- Buzz-generating AI startup Runway wants to revolutionize video creation and editing.
- Filmmakers and creators have turned to this startup to make video editing more efficient.
- Runway co-founder Cristóbal Valenzuela shares his vision for how the platform empowers creators.
All sorts of AI startups are popping up in hopes of simplifying video creation and editing.
But Runway is one of the most talked about. He recently announced a $141 million funding round at a valuation of $1.5 billion. It is also popular among VCs and creator economy professionals.
“We’re not investors, but when the runway was in its early stages, this deal was at the top of my ‘I wish I had a fund back then’ list,” said creator-focused fund Knight. Ventures general partner Ben Matthews said. January Insider.
The idea for Runway came from the co-founders’ backgrounds at the intersection of art and technology, and the trio spent seven years developing tools to integrate AI into film and video production, well before AI became a hot topic in mainstream media. has been built.
Runway co-founder Cristóbal Valenzuela shared with Insider about some of the key features the platform offers, how it was developed, and the company’s vision for the future of filmmaking.
Valenzuela said Runway’s research is focused on facilitating storytelling in two ways. One is to help you “see the world” with video editing, and the other is to “generate something into the world” with content generation.
At its current stage, Runway has clients such as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, VFX artists from the Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once, and creators like MrBeast.
What Runway Offers to Creators and Editors
Runway has a function called “AI magic tool” that not only generates images, but also enlarges images, moves them, slows down videos, erases and replaces objects in images. can be done.
Editing-wise, Runway runs in the browser, so video editor Quinn Murphy, who works with pop star Alicia Keys, helped edit on the go.
Another feature Murphy used was the “green screen”. This is a tool that simplifies rotoscoping, the historically time-consuming task of isolating a subject in a video and changing the background. In traditional video editing, this happens frame by frame, but Runway’s AI can do it automatically.
It’s also the tool VFX video creator Kevin Parry used to edit the Netflix logo behind one of his YouTube videos.
On the creative side, Runway announced Gen-1, a tool that enables editing between videos. Users can upload captured video content and change its style through text prompts, effectively generating unlimited new videos.
For example, Martin Haerlin, who describes himself as an “AI-powered director” on Instagram, makes heavy use of video-to-video creation.
“This is a perfect example. The video needed the first iPhone shot he recorded and the text prompts,” Valenzuela said. “There is no pre-processing, no post-processing.”
The next step for Runway is a text-to-video model called Gen-2. This allows you to generate an entire video from a text prompt. Although the product is in its early stages and can only produce rudimentary videos at the moment, directors like Paul Trillo are already using it to create short films.
“Think of it as a new kind of camera,” says Valenzuela. “We are in his early 1910s black-and-white camera phase. The camera works, it catches the light, you can see something, but it is still silent and not good for long sequences. yeah.”
Runway wants to develop Gen-2 so that users can generate all kinds of content, and Valenzuela expects it to fundamentally change the creative process.
However, Gen-2’s goal is not to completely eliminate human input from the creative process.
“A common misconception is that if you type ‘tell me a Star Wars movie,’ just one text will generate a three-hour Star Wars movie,” Valenzuela says. says. “You can shoot faster because you don’t have to be on set to shoot, but you still have to have an idea of how you want the video to be put together and what story you want to tell. yeah.”
