6.2 AFX Elite- Business Concept

AFX Elite, the conceptual audio effects company seeks to use machine learning to create quick and easy sound design for your budget film production. Just give us your video and we'll do the rest - cleaning up background noise, adding in footsteps and appropriate foley, as well as sound mixing service are provided by our company. With our extensive library of sounds and patented algorithm, we create quick and clean audio to serve your filming needs, whether you're an aspiring wedding videographer, or an indie filmmaker. 

Our Market: 
- Smaller-budget film production companies, indie filmmakers, home-movie makers who want better sound in their videos. 

Do they already exist? 
- Yes

How about the technology? 
- Yes, and this video is a cool example of it. 

What specific needs, wants, desires, and hopes do they have? (The Market)
- cheaper cost, and short time-frame.
- having good quality audio even with a lower budget (especially home videos).
- even though smartphone video quality has improved by a lot, their audio quality is still very much lacking. AFX Elite can help recreate or enhance the sounds that phone cameras miss out on. 

What are their limitations, strengths, and prejudices?
- There might be the initial impression that robots are unable to adequately solve their problem. But that's also why each project done by AFX Elite has a human sound designer monitoring the process and checking its work. The AI also learns from each project and adds to its library.
- If the client's videos don't have sufficient visual data for the AI to process, such as having things happening out of frame or blurry visuals, it might have trouble figuring out what sounds to add or take out. 

What roles do designers play? 
- AFX Elite would still hire a full staff of sound designers to monitor and check the AI's work, intervening wherever necessary. We would also need to continually add to our sound library, and this work will still be done by sound designers.

Are there roles for artists?
- AFX Elite will also have a cast of voice artists for voiceover or dubbing work, and can help fill in missing spoken audio in a video.
- AFX Elite would also have recording studios for a filmmaker's actors to come in and re-record voice lines when needed.

What role does machine learning and artificial intelligence play? 
- The machine learning algorithm will be used to fill in the majority of audio needed in a scene. It will be trained on what types of background noises are appropriate to different scenes, and does the tedious and repetitive work of filling in perfectly-synced footsteps in each scene where it is required.

How do these integrate and function? 
- The sound designers and the machine learning algorithm will work together to create the audio for video clips, with the algorithm helping with the more repetitive tasks, and the human designer checking the work and helping it improve. 

Other considerations: 
This proposed business seems like a viable and profitable plan, with the main target being filmmakers with a lower budget for audio mixing. Sound designers are able to free themselves from the more tedious tasks, and focus on other tasks. 

References: 
MITCSAIL. (2016). Visually-Indicated Sounds. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FW99AQmMc8 [Accessed 26 Dec. 2018]