Indonesia's Film Industry Embraces AI To Make Hollywood-style Movies For Cheap (restofworld.org)
- Reference: 0179780528
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/10/14/1536226/indonesias-film-industry-embraces-ai-to-make-hollywood-style-movies-for-cheap
- Source link: https://restofworld.org/2025/indonesia-ai-movies/
The Indonesian Film Producer Association supports the technology. Indonesian films typically cost 10 billion rupiah ($602,500), less than 1% of major Hollywood productions. The sector employed about 40,000 people in 2020 and generated over $400 million in box office sales in 2023. Jobs for storyboarders, VFX artists, and voice actors are disappearing.
[1] https://restofworld.org/2025/indonesia-ai-movies/
where actors, writers, others don't have an union (Score:2)
where actors, writers, others don't have an union
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What good does a union do for them exactly? They're not in control of who can produce movies any more than Fox, CNN, ABC, et al. can prevent someone else from starting a new news station. Do you believe that if the telephone switchboard operators had formed a network union that they'd still all have jobs or even consider the notion that they might a good thing.
Is this a troll post? I can understand why a poorly programmed autocorrect would use "a union" instead of a union, but mine doesn't and I can't im
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It seems to me Joe_Dragon was being sarcastic (normally comments negatively about labor unions) and always follow this spelling.
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The internet is really the best medium for sarcasm.
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The AI/VFX may be unionized. Wikipedia lists several Labor Unions to which Indonesian workers can choose to adhere [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Academic studies report a percentage of unionized worker of 11.76% (2022) (source: Ikde Farida, "The State of Indonesian Labor Unions: Navigating Dynamics and Challenges"; Japan Labor Issues 8:50, pp. 60-72, 2024 [2]https://www.jil.go.jp/english/... [jil.go.jp] )
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:National_trade_union_centers_of_Indonesia
[2] https://www.jil.go.jp/english/jli/documents/2024/050-06.pdf
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The country most famously known for railway unions successfully insisting on the retention of the "second man" (the Fireman) long after steam was replaced by diesel and electric locomotives was the United States.
Powerful railroad brotherhoods argued the position was still necessary for "safety "and as an "assistant to the engineer."
This led to a decades-long labor dispute over "featherbedding" that was ultimately resolved by federal arbitration in the 1960s, finally allowing the railroads to phase out the p
All right, but is it any good? (Score:3)
All right, that's nice for them, but is it any good? I listen to some AI generated stories on youtube sometimes. They're fairly short and confined to a single topic. They are usually "fine" as I don't have high expectations for them. Are they great? Heck no! I'm glad I didn't have to pay for them. So if the Indonesian movies are like that, I'm not going to be wanting to see them. I hope he's doing that for his own people who can't pay much.
Re: All right, but is it any good? (Score:2)
I've seen some documentaries on YouTube that are narrated and probably at least partially produced with AI. They might have been interesting, but I would never pay to see them. Most video I see made with AI is just short clips generated from a still frame. Not long enough takes to really see it as "video". Reminds me more of animated gifs.
If Hollywood studio heads think this is the future and they will someday be doing the same thing, I hope they are prepared to start making the same salaries their Indonesi
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I think that if they're actually generating feature length films, they'll probably be decent...well, not much worse than what they've been doing. Films are expensive not just to shoot, but also to make, so I expect there'll be lots of steps where "editorial judgement" is applied.
OTOH, I'm not a movie goer. I don't know the current quality. And Ed Wood is a level it's pretty hard to go below.
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I could be convinced to pay a dollar to watch something that an AI shit out that was packaged as a feature film. I can't say they would get a second dollar out of me, but it would be one dollar more than I've spend on Indonesian films otherwise, so it does represent an incredible amount of growth for the industry.
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You mean the one that produced $400M in box office sales in 2023? That industry?
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Indonesia is a Muslim country with approx the same population of USA, but sharia-law & a yearly theater box-office less than 10% of ours. Indonesia really does-not-count as a media mover, so their use of movie.ai fades into noise. When a country ( like China ) with a proven record of world-class films begins slurping *.ai into their art then movie-goers can start to worry. BTW// I do not consider integrated CGI-crafted catastrophes as "ai".
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Indonesia did give us The Raid and it's sequel which are both fantastic action pieces. The sequel in particular has one of my favorite little making-of sequences [1]with the camera guy disguised as a car seat [youtube.com].
If anything though the creativity here is stuff that AI can't quite reproduce IMO. It's visceral in that way that only in-camera work can do.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxb9xzAaYjM
Netflix filler (Score:2)
Netflix is full of cheap Asian action movies, or just cheap action movies full stop. The sort that get a solid 5.8 on IMDB. With so many channels and platforms to fill I have to wonder who is actually watching some of this stuff
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It's getting harder to find anything good to watch anymore.
Only problem is the dialog is in Klingon (Score:2)
With subtitles in Dothraki.
"Hollywood-style Movies" (Score:2)
I'm not really seeing a problem with AI-generated superheros, wisecracks, and explosions.
Nor how we will tell the difference ...
how can it be worse? (Score:2)
I don't see how chatGPT for scriptwriting, Midjourney for image generation, and Runway for video storyboarding can possibly extrude out more shat than Hollywood's never ending, plotless remakes.
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While it had a plot, I thought the latest MI movie sucked ass.
Ironically, it featured an AI as a central character.
Coincidence?
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And this is why you shouldn't abruptly discontinue your meds
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this is how i feel. adblock works or the tab closes. if youtube succeeded in their war on adblockers I would never use youtube again.
a spiked baseball bat down my urethra is preferable to submitting to mindrape at the behest of advertisers.
IF YOU WORK IN MARKETING PLEASE KILL YOURSELF - bill hicks
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY