“The hardest Hollywood truth I have had to come to terms with is that no one is going to come and save me.”
“I’m going to have to save myself.”
“I talk to so many young writers and directors who think someone needs to pluck them from obscurity so they can begin their careers. That’s just not true. Nothing is holding you back except your willingness to work hard and to create new things to show people. Start with small budgets, write things you can shoot. Then build from there. Get really good, get undeniable. Sure, to have a career in Hollywood a little luck is involved, too. But I am a firm believer in making your own luck.”
Keep learning.
Keep creating new things.
Keep putting yourself out there.
Be your own advocate and your own voice.
Stay relevant.
He concludes with, “It is on you. You’re the hero of your story.”
My take: I really needed to be reminded of this, this week. Thanks, Jason.
CyberJungle, the Youtube channel of Hamburg-based Senior IT Product Manager Cihan Unur, recently posted a great video on consistent generated characters.
There are lots of great insights in this 20-minute video. Two outstanding takeaways:
First: a prompting guide for Flux.1. At 15:28 he reveals three prompting styles: list, natural language and hybrid.
Second: a guidance guide for Flux.1. At 17:18 he shows Photorealistic and Cinematic images with a wide scope of guidance values. He posits:
“The essence of guidance setting is a compromise or a balance between photo realism and prompt understanding.”
My take: to me, too often generated images look over-the-top and so ideal, they’re unrealistic. The key seems to be dialing the guidance down to two. Who knew? Now, you do.
My take: a lot of people will immediately claim this is heresy, and threatens the very foundations of cinema as we’ve come to know it over the last one hundred years. And they would be right. And yet, time marches on. I believe some variation of this is the future of ultra-low budget production. Very soon the quality will surpass the shoddy CGI that many multi-million dollar Hollywood productions have been foisting on us lately.
Love it or hate it, as of August 2024, AI Video still has a long way to go.
In this video, AI Samson lays out the current AI Video Pipeline. Although there are a few fledgling story-building tools in development, full-featured “story mode” is not yet available in AI video generators. The current pipeline is:
Create the first and last frames of your clips
Animate the clips between these frames
Create audio and lip-sync the clips
Upscale the clips
Create music and SFX
Edit everything together offline.
It seems new platforms emerge weekly but AI Samson makes these recommendations:
My take: You know, the current pipeline makes me think of an animation pipeline. It’s eerily similar to the Machinima pipeline I used to create films in the sandbox mode of the video game The Movies over ten years ago:
Folks who follow this blog, know that I love Telefilm‘s Talent to Watch competition. It remains your best chance at funding your first feature film in Canada.
Until they allowed direct submissions from underrepresented folks two years ago, this is normally a two-stage process. Each of approximately 70 industry partners get to forward one (and sometimes two or three) projects to Telefilm and then the Talent to Watch jury selects eighteen or so for funding.
The prize? $250,000. One quarter of a million dollars.
Don’t belong to one of the Industry Partners? No problem!
The Chilliwack Independent Film Festival has got you covered. Launched last year, Pitch Sessions lets you throw your first feature project into the ring; five are selected to then pitch in person at the festival and the winner becomes CIFF’s nominee to Telefilm’s next Talent to Watch competition.
Oh yah, the top five also get free passes and a hotel room for the festival.
My take: If you’ve got a spare $100 and you want to hone your pitch in public, this is a great opportunity. Note that each industry partner sets their own rules but this is the only one I know of that incorporates a live pitch. Just be aware that Telefilm typically doesn’t open the Talent to Watch competition until mid-April.
BANFF Spark provides market access, training, and networking opportunities to help build more Canadian women-owned media businesses.
“Since the program began in 2019, BANFF Spark has already provided opportunities for more than 200 women entrepreneurs. The program is open to all candidates and is designed to empower women of colour, Indigenous women, women with disabilities, 2SLGBTQI+ women, and non-binary individuals.”
All selected participants will receive:
Online workshops (that address the core components of business development).
Networking opportunities with top industry professionals.
A full-access pass to the 2025 Banff World Media Festival (June 8-11, 2025) and its complement of top industry sessions and international marketplace.
A $1500 CAD travel stipend to attend the 2025 Banff World Media Festival
(on the condition of in-person Festival attendance).
He begins, “This morning, a really lovely NFS reader reached out to me and wanted my opinion on a program called ScriptReader.AI, which charges $10 for a complete screenplay breakdown.”
He uploads one of his scripts and in two hours gets extensive coverage. It appears the AI’s method is to rate each scene and then average the scores. His script gets a “Recommend.”
However, Jason is not impressed. He concludes:
“Computers cannot think and feel. They have zero sense of nuance. And you cannot take their coverage seriously. No matter how nice it is. AI coverage is worthless!”
My take: the ScriptReader.ai website woefully undersells its capabilities. It certainly looks sketchy. But you can test out three scenes for free.
And then there’s a link in the top right corner of the website labelled “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?_” I recognized this as a reference to WarGames in which Matthew Broderick unwittingly provokes WWIII.
With some trepidation, I clicked on the link.
This brought me to a page titled “SceneProv_” with two modes, Fun and Training.
I decided to have some fun and generate a scene for a RomCom. The AI, suddenly my writing partner, set the scene and populated it with two characters. My interactions are bolded.
“Genre selected: romance
INT. COFFEE SHOP – DAY
JEN sits at a table with a book, sipping on her latte. She notices AIDEN walk in and their eyes meet.
JEN:
(smiling)
Hey!
AIDEN:
(nervously)
Hi! Can I sit here?
JEN:
(surprised)
Uh, sure!
AIDEN sits across from Jen and they strike up a conversation.
AIDEN: I noticed you’re reading “Do Androids Dream of Sheep?”.
JEN: Yup. It’s my favourite book.
Her eyes glitch.
AIDEN: Do you want to go back to my place?
JEN:
(surprised)
Excuse me?
AIDEN:
(smiling)
Not like that. I have a first edition copy of that book. I’d love to show it to you.
JEN:
(relieved)
Oh, sure. That sounds great.
INT. AIDEN’S PLACE – NIGHT
Aiden and Jen are sitting on the couch, looking at the first edition. Her eyes glitch again.
AIDEN Jen, why do your eyes “glitch?”
JEN What do you mean?
AIDEN Well, every once in a while they kinda spark.
Are you hiding something from me?
Jen looks at Aiden angrily and stands up quickly.
JEN:
(angrily)
No, I’m not hiding anything! It’s just a glitch in my synthetic retinas. I’m an android.
AIDEN:
(surprised)
An android? I had no idea.
JEN:
(sadly)
I know, it’s not exactly a desirable trait in the dating world.
AIDEN:
(smiling)
Well, I’m not like most guys. I think it’s pretty cool, to be honest.
Jen’s eyes glitch again, this time in surprise.
JEN:
(surprised)
Really?
AIDEN:
(nodding)
Really. Plus, I always thought I’d make a great cyborg myself.
Jen smiles and takes Aiden’s hand, feeling grateful for the first time to have found someone who accepts her for who she really is.
They continue to look at the book, their fingers touching.
Aiden turns to Jen, looking into her eyes.
AIDEN:
(softly)
You know, I may not be able to dream like you do, but
I have a feeling this is the beginning of something special.
JEN:
(smiling)
I have that feeling, too.
They lean in and share a kiss, the start of their unconventional love story.”
And then it rated “our” scene a B+. This AI passes the Turing Test for sure.
