Former Prime Video UK chief Chris Bird has launched a pair of AI ventures aimed at empowering indie content creators, one with documentary director Dan Hartley.
Bird is behind HawksHead AI, a predictive data analytics platform, and CineMe AI, an AI-powered development took he has co-founded with The Boy Who Lived director Hartley.
Having left Amazon last year, where he was Managing Director of Prime Video UK, Bird has been building up his new businesses behind the scenes and is now in Cannes at the film festival to launch them.
HawksHead AI is being billed as a data analysis platform that helps content creators predict how their projects will perform with audiences at the earliest stages of development from script or synopsis.
Using proprietary AI tools and private databases, HawksHead gives eagle-eyed analysis on the likely performance of a project within specific audience groups and provides actionable guidance on how to adjust scripts, casting or the creative approach to improve resonance. A ‘synthetic panel’ capability also allows creators to test changes and gauge results in advance, getting feedback in hours.
Bird hope this will collectively allow creators to win commissions or secure investment from broadcasters and streamers.
CineMe comes from Bird and Hartley, whose HBO and Sky feature documentary David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived, about Harry Potter stunt performer was BAFTA and Emmy-nominated) is being marketed as “a pioneering, accessible and affordable visual development tool for filmmakers, powered by AI.”
In practice, it will take a script and automatically createsa visual storyboard of related photo-realistic images in seconds. The founders say it enables collaboration between producers, directors, production designers, DPs, locations, costume designers and VFX teams, simplifies how ideas are shared and saves “significant” time and money.
The tool is being aimed at everyone from established Hollywood film producers to indie grassroots creators. Generative AI VFX capabilities that allow for complex visual effects such as explosions or large-scale set pieces entirely through AI will be introduced over time.
“The old ways of commissioning, based on who you knew and what talent you could attach are changing rapidly,” said Bird. “Streamers and platforms have for years used sophisticated data analysis to make investment decisions, and that data was their exclusive preserve.
“Now, through HawksHead AI and CineMe, we’re levelling the playing field – putting that same power into the hands of British filmmakers and content creators at the point where it matters most: before a single frame is shot. As AI-produced content becomes more mainstream, the ability to optimise for audience engagement will only become more important. We exist to help creators make the best decisions with the best available data.”
Hartley added that CineMe “was born out of frustration with slow, laborious systems for getting projects off the ground,” adding: “There’s an absence of accessible, affordable visual development tools outside of the studio system. We’re changing that — for established filmmakers looking to simplify the production process, and for the next generation of content creators across film, television and web-based media.”
CineMe is currently in beta phase testing, with “a series of confidential, high-profile productions on board.” Unnamed “key advisors and industry names from across the film, technology and investment sectors” are on board and will be announced “soon.”
Hartley and Bird have also formed the CineMe Future Fund, which will put 5% of the company to a charitable trust, with the goal of providing enterprise-grade AI to the screen-based creative industries workforce. Hartley, a freelancer who hit hard by financial insecurity in the wake of the pandemic and Hollywood strikes, wants the fund to start a conversation about supporting those most vulnerable to disruption.
”Over a 20-year career I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the leading luminaries in the British film industry, and I’ve seen first-hand how important it is to align teams around a creative vision,” said Hartley. “I see CineMe’s role as supporting the next generation of storytellers and filmmakers, by giving them access to affordable tools that will transform how they develop, produce and distribute films. Before CineMe you used to have to wait until you’d made a film before you could see it, now you don’t.”
Bird added: “After 15 years at Amazon, seeing first-hand how new technologies can help reduce cost, improve decision-making and increase efficiency, I’m excited to bring that ethos to the UK content creation space with CineMe. We sit on the precipice of significant change in our industry, and CineMe is perfectly placed to help creators bring their vision to screen more easily than has ever been possible.”
The news comes after Deadline’s Breaking Baz revealed David Holmes, who played Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double in Harry Potter before a tragic accident on the set of Deathly Hallows: Part One left him paralyzed from the waist down, was turning Harley’s doc The Boy Who Lived into a stage play.
