San Sebastian’s Zinemaldia & Technology Startup Challenge Winners

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

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

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

The San Sebastian Film Festival launched its 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 bit of tech to the most talked-about force in the audiovisual industry. Things are no different in San Sebastian, where every Zinemaldia & Tech pitch, roundtable and watercooler discussion seemed to center on artificial intelligence.

With its ubiquitous rise, AI has become a bogeyman for many working in the industry. Nobody at Thursday’s presentations pretended otherwise, and many of the day’s pitches included assurances that their software was developed within an ethical and legal framework. When it wasn’t addressed during a pitch, the first question from the event’s panels of judges was often about the legality of the product being promoted.

Another trend common in many of the day’s discussions was the rise of independent content creators as a commercial force in the screen industries. Nearly half of the day’s pitches were designed not only for large media companies but 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 adapt sound effects for film, creating editable multitrack sketches. Kaspar K1 works like a search engine that scans through an editor’s library of footage for specific shots and will eventually allow for AI-generated rough cuts using the original footage.

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

Spanish winner Dubme was one of the day’s most professional pitches, delivered by company executive Elías Moreno, a former 10-year YouTube executive for Southern Europe. Dubme’s ambitious goal is to “eliminate language barriers in professional audiovisual content using artificial intelligence and human professionals” by streamlining and drastically lowering the cost of dubbing.

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