As AI looms over Hollywood, Oscar hopefuls make the case for human craft

This week, we’re looking at Universal’s “Odyssey” Oscar push, Skydance’s big week and Sofia Franklyn’s “Daddy Issues.”

As awards season heats up, senior Hollywood reporter Rebecca Keegan delivers a dispatch from a massive special event for “The Odyssey” on the Universal lot this week.

When Willie Burton needed to capture the sounds of creaking oars and lapping waves for the many seafaring scenes in “The Odyssey,” the veteran sound mixer planted microphones around a 115-foot wooden Viking ship, grabbed his gear and raincoat, and climbed into the hold.

And before shooting aboard the ship, the Swedish captain issued a warning to the actors and production workers sailing with his crew.

“He said that everything on this ship would kill you,” Burton said, addressing a packed theater on Tuesday at the premiere of the documentary “Behind the Scenes of The Odyssey.” “The crew said, ’No one survives the hold.’”

There are plenty of less dramatic ways to supply sound to a movie. But Burton was one of 10 craftspersons from “The Odyssey,” along with star Matt Damon and producer Emma Thomas, on hand to explain how they made an ancient Greek epic for 2026 audiences under the defiantly analog direction of…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/health