How Chimney will win the AI race
Now the classic postproduction company has boarded the AI boat – and intends to sail past the competitors.
For us, AI is the best thing that has happened in a long time, says Henric Larsson.
Chimney AI studio is launched
Creativity is bubbling, the CEO is optimistic – especially about Chimney's new leg: the AI studio.
He and Giulio Musi, agency manager for Chimney AI Studio, say that AI in film production is actually something new – in fact, Chimney worked with AI already 15 years ago, explains Henric Larsson:
“It wasn't called AI back then, but we used a lot of advanced tools to save time on special effects,” he says.
An important customer is ATG. In connection with the launch of V85 in the autumn, Chimney was responsible for the post-production of a spectacular launch film, with horses taking over Sergels torg and standing lined up on top of one of the Hötorgsskraporna. It would probably have been technically possible even ten years ago, but with a production cost higher than the five Hötorgsskraporna stacked on top of each other. – Our focus is not to replace what we can do with a camera today. Sure, that process can be expensive, but you can't beat what happens with an actor, director and photographer in a room. What we're trying to do is elevate it and do fatter stuff, says Henric Larsson. – Many brands use AI to save money, but I think that will backfire on them. When the target audience sees that this brand has used AI a bit sloppy, they appear cheap. A head start over competitors The furious pace of AI development also makes it difficult to keep up. Just as the V85 film was being shot, Google released its video generator Veo 3.
“Now we have completely different tools than what existed back then. But that’s how it will always be with AI.”
And that’s where Chimney has a trump card: They’ve recruited several big names, so-called AI artists, who in turn have early access to many of the most important services,” says Giulio Musi. This gives the agency a unique advantage in many cases.
“Thanks to having this knowledge in-house, the AI studio isn’t just a couple of cool guys doing something cool. Instead, we have people who can build extremely complex workflows at a very high level,” says the agency director.
On a computer, Giulio Musi shows an almost endless scheme of nodes where several different AI tools are interconnected to make a small, small part of a large machinery.
“There could be eight different models in this flow. One to create the image, another to change it, which you then make a video of. Then you use a model to do the lip sync, an audio model to do the voice, a model to upscale to 4K, describes Henric Larsson.
However, relying entirely on AI models is not possible – small errors occur all the time.
– These last 15–20 percent that AI doesn’t fix, either because it can’t do it or does it poorly, are very complicated when it’s moving. It becomes “heavy” with compositing, cleanup, retouching and everything. But we’ve been working on that for 30 years, continues the CEO.
– So for us, AI is the best thing that has happened in a long time.
Samuel Eriksson