Students in the Terry College Full-Time MBA and Master of Science in Business Analytics programs spend a lot of time learning how AI agents will transform their future careers, but they were recently asked to explore how AI will transform film and video content.
“The programs have gotten so much better than when I first played with generated video a year or two ago,” Emma Price, an MSBA student, said while working with her team to develop a short pitch video for an NIL company.
Price and her classmates were tasked with using AI to create a short marketing video as part of Terry College Senior Lecturer David Sutherland’s Business in the Creative Economy course.
“Before, I would have never been involved in making a film without taking classes in filmmaking, but with these tools, I can make a short video for a presentation or just because I want to tell a story,” she said.
Over the past two decades, Georgia’s film industry has become a $4 billion, 60,000-job segment of the state’s economy. In Sutherland’s course, students from business backgrounds investigate how business and economic development decisions shaped that rise. In the past, his students toured Georgia film studios or helped local towns develop economic development strategies focusing on the arts.
This semester, the class focuses on how AI is transforming the movie industry. As part of the course, AI film production leaders from Altera and Machine Cinemahosted an AI video storytelling workshop with Price, Sutherland’s other students, and Athens-area film pros on Feb. 16.
During the workshop, Altera representatives Elizabeth Kealoha and Natalia Gonzalez led the students and film pros through the process of making a short film using generative AI tools.
Screenwriter and producer, C. Neil Davenport, who also serves as executive director of Filmed in Georgia and director of operations of PhilanthroFilms joined Sutherland’s workshop to learn how to incorporate AI tools into his workspace to then help others become more confident using AI.
“AI is not going anywhere,” said Davenport. “It’s a tool at the end of the day, and we need to know how to use it to become that much closer to achieving our dreams.”
