Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been the preserve of science fiction narratives involving sentient machines and killer automatons. But for many years now, the term has been a major part of the technologists' lexicon. Everywhere you look, applications, games, services, transportation, cybersecurity and even consumer goods are leveraging the power of AI. It's become shorthand for automating systems that perform laborious tasks – often creatively – beyond the power of mere mortals. "I think artificial intelligence is a misnomer to a certain extent," argues Martine Bertrand, Senior AI Researcher at DNEG Montreal. "The reason why there's so much hype around these technologies is because, for most of us, we get convinced this is artificial intelligence in the form of a super-smart robot or a brain living in a cloud, that can suddenly do magical stuff.

Artificial intelligence applications in video post production come in many flavors: automatic transcription and metadata entry, speeding up lengthy color correction and VFX processes, and so much more. Fears of computational overreach, though, have become common in film and TV. Usually, these worries are a reaction to news of studios using performance prediction algorithms to make decisions about which films or TV series get made. These fears are overblown--at least where film and TV post production is concerned. We are in no danger of artificial intelligence replacing the most vital post-production creative processes.

Deep Learning is really starting to establish itself as a major new tool in visual effects. Currently the tools are still in their infancy but they are changing the way visual effects can be approached. Instead of a pipeline consisting of modelling, texturing, lighting and rendering, these new approaches are hallucinating or plausibly creating imagery that is based on training data sets. Machine Learning, the superset of Deep Learning and similar approaches have had great success in image classification, image recognition and image synthesis. At fxguide we covered Synthesia in the UK, a company born out of research first published as Face2Face.

Netflix has released hundreds of Originals and plans to spend $8 billion over the next year on content. Creators of these stories pour their hearts and souls into turning ideas into joy for our viewers. The sublime art of doing this well is hard to describe, but it necessitates a careful orchestration of creative, business and technical decisions. Here we will focus on the latter two -- business & technical decisions like planning budgets, finding locations, building sets, and scheduling guest actors that enable the creative act of connecting with viewers. Each production is a mountain of operational and logistical challenges that consumes and produces tremendous amounts of data.

Netflix has released hundreds of Originals and plans to spend $8 billion over the next year on content. Creators of these stories pour their hearts and souls into turning ideas into joy for our viewers. The sublime art of doing this well is hard to describe, but it necessitates a careful orchestration of creative, business and technical decisions. Here we will focus on the latter two -- business & technical decisions like planning budgets, finding locations, building sets, and scheduling guest actors that enable the creative act of connecting with viewers. Each production is a mountain of operational and logistical challenges that consumes and produces tremendous amounts of data.

Gab Scanu works alone, with a special operating licence for his UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in Australia. The 20-year-old's drone photography shows a new perspective on well-known locations such as Sydney's Bondi beach, Mona Vale and other famous coastlines on the country's east coast. He has also travelled abroad and shot the LA coast at Malibu. The son of a cinematographer, Scanu has inherited a keen eye for photographic composition, capturing both the dramatic and the picturesque qualities of the Australian summer experience. He has developed a unique style and feel, using a combination of post production and drone technology to capture often never-before-seen landscape views.