TheWrap is bringing five of the leading voices in AI filmmaking to TheGrill, the company’s flagship business and technology conference. As grey box production, generative AI and hybrid live-action/AI workflows create new ways to develop, shoot and finish ambitious stories, Jason Zada, Eliza McNitt, Jon Erwin, Ori Winokur and Todd Terrazas will take audiences behind the scenes of their latest films and into the production model taking shape around them.
Taking place Sept. 30 at the DGA Theater Complex in Los Angeles, the future of filmmaking with AI panel is a timely conversation about how traditional production — actors, crews, physical performance — is being combined with emerging tools to expand creative possibilities and get ambitious projects made that might not otherwise happen.
Jason Zada is an Emmy-winning director who has spent 25 years at the intersection of technology and entertainment, with 26 Cannes Lions and SXSW Best in Show honors for projects including “Take This Lollipop,” “Elf Yourself” and “The Forest.” As founder and chief creative officer of Secret Level, the AI-native studio behind the hybrid horror feature “Terrarium,” he now builds the kind of film the panel is unpacking.
Ori Winokur, Artlist’s head of music and entertainment partnerships, leads the company’s AI and product work — intelligent tagging, smart search, catalog intelligence and Artbeat, its interactive creation platform — along with Artlist’s expansion into Hollywood through partnerships with studios, agencies, brands and creators. That’s the vantage point that brought Artlist into “Terrarium” alongside Secret Level.
Eliza McNitt brings the independent filmmaker’s side of the model. An Emmy Awards finalist and winner of the VR Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival, she created “SPHERES,” executive produced by Darren Aronofsky and starring Millie Bobby Brown, Jessica Chastain and Patti Smith — the first VR acquisition out of Sundance. Her latest short, “ANCESTRA,” made with Aronofsky’s Primordial Soup and Google DeepMind, blends live-action and generative AI to tell the story of an expectant mother drawing on everything that came before her, from past matriarchs to dying stars, to save her daughter’s life.
Jon Erwin comes at the same question from the studio side. He founded Wonder Project, which makes its films and series with Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video — among them “House of David” and this summer’s “Young Washington,” which he directed — and is CEO of Innovative Dreams, the R&D and production venture Wonder Project launched with Luma and Amazon Web Services to merge performance capture, virtual production and generative AI into one pipeline.
Todd Terrazas is co-founder of AI on the Lot, the world’s largest AI media and entertainment conference, and of FBRC.ai, where he advises major studios including Fox alongside independent filmmakers such as Gossip Goblin. A community builder and self-described professional “nerd herder,” he works through URL-to-IRL strategies that help digital IP expand into the physical world.
They join a lineup of powerhouse speakers including California Attorney General Rob Bonta, AMC Entertainment Chairman and CEO Adam Aron, Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Chair Adam Fogelson, YouTube’s Kim Larson, Paramount Skydance Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim, NBCUniversal Chairman Mark Marshall, DraftKings founder and CEO Jason Robins and many more.
TheGrill will be at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles on Sept. 30. As a bonus, your ticket also gets you into AI Creator Day on Sept. 29. One ticket. Two days. Full program and seats here.
TheGrill is sponsored by Artlist, Antenna, aTwist, City National Bank, Disney, Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, Lionsgate, Versant and Viva Pictures.
The post The Future of Filmmaking With AI: Jason Zada, Eliza McNitt, Jon Erwin Join TheGrill appeared first on TheWrap.
