Cardiff-based production company and AI tech specialist Deep Fusion Films has partnered with historical picture archive agency Topfoto to create a slate of AI-assisted documentaries.
As part of the deal, Deep Fusion will be granted access to a curated selection of Topfoto’s archive material to produce 12 premium one-hour documentaries.
Deep Fusion will employ its proprietary software Weavr on the project, which analyses archival material and assists producers in curating it, through visual analysis, for a given documentary topic.
The software also helps producers draft a script, create a guide voiceover track, and auto-assign the archive material to the right moments in the script before creating a draft edit, which can be imported into Premiere for finessing.
When announcing the partnership, Deep Fusion stressed that human involvement is necessary at every stage in the process to ensure accuracy and creative control, but that the production timeline can be reduced from weeks to under five days.
The first documentary collections to flow from the new partnership will draw on Topfoto’s archive of royals, presidents, and feats of industrial engineering.
The documentaries will be released over six months, with all distribution revenues to be evenly split between the two parties. Niki Page, Head of Sales at Deep Fusion, will lead the international distribution, targeting legacy broadcasters, digital platforms, and the expanding FAST channel universe.
Flora Smith, Managing Partner at Topfoto, said: “Topfoto is thrilled to be starting on this adventure with Deep Fusion. We have thrived for nearly a century by recognising and adapting to profound technological shifts. When those shifts have occurred, we have always got into the change and worked out how to navigate it successfully. We are interested in AI that is used by creatives to license work, support copyright and provide excellence in the creative marketplace and social spaces.”
Benjamin Field, Co-Founder and CEO of DeepFusion Films, said: “This partnership with Topfoto opens up a treasure trove of stories and stories that, in today’s over-saturated and under-funded content market, would remain in the vault without AI technology. It's this efficiency that opens up the opportunity to create new programmes at scale for the new digital era, whilst maintaining authenticity and creativity.”
Field added: “In essence, we are using non-traditional means to create traditional documentaries quickly and at a fraction of the cost. Our AI tools will expedite the long and costly research process that underpins premium documentary production, allowing us to tell niche stories, bring the explored past to life and to ‘create not scrape’ Topfoto’s unparalleled archive.”
The British Film Institute (BFI) recently awarded £192,500 in funding to King’s College London for a project exploring how AI technologies could be used to unlock potential within screen archives. Discover more here.
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