This week on The Filmmakers Podcast, hosts Giles Alderson and Dom Lenoir chatted with Enfys Dickinson and Stephen Follows about their experiences at the legendary Cannes Film Festival. They also discussed shifting industry trends and AI in filmmaking.
Cannes: Art, Business, and Social
You might assume that Cannes is all about premieres, champagne, and paparazzi moments. And for some it is, but for Giles, “Cannes is business.”
And Dom shared that while he’s “there to do meetings. Sometimes you want to experience everyone celebrating cinema and joy…”
For Stephen, there are “business, art, and social” Cannes, and you have to choose which one to partake in. Whether it’s pitching a project, hosting a private teaser screening, or catching the right person at the right party, every conversation matters. “We were fully packaged, financed, cast… looking for a home,” Enfys shares about her current $30 million studio-level independent production. She adds, “It’s all about the fastest route to ‘yes.’”
Being Prepared
Whether it’s booking meetings, booking decent accommodation getting the right pass, or RSVPing to events, planning can make or break your trip. Dom shared a tip: “If you want to meet busy people, set that up in advance – and convince them it’s worth giving you one of their slots.”
Stephen shared insight on the badge system: “If you’re a member of the press, you apply for a press badge. For the festival one, you have to prove yourself with IMDB credit. This year they rejected an actor friend who’s been working for 20 years because they said he wasn’t producing enough.”
Giles shared that, for him: “ Things happen because you’re just chatting and being natural. Not coming in going, I need to sell something. This applies to all festivals.” And Enfys summed up by saying: “Know what you’re pitching. Get your two-minute pitch down to 30/ 40 seconds.”
American Films, Tariffs, and Incentives
The panel then discussed international tariffs and how national incentives shape where films get made. Stephen explains, “Lots of big American films have been shooting outside America, mostly the UK and Canada… Hollywood is losing productions for various reasons.” But the question remains, how do you decide if a film is American? What makes it American?
Stephen shared the complexity of defining a film’s nationality: “Marvel Studios had a fund to produce up to 10 films, not all from the US. Does that mean Marvel Studios movies are not American films? How are you defining it beyond a cultural test, for tax incentives?”
The Future of Filmmaking
An interesting part of the podcast centred around the role of artificial intelligence in film production. Giles shared that Stephen sent him a clip, “made in AI. The acting is unbelievable. Action, set pieces, the shots, how it looked. None of it is a cartoon.”
Enfys commented that: “AI is only a threat if you don’t embrace it or have no talent. It doesn’t matter how great the tech is if you haven’t got a great story.” From a producer’s viewpoint, she shared that: “It enabled us to produce our movie in half the time, for less than a third of the budget of a studio movie. Instead of one movie in four years, we’ll do two, and those people still get to work.”
Dom pointed out the darker side, though, noting jobs already disappearing: “I know clients personally, they’ve just got rid of voice actors. They do everything through AI. They’ll pay for all the other stuff of the production, do the filming and then the VoiceOver they’ll get a robot to do. That’s become quite a worrying precedent.”
Protecting The Film Industry
The conversation moves on to the ethics and legalities around AI. Enfys says, “The contracts, with our talent, cover AI exploitation of their voice and appearance beyond the performance in a film… We were trying to figure out what was reasonable… where the talent wasn’t feeling exploited and we didn’t feel restricted.”
Stephen sees a larger industry shift on the way: “Will we have another generation where there are no new action stars compared to the pipeline we used to have? In 10 years, will we have a stasis of fame, still getting Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling but not new people?”
But we feel that it all comes back to a comment that Dom shared earlier in the episode: “The main thing is story and feeling something when you go to the cinema. If you don’t have that, people will switch off. Technology does cool stuff but if it’s not grounded in a really good story and character. And something that emotionally connects you.”
Listen to the complete episode (and see if you know the answers to the quiz) here.