Oleksandr Serdyuk, CEO of the Ukrainian startup Respeecher, which helped score two Oscar-winning films — «The Brutalist» and «Emilia Perez» — told how the Ukrainian startup managed to establish cooperation with the world’s largest film productions.
Oleksandr Serdyuk, CEO of the Ukrainian startup Respeecher, which helped score two Oscar-winning films — «The Brutalist» and «Emilia Perez» — told how the Ukrainian startup managed to establish cooperation with the world’s largest film productions.
«There are several components here. The first is sound quality, because Hollywood production is about quality. To reach a world-class level, you need to focus on the most demanding client, and then understand: when you make synthesized sound, you are not optimizing some parameter, as is usually the case with AI models, not conversion or other metrics,» he said in an interview with Vector.
According to Oleksandr, the Respeecher team has combined two worlds: the world of models — the people who build these models, Deep Learning Engineers, AI Engineers, and the world of sound — «sound engineers.»
«This created what we call a feedback loop: our sound engineers influence the models. And it made it possible to create technology of a level that „passes“ a Hollywood sound engineer. When the quality is right, when the sound can be mixed in Dolby Atmos — that’s one part of the story,» he says.
The second is ethics. Hollywood, according to Alexander, has been shaken up a lot in recent years. «It’s a complex, slow, cautious market, governed by fear when it comes to AI. The best answer to fear is trust. To build a reputation for trust, quality alone is not enough,» he said.
And the third aspect that the startup team took into account was that we had to play by Hollywood rules. «Being a partner not only for big studios, small productions that are then sold to big studios, but also for those people who trust us with their voice,» he explained.
Serdyuk says that initially the startups went to the film industry and asked: «If I solve the issue of voice quality, will you use it?» Having received a positive answer, they began working on quality.
«We are one of those companies that the Screen Actors Guild respects for our approach. When the unexpected situation with Brutalist arose, which was a surprise to everyone — A24, the film crew, and the production team — my first step was to call the Screen Actors Guild. . We explained what exactly we were doing, why it was in line with the rules, and established connections between all stakeholders so that the industry worked correctly and in accordance with ethical standards,» says Oleksandr.
