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Postproduction 4.0

How artificial intelligence and metadata are revolutionizing the film industry

The film industry in the 21st century: Streaming providers are omnipresent, virtual reality is making inroads everywhere and films in 3D have literally reached new dimensions. But if you look at the workflows in the background, the film industry is still a long way from arriving in the digital age. “Film has to be thought of as IT – the industry is still stuck in the last century when it comes to this,” says Holger Lehmann, Managing Director of Rotor Film.

The production company is an expert in all post-production steps, from shooting support, image design and sound design to the film master. They work nationally and internationally on cinema productions such as The Square, Iron Sky 2 and Gundermann and for streaming portals such as Netflix and Amazon Prime (Deutschland 89 and Bad Banks). But in addition to traditional post-production, Rotor Film has set itself the task of rethinking post-production for the future. “To do this, we need to automate the time-consuming processes that were previously carried out almost manually,” says Lehmann.

Normally, a film is shot, cut, edited in picture and sound and then combined, distributed and evaluated in the master. The sequence of work steps is often a logistical and time-related challenge. In the international and national film business, people are working at different locations at the same time to finalize a film. This leads to numerous agreements between actors, sometimes in different countries. The content-related, creative work is influenced by the technical conditions and vice versa: for example, when large amounts of data are transferred, sound processes and color spaces are coordinated and last-minute changes are made during final approval. This is where simplified collaborative working is needed, where everyone has access to the same data. The previous processes cost a lot of time and resources. As we all know, time is money and resources such as skilled workers are finite. So how can post-production 4.0 be realized? What additional business models can be generated around data-driven structures? This is exactly what Rotor Film is working on in the DWerft research alliance at the Babelsberg site.

Metadata plays a major role here: Information that accumulates during film production but also during distribution and is anchored in the film. A technical subline is added, so to speak, which helps to categorize certain elements or make them easy to find. The better a film is enriched with metadata, the easier it is to find and the better it can be used. There is a wide range of metadata that can be integrated into the film – whether technical information, evaluation information or content-related information. Ideally, the data networks and connects everything relating to production, post-production, distribution and archiving. “Metadata thus becomes the ‘fuel’ for artificial intelligence and a necessary prerequisite,” says Holger Lehmann, describing its importance. “The question is: how can we take the use of metadata further? I could store information about second or third exploitation in other countries or use it to analyze the optimal narrative thread of a romantic comedy. Special dialogue passages, additional information on filming locations or music rights as well as language versions can be specifically categorized. Metadata can also be used to create the basis for a global content database.” And that is only part of the future possibilities.

Traditional metadata models are not sufficient for such applications. Rotorfilm is therefore working on innovative methods to enable such data utilization from shooting to distribution. To this end, they are developing adapters and plugins that enable the comprehensive collection and mapping of this data and its stringent transmission. In addition to new business models, the aim is to transfer outdated working methods into new digital workflows. Manual post-production sequences, such as noise reduction or the deletion of connection errors in the image, could then be automated in future with the help of artificial intelligence.

This is the value chain that Holger Lehmann wants to drive forward at Rotor Film together with his business partner Martin Frühmorgen: “Our vision is to become one of the leading metadata processors for moving images.”


More about the MTH Blog

The media technologies of the future are already being used today – not only in the entertainment sector but in a wide variety of industries. For our MediaTech Hub Potsdam blog, we talk to tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and researchers once a month and tell the stories behind their innovative business models, ideas, projects and collaborations.