When it comes to the technical aspect, I mean we've seen in the past few years, like Mumblegate, there's so many issues on set where there can be extra noise that just can't be avoided. And that means the dialogue is not going to be clear. And unless you want viewers coming in complaining about ‘well I couldn't understand what was going on in this show’, ADR is there to salvage it, it's there to help and make sure that clarity is crystal clear and that audiences aren't going to complain. [to Alan] You might have a different answer?

Alan Leer (02:43): Spot on, to be fair. I think ADR also has an ability to potentially save voices that otherwise get lost inside the process. So people that have heavy accents or that overseas people might not necessarily understand immediately - you can often get those re-recorded in ADR in a clearer way, which means that your audience is going to understand them, which avoids voices being cut sometimes. So you can kind of step in and save the process a little bit, keep scenes flowing that would otherwise be shifted.

Ben Nemes (03:12): I guess the other thing we haven't touched on is exposition ADR, which it's one of those things - is it Bader Meinhof Syndrome? When you see something, then you see it everywhere! I didn't know what it was until someone explained it to me once. And then you see lines of dialogue pinned to the back of someone's head, but their jaw isn't moving. But that line of dialogue explains a plot point that otherwise gets lost in the edit. So you come up with…I'm looking at you guys for affirmation…

Alan Leer (03:43): No, you're absolutely right!

Ben Nemes (03:45): ….So you come up with a line of dialogue that’ll bridge a plot point - and then you tack it to the back of someone's head.

Emma Butt (03:51): I mean, it can go the other way though, as well, where a broadcaster is kind of trying to overfeed audiences with extra lines that really don't need to be there. And I think that's when you get into the realm of bad ADR, right? Because you know that line is false, the actor never said it and it stands out a mile away and it's because it's an unnecessary line.

The audiences are intelligent, they don't need everything spoon-fed to them, and yet sometimes we get broadcasters just adding in extra lines for god-knows why, kind of ruins things a little bit.

Max Miller  (04:27): And so is that basically when someone says ‘bad ADR’, that means it's particularly noticeable?

Ben Nemes: I guess any ADR that’s in any way noticeable is, by definition, bad ADR.

Alan Leer: Precisely that.

Emma Butt (04:40): And sometimes it's unavoidable. You can record it with the best quality mics and the best room with the best recordists and it's just not going to work. We've had situations before-  and I'm sure you've had horror stories like this - where they've decided for story point reasons that they need to change a word in the middle of a sentence, but they don't want to change the picture cut.

So the actor will be on screen, you'll see their mouths moving for a particular word, but yet they want to change it. So the mouth shapes are going to be totally different. And that's when bad ADR comes into it. And you can have the best recordists, you can have the best equipment, you can do everything right and it is still going to look absolute shit! <laugh> and you just can't avoid it.

Max Miller (05:23): So ADR as a whole, isn't just replacing dialogue that was poorly recorded in the first place. There's so much more to it, effectively, is the thing.  It’s exposition on top of bringing in background sounds of people everywhere.

 Ben Nemes: It’s one of those things, there's a real assumption that it's about fixing something that's somebody got wrong and that's not really what it's about. And the more it's portrayed as that, the less willing and keen actors are.

Alan Leer (05:57): That’s so true.

Ben Nemes (05:58): "‘Why am I doing this? ‘Cos someone else cocked-up?’ You kind of just repackage it a bit...

Alan Leer (06:30): Absolutely on point.

Max Miller (06:32): So in that case, what are the main challenges of ADR? What’s the worst thing you want when a production comes to you asking can we get the dialogue for this scene?

Alan Leer (06:43): I think a lot of the time, a lot of the challenges actually revolve around scheduling. There's a lot of testing involved.

There's a lot of, ‘does that studio have the capability to do what we need them to do?’ There's a lot of that kind of stuff…

Ben Nemes (07:05): The website said they do ADR!

Alan Leer (07:06): Oh, the website always says they do ADR! However, it's probably a U87 in a cupboard somewhere. So, so there's a lot of stuff to kind of fiddle through and go through.

I think one of the main challenges is just trying to work out scheduling, make sure everyone's available at the same time. Everyone can be in the same room. Quite often you're doing things and thankfully now, well I say thankfully - because of the pandemic - we've got loads of options for people to join remotely, and ADR was already in a place to deal with that when it happened. But now we're finding people utilizing it more, so now people are joining from all around the world to contribute to those sessions. Where before, scheduling was a lot harder, it's become a little easier, but I still think that's one of the main issues that we face.

Emma Butt (07:44): You’ve hit on something else that's changed since the pandemic. And that’s: Zoom has definitely been employed in ADR, but it's not always employed in the right way. There are definitely people who organize ADR schedules, who think actors can record over Zoom - and they can't.  We cannot judge sync correctly over Zoom. Zoom is so unreliable: It depends on how stable the internet connection is at all ends. The Zoom thing is just really, really frustrating....

Ben Nemes (08:42): Once you've got an idea what your ADR is, I suppose. For us it's about the latter stages of a production. On features, it's generally reshoots or additional photography - when the director's cut exists. Because you can't do ADR ‘til you know what needs ADR. So there's no point in us being there day one. With episodic TV, we'll tend to be there towards the end of the shooting period, because they're handing over episode 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, but they're still shooting. So you know the lion's share of what you need.

The way we've always worked together is: if the actor is still there, then apart from anything else, there's the practicalities of things like accent. We did a feature film a few years ago where the actor had said to the director “I'm on your movie ‘til the 13th, then I fly to New York where I'm in a big HBO show, in which I'm American, until April. So I'm American. I FaceTime my kids at night in accent because I can't switch it on and off. I've got a dialect coach, I'm immersed, I'm American. So anything you want from me in terms of ADR…” - or the one thing we didn't mention was airline cover - when you have to replace expletives, because for certain airlines in America, you can't say God. “…So anything you want from me as this British character, get it before Thursday the 13th or whenever or you can't have it until the spring”.  So it's just getting people while they can, and you've entrusted your actor to get to get to the studio and you just don't know whether it's just going to be an absolute shit-show.

Alan Leer (10:48): It's very true though. Even down to the experience of the actor on the other side…

Max Miller: And is this something where you, as well as getting the director and the production on board, is it getting the actor themselves on board? Are you calling people up and they're going ‘No, I've I finished with that months ago. Why am I coming back to it?”

Emma Butt (15:52): It's part of their contract that they have to come in and they have to do a certain amount of ADR for a show …so they've no choice!

Max Miller (15:58): And in terms of the productions as well as putting it in their contract, importantly, when should they start thinking about ADR?  Should it be right from the beginning of production, making sure it's filmed in a particular way?

Alan Leer (16:10): Literally from day one you you'll know.  There are some scenes, like we were saying, you won't always know what's going to need to be ADR-ed. Because at one point in the process, someone else is going to look at it and tell you.  So there will be ADR that gets flagged there. If you've done a night shoot, loads and loads of lights, and you've got huge generators in it, yeah that's probably going to be ADR-ed.

There are certain things you kind of know just straight away how it’s going to be. So if you've already got that in the back of your mind, you can already start planning ‘OK, when's that cut going to be? Can we even get that scene exported and just have that ADR-ed?’. It can make things a bit of a juggle, but you can definitely start looking at it way earlier. I've even said to people to get a location recordist to do wild ADR just after a scene wraps. As soon as they wrap on the scene, if someone screamed really loud in another room, go and get a clean recording of it quickly. If it's off screen you can catch it. So why not?

Ben Nemes (16:59): You guys can read a script now though, right? And go ADR…ADR…..ADR. Do you just know sometimes?

Emma Butt (17:05): It depends on when we get the script!

Alan Leer (17:07): Yeah, that's right. Precisely.

Ben Nemes (17:08): That's the time to start, right? The script.

Alan Leer (17:10): There are times as well, where there are people in a room - say there's 10 people in a room. There's cameras concentrating on two people over here, who are having a conversation. Camera pans across and it's now concentrating on two other people, so that conversation stops. Now that's because of the way a script is written. You don't suddenly have a branch of a script that lays down in two lanes and you've got this thing continuing, it just doesn't happen. But in the real world, once you watch it, your ear wants to hear that conversation continue. So at that point, if you're looking at the script, you can already be thinking we are gonna need an offshoot of this conversation here, because we are definitely gonna get that later on anyway.

So you can be thinking from the script moment, where will a potential overlap need to be? How can we start thinking about that and how can we write that in, get the writers to start writing those things so that we are not there in the ADR sessions going ‘What would they be talking about? What year is it? Where are they?’. Start thinking about it, literally, from the moment of the script I think.

Max Miller (18:06): And how often does that happen?

Emma Butt (18:12): Never! I'm right in saying that that? [to Ben Nemes] - well I think you get called in a little bit sooner?

Ben Nemes (18:15): I would say there's two sorts of call that we get. One is really positive, we'd like to approach this show in this way – because they’ve worked with us before, or someone's told them about us and if we can do it this way, then great!  And it's conducive ‘cos it's shooting here and everyone's up for it. Let's get ADR at least 90% done before we wrap ‘cos that would be amazing.

And the other calls we get are: Help me. The first thing we ever worked on was an enormous superhero movie. We went from not existing to working on superhero movies without collecting $200 or passing go, or doing any kind of cutting our teeth or earning our stripes, because of that. It was a film that was in reshoots and the cast were going to be around for a few more weeks and then they were a hundred percent gone forever.

And these were the kind of actors for whom extra days are very expensive! So it was a case of let's get everything we can from the director's cut and anything else we're shooting, anything that even looks like it might need ADR (because there's a wind machine or because they're walking on this fiberglass stage). Just redo it.

So we were kind of camped out in the unit base and actors were coming in - in costume - in full battle dress, so we covered everything whether they needed it or not, basically.  But encouragingly, and increasingly, we're talking to productions that are saying let's approach this this way. You know it's gonna happen. It's happened since the dawn of time. So can we mitigate it? Can we approach it differently?

Emma Butt (20:06): I think the problem at the moment as well, though, is that the cost of living crisis is actually having an effect on ADR. It's having an effect on drama productions and budgets, in that budgets are basically being destroyed by rising costs.  So by the time it gets to post-production, money is tight and they try and find ways to cut corners - and it's totally understandable, because a budget that you planned two years ago, before you went into production - everything's gone up, everything's more expensive. I think the PACT / BECTU agreement, from what I've heard, that's had an influence as well on budget items. Because obviously cost of crew has gone up on set.  

So then you get to post and you're like, ‘Well, I know I need to do this ADR, but I don't have the money to do it’. And then the cost-cutting factor starts coming in, which ends up being another problem. So I think productions that have a healthy budget and have factored it in are okay, and they can do stuff like use SpaceCrate. But then they're also in a position where they just might not be able to.

It is problematic and it ends up with shows sounding not so great!

Ben Nemes (21:18): We’re about to find out, we're about to enter, cross a new rubicon, I suppose, with the writers’ strike. Because for things that are underway, or about to get underway, there's gonna be a period, X months from now when everything's just an absolute mess, I guess, again. It could be good, it could work well, you know, but maybe that’s me being wildly optimistic in the absence of any evidence, and actually it's just going to be, okay, so everything's a mess now because schedules will be somewhat randomized by this period of inactivity.  And rightly so. Fair play. But it's going to have an impact on schedules.

Emma Butt (22:05): Because they can't actually shoot ADR without the writers for any American shows. Because the writers do write those additional lines of ADR, if it's a script change. So it's going to be interesting to see how long that goes on because we can't do anything. We can't do anything until they give us the lines.

Ben Nemes (22:22): But then you have to imagine that shows that are slated to get made and part of that schedule is interrupted by the strike. We'll just get, that's not gonna change. So that's gonna change. Right? It's going to get squashed up against it. Because if you're booked into a stage at Leavesden or wherever, you can't just go, ‘Oh we'll be a bit later then’. No, because someone else is in, so it's going to get compressed that way, which means it's time compression.

Alan Leer: A lot of late nights!

Max Miller: Looking forward, are productions getting more knowledgeable about ADR and taking better steps? How is it going in the industry?

Ben Nemes (23:07): A couple are. Not enough!  My ones are, they're awesome. <Laugh>

Emma Butt (23:09): [to Ben] Did you just say ‘my ones are’!?

Ben Nemes (23:11): The ones I work on. They're amazing!

Emma Butt (23:14): Thanks mate. <Laugh>

Alan Leer (23:16): I think people are thinking about it a little bit more. But again, I think we're probably 5 or 10 years off it really being embedded. The actors that are coming up now, it's a part of their headspace as a part of their process and as they speak more to directors and production, I think it'll bleed in that way.

And I think as more of those actors become producers, become directors, it'll be in the back of their heads. Because there are some people that do think about it very early on, I think. And people are getting quite savvy with it, knowing that it's gonna have to be in. Especially with stealing people's time, when they're piggybacking off something else that they happen to be in town for. That happens quite a lot now. So people are semi thinking about it, we could certainly do with a lot more thought about it though.

Max Miller (23:56): And is it possible it's going to be moving – and we’ve had some some lovely recommendations for Ben’s company! - Is it going to be moving further forward in production to being done less as post, I guess moving across that line almost?

Alan Leer (24:12): I imagine it will. I think it will, I think it will move slightly more forward.  There'll be less ADR to do in post, but I think there will still be some ADR to do in post. I think that bit's unavoidable. Especially if you're doing episodical stuff, it makes more sense. You can get more of it done. But for films and stuff, once you have a definitive wrap time. Stuff will get picked up beyond that. So I think we can do more and move more in and we'll just have less to do later on. But I still think there'll be plenty to do at the same time.

Ben Nemes (24:44) Absolutely. It'd be disingenuous of me to say that what we do, does all of the ADR, there's always something else at the end, there's always bits.  It’s just breaking the back of it – minimising that.

If you've only got one actor to find for one page, and they're already in London, then fabulous.  If it’s everybody all around the world, for all of it, it's a whole different kettle of fish.

Alan Leer (25:08): A hundred percent, completely agree.

Ben Nemes (25:09): Just to your point, and to answer Max's last question, about people getting to understand what ADR is: You were talking about the TikTok thing.  I think that's a generational thing. My son at 13 years old knows things about how telly is made that I didn't know all those years ago. They're completely savvy. We were watching Everything, Everywhere All At Once, and he was going on about the transitions <laugh>, I mean - they're good - but how did you know that word? They’re so savvy about behind the curtain.

Alan Leer (25:51): People are becoming editors, people are becoming their own sound people. People now are recording voiceovers for their own videos that they've made, and they don't really realise that's a post process. But it is, the editing is a post process and it's color grading. People are thinking, ‘oh, I'll do a filter on this bit of it’ -  that's color grading, technically speaking.  It's very early forms of this happening. So I think the next generation of people are going to be way more savvy from a younger age.

Ben Nemes (26:17): Your average 12 year old can use a green screen.

Alan Leer (26:18): There you go, <laugh>. Exactly. That's what I mean.

Ben Nemes (26:21): Because of Zoom and because there's always someone picture-in-picture on their gaming stuff and it's all entirely natural. They're wanting streamdecks for Christmas at 11. So ADR’s part of that, actors coming through now would expect to do ADR and it won't be a surprise to them and they won't be offended by the concept.

Alan Leer (26:43): Better mic etiquette as well. Because they've been surrounded by microphones their whole life, whether it's their AirPods or whatever, they're used to the idea of proximity to microphone now. And so people are like, ‘oh, is that gonna be a bit close?’ You're like, ‘yeah, I mean you're right! Take a step back. You are absolutely right.’ So it's funny, that next generation I think will have a slightly different mindset towards it.

Ben Nemes (27:03): And Emma mentioned earlier about the impact of the pandemic on people's ability to collaborate over Zoom and that sort of stuff. And to some extent that helps, but the other point that Emma was alluding to, was that we have to unpick some of the damage.

We did a load of really heroic shit in the pandemic to get stuff made! That was in extreme circumstances and should, under no circumstances, continue or be repeated <laugh> However - because we kind of taught each other, and the world, how to lash this stuff together in extreme circumstances - And it didn't really work. We got away with loads. We need to kind of go ‘But now that's over - that's over’.  No, we can't do that in your cupboard on Zoom, because d’you know why? Because it was crap <laugh>.

Alan Leer (28:01): “But you said it was alright last time?”  Last time during the pandemic! But let's be better now! <Laugh>.

Max Miller (28:06): You’ve mentioned obviously about Zoom already. Are you finding the same for you as well?

Emma Butt (28:12): Yeah. I've had so many arguments on productions where post-production supervisors who, through no fault of their own, they have been trained in the pandemic. They were production coordinators and then they moved into post-supers during that really, really weird time.

And so for them, Zoom is totally normalized. And they just think that's how you do ADR. If the actor is no longer in the country - it's like Ben said, that was an extreme circumstance and you have to fight back against it. And it comes back to budgets. If they haven't allowed money in their budget for Source Connect or for two studios to be able to link up.

So then it comes back to, ‘Well we don't have the money to do that, so we're gonna have to do Zoom’. And it's trying to explain to them the quality degrades so badly when you do it that way because you can't judge anything. You can't judge projection, you can't judge sync. You can't judge if the tone is right, if the performance is right, if it's going to work. Playbacks can be dodgy. It's just not reliable. And to not have a dialogue supervisor or an ADR supervisor in the room, with an actor when they're recording ADR is just insanity to me - and is actually becoming really, really common. It comes back to schedules. Ben's making a face….

Ben Nemes (29:28): No, no, I was just thinking about the other thing that Zoom did, is it allowed all manner of people that don't necessarily have to participate - to participate and that persists. So, someone who's driving into work on the 405 in the rush hour in L.A. wants to dial into the ADR session. Suddenly the whole thing has to be done on Zoom, and that's going to move the whole thing into a level of complexity because you can't do source connect on an iPhone, but you can be on a Zoom.  Think about who needs to be there and the answer is a dialogue supervisor. The answer isn't necessarily everybody else.

Alan Leer (30:05): True.

Emma Butt (30:06): But that adds in another level of complexity that ADR mixers have, which is we are now being asked to do setups in an ADR session where we have people in the studio, people on Zoom and people on source connect. So you technically have three different technical setups that you have to be able to work, you have to be able to test that out beforehand, make sure that it's all running smoothly and, with all the will in the world, you can test it as much as you like. Something will go wrong.

Alan Leer: On the day of. A minute before!

Ben Nemes (30:31): The irony being that the least confident person technically, is on the least reliable app!

Alan Leer (30:38): That's also very true.

Emma Butt (30:39): ..And you will get the blame, you'll be the sole person responsible!

Alan Leer (30:43): It kind of goes back to what I was saying before about the overseas connections. So now you've added that into it as well. So, it used to just be a source connect, but now I've got to test that that studio's able to source connect and add a zoom in and not cause a loopback feed, which happens all of the time... All of the time. And you can test, you can test, you can test, but until the day that they all sit there and someone opens that first talkback and you suddenly, suddenly, you're like, ‘oh God, everyone stop for a second. Let's reset’. So yeah, it's, it is another level of technical complexity that probably isn't necessary a lot of the time.

Emma Butt (31:15): Clients just don't understand how complex that setup is. And so they just assume, well you can do ADR setups in the room really easily. Why is this not simple? ‘I do a Zoom every Tuesday to have my meeting with my team, so this should be a simple setup’. And it's so much more complicated - and it's also not fair on the actors - because they then have all these unnecessary voices in their headphones saying, oh no, can we go again on this? Or, yeah, that was okay. And they don't need that.

And it comes back to the psychology thing of that they need to stay in a proper headspace to be able to give you the best performance possible, and if they have 20 voices in their ear, that's not gonna happen.

Ben Nemes (31:53): ADR is the only post-production task, from the day that production wraps, from there on in - up until Graham Norton six months later - It's the only bit where the actor, where the cast, the talent, is involved. Other than edge cases, where you're a writer/director/actor, but for the most part…

…And that can also be hard if they're overseas because you don't know the experience they're getting in the other building. You don't know how has their journey to the studio been? How has the welcome at reception been? Have they been treated well? You don't know what head space they're in. And a lot of ADR, especially working with actors, directors; a lot of it’s psychology in the room. A lot of it is knowing where they're at in the moment and helping them get to where they need to be….gently. And that's a lot harder to do when you're not in the room with them in another country.

Ben Nemes (11:50): I mean as, as a non-ADR mixer, as the non-talented one on the panel. <Laugh> I have to say that what you guys do is 10% technology, operating ProTools and positioning microphones and 90% - or more - is psychology.

Alan Leer (12:08): Yeah, a hundred percent. It very much is.

Ben Nemes (12:09): You’ve got so many schisms going on in a room, and some people in that room with an awful lot of power <laugh>. It's fascinating to watch. It's all psychology.

Emma Butt (12:21): Coming back to ‘what problems do we face’; clients can actually play play a huge part in that. There's so many times where we've had new actors coming into the studio and they've never done ADR before and they are really nervous and they don't know what to expect. And sometimes the first thing a director or producer or someone in charge can say as they walk into the room is ‘Oh I hate ADR. It never works!’. And it comes back to this psychology thing.

You're already putting this actor in such a negative head space. You're asking them to do a really difficult thing. You're asking them to come in - like we've said - they've probably finished shooting months ago. They're not in the character headspace. They've gone onto another job. They're just in this totally unique environment where they have no-one to play off, they’ve no other actors in the room, they're watching a screen, they're trying to recreate their lines in time, in sync with the picture, with loads of strangers just staring at them while they're trying to perform. And then if your immediate thing is to say, ‘Well it doesn't really matter what you do, it's still not gonna work. I'm still not gonna like it and I'm still gonna think it's bad’. I just wish people would stop doing that because if they didn't, there is so much more chance and opportunity to get incredible ADR and incredible work from the actors that is going to be seamless and going to be perfect and work really well on the show or film.

Ben Nemes (13:44): But the but the opposite is also true, right? You have actors that approach it with a really healthy attitude about ADR. We've worked with actors who look at it as another shot at just fine-tuning a performance, because now it lives in context in the cut.

They might have approached that differently now that they know what happened just before, and what's about to happen. To say, ‘Oh, okay now I know that I, I'd come at this differently’. So it's a great opportunity to do that.

Alan Leer (14:12): That's also true of younger actors as well at the moment, I'm finding. The younger the actor is, the more they're approaching it with a new mindset. And I almost entirely attribute this to TikTok! Because everyone's used to lip syncing. Everyone's doing loads of lip syncing videos now. So people are coming into the studio and they're like ‘Oh it's just like making a TikTok’. You're like, ‘Yeah alright, yeah sure, yeah, do that!’ And people are really, really good at it! You're like, oh that's really, it's just a different attitude, a different way of thinking. So if they're coming into the room with that energy, my chance here is to harbour that, use that and keep that vibing, and the director, they're enjoying themselves. Just let them, and then you're going to get better out of them. Because it's all about that. It's about them approaching it in that right head space.

Ben Nemes (14:52): It’s also partly about the way actors are taught now. Cause there was a time when American actors who'd been through film school, been through acting classes, were specifically taught how to do ADR - Because it was part of the job: if you're gonna do this, you're gonna need to do ADR. So this Thursday afternoon, we're gonna do ADR so that you know how to do it. So that the first time you walk into that studio, this isn't a completely alien experience. Whereas - the way I had explained to me, at the time - British actors in film school here, weren't taught that. Almost like it's not part of the curriculum.

They are that person, that character. So you can't just go bowling in there. You're kind of in shot, if you know what I mean? You have be really cognisant of that and make sure you create a scenario that supports it. Yes, it's screens and computers and stuff, but it's kind of that you’re back on set, in a lot of ways.

Alan Leer (32:56): I’d be completely and utterly lying if I said that when an actor has looked at me through the screen, I haven't just punched roll mid-sentence because an actor’s told they want to go! You have to be ready to go. They're in the head space. So you are kind of dictated by them. If they're ready to go for it, you're going for it!  If there’s a director, you don't know what relationship they've got. You don't know, when you're working with that. If they're looking at you, OK, fair enough - we're just going for it!

Ben Nemes (33:20): It's the only bit of post that’s still in the moment.

Alan Leer (33:23): Very much so.

Max Miller (33:24): So, well we're almost out of time. We have time for a quick audience question. Most of them, luckily we've kind of covered I think in the conversation, but one is: Has the rise of noise reduction and using AI techniques, apparently, helped with fixing stuff with a tighter budget as we mentioned before?

Emma Butt (33:44): Can I hit on the AI thing? Because it's a bugbear of mine!

AI has been employed, on certain productions, to recreate actors voices without the need of ADR. And once clients found out about that, now clients are starting to ask, well, do we have to get actors in? Can we not just use this AI software? No, you can't. Ethically it is totally wrong. You should not be replicating a person's voice without their permission. It also needs to be stated in their contract that that has been agreed. And I think until all of that is ironed out, AI technology - for replicating voices at the very least  -should just be left alone and deal with that in the future. But ethically it is so wrong right now. Sorry, that's my little rant over!

Ben Nemes (34:38): It's a hot topic, isn't it? I think you're right. We have to find the right pace for this stuff. It's going to be massively, enormously powerful and helpful in all sorts of ways. If a generative AI algorithm can create anything, then immediately we reach ‘content infinity’, right? …Anybody can make anything.

So at that point, does it reset? Do people only want to pay for that which is valuable. So is that art? Is that performance, is that creativity? I don't know. We're not all out of a job because an algorithm will do it. It's just everything will be brilliant: A four-year-old can make a Disney movie ‘like that’. Great. So what does anyone want to watch? How do you want to spend your evening - watching a million 4-year-olds’ Disney movies they've made? No, I want to watch something worthy, something that's actually interesting. So that's when talent, and creativity, and art reassert themselves. And that's when humans come back into it.

So I don't think it's like we're all out of a job and the replicants have taken over, but you're right, we have to make sure that we approach this in a way that extracts from it the useful bits and doesn't just ride roughshod over the whole fundamental concept of art and IP, frankly.

Max Miller: And so on that cheery note I'm being told to end.

Ben Nemes: I thought that was cheery <laugh> That's why I did it!

Max Miller: So, thank you everyone for your time. I hope everyone enjoyed it.