The Wizard of Oz premiered at the Las Vegas Sphere on Wednesday with
the help of Google Cloud, Veo, Imagen and Gemini.
Using versions of Google's technology, the teams and partners developed an AI-based “super resolution” tool to turn tiny 1939
celluloid frames into ultra-high-definition imagery. Imagine what the technology could do for advertising.
The transformation highlights AI's creative potential for advertising
without replacing the human touch.
“AI is influencing every part of the media and entertainment industry,” Buzz Hays, Google Cloud’s global lead for entertainment
industry solutions, told MediaPost.
Since the Wizard of Oz at Sphere is a showcase of Google's most advanced AI and cloud capabilities, he expects that innovations and lessons
learned from this large-scale, high-fidelity project will inevitably trickle down and influence tools, capabilities, and expectations across advertising.
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“The ability of AI to enhance
resolution, extend backgrounds, and even generate consistent character performances for The Wizard of Oz at Sphere is directly transferable to marketing and advertising,”
Hays said.
Experts said the AI models substantially improve resolutions. Hays believes marketers could leverage similar AI tools to upscale existing ad creative, automate creative variations,
produce hyper-realistic assets, and create new ad formats.
Performance generation was used to show a character in a frame that was not there in the original movie. Not all agree with the
"what-if" concept, which is highlighted in the comments of the behind the scene creation video.
For creators, this project
shows that high-end production techniques will soon be within reach.
Previously, techniques like super-resolution and the AI-powered image editing technique called outpainting required
specialized visual effects studios. As Google's AI models become more accessible, these capabilities could eventually be used by creators.
Major studios are working with Google on a variety of
AI initiatives, and numerous brands and agencies use the products to create ads, he said.
For example, eToro, the trading and investing platform, partnered with Google to launch a TV and
YouTube advertising campaign fully created using Veo 2, Google DeepMind’s advanced video generation technology.
Hays said that for Sphere, Google used a “super resolution”
tool, versions of Veo, Imagen and Gemini that the company has been developing focused on media applications.
For the “Wizard of Oz” production, Google took the original frames and
enhanced it to ultra high-definition imagery, 16K x 16K resolution, for Sphere. The technology turned the tiny celluloid frames from 1939 into ultra-ultra-high-definition imagery.
Assets for
the production of The Wizard of Oz at Sphere live on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Sphere relies on Google Cloud's scalable infrastructure to support the massive data
processing and real-time rendering required for an immersive experience like this. The final version of the film will live on server hardware inside Sphere for playback.
The project had many
obstacles such as storage space and processing limitations.
Reimagining a work of art like ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for the 160,000 sq. ft. screen that wraps up, over and
around the audience required a ton of creative problem-solving.
After Google worked with the teams at Sphere and Magnopus to develop the AI-based super resolution tool to transform the frames
from 1939 into high-definition imagery, the AI outpainting process expanded the scope of scenes to fill the space and fill in the gaps created by camera cuts and framing limitations. Through
performance generation, the team incorporated composites of those famed performances into the expanded images.