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July 21 - July 27

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Apple landed a record 54 Emmy Award nominations, and made history as Ted Lasso became the most Emmy-nominated comedy for the third consecutive year, and STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie becames this year’s most nominated documentary film or docuseries...

Congressman Joaquin Castro and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have launched a nationwide call for Latino films to nominate for the National Film Registry. The U.S.’s preeminent archive of films with cultural, historic or aesthetic significance is essential in preserving cinema. Every year, the Librarian of Congress adds 25 new movies to the registry after reviewing titles nominated by the public and conferring with National Film Preservation Board members and Library film curators. As of 2023, there are 24 Latino films on the National Film Registry, less than three percent of the 850 movies in the registry...

Founded in 2018, Runway ML offers a suite of AI tools powered by models trained on quantities of video data for artists, filmmakers and creators. VFX artists have been using Runway to complete manual tasks that previously took days and costly professional software and equipment. For example, with Runway’s inpainting tool, filmmakers can use AI to seamlessly remove objects or backgrounds in the video editing process. (Remember that pesky Starbucks coffee cup that somehow made it to Winterfell in Game of Thrones?) The company’s suite of video editing AI tools also enables motion tracking and even greenscreen. For filmmakers, transforming video footage is a critical aspect of the post-production workflow. Runway’s Gen-1 is video-to-video offering, a form of generative AI that uses words and images to turn out new videos based on existing ones. Gen-1 represents a drastically cheaper and more efficient way to create unique visual effects, stylize footage or even craft new scenes based on reusable footage. Finally, text-to-video AI represents a significant technological leap in content generation. Runway’s Gen-2 is widely considered to be among the most sophisticated text-to-video AI models available...

The actors guild released a list of 39 movies and TV shows that have signed an interim agreement to proceed with filming during the strike which will allow those movies to continue filming or imminently start filming even as the actors strike against the studios carries on. Under the terms of the interim agreement, indie producers are agreeing to offer cast an 11 percent raise to the minimum salary as negotiated in the previous 2020 deal. It also comes with the expectation that the producers will agree to whatever the new terms of the contract are whenever the strike between the studios and SAG-AFTRA ends...

A WGA member protesting outside of Universal’s lot in Los Angeles noted that the studio trimmed the trees along the street near demonstrations, all when temperatures are hitting over 90 degrees up in Burbank. When reached for comment by IndieWire, an NBCUniversal spokesperson said that the trimming is done annually for safety reasons, and that the studio is working through offering things like pop-up tents and water to protestors as additional accommodations. “We understand that the safety tree trimming of the Ficus trees we did on Barham Blvd. has created unintended challenges for demonstrators, that was not our intention,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “In partnership with licensed arborists, we have pruned these trees annually at this time of year to ensure that the canopies are light ahead of the high wind season. We support the WGA and SAG’s right to demonstrate, and are working to provide some shade coverage. We continue to openly communicate with the labor leaders on-site to work together during this time.”...

John Cusack has taken to Twitter with some compelling thoughts about the importance of the SAG-AFTRA strike and the business practices that have resulted in the studios (and studio CEOs) making ever more money while many actors can barely make a living wage. “One fun fact – when I was a youngin- I did a film (with a boom box ) and somehow I got points – net not gross. Never expected to see any money – but the film became quite famous – so about 10 years ago – I looked again at the financial statements they were obligated to report – and to my shock – they claimed they had LOST 44 million dollars on the film – I thought wow , I almost bankrupted Fox! The film cost about 13 million to make – and money spent to release was minimal at the time – 30 years in – that film lost millions every year ! “Say Anything” grossed $20.7 million at the time...