Hello, I'm Associate Professor Alex Mutt, a filmmaker, screenwriter, and media researcher at UTS specialising in micro budget filmmaking and creative screen practices. I'm here today to answer your curious questions about filmmaking, creativity, and the future of cinematic storytelling. 

This is Creative Curious, a UTS community sending some thought-provoking questions to tackle. Let's get started. 

How has technology shaping the film industry? 

Technology has always shaped the film industry. It's a medium that was first designed with inspiration from the sewing machine. We can think of the inventors of cinema as the Lumiere Brothers or Thomas Edison.

All kinds of technologies have shaped the way which screen stories are made and screen stories arrive to us. We can think about virtual effects. We can think about the introduction of colour to moving pictures. We can think about the birth of television, the remote control, the zapper, which moved from one image to the next.

Today, there's a lot of hype around a few things and one of those is AI, but also around the way that gaming technologies are affecting cinema, cinematic language and the cinematic image as well. 

Is AI enhancing or threatening creativity in filmmaking? The answer is it's a double-edged sword. 

On the one hand, the power of AI can really support and help creatives working with technical workflows, for example, in post-production editing. 

On the other hand, AI can be a homogenising force. It can make everything the same. It can basically reduce the emotion within our storytelling, and have some kind of threat to the way in which screen stories arrive to emotionally impact an audience. And those ideas are around authenticity. 

The other ideas are around labour, and we saw this for example, with the writer strikes in America. There's a threat that AI can basically devalue what humans bring to screen stories simply through an efficiency quota and replacing human labour and skill, which has generated screen stories across time with cheaper kind of technologies.

What are some of the ethical considerations around using AI in credit work? We've seen a few controversies here. I can think of the Brutalist, which is a low budget film and is Oscar nominated. 

The filmmakers got into a bit of hot water, when audiences realised that some of the dialogue, which was Hungarian, delivered by actors not completely familiar with that language, was basically put through AI in order to refine and correct that language.

Now it's a really good example of AI in filmmaking. On the one hand, the production would've benefited from some of the efficiencies in using and sculpting the dialogue for the film. 

On the other hand, some people would say, is this an authentic screen performance? Does this devalue the human performance in the acting?

That's maybe one for you to think about and decide. 

The other controversy is around this idea of digital resurrection. We've seen this with Paul Walker in theory seven, Carrie Fisher in Star Wars. The idea that an actor's performance is posthumously recreated. 

And I guess some of the ethical considerations about that is that actor's no longer control their legacy if they're having new roles, new speaking parts, new roles in drama production after they've passed away.

The big one, and it's one that we talk a lot at UTS across our different faculties is around copyright and the training of these AI models. 

What is the data set that relies upon and what is the copyright that the artists of that data set have given their approval for this use of the technology.

Can technology like AI coexist with artistic integrity? 

Technology and cinema and television have always been hand in glove in the way that they impact each other. The one thing to remember is that AI is a predictive technology and is trained on a data set, which means that it's based on what already exists, rather than what might be.

When we come to the cinema, when we sit in a dark room with strangers and watch the flickering light beam, we want to be entertained, but we also want it to be meaningful. 

We want to be connected with emotionally. We want to be in the moment with the story. It's hard to think about the ways which AI can deliver that kind of experience.

How is streaming change filmmaking? 

Okay, another good question. Streaming's changed filmmaking in both smaller and subtle ways, and also larger, more obvious kind of ways. We can think of streaming as opening up content and opening up certain genres and styles, things like Squid game, the Korean series, which has captured the world in Australia.

We can think about this idea of what the stream is called, hyper localization. 

And a good example of that is Heartbreak High. Heartbreak High was an Australian series and it in the centre of that. It introduced a global audience to the series. What they wear, how they speak, and again, is a very successful example of that.

The other question here is back to IP again and Netflix have just announced the adaptation of My Brilliant Career. 

First made as a feature film by Gillian Armstrong in 1979 and now going to be reimagined for a 2025ish TV series. So again, this idea of the future is also bound up with the past in the way that existing films are now becoming IP for streaming television versions of them.

Another way we can think about that is really looking closely at the industry itself in relation to how the streaming platforms negotiate Australian made content. In New South Wales, the screen and digital game sector is worth about $1.2 billion annually. Also supports around 15,000 jobs of the crews from above the line to below the line.

We have the big US productions coming here for Love and Thunder, Mad Max or the Fall Guy. But what we really want in Australia is for our screen industry to be both creatively sustainable and also economically sustainable. And that's where this idea of quotas come in. 

There's a bit of a push and pull whether we need to force our international streamers to have a mandate on a certain percent of Australian content. 

But on the other hand, streamers are audience friendly and want to give the audiences what they perceive they want to a degree. 

So we can see streamers like Stan, where Australian content has become part of their brand, but also we talked about Netflix basically using prime Australian IP, like My Brilliant Career and adapting that from a feature film into a television series as well.

So quotas are difficult. It's an ongoing conversation and the jury's a little bit out on that. 

Why does it seem like there are no original movies? 

Everything seems to be sequels, adaptations, or part of the franchise. IP is a risk measure. IP basically tries to ensure that producers know that they'll get the bang for the buck for the money that they invested. IP is a risk mitigation device. 

Does indie filmmaking have a future? 

I really like this question, and it's one important to me. I've got fond memories of the 1990s with a thriving independent film, and today that's not the case.

Indie filmmaking is under a certain amount of threat. In the 1990s, it produced some talented and innovative filmmakers, Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson, or Jim Jarmusch and many more. 

Sean Baker talked about his own commitment for indie film, talking about making personal films, talking about making films with artistic freedom, and also talking about films that are intended for a theatrical big stream kind of release. Films to be seen with an audience as opposed to going straight to streaming TV.

At UTS in our creative practice research, one of our research strengths is micro budget film production. And in this we look at the ways which films are made. 

Can we be more innovative in the ways that films are made using technology? For example, can we find ways which can deliver those personal stories?

Stories which are both dynamic in content or bold in content, and also innovative in cinematic form. 

What's a low budget film that has had a significant impact? 

I think Talk to Me is a really good example. It's a film made in Adelaide. It is a film made to $4.5 million that took $90 million at the global box office.

The Philippou brothers started their careers, if you like, on YouTube. And that's where they honed their craft of filmmaking. And you can see this sense of that as a low budget film. It really has this sense of a much grander kind of budget behind it. 

It's a good example of what we think about the convergence of the small screen of YouTube over to the theatrical screen as well.

What do Indy filmmakers offer compared to major studio? 

That's a really good question. Ted Hope is a veteran indie film producer out of the US and he talks about you can't rely on what worked before. And what I think he means by this is that that's the studio model in relation to using risk mitigation, using things which are very predictive about audiences. What audience want in relation to what's come before. 

Indie film really operates at a different scale, and that scale is about personal films, is talking about films which can provide, can lean into an uncertainty, even sometimes the discomfort with screen experience and providing audiences with important work which connects emotionally with their own lives and the authenticity of the human lived experience.

Does the research add any value to the film industry? 

Absolutely, yes. Some of the research we focus at UTS is around the process of filmmaking. In other words, as creative practice, how as filmmakers and budding filmmakers do we reshape our processes to be both creatively sustainable and economically sustainable as well to deliver cinematic visions to audiences.

Other modes of research are more quantitatively based. 

So we can think here about some of the research which shapes the industry is around diversity. For example, the gender matters project for Screen Australia and so on, and we can think of these two modes of research which are interacting to affect both the creativity and the filmmaking industry itself.

From a political or a diversity or an equity point of view, how do you prepare students for future careers in the screen industry at UTS? 

What we prepare our students for in media arts and production is really to be agile, to be creatively agile, and also technically agile. What that means is that we want them to be able to write, to shoot, to edit, to produce, and having this sort of toolkit that will enable them to basically be both resourceful and value.

The two production companies in the film and television industry at UTS are AVID and ARI certified. In other words, we work really closely with industry partners to make sure that our students learn the industry protocols and proficiencies with the tech as well.

We also work closely with the Australian Directors Guild. It's the prime body for directors in Australia. And again, we've got sort of a collaborative relationship in relation to our pedagogy and curriculum. 

What are the strengths of the Australian film industry? I think the strengths are historical ones. What we have in Australia is really a strong sense of screen storytelling. New Zealand as well. We can see that as well in the sense it's underpinned by creative and strong technical crafts. In conjunction with really strong acting performances as well. We know how well our Australian screen actors have performed on the world stage, but it's also our film disciplines as well.

You think of a cinematographer like Greg Frazier. He shot Dune, and part of the Star Wars franchise as well, producing dynamic moving images for an audience. 

So, this interaction of the moving image and the lighting, the cinematography, the sound design in conjunction with the screen performances of our actors and the capacity of our screen directors are really those forces which traditionally have really served the Australian film industry, and will continue to do so.