AI came to the fore at the Berlinale’s EFM Startups pitching session yesterday, which saw 11 start-up entrepreneurs pitch a series of tools for the film production, development and distribution sectors.
At a time when the industry is facing multiple challenges – from rising production costs to a proliferation of platforms vying for audience attention – the start-ups’ applications were pitched as a way to produce and to distribute content more efficiently and creatively.
More than half of the selected 11 startups offered solutions for marketing & distribution, PR and exhibition. From Germany, they included Magig’s Cassi which allows people with no technical or marketing background to create social media and marketing content for movies. Users can load up the synopses, cast list and entire movie script; then using Gen AI technology, its content generation system creates marketing materials in multiple formats and automatically schedules and publishes it to any platform.
Also pitched was Denmark’s Houston, which uses AI to predict film release box office, optimise marketing and forecast revenue in Europe, and the US’s Titlepool, a smart rights and revenue management platform. The UK’s Curate offers a step-by-step guide for putting on a film event, while South Korean platform HiStranger is an content A.I. diagnosis system and Spain’s Gretico has technology that allows movies to be delivered for local projection in places that lack theatres.
In the production sector, a lot of start-ups pitched tools to make production, risk assessment and shareholder management more efficient. From the US, Greenlit is an AI-enabled back-office solution to help simplify workflows around contracting, financing, tax incentives and project management. The US’s Producers PIN (Production Incentives Network) provides tools and information for producers need to raise capital for films, while Lithuania’s Perfection42 allows production companies to train models on their own intellectual property. From the UK, ALL-VP, is an AI-powered lighting solution for virtual production. African Screen Intelligence was also pitched as an AI-powered platform to provide market intelligence on Africa’s screen industries.
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