a good example.
James Pichard:I built a very small version of this, but an AI agent for a brand guidelines.
James Pichard:So when you think about like a big campaign that has multiple touch points, it's got tv advert above the line, below the line, printed media, loads of different digital, out of home, and all these other e commerce things, you're basically as the agent, as the agency, kind of throwing them to other different production companies and various other creative things and trying to keep creative control so that you get consistency over that campaign.
James Pichard:But what you get then is questions back either to the marketing team at the brand or to the creative team at the agency where they're going, can I have the vector logo?
James Pichard:Can I have this?
James Pichard:Where would text go?
James Pichard:Because this is a long banner that's going in a petrol station or something like that.
James Pichard:Now if they can ask that of an AI agent, especially when we're talking as well, multinational EMA and all the rest of the, that thing is on all the time and it can say, I built it so that basically I can say, what are you doing it for?
James Pichard:Oh, it's a banner.
James Pichard:Oh, it's a printed banner.
James Pichard:Okay, here is the graphics for that component.
James Pichard:Here is the print vector files.
James Pichard:And it's not a JPEG.
James Pichard:Here is all of the other components that are right for that.
James Pichard:And let me have a look at the text.
James Pichard:I can help you write that in the brand tone of voice quickly because it's invariably like just a very small thing.
James Pichard:So it might just be, how do, how do they say, how does that brand say 50% off.
James Pichard:How do they imbue that information in a branded style?
James Pichard:So it's not like full on campaign copywriting or anything like that.
James Pichard:It's just reference and interpretation of a small thing that used to take.
James Pichard:If somebody sent that across and went, oh, can I have the logo?
James Pichard:It might be 20 minutes before we send that back.
James Pichard:And even worse, if it's a marketeer who's rushed.
James Pichard:No, exactly.
James Pichard:You can be 24 hours or they've gone on holiday or whatever, and the entire campaign's at the risk of missing the deadlines and missing that all important launch window where you get that repetition of viewing with things like this many times that you've tried to solve that problem to ensure that you don't miss the deadline or you don't miss that key window.
James Pichard:Because, you know, we're paying a lot of money for these things and we're, you know, when you've got above the line tv stuff going out, you can't miss any of these opportunities with different touch points across the, across the media landscape.
Host:Do you think that also affords the opportunity of, I don't see it a lot these days.
Host:But you do see it sometimes where there's a last intentional, last minute piece of creative, either for an ad or a piece of content or what have you, because of something that's in the press and they, they can quickly flip it.
Host:Do you think that's going to enable that immediate response to the zip?
Host:Yeah, that agility.
James Pichard:Yeah, agility and reactive nature.
James Pichard:So a lot of this stuff, if I'm helping in house teams, a lot of the stuff that I build has that 20% reactive element in it.
James Pichard:And so expect reactivity, expect demur, or expect all of these trends that come out that need to be capitalized on really, really quickly.
James Pichard:And you can still do that if your planning is top notch, you can do it in a way that enables us to build either sub lorers or little fine tuning components, context changes.
James Pichard:And the reason I talk about this in terms of AI or CG or anything like that is because the less destructive, and when I say destructive, I don't mean an explosive thing.
James Pichard:I mean more like when you compress down a tv advert to this and you don't have how it was made, you basically have the end asset.
James Pichard:But actually, if you have the framework of how it was made available to you, to change your hairstyle there because it's quite funny, or to add something to a t shirt here is actually quite easy to do if I have the understanding here and in AI, non destructive means, I have the ability to recycle and reuse anything we've created.
James Pichard:So a lot of my work is building frameworks that do not have destructive elements.
James Pichard:So that even if the campaign is built really, really quickly or really expensively, and we can't afford to reshoot that, we might not have to, because we can augment that with either digital virtual production, digital twinning tools, CGI, or even now AI, which means that the content remains open for films.
James Pichard:Do this basically with product placement, product placement, language variables in terms of the background signs and stuff like that.
James Pichard:We can have those open now in advertising and marketing as well, so that we can make personal, regional or language based context changes, but keep the essence of the narrative the exact same.
James Pichard:And that's the key part.
James Pichard:It's still the same creative, it's still the same message.
James Pichard:It's just that subconscious twig or subconscious recognition to me that I know that place, or, oh, that would look good in my kitchen or something like that.
James Pichard:Those are the subconscious triggers that are actually probably more powerful than some of the other bits, I think.
Host:What is that?
Host:Just reminded me of something like when I've worked in big global agencies, one of the challenges they've had is going from global to local, right?
Host:So you've got your global strategy, you've got your global creative idea and thinking, but it does need, in order to hit the audience that it's hitting in individual regions, countries, what have you, languages even, they often had a challenge with.
Host:How do you take it from the big idea down into the individual areas?
Host:Does that fix that then?
Host:Does the AI part of somewhat?
James Pichard:Somewhat, yeah, I would say somewhat because, I mean, if you think about fashion, again, another live example, diversity and inclusion is really, really difficult to deal with.
James Pichard:If you were to shoot something, let's say we're shooting a t shirt across the breadth of, you know, human culture, especially if it's a global brand or something like that.
James Pichard:It's really difficult to represent that in a cost effective way without having representation for just about everything.
James Pichard:And it's really hard to do that.
James Pichard:So most brands don't or can't, whereas with an augmented AI scenario, we start to be able to have that personal or subconscious representation a little bit more.
James Pichard:Now, that's not to say that's why I say somewhat.
James Pichard:It's not to say that that's now wiping out the need for creating models or building models or using locations or things like that.
James Pichard:It has to be a hybridized process and there's elements to fix along that pipeline.
James Pichard:But it means that contextual personalization becomes more capable, more plausible, in both below the line content and above the line content.
James Pichard:And, of course, regionality, seasonality and things like that are exactly just the exact same.
James Pichard:It's part of that and the same deal with very, very big multinational brands where they have departments working across different regions.
James Pichard:The way to control and connect those is to work in a way that allows that openness, allows that regionalization really, really effectively without having to go out and reshoot something or go out and redo it again and do it again.
James Pichard:And then there's levels of interpretation there which might affect the core essence of that message.
James Pichard:So it's really weird to say that that's helping, but it will help in terms of making advertising more relatable, I think.
Host:Yeah, it makes sense.
Host:It does make sense.
Host:So one of the things.
Host:Sorry, sort of jumping conversation a little bit in a slightly different direction, although probably not.
Host:You and I, when we were chatting before you jumped on, you told me that you'd been doing something called promo 24 with a.
Host:With Tungsten Media, who I understand you're non exec director for, and have some level of investment in as well.
Host:Tell me what promo 24 is, because I think they would be of quite interest to everybody what you've been doing.
James Pichard:Yeah, I sent an.
James Pichard:When I.
James Pichard:When I joined there, I joined there and I said to them, they have a.
James Pichard:They have this thing called a robotic arm, and it's called a motion control unit.
James Pichard:And not many agencies would know that exists, but you've all seen the work.
James Pichard:You've seen every McDonald's advert, every high end FMCG, beautiful, sweeping movements.
James Pichard:You've all seen its work.
James Pichard:But they have one, and it's in Leeds, it's up north, but there's only one.
James Pichard:There's only one in Yorkshire and there's one in Manchester and then there's some in London.
James Pichard:And I said, you shout about this, how you use this, how it augments how you approach content generation, content creation, tv adverts, stuff like that.
James Pichard:And they don't.
James Pichard:But equally, they didn't.
James Pichard:That is the framework of knowing this robot exists, that actually, when you apply other technologies to it, and of course, AI, it becomes really quite powerful, and therefore, then lowers that barrier to entry so that it's not just reserved for your big McDonald's adverts and things.
James Pichard:Actually, we can start to use this from a creative standpoint for various other stuff.
James Pichard:So the point was that we would basically like a stark expo.
James Pichard:I basically sent a gif of Iron man to the guys.
James Pichard:I'm like, right, what if we just open the doors?
James Pichard:What if we just open the doors and we tell them, we lift the hood up and show them exactly how we do all of these things?
James Pichard:Because in fairness, it's, it's building that excitement and that invigoration, that aspiration, inspiration to the creatives both in the north and in London.
James Pichard:We had a few come up from London and the students to start creating things with the vision that don't worry about how we make it, we'll just make it.
James Pichard:And so we basically brought this expo together and we had hundreds of people coming round, including students, freelancers, other production companies, agencies, brands, who were able to see what the robot did, what virtual production was, which is another, the whole other topic that I do a lot with.
James Pichard:But how AI is mixed into all of these, but not in a way of replacement, but in a way of augmenting for either the value of agility, sustainability, or literally cost reduction, speed.
James Pichard:And all of the pieces of work that we were showing were like, if we can integrate AI into this section here, that means we don't need to do this, which means that we don't need to do this, which means that the barrier to enter the price point that you need is here.
James Pichard:It also means we don't need to go to that location, hire this bunch of crew or do this or do that at that point.
James Pichard:So it means that it becomes much, much cheaper for them, it becomes much more sustainable for them, which is essentially the mission that we've been on for.
James Pichard:I've been on for 510 years, is how can I make it more?
James Pichard:I mean, efficiency and sustainability, they just sit next to each other.
James Pichard:If it's more efficient, it's likely more sustainable.
James Pichard:But track all of that and then show how that looks and how that works was this year.
James Pichard:Yeah, so, yeah, sorry, go on.
Host:No, I was just gonna say, was this the first year that this, you did this, uh, opening up to everybody kind of.
Host:And are you going to do it?
James Pichard:Yeah, yeah, and, yeah, we're going to do it every six months.
James Pichard:It was a mission and a half.
James Pichard:It was an absolute mission and a half.
Host:We'll put some notes somewhere.
Host:We'll put some links and things.
Host:Deanne?
James Pichard:Yeah, please.
James Pichard:Yeah, just give me six months.
James Pichard:Just give me six months to do it again.
James Pichard:But, but I think the interesting part is that there was no secrets.
James Pichard:There's nothing there that you can't see.
James Pichard:I will send you the softwares, I will send you how to do it.
James Pichard:I'll show you how we color correct technology between cameras and virtual screens, or physical screens or whatever.
James Pichard:I'll show you how we create backgrounds and everything.
James Pichard:Because realistically, the more that we get involved and engaged in this as.
James Pichard:As an industry, as Yorkshire, as a creative industries, the more people that will validate that that is a viable methodology, and the less we will end up flying across to Africa to do a shoot in January because it's warm there.
James Pichard:That's a real world example.
James Pichard:Those kind of things are quite commonplace and quite unsustainable when it comes to both budgets and the environment.
James Pichard:If we're more clever, we can deliver the exact same thing, but in a more efficient way.
Host:I find that really exciting.
Host:Please invite me to the next one and let us know about it as well, because we can always, I guess, tell people about it on our social medias.
Host:We touched gently on the sort of 20 years ago CGI throughout the conversation.
Host:Tell me very specific, I don't want to say specifically, the journey that you took from going from there to where you are with the AI, what sort of got you to where you are at the moment, to what you're doing with AI and how you're.
Host:I mean, there must have been other touch points along that journey that kind of got you to where you are and what you're doing with the.
Host:I love the fact that it's robot and AI.
Host:My brain just went Terminator.
Host:Anyway.
James Pichard:There'S a good story there as well, actually.
James Pichard:We had a few guys that came from different industries.
James Pichard:There's a guy that actually came from agricultural, agricultural, deep tech something or other.
James Pichard:Anyway, ordinarily we would never speak a completely separate industry to us.
James Pichard:And I've known him from doing some talks on the AI circuit generally.
James Pichard:But he came and we started to break down his infrastructure of what he does.
James Pichard:And basically his toolkit is for agriculture, which is a huge climate, climate problem, really automates electric robots, or his company creates electric robots that pull weeds out.
James Pichard:And how do those robots detect the weeds in fields, you know, and automate themselves?
James Pichard:So they do it all the time, 24/7 they don't pull out the potato.
James Pichard:Well, fingers crossed they don't pull out the potato, but, yeah, they basically weed the ground and they detect all of those things.
James Pichard:And by the way, there's augmentation for different types of soil, different types of sun covering different.
James Pichard:All of those factors.
James Pichard:And actually, when you boil down the tech, how does it work?
James Pichard:They train it on the local weeds.
James Pichard:That training data creates a 3d model.
James Pichard:That 3d model gives you a volume, that gives you a volume for how wide to reach in and pull the weed out, including the root system.
James Pichard:Then they have computer vision with segmentation.
James Pichard:But when we to figure out what's a weed and what's a potato and that sort of thing, and then basically upload the software and away it goes, and then track and understand the validation of whether it was successful or not.
James Pichard:When we finished the promo event, we went through our tech and they were exactly the same, exactly the same process.
James Pichard:We train products and certain things for e commerce use.
James Pichard:So basically we as a production company, they basically create consistency for what's called Lauras, which basically take a product and make sure that it doesn't give you that six finger AI thing.
James Pichard:It's perfect every time, the generation is perfect every time, and it's controllable and local, that's the exact same as them.
James Pichard:That then creates a 3d module object, which is geometry, exact same as the agricultural thing.
James Pichard:That then gives you the ability to move a robot around a physical space in order to capture other content, lifestyle content, stuff like that, that's the same as the agricultural guys.
James Pichard:And then the segmentation enables us to do color correction based on physical and virtual components.
James Pichard:That's the same as the.
James Pichard:So realistically, like it was down to the actual algorithms we were using were exactly the same.
James Pichard:It's so odd.
James Pichard:But that's a good example of how AI has exponentially exploded.
James Pichard:Because industries that are not connected and never were connected, are now using the same toolkits, the same approaches, and the same technologies, in order to do different things.
James Pichard:And that was one of the key bits for me, that was, these are all essentially three dimensional components.
James Pichard:How I would have segmented 3d things way back when, 20 years ago, is exactly the same way you do it now in AI, it's still the same output, it's just an AI is defining that and how you define where that one component in the string of things happens.
James Pichard:But it's the same, it's so odd.
James Pichard:It's so odd.
Host:It is odd.
Host:I think what's quite a big learning from that, and I've often done this when I've been working in agencies and trying to come up with different pitch ideas.
Host:And that kind of thing is like, look at industries that are completely nothing to do with you.
Host:Like completely random for inspiration.
Host:That is a prime example of.
Host:I would never have thought that those two industries would have had alignments when it came to augmentation and AI, you guys must have looked at each other and gone, what?
James Pichard:It's almost like a little bit of kinship kind of thing.
James Pichard:It's like, how did you solve this bit?
James Pichard:Oh, I did this.
James Pichard:Yeah, we did that.
James Pichard:You even do this because AI is this big explosive thing, and I end up talking to people across the world.
James Pichard:It's so odd to see that us all.
James Pichard:I spoke to someone in Indonesia the other day from a really big company, and they're an animation company, and they were solving the same sort of things in the same sort of ways.
James Pichard:And we're asking a little question.
James Pichard:I was like, oh, yeah, just do this.
James Pichard:Oh, yeah.
James Pichard:And it was almost like that light bulb moment.
James Pichard:But the language is the exact same, you know, different languages, different cultures, different use cases, but essentially, this AI language is one language, it's all.
Host:And it's developing itself, really, because nobody, I think, is necessarily yet sitting down and go, this is the language.
Host:It clearly is just developing as it's growing organically.
Host:That's kind of cool.
James Pichard:And replacing those steps that we don't want to do anyway.
James Pichard:So the segmentation is replacing rotoscoping, converting into 3d, is replacing retopology datasets, is replacing 3d modeling in certain instances, not in every instance, but in certain instances.
James Pichard:This is enabling us to shortcut those bits and get to what, from a creative standpoint, is important.
Host:The story, yeah, I think it's come up and like, you know, I keep doing this a lot.
Host:It's come up in my other conversations with creatives and artists on this show is it's a tool to enhance existing creativity, which for a lot of people out there, there's a fear around AI.
Host:And for me, the more I'm learning and the more I'm communicating with people like yourself, the less.
Host:Well, I didn't really have a lot of fear around it anyway myself, but just disappearing, like, for me, it's becoming more and more exciting and more creativity will come out rather than less.
James Pichard:Well, let's go back to the CGI conversation again and say that when I started in agency like the 20 years ago, doing this apple reel, CGI, Apple, which one's the real one?
James Pichard:The reason I was doing that is because people said CG will never end up in, in a price point and in a situation where we can use it for advertising and marketing purposes, I would absolutely guarantee that anyone in a small agency or a large agency wouldn't butt an eyelid.
James Pichard:Now, if we said that bit's going to be CG, that bit's going to be this, that bit's going to be that nobody bats an eyelid, because that's fine.
James Pichard:It's now a commercial staple.
James Pichard:It's a part of our standard toolkit is.
James Pichard:Is applying CG components.
James Pichard:Now that's the exact same as where AI is going to be.
James Pichard:Not in three years, five years, six months, less than that.
James Pichard:This is kind of like the augmentation of our toolkit, that's all.
Host:So we've talked about, well, you've actually hit on the three to five years thing, which I think we've, to a certain degree, kind of covered, what, three, but top line, three to five years, what does that look like?
Host:And then what does ten years out look like if you're sort of, in your mind, projecting?
Host:So three to five and then ten, what does AI look like in three to five and then in ten years time?
James Pichard:Well, I've got a good example of how I've got this wrong loads of times as well.
James Pichard:I used to do augmented reality with 3d properties for a big house builder in this country.
James Pichard:And I do massive ar things and say, trust me, ar is the future.
James Pichard:And I've been saying that for 15 years now.
James Pichard:And the reason for the barrier to entry with AR was that you had to download an app.
James Pichard:So basically that impression to engagement is cut by 60, 70% because nobody wants to download an app.
James Pichard:But the minute that you can bypass that by having it become web AR, then that shortens that barrier, which means that a lot more people engage with it.
James Pichard:And the technology has just been bubbling over in the background to make that more effective, more interesting, more engaging.
James Pichard:And that's where you start to see things like, although they're all fake, you start to see a lot of those CGI dressing, the big Ben in a jacket sort of scenario.
James Pichard:All of those little campaigns are all fake.
James Pichard:But we're getting to the point now where certain elements of that mixed reality, the mister, where you're augmenting physical components, like maybe fashion or something, has a digital component to a digital personalization to it.
James Pichard:We're now getting to the point now where really that is working.
James Pichard:So when I say in AI, I think there's a huge level of personalization that can come from this.
James Pichard:There's a huge level of customization in real time, and that's going to be the key component for things like streaming technologies.
James Pichard:When we engage with streaming technologies and things like that, we've been doing product placement, we've been doing contextual, subconscious cues in films for years, but it's all manual to achieve that.
James Pichard:Whereas in a matter of years, in a matter of a few months, years maybe because of the timeline, to build the actual story itself.
James Pichard:We're talking about being able to augment that based on personal preference.
James Pichard:So that's things like, I actually want to see this story Romeo and Juliet told to me in a Sci-Fi setting.
James Pichard:I'd like to see this story told to me as though it was an ancient battle in World War one.
James Pichard:Now, the variety, the story is the same, the characters can be different, the language is different, the set is different, the wardrobe is different, everything's different.
James Pichard:But actually, all of those are controllable and all of those in the future, I could see world where you could actually make those in real time and have complete control over how you engage with stories.
James Pichard:So I'm a Sci-Fi geek.
James Pichard:I would like.
James Pichard:I'd be told the same damn story that I could be told in Renaissance times, but on a spaceship or something like that.
James Pichard:That way we get the essence of the story, we get the essence of the performance and stuff, but the context of the environment, the landscape that it's being presented in is.
James Pichard:Is up for interpretation.
James Pichard:I think that's quite.
James Pichard:It's quite interesting.
James Pichard:I think there'll be a lot of people that would hate on that, but it is quite interesting.
James Pichard:Right.
Host:You've seen it over the years in theatre, though, where, you know, Shakespeare has been taken from its original format and taken into the modern, sometimes taken into sometime in the future, what have you.
Host:So it's not that different.
Host:It'd be like taking Hamlet and putting it onto a, you know, a Star wars kind of environment.
Host:What does that look like?
Host:You know, the stories.
Host:I mean, they always say that stories have got the same.
Host:Is it five or six different scenarios that kind of generally goes on?
Host:Well, that's kind of what that is.
Host:But taking it into a different, different direction as far as stylistic is concerned.
James Pichard:And I think the other thing that is bringing everything closer together is this content mix as well.
James Pichard:There's always been this divide between high end tv film stuff and the advertising and marketing industry.
James Pichard:And I'm constantly pushing this one to here as this one comes down in both budget and time to delivery, streaming.
James Pichard:Thanks for that kind of scenario.
James Pichard:But there's kind of that overlap happening where as these get closer and closer together, they borrow techniques from each other.
James Pichard:And so how you would have created high end tv in terms of dramas and things like that, or how you create long form content and how you apply that to short form content.
James Pichard:Look at YouTube, for example, how that streaming capability that and the engagement that they're getting on that, on the big telly as well as on mobile phone and laptop scenarios, look at the overlap that's happening there.
James Pichard:It's the power of the story and the engagement in the characters and the way that it's a told, that's the important part.
James Pichard:And the technologies are kind of just starting to overlap together and I think there's more of that to come with AI shortening the barrier.
James Pichard:It's stopping those big agencies from saying proprietary tech and it's enabling more stories to be told with variable budgets without being controlling it from Paramount studios or whatever, where you have these restrictions and various other influences that are stopping that story going out, how it should be told or how it was written.
Host:So if that is what the future is going to look like, which I do agree with most of what you've said on that, I think you are right on that.
Host:I'll be backing you on that one.
Host:There was one question I wanted to ask, which we did touch on earlier about students and so forth, but future students, you and I were talking about what those students are going to need to be doing and you had a view on that, I think, didn't you?
James Pichard:Oh gosh, yeah.
James Pichard:I mean, I am genuinely not worried, but I'm conscious that burying your head in the sand and there's a term that everybody tends to use in AI circles is ostriching, where you can kind of get angry and it's almost like.
James Pichard:It's interesting.
James Pichard:It's almost like those five stages of grief scenario as well, where people are going, nah, it won't make any impact, it will stop this.
James Pichard:It will stop this.
James Pichard:But actually get quickly to acceptance and then open your eyes to actually, how could I use it?
James Pichard:It'd be almost like a person who's always drawn on pencil, being handed a bunch of paints and saying, actually, what else can you do now that you have all of this capability and with students, I would say that although you don't need to go to the nth level that I've discussed in this thing, with all of the controllable frameworks, you don't need to get to that level yet, but actually understanding the very basics of what is capable and what is out there for you to express that creative capability, opportunity, because let's face it, that's your best time to do it.
James Pichard:University, college and stuff.
James Pichard:Your brief is open, do whatever.
James Pichard:And the learning stage in there is actually in learning both the traditional methodology but also what makes your approach different to if someone, somebody like a marketeer or somebody like a randomer tries to make a film with chat, GPT and various other tools, you can do it, but we've seen those fail massively in the last six months because there's no emotion, no storytelling, no nothing.
James Pichard:And there's also no hybrid use.
James Pichard:It's just AI end to end.
James Pichard:Whereas what I'd say is, as a creative coming into the industry, learn the essence of the traditional composition control for visuals, composition control, how to use a camera, what a lens means, depth of fields, all of these focus points, all of these short progressions, and how you build good act control and emotional arcs into your story, whether it's a tv advert or a full on short or anything.
James Pichard:And then look at how AI can style it, how you can apply areas of efficiency to your production by integrating some of those bits.
James Pichard:Now, you won't know how to do all of that at the beginning, but you will know how to just apply a style, apply these other factors that tell a different tale.
James Pichard:And I've seen some really great little shorts coming out that basically augment a normal traditional production shoot with something else.
James Pichard:With something else, with something else that is telling a really unique story or telling it in an incredibly different way.
James Pichard:And, you know, the ability for you to shortcut some of those phases.
James Pichard:I remember doing some stuff with CGI and having to do motion control, rigging, distortion and things for your musculature and then facial rigs and stuff like that, that takes months to do.
James Pichard:But all of those elements, and they're not important to get perfection.
James Pichard:They're important, but actually to shortcut to get you to a phase there.
James Pichard:These are areas where you can tell a story in a quite compelling way very, very quickly.
James Pichard:And so those bits there are still for the benefit of the creative and for the benefit of the story.
James Pichard:So jump in.
James Pichard:Jump in.
James Pichard:Just keep trying and get experience where you can.
James Pichard:Because, yeah, most, I think most agencies and most production companies should be screaming out for people who have that capability.
James Pichard:Certainly in the next two to three years, as we start to define where AI sits in our industry landscape, people with that knowledge are going to be far more in demand than the random usual output from university, college or apprenticeship.
Host:I think that wraps up a very comprehensive, in depth, but really fascinating conversation I have.
Host:I mean, I want to carry on.
Host:I may even get you on another time, who knows?
Host:Thank you very much for the experience that you've brought to the table.
Host:The one thing that I've taken away from this, which I think is pretty cool, is the melding of tradition and the future new.
Host:And I think for me that is really exciting.
Host:As a 51 year old, you know, I'm glad that the tradition and the experience is not going to need to be.
Host:In fact, it's better to have those two things together.
Host:So thank you very much for our chat.
Host:I have one last question.
Host:It's a very simple question we usually ask our guests at the end of each recording.
Host:If you were to recommend or say, I would really like to see this person on as a guest for creatives with AI, and I know I've thrown this at you, I didn't tell you I was going to ask this question.
Host:Would there be somebody that you.
Host:It could be a famous person, it could be a colleague, somebody you've known in the past or somebody you know that you could say, right, you should definitely talk to them.
James Pichard:I would be interested in hearing from, if you do know him, James Somerville.
James Pichard:He was the old school graphic designer for a company called Attic, which in the nineties was.
James Pichard:Everybody wanted to work there.
James Pichard:They were brilliant.
James Pichard:Then he became the creative director of Coca Cola.
James Pichard:He is now out on his own, but actually, actually, I'd love to hear how he sees the industry changing.
James Pichard:He's been a pioneer of how augmenting independent thought in terms of crowdsourcing creative, and that is a little bit like how AI is doing it.
James Pichard: at happens if you crowdsource: Host:I love that.
Host:Okay, I'm going to try and reach out to my network to see if I.
Host:The name rings a bell.
Host:I'm sure I've probably met him, come across him at some point in my agency world.
Host:So look, thank you very much for that.
Host:Thank you to all the listeners for listening today.
Host:And I want to encourage everybody to stay curious because I think that is the answer to where AI is going.
Host:So thank you very much, James, and, yeah, goodbye.
