Digital Hollywood: The AI & Entertainment Summit

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026

3 – 3:50 PM Eastern Time Zone

Session II: A Virtual Event

The Creativity Pipeline: AI Ideation · Visualization · Storyboards · Plot Structure, Part II

Every great film, novel, screenplay and creative project begins the same way — with an idea that needs to become something real. The journey from first spark to finished structure has always been the most challenging and most solitary part of the creative process. Until now. Artificial intelligence has fundamentally transformed the creative pipeline — from the earliest stages of ideation and concept development through visualization, storyboarding and plot structure — giving writers, filmmakers and storytellers a collaborative intelligence that never sleeps, never runs out of ideas and never stops pushing the work forward. In this session we map the complete AI-powered creative pipeline, demo the tools that are making it real and hear from the practitioners who are using it to produce work faster, bolder and more ambitiously than ever befo

Speakers:

Stacey Kelly, YouTube & Content Strategist, WatchLab, former, Viacom CBS, Moderator

Evette Vargas,  Co-founder, Indigo Reign Films. Winner of Audience Award, Cannes Showcase

Esha Bargate, President & Director,AI/VR Motion Picture Guild™ (AIVR MPG™)

Griff Furst, Creator and Executive Producer, humAIn

Dan Kovacs, Chief Experience Officer (CXO), Voia

Shaun Foster, Professor & Program Director, 3D Digital Design, Rochester Institute of Technology School of Design

Diana Colella is executive vice president of Autodesk’s Entertainment & Media vertical solutions group. In this role, she manages product, strategy and execution for the company’s portfolio servicing the film, TV and games industries. Colella has been with Autodesk for more than 20 years occupying a range of leadership roles, including head of product management and worldwide support. She has extensive experience in strategically transforming business models, creating new product offerings and optimizing processes on a global scale. Most recently, she served as vice president in Autodesk’s Business Strategy and Marketing group, leading the M&E and AutoCAD businesses, which represent more than $1B in annual recurring revenue. In this role, she drove the company’s strategy for digital conversion of non-compliant users and launched One AutoCAD. She is the executive sponsor of the Autodesk Women’s Network.