Wonder, a London-based creative studio that uses AI to make films for entertainment and advertising, has raised $3m pre-seed funding led by LocalGlobe.
Other investors in the round include Australian VC Blackbird, Mati Staniszewski, cofounder of AI voice startup ElevenLabs, Laura Modiano, head of startups at OpenAI, Ammaar Reshi, design lead at Google DeepMind. Oscar-nominated Straight Outta Compton producer, S. Leigh Savidge, Michael Richards, the former head of Paramount in Europe, and Ross Dinerstein, the CEO and founder of Campfire studios, also invested.
Wonder was founded by chief creative officer Justin Hackney, a BAFTA-winning filmmaker who used to be the creative director at ElevenLabs, and CEO Xavier Collins, who is also the founding partner of Lumiere Ventures, a London-based VC which specialises in acquiring intellectual property (IP) rights from action films.
Like a traditional creative studio specialising in video content, Wonder’s team collaborates with artists and companies to develop films from scripts. Wonder’s eight “creative producers” use a variety of publicly available GenAI models such as text-to-video generators Midjourney and Runway to develop footage for them, including animation films and live action features.
Wonder also makes “pure AI films” with voiceover actors, and adds effects to videos shot and produced using traditional methods.
The problems Wonder wants to solve
For a project it is currently working on to develop an animation for a children’s short video, a traditional three-minute film would cost its filmmaker up to $100k. Wonder charges £10k-£20k, allowing storytellers “to make proof of concepts, and eventually a series at a radically reduced cost,” Collins told Sifted.
In the case of animations, Wonder uses a combination of human direction and multiple AI tools to develop visual materials from scratch. For non-“pure-AI” films, it uses AI to add special effects to existing video footage. These effects can include elements typically added after filming, like an explosion in a skyscraper or a monster appearing in a scene, said Hackney, who’s also the founder of Realdreams, a global community of artists and developers using AI.
In traditional filmmaking, adding visual effects is complex. It requires adjusting lighting, obtaining the correct materials and movement control (rigging). Wonder allows customers to test and develop concepts “at the beginning of the production process,” which ultimately results in higher-quality films, Collins said.
“We’re not trying to build an automation machine for AI content […] we’re here to make the best movies that just would never have been possible before this technology existed,” Collins told Sifted. The company is also exploring gaming-style and immersive filmmaking formats.
Wonder’s approach is also much better for the environment, Hackney said. It’s “really energy efficient” because team members don’t need to travel to multiple filming locations to create special effects. This significantly cuts down on travel-related emissions — especially for “pure AI” live action films where traditional methods would require moving cast and crew to different settings.
How does it make money?
Wonder charges independent producers, production companies and companies wanting to outsource advertising a service fee. It makes short films (five to seven minutes), brand content (30 – 90 seconds), trailers and teasers (30 – 60 seconds) and documentary footage (30 minutes).
It plans to develop its own feature films in collaboration with independent artists (with creators paying a reduced service fee), gain intellectual property rights to the footage and license it out to streaming platforms. The majority of its customers are UK based, but it also has some in Sweden and the US.
Wonder is currently partnering with ElevenLabs “as a visual product arm” on an undisclosed project.
It will reinvest some of the $3m into filmmakers who Wonder will collaborate with to produce original content, while also buying and developing AI tools to automate workflows “so we can really start to unlock our own internal studio — Pixar 2.0,” Collins said.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/elevenlabs-openai-and-deepmind-angels-wonder/
