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Emmy Award-winning Video Editor | award-winning Screenwriter | AI Filmmaker and Consultant
Very proud to share my newest film Mnemonade -- which won first prize at the Culver Cup competition organized by AWS Startups and FBRC.ai I challenged myself with this film to create the most compelling and emotional dialogue scene that anyone has ever seen in an AI film (no big deal 🤷♂️). But the tools to achieve realistic lip-sync with AI are only half the battle, as writing good dialogue scenes take years of practice. This led me to the conclusion that there are 3 paths for AI filmmaking in the near future… Path 1: People will try making AI films, realize that filmmaking is hard, and stop. Path 2: People will keep going and actually learn filmmaking. This will take time, but AI workflows will be incorporated in film school programs. PATH 3: People will hire skilled professionals. It’s my belief that we will need more VFX artists, editors and writers, not less, due to the explosion of content that’s coming. Currently when I work with my commercial agency Secret Level on a project, we use multiple VFX artists. If you are a VFX artist and you align yourself with the AI community, I think you can work everyday if you want to. As for the inspiration for the film… my grandmother Judy passed away about one year ago at the age of 93 with dementia. Her husband, my grandfather, passed away in the 1980s. I visited her last year in the assisted living home she was in and watched as she experienced vivid hallucinations from her past. I thought that maybe I captured a little bit of what it was like for her in the flashback scenes in Mnemonade. Guillermo del Toro recently claimed that AI-generated films couldn't evoke deep emotions by stating, "Are they going to make them cry because they lost a son? A mother? F*** no!" Several people came up to me after my film was shown and told me how they lost a loved one to dementia and that the film made them cry. I’m a fan of Guillermo’s work, but the reason why he made that quote about AI film is because he just hasn’t seen the proof yet. In the past 2 years of AI video’s infancy, the tech has outshined the story. That’s on me, and creators like myself, who have come from traditional filmmaking backgrounds and embraced AI, but have not used it to its full potential. As early as we may be, it’s our job to create content where the story speaks louder than the tools used to tell it. My hope is that Guillermo and others see work like this and realize its potential. The filmmaking pipeline in Hollywood is too small for today’s technology, and it’s about to get a lot bigger. Companies and platforms are stepping up to provide the tools needed to lift new voices and stories up out of obscurity. If you want to be one of those voices, the biggest thing you can do to help yourself is to learn the fundamentals of filmmaking. AI tools change frequently, but the fundamentals of storytelling do not. So get started and have fun. And to quote Rob Schneider from the movie Waterboy, “You can do it!” 🫶