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Winners of the Zinemaldia & Technology Startup Challenge from San Sebastian

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Lithuanian sound design platform Sonic Alchemist won the European competition at this year’s Zinemaldia & Technology Startup Challenge in San Sebastian. Spanish dubbing software Dubme won the section’s domestic competition. Both projects raised €10,000 ($11,168).

A special entrepreneurial prize of €3,000 ($3,350) was awarded to Danish company Kaspar K1, an editing program that allows filmmakers to sift through thousands of hours of footage using text prompts.

In addition to their cash prizes, this year’s winners are also conditionally eligible to receive free access to an incubation space during the first year following their visit to one of the Business Innovation Centers (BIC) belonging to the Basque Technology Park Network. They are now also eligible for possible financing of up to €500,000 ($559,000) to develop their project with grants managed by the Basque BIC network and supported by the Basque Ministry of Economic Development, Sustainability and Environment through the SPRI and the Provincial Councils.

The San Sebastian Film Festival launched the Zinemaldia & Technology Startup Challenge in 2019, with the first winner being an AI-based company, LargoAI. In the five years since, little seems to have changed, except that AI has gone from a buzzy piece of technology to the most talked-about force in the audiovisual industry. San Sebastian is no different, where every Zinemaldia & Tech pitch, roundtable and water cooler discussion seemed to focus on artificial intelligence.

With its ubiquitous rise, AI has become a bogeyman for many working in the industry. No one at Thursday’s presentations pretended otherwise, and many of the day’s pitches included assurances that their software had been developed within an ethical and legal framework. If it didn’t come up during a pitch, the first question from the event’s judging panels was often about the legality of the product being promoted.

Another trend that featured heavily in the day’s discussions was the rise of independent content creators as a commercial force in the screen industry. Nearly half of the day’s pitches were not only aimed at major media companies, but also included B2C business plans for solo digital-first content creators such as YouTubers, influencers and independent animators.

This year’s European winner, Sonic Alchemist, uses computer vision to synchronize and adjust sound effects for film, creating editable multitrack sketches. Kaspar K1 works like a search engine that searches an editor’s footage library looking for specific shots and ultimately enables AI-generated rough edits using the original footage.

Other European pitches came from Filmanize, a UK-based company developing a platform that allows filmmakers to streamline the filmmaking process by making processes of pre-production, script analysis and call sheet creation semi-automated. Phont is a German-developed software that evolves the long-unchanged art of displaying subtitles by using AI to liven up text on the screen, similar to how comic book fonts are used to convey emotion on the page. Thol is a sound design package for content creators and businesses that scans video footage and creates sound effects to match the on-screen action.

The Spanish winner Dubme was one of the most professional pitches of the day, delivered by company director Elías Moreno, a former YouTube manager for Southern Europe of ten years. Dubme’s ambitious goal is to “remove language barriers in professional audiovisual content using artificial intelligence and human professionals” by streamlining and dramatically reducing the cost of dubbing.

Fellow Spanish startup Current Anima received a special mention. The software package allows users to create virtual 3D videos using text prompts. Emotional Movies – from Spanish professor Octopus AI Lab – is a new audiovisual format between video games and movies that monitors users’ emotions to adapt to what is happening on the screen. Hulahoop is an investment platform that allows any user to invest in film projects and provide a return on investment by cataloging each person’s stake via blockchain. The final pitch of the day came from Vocality, which creates cloned voices with generative AI.

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