Another session of Breaking the AI Barrier, with Ari Kuschnir, the film-school-trained storyteller who founded the production company Missing Pieces two decades ago and now makes widely shared AI-generated satirical videos. Kuschnir walks the group through his working method and urges participants to subscribe to a cheap tier of a tool such as ElevenLabs, Midjourney or Veo and actually make something, on the grounds that the craft now reduces to combining an image, a sound and a motion pass. He raises the ethics of training data, pointing to Moonvalley as a fully licensed model, while noting it does not address energy use. Pinchbeck argues that the tech oligarchs' move into government reflects insecurity, since AI is democratizing the advantages their fortunes rest on, citing DeepSeek, BYD and TikTok.
Guest: Ari Kuschnir
In brief
- Kuschnir argues that generative AI has become simple enough that anyone willing to spend twenty minutes with a tool can make work, and that ideas and execution now matter more than technical access.
- He contends that culture is stuck in a postmodern malaise in which every imagined future is a worse version of the present, and that his AI work is an attempt to produce positive visions instead.
- Kuschnir points to Moonvalley as an ethically licensed model that solves the training-data problem for client work but not the energy consumption problem.
- Pinchbeck compares the current moment to the early internet and warns that the window closed once Facebook, Google and Twitter enclosed it, arguing the same enclosure could happen again.
- Pinchbeck theorizes that the tech oligarchs merged with the US government out of insecurity rather than confidence, because AI is commoditizing the assets their fortunes depend on.
- Kuschnir observes that AI-generated period pieces only convince from roughly the 1920s onward, since audiences read anything predating the film camera as costume drama.
Full text
All they do is just here's the tool, here's how you use it, and it's I it's gotten so simple that it's worth trying because it demystifies it. Um, and it opens up creative portals for you. So I would encourage everyone here if you're doing the course with Daniel, it's not just about understanding with the mind like what AI is and having these different speakers like me come in and but like really try the stuff, you know, and I'm happy to show you under the hood um of how I make some of the videos and you'll see that I mean the the big thing is the ideas and the execution and yes I have a unique maybe storytelling gift but anyone pretty much here can do what can make these things in their own to their best of their abilities. You know, it's pretty simple in as far as getting an image, getting a sound, putting an image with a sound together, turning a still with into a video, you know, this kind of thing. Um, it's all doable.
So, so part of what AI is part of what this generative AI stuff is doing um is that democratization. Of course, that comes with some consequences and there's some negative stuff to talk about and there's some ethical models now like uh Moon Valley came out in the last two weeks. Those are friends of mine who want to do the a clean ethical model where everything is licensed and therefore you can use it for clients or you can feel good about it. um doesn't solve the energy consumption part, but it solves the ethical part. You know, this kind of thing. So, in any case, I just want to encourage everyone here to just pick a tool and play with it like Daniel's saying, you know, and and see what comes up.
spend 20 minutes, you know, like watch a demo, watch how to use 11 Labs, how to use Mid Journey, how to use V3, and just subscribe to the basic 5 $10 version and try a few things. Well, I my feeling is that we're kind of at one of those moments like in the early days of the internet when suddenly there is all this potential available and if sort of the people don't you know sees that potential ultimately that that the window closes as it did when like Facebook and and and sort of Google and Twitter kind of enclosed you know the internet we kind of never gained it back that's why I'm so interested in in vibe coding and the possibility that we can make even like sharing platforms or democracy platforms because essentially things that used to cost like bazillions of dollars are now basically free. And that does not mean that there aren't expenses with like marketing and hosting and so on. But um yeah, I mean that's um my own my own interest is could we you know use a set of these tools to kind of flip the script on the um the culture. One of my theories as to why the tech oligarchs felt the need to kind of merge with the US government, kind of take over the government from the inside is not that they were feeling so secure about their future, but but seeing the trajectory of AI, they were actually feeling pretty insecure because they realized that a lot of the things that they had, you know, made huge fortunes on were also going to be democratized.
And we've seen that, you know, with China and with like Deep Seek. I mean I mean um yeah, China is kind of like outdoing a lot of American tech right now, you know, whether it's the BYD cars which are cheap way cheaper than Tesla or um Tik Tok which is you know outperformed Instagram and so on. So I think there's a lot of trepidation in this tech world and there sort of merger with the government as an attempt to kind of like just grab the reigns of power in like a permanent way so the the the sort of people the individuals don't have that opportunity to kind of turn the table on them and I think what Ari has been doing is really mind-blowing and I have to admit at first I was like you know not quite sure what I thought I I still have my own little bit of qualms in terms of like uh because we always end up focus focusing again and again on Musk and Trump, you know, and I end up watching videos about them every day and I was like, Jesus, like, you know, even this this vision of Trump becoming spiritual or Musk awakening, I was like, isn't it just like ultimately more Musk and more Trump? But the more that I've sat with it and and seen the recent ones and some of the even more maybe less mascul ones you've done like uh the one about your Jeff and so on, the more I think it's really really amazing and um yeah like very visually compelling, very funny um shift something in people's minds when they see them for the first time. So I'm really happy that you could join us and I really appreciate uh what you got to to share with us.
I'm going to, you know, pass the mic over to you and you can share your screen if you want and whatever feels good. Yeah, maybe like a quick introduction for those who don't know. Um I um I'm a storyteller. I went to film school. Um I fell in love with editing in film school. I, you know, started a production company 20 years ago called Missing Pieces at the when when when the first revolution of we can make our we can edit with our own cameras and you know in our laptops, shoot with our cameras, edit in our laptops and upload it and You Tube had just come out and Vimeo had just come out and it like Daniel's saying there was a a a new wave of like the promise of like the creators and the people can make stuff and millions will watch it and it'll be democratized and the big ideas will rise to the top and of course like the market speaks and the you know things happen and um it in some ways it hasn't quite panned out like that but I have always had this bent toward um for the last maybe 10 years I've been with this I kind of going back to this idea of like how can we imagine a better world is possible how can we um create more positive visions of the future in the culture.
I feel like um and Daniel's spoken about this like we're kind of stuck in postmodern malas and a kind of uh uh you know show me all the problems but none of the solutions and and this is bad for us like that that all the futures we see are shittier versions of the future and that um we're kind of stuck in this kind of doom scroll like there's just not a lot of alternatives to like news which is essentially bad news and uh our are polarization which is you know being led by the algorithms and and and AI and um dystopia in the culture you know so the nihilism dystopia all these things so I really felt like with the with AI um it's for me it started it was a call to do this and it started with me playing with my daughter um with it you know she was five and she wanted to do a show about cats going on adventures and we made these little animated things and it was so much fun because I felt like a kid again making them. And I remember why I was in the thing in the first place. You kind of forget, you know. Um I felt the childlike wonder, the play for play's sake, the creativity for creativity sake. I mean, I feel like we all can connect to that.
And that's what this generative AI tools were doing for me. Um, so I really experimented with this for a while trying things out and what I realized is I could what because I was so fast because I'm an editor and because I have these ideas and could see the polarization and could see kind of like Daniel very meta can kind of like look at what's happening. Um, I could see that AI was a great tool to anticipate and react to the culture in real time and to create a parallel alternative world, you know, a healing vision for a broken world. Um, like a parallel timeline in which the most divisive people are doing the thing that you and saying the thing that you would least expect them to say. And as the tools have gotten better, I've gotten better.
And I've been doing it consistently um for the past year. This all led to last um August when I, you know, one of the many ideas I had was Trump, we should have a video of Trump doing. You know, this has been a kind of like trope since the 60s or 70s and if if if just if we could just dose them, they will wake up. And I thought, "Oh, this is a great chance to to try it out." I made it in I had the inspiration. I made it in three hours. This is something I'll talk about about being in the flow state and and and why I work in in the way that I do.
And I put it out and had no idea that 50 or 100 million people would watch that thing. Um, and so I was kind of off to the races and realized that this had tremendous potential. And so I have these two tracks like Daniel says. One is reacting to the culture and creating an alternate timeline which sometimes involves the Musk Trumps of the world um because they seem to be um the most you know in in the news in your face um uh in and causing some of the most trouble. And sometimes I'm doing this kind of um time travel with AI going somewhere like the prairie with Gerif that has no film.
Nobody's there's no video of that. There's no film of that. That was in the 20s. So the cameras were invented but nobody filmed it. There's one or two photos of Gerif maybe in his life like four maybe. So um what would it be like to go back to the prairie and and or what would it be about to go to in the 60s? So that's been the other track that I've been experimenting with. um AI. So what I like to do for me the alchemy of these things is in the in the um films themselves. So I like to show not you know show don't tell me.
So I'll play you this kind of two-parter which started with a commission I got um reached out by TED the TED organization saying we like your shorts if you do something um you know do something for do something that and we'll put it on the TED main stage. And I thought this is a good chance to try something. and I came up with this character that I then use in the second one that I'll show you. So, I'll show you both back to back cuz they feel related and connected to me and and uh I'm going to play you the first one and and then I'll play you the second one back to back. I'm the urban spaceman, baby.
I've got speed. I've got everything I need. Heat. Heat. So then I had the character, you know, this kind of crystal being and I and when the Trump uh playing the Qatari plane for for the $400 million gift bribe was given. Um I thought what could happen in that plane? How can we trans I'm often thinking how do we transmute these things what and I got this very clear image of some intense healing and crying in this plane and I started with an image and then I remembered the beings and you'll see how I brought them in. So here's um love force one. Give me love.
Give me peace on earth. Give me life. Give me life. Keep me free from birth. Give me hope. Help me cope with this heavy Lord. Trying to touch and reach you with heart and soul. My Lord, please take hold of my hand and I understand. Want to please hold you. Give me love. Give me love. Give me peace on earth. Give me life. Give me life. Give me hope. So I Yeah. Thank you. I really and this is all in the silent era of film make of AI film making. We then moved into VO3 coming out with where you can do voices and I'll show you that video after if you want to see like with talking.
Now we're kind of entering the we went from the silent era like in film making to the talkies. So now we're in the kind of talkies phase. So I if I were to make those videos now I could actually sync up the lips and do all the um stuff. But also part of the fun is kind of making them quickly like I say intuitively emergent. Sometimes I don't have a script like with that one. I just had an image and I kept building and then I thought about the beings driving the the thing because you would want to it would want to be operated by a higher intelligence the the plane.
Um so you know I'm happy to answer questions. I'm happy to show you more videos. I'm happy to show you how I make them or share more about um the tools and the process. I kind of want to Yeah. The music there that was another inspiration as I was making it. I I had been listening to that record cuz it they had remastered it and put it out I think last year and I thought wow give me I mean that is the song you know so yeah I mean this is the other thing is with Instagram and You Tube to some extent but Instagram 90 seconds you can use any song you want this used to be a dream when I was in the commercial space you would have to pay a million dollars to get a song like that you know for a for commercial monetizing it right and I'm not monetizing it and I I felt like this is the perfect song and I could edit to it and then reync it on Instagram.
So, it's the royalties or whatever whatever it generates goes back to what whoever owns that catalog. So, it's it's it's another way all of a sudden we've got access to these iconic songs. We've got these this iconic imagery that can be generated um that's again playing off the culture and we've got music that really hits you in a in a different way in a different place, you know. Um, I would love to know something a little bit more about the how. Uh, because, you know, I've been playing with this stuff and I feel like I only get to a certain point and then I sort of glitch out.
Yeah. How do you how So, you know, well, first I don't even understand because like when I try to create like a Trump or a uh, you know, Zuckerberg or whatever, I sort of get access denied kind of vibes like is there one of the platforms that allows you to do that? Yeah. So, yeah. So, you can't do everything everywhere. So if you're working with um known people, it seems like Sora lets you lets you do it right now. That's the one I use. And u midjourney Sora. What is Sora? Sora is um is chat GBT. So if you're subscribed to the higher tier of chat GPT, you get access to Sora.
And Sora's images and video. The video is terrible, but the images are really good. So higher tier mean just $20 a month. Yeah, I think you can get one for um I'm going to try to show you here. See if I can pull up some some very disorganiz chaotically and disorganized so it won't look pretty but it'll give you a sense of what we're what we're trying to do here. So, if you go to Sora, um, you'll see that I have all my So, I just did one, which I can show you later. I go to my media. I just did one of the alligator Alcatraz, the Trump.
Um, I'm just going back because I've done a couple done a couple of tests since and I need I see this is the thing. I could organize them by folder. Okay, so here we go. So I had this image of what if these guys get trapped in their own, you know, this horrible place that has been nicknamed alligator Alcatraz. This this where they're sending the illegal immigrants. And so here, for example, I have this image of Trump um you know, as the place is flooding. So I will typically, if I look here, this is what the prompt looks like. this prompt. I'm I'm see I'm uploading a photo here of the actual place and I have a filter here that I've created um that has the camera.
Now, this is where Daniel, this is where this is the difference between sort of like playing with it and going to film like it's like me saying to you like how do you write so well and so prolifically every day? Teach me. And you could you could be like I'll teach you how to write but I don't think I can do what you do. So, I would, you know, I would just show you just to see like you I have a I have a specific um prompt that I've created with the lenses and camera and film stock that I like that I'm trying to emulate and I run I take a I take a photo uh from the internet and I say I composition, lens, lighting, everything and it'll give me this image and I'll say, you know, that's an interesting image. Sometimes it looks more like him than not, but I want something else, you know.
So then I'll go back and and remix it, play with it. When I'm happy with the image, I'll take that image in this case to um cling. So this is cling. See, here we have some here we have Steven Miller getting eaten by a cling is like a paid subscription service. Huh? Thing is like a paid like you pay 20 month. And all these are they have a minimum entry point of $10 to $20 a month for a number of credits. And the credits give you a number of things. So here I would take the image. I'll do it right now for you. Um I'll take the image of uh that I like.
Let's say it was this one. I download it. Okay. And I go to um in this case cling. There's a couple of them. And I and I put it here. I upload it here. Here's the image. And I say I could say nothing and just see what it does or but I what I what I really want in that scene is him walking towards the cam the camera. So the camera should follow the subject and he should be confused, you know, confused looking around. Uh and then generate, you know, 5 seconds. I don't need 10 seconds. I'm going to do this one that's faster. There's two modes here.
There's cling 2.0 No. And then there's master, which is a step up, but you eat more credits. Um, and here we have a a great shot. Look at that. Steven Miller getting eaten by an alligator. Um, with sound like these are four sounds that it's generated and I have to pick which sound. I like this. I don't know if you can hear the sound. That was very realistic. I was shocked. I typically don't like horror and gore and I never done anything like this but I really felt these people were bloat gloating about it kind of like and they really kind of karmically needed to get a kind of gothic southern gothic horror tale so we could we could watch that to see where it ended up.
Um, so there you have the video, the still. If I have a voice over, I'll go over to uh uh like what Daniel was saying, 11labs, 11labs. com, and if anyone has questions, put them in the chat and I'll answer that. And I'll generate a voice. I have a voice over. So you could create a voice here. You could say a deep booming voice. This is this is the template, right? So you could generate a voice here. like I wanted a voice that was uh Native American um kind of like futuristic. So I made this seinal wise man from the future and he talks like this.
My voice is not real. That's a great voice, right? So let's say um I I just write here what I want to what I want him to say. the voice over will be such and such and then he'll say that you know and then if I think it's generate speech and if I think the voice over will be such and such that's too fast the voice over will be so I'm going to slow the voice down here a little bit regenerate the voice over will be such and such good I'll download that and then I'll edit everything together starts coming together in Adobe I use Adobe Premiere some people use other things Um, and then we're off to the races. We're putting a thing together, you know.
Um, that's kind of the, you know, I start, one thing that I didn't show you is I start here in chat GPT. So, if I have an idea, let me see alligator Alcatraz. Here's the first idea for alligator Alcatraz. So, we're going to go back to the beginning of this. We're going to see what was the original thing. So, the first thing is research. I had this idea and I said, "Why don't you re I'm going to have Chad GBT research myths around Everglades to create a new AI viral short. Let's send Trump, Vance, Tucker, and others to it and get them stuck there. Weird stuff happens.
Vance gets eaten by a snake. Local lore, maybe some deliverance vibe. Find some of the original myths. It needs to feel real." So then it'll ask me questions and then it'll just This is This is with the research function down here. uh rundeep research. So this you need the pro um I don't know 20 $40 a month. So it's g it's giving me all these great lures and ghost stories from the Everglades. Now I'm starting to design I'm asking it to design some scenes based on what I said, but I don't like a lot of this stuff, you know. Oh, this is you know, these are the people who, you know, here we go.
Like um let me now, you know, songs that could work. I thought maybe it was a song. I ask it to even generate a voice over from the future and it's really bad. Like a lot of this stuff comes off really bad, but it gives me the inspiration. This is what I'm saying to you, even if you don't know how to use it, to make it good or to or or sometimes it'll be like a weird idea that actually works. Um, so all this is me refining and finding now we've got some prompts. None of these prompts made it. Like there was no ghost ship. uh you'll won't see that the the python you'll see this ended up being how van I had this image of Vance getting eaten by a snake and that um that's what happens at the end of this um film this is once I'm happy here right I'll copy paste I'll ask it for that prompt that you saw the detail cinematic prompt I'll copy that and we're back to Sora remember where I showed you when you just say when you say the a steer prison like interior of alligator Alcatraz that's enough for it to go and grab that and the visual image that and the visual image that you saw.
I'll pull up an image for it because otherwise it'll just make it look like an old prison, you know. Um and we don't want that. So, if I were if I if we go back here to the sorry to make you scroll fast um we will see that we're back to that prompt here, you know. Um you see Mhm. So here here's that copy paste of that prompt with the picture and that's what's generating the image. That's really it. Um that's the the simple. And so the alligator Alcatra one took you about how many hours to do. Again um maybe like six to eight. It's amazing.
Yeah. Let me see what the chat is saying. I'm not following right now. Um if anyone has a question. Yeah. But they can raise their hands. Okay. Um, so, uh, but and then what do you do about the marketing of these things once you've made them? I I have realized that, um, I have enough of a little audience that'll disseminate it and, you know, some you you don't really don't know. I thought this Alcatraz one would be a huge hit and, uh, it's it's got a decent follow. It's got it's got good numbers, but it's not this massive thing. the the Elon Trump one, the the the Musk in space one that I thought, you know, would be like an okay thing ended up being huge.
So, I'm not really so concerned. I'm just concerned with experimenting with the tools every week. I get it. But when you say that it's huge, um, how do you know? Is it just the Instagram number? Yeah. What happens what happens when you start to go really viral is all these weird AI accounts take your video. Most of them credit you, so you get some back to you. But those accounts are very big. You know, they have millions of followers. So, they will kind of rip your video and put it on their thing and and tag you. So, when you start seeing the mentions go up, you kind of know, oh my god, everyone's re re not just re-sharing the video, but reposting it in their own accounts who also have millions of people.
So, all of a sudden, it's going everywhere and it's on X and Instagram and, you know, other places. Somebody asked about uh Adobe Premiere seems super complicated and Mark I would say that's true but I actually um was able to learn how to do stuff with it using chat GPT uh also for OBS. So basically I think Chat GPT is the most incredible tech problem solver because normally I would hit like a block with a with a program like that and like ah there's no way I'm ever going to be able to like you know call customer service or read a manual or something. But essentially with chat GPT, you're working on something like Adobe Premiere. You're learning it.
You hit it you hit an obstacle and you can actually set it, you know, take a screenshot of what of where you hit the obstacle and send it to you. And I'm finding it basically 100% helpful uh in in in like just um taking you through the obstacle and and um making it so you can do your thing. That's a great that's that's a great point. It's almost like Chad GPT is like the best creative assistant I've ever had. It does so much for me. It would take me so many more hours or days to make these if it wasn't for what I showed you where it's like, I have the idea, go research it.
Oh, here's 10 myths of the ever. Okay, I like these three. Now, combine them with my original idea. Oh, I don't like these seven ideas, but keep these three. Oh, create prompts for each of these ideas. Uh, cinematic, make sure it has camera, make sure it has uh, you know, composition, lighting the way I like it, because I've already been feeding it. All of a sudden, it's like what used to take days takes minutes. It's crazy. That's what's amazing here. And the last thing I'll say is a lot of these films that I'm making, you know, are couldn't be made otherwise. Like, how could you make this before AI?
So, that's kind of part of my argument when the um the conversation peers into the other places of like, you know, ethics or or or um you know, taking jobs or all these things. I'm using it in a very particular way. Not everyone is and there's a lot of slop out there um as we can all as we've all encountered. Part of my mission is to counter the slop and like the dystopia and show people that this could be used in an incredible way um to make these things like like never before. Did you see that New York Times report about how AI is now being used to manipulate elections around the world?
the tea fakes and it's had impacts like over 15 different elections already. Totally. And I feel I mean I feel I have my mom sending me daily almost like every three days things like is this real? Is this real? Is this and it's all not real. It's so clearly not real to me, but she can't tell. And that's the that's kind of the um that's the scary thing that we're up against. I think you've articulated that really really well. And the question is what can we do about it collectively here in the room there's I don't know 50 100 people like is very smart people Daniel attracts really good kind of forwardthinking you know people who are who get the problems and it's like and have their own gifts each of you have your own gifts how can we um not necessarily we don't I mean we can band together but each of the gifts also how can they contribute to fighting all this all this um craziness that we see every day.
Yeah, I guess that was a question I had. I mean um yeah, how could these types of you know in a way they're kind of like agit prop in some sense videos kind of like positively tilt or influence the discourse which seems to have been so skewed and you know people seem to have like lost any like mooring and like empathy or conscience or whatever. Do you think there's a way to um target these more at at that sector which has kind of like fallen down the sort of like rabbit hole in a way? Yeah. Yeah. And I've gotten reached out a lot because of them.
And um you know I can see people really trying on the left like you know what what if we do one about like trying to get people like you were like a general strike you know which is something you've talked about. How could we make that a thing? And I saw the farmers one and I thought it was really good you know I mean that was an AI. It was just like you know the farmers banding together to do a strike you know because of what's happening. Um and it seems to be work. It seems like it's going to happen and and a lot of people are going to unite.
So yeah, it's like it's like the thing that we all feel the power of media being used for the highest good or to activate people in the right way. Um I don't have all the answers of course. I just know that as a storyteller I can make an impact now that I couldn't make two years ago. Well, if you can reach 50 or 100 million people. Yeah. and and you know, not everyone is is is hip to the things that this group is hip to, but it seems to be resonating at a deeper level because people are just not used to seeing or hearing um that it could be different.
Just the the thought planting the seed that it could be different seems to be enough sometimes. But then I really want the action, which I know Daniel, you've you've talked about a lot also. It's like how do we move the hit the hits and the the amount of attention into action? That's that would be the next thing to figure out, you know. All right. Why don't you show the alligator Alcatraz one? Yeah. Are we ready for some horror? Yeah. And and maybe the Gerf one also. And then after while he's showing these guys, maybe you guys can think of some questions. Um because I think what we should do today after Ari leaves uh is maybe a little bit we're gonna try a breakout group which I've never done before.
Uh so that'll be interesting. Uh I might have to go to chat to figure out how. Uh and then um maybe we'll break up into groups of like five or or 10 or something and come up with little scripts for um our own little AI, you know, save the world or uh you know, h how to make the utopia that we believe humanity should have and so on. Uh, or it could be more like, you know, scaremongering maga. I mean, I I was playing around before the call around like a um Trump visited by the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein, you know, kind of kind of a thing, you know.
Yeah. Get the stuff out right on on the current moment. It feels like it does have that possibility of like propagating, you know, so that All right, here we go. Tell us the story again, grandfather. The one about alligator Alcatraz. Well, long ago, men who believed themselves powerful came here. They dared to build a prison deep in this sacred marsh. They thought the swamp would be their ally that no one could escape. But you see, children, these men did not understand the ancient power of this place. Only the virtuous can stand themselves here. Each one had to learn this the hard way. First, a man who traded his roots for ambition.
A man who let suspicion rule him. A man who confused domination with strengths. A woman whose smile masked her insecurities. A man who turned dreams into nightmares. And the proud one who believed the rules of life did not apply to him. You see, this land was never meant to imprison anyone. It was meant to nurture and protect life. So, I thought I earned my I I really don't like horror films or gore, but I really felt there was no other way to I just felt this real heaviness around that place and and disgust at the way they were talking about it. And normally I wouldn't go for something like that, but I just thought this one really deserves it.
And everyone in there based on their actions and what's known needs some karmic reckoning. You know, I'm always trying to make things also that are a little don't you can't say, oh, this is like some left propaganda or some right propag. can't be put in a box because I that's part of what I'm trying to do kind of post meta approach so that it can't be kind of pinned down. But this one I was like they all have to die. How did you do the soundtrack the music? Oh, so that's another cool thing that you could try. That's a really easy thing. Um there's two. One is called and the other one is called Murka.
Ando is so fun. You can literally type again, sign up for the basic, they they'll give you a few credits or fe and just come up with a song. Sometimes with lyrics and you can pick a voice, sometimes instrumental um and you generate it. If you like it, you keep it. If not, you can grab a little piece and extend it. It can get more complex, but it's as simple as that. like that's those two songs I was like horror movie, you know, slasher minimalist because I don't like like the, you know, the crazy soundtrack. I wanted something more kind of like uh mysterious, you know, ghost ghostly.
And within a few tries, I had those two tracks on MCA or whatever. But then and did you edit it uh to to fit with the tracks once you had the tracks? Yeah. I mean that's this is where I think like the what I was saying to you about writing this is where I my magic I think is the ideas and then the ability to execute based on 25 30 years of of storytelling experience but really editing is is always been the place for me where the magic comes together and the editing is kind of its own language and its own thing um as most uh creative arts are. And to me, that's where it always comes alive and together.
And that's the hardest thing to teach. I mean, you can learn editing. Again, you can I can take the course on writing, but to get good at it and to get the flow and figure out when to cut and when to hold, when like the Steven Miller thing, you're holding, you're holding, you're holding because you know you're going to get the the the alligator thing. So, the more you let it breathe, the more the payoff of the of the uh alligator eating him is is going to or his avatar, you know, let's say. We don't want to wish violence like that on anyone, his soul. Yeah, totally.
And the other thing I guess that you have to do with these AI videos is you have to keep them each clip is like five to 10 seconds. That's all you got. So you always have the mo the most you get is is I think 10 seconds on on cling and um uh yeah VO3 gives you eight eight seconds. So yeah, whatever whatever the length is of your shot, you have to think in terms or your conversation now that we're getting into dialogue. Um your convers it has to be thought of as like okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to have him talk first and say the line because it's 5 seconds long.
Then I'm going to do the other prompt for the other line, you know, because it's another six seconds. But how do you do it? Because what I've tried to do it, it often feels like consistency is very hard to like that's the biggest challenge. The biggest challenge right now is consistency. I try to um not worry too much about it. You will see inconsistencies and Trump's what he's wearing. I I don't really get hung up on now that we're getting into dialogue and scenes. Now we now there's a couple of ways and tools that I've been studying in the last two weeks to get that continuity right.
It's a little bit hodge podge right now, but I think in the next two to three months, we'll have some one of these apps going to come out with a really simple way to be like, always give me the same guy with the same or the same person with the same haircut, with the same look, with the same shirt, with the same glasses, with the same and in this context here's in the office doesn't change every time you cut inside the office. Then you have this um uh real continuity. Let's say we I kind of like the sort of punk rock kind of like me too. I don't really care. It's like too perfect.
It's kind of It's sort of something nice that that you can still sort of identify it as Yeah. Yeah. We don't really know where this will be in like six months, you know, like I have whole screenplays where I'm kind of like waiting, you know, hey, like if I can make my movie with AI in a year, you know, whatever, I'll try it, you know. Yeah. So, I see a question here. Why cling and not runway? So, I use different ones for different things. I've used BO3 uh for the one I'll show you with um that Daniel likes of the time travel one. Um I use Clling and Hilu Hilu Hilu I don't know how to pronounce the other one.
Uh the two kind of Chinese ones. Um and then I've used more recently Hicksfield which is really good for selfies and things like that and um like realistic kind of like i Phone shot on i Phone vibe. And what what are the advantages to of Clay and Halo over uh over some of the other ones? I think I think for me they let you do the they they look really good. They're very high-end and they let you do the real people. V3 will censor Trump or anyone recognizable because it's Google. Um the Chinese I think are not. So maybe if I put Z in there doing something weird, it'll censor.
Yeah. Let's see what happens. It'll be nice to try. Although there is that shot of Trump conf uh comforting him which is something you never would see Trump do um in the when he's having a kind of hard trip in the plane. Gregory Rufa in the comments says it would be often if someone was aggregating the list of tools and best uses. Yes. Yeah. Maybe from the transcript of this we you could put out a little little spreadsheet with links. Yeah. And I learned I learn every day. I'm learning. I have to relearn how to do it now with this all the time. Oriana said, "Where do you show your work and is there a specific audience targeted?" The main places is my Instagram and um that seems to have the most traction.
Linked In for some of the projects take off there. Um X for some of them really take off there. Uh those are the probably the three ones that I do. And I have a You Tube channel, but I I don't really know how to crack You Tube. I just put it up there and sometimes people watch it and sometimes they don't. How uh what's been your biggest You said people pick it up. Is it like uh Aubrey Marcus or people like that or Jason Silva? People like Yeah, I mean Jason is a supporter. I mean I get like you know I get like for the for the Trump Musk one like weird people were reaching out like Logan Paul and these like people with you know these weird they're like this is the best thing I've ever seen.
So I I it seems to be making its way to the to different worlds and uh Ruffalo shared the you know the the Trump one and a bunch of other people. It just for me I I think I'm mostly like interested in the the more the better and that it can be seated. the more it can be seated and the more it can be seen the better um you know the effect of planting the seeds can be but there really hasn't any commercial uh thing for you at this point. I mean, maybe the TED you got paid something or Well, no, the beauty of it is that I'm doing them as experiments and the stakes are it's like a it's like an art project and I love that about it because after 20 years of being in the commercial type space where you have clients and agencies and decisions and design by committee and this is the most fun I'm I've had. You know, think about it.
It's like I get to do this myself from start to finish. put it out and in some cases millions of people watch it around the world and it will have an impact. I hear back the feedback loop, but I'm not doing it to like become a content creator or build a an audience. I have a pure uh kind of intent here. And so I I I love that about it. Yeah. Let's let's watch a couple. All right. So this is part of my this is a inspired by a novel that my uh girlfriend Skyler Brown who Daniel knows and has worked with. This is a great um writer and uh embodiment coach and and spiritual teacher.
She wrote this book um Katherine Mansfield kind of came to her in like dreams and kind of you know telling her the story of what happened in the prairie and and it's parallel to her story uh in New York. And so she finished the book and I thought, "Oh, it would be really cool to try to bring Gerif uh and the prairie, which was this very special place, to light." Maybe maybe you could frame Daniel since you know so much about these esoteric places like the prairie. You could talk a little bit about that. Uh yeah, this was in France, right? This was um Gerf had developed this whole school.
Well, he was sort of trying to figure out how to bring enlightenment to the deviant western kind of consciousness or psychology. He'd sort of been given this mi this sort of mission maybe by these um mystics in Afghanistan and they sent him back to the west. Then he gathered groups in Russia. Then he moved to France and he had a lot of really well-known you know artists, intellectual. I think is this Katherine Mansfield? Is that the one who's sort of talking here? We can't hear you but I assume I assume that's a yes. So you'll hear it from the perspective of Katherine Mansfield here, which was also a really interesting thing because there's no recording of her her her voice.
So we had to figure out how based on the description of her voice, what she sounded like, create a voice that sounded like that era. So this should be the one. My body grows weaker by the day, ravaged by illness, incurable and relentless. Yet perhaps it's not only my body needing healing, but my spirit, my very essence, in this place of strange discipline and peculiar magic under Mr. GIF's enigmatic gaze through the sacred dances and their hypnotic rhythms. I feel a glimmer of something I've long sought. A chance may be the only chance left to confront myself, to discover a deeper strength that illness cannot touch.
If there's truth to be found anywhere, it is here. And I'm so very glad I found him. I really like the feeling of that one. and capturing um the era and the camera, the way the the stuff looked and also um she was very sick, you know, and she was hoping this was sort of like a last going to the prairie those three, four months was a kind of last hope and the dances also and the music is Gergeiff. So the the music was the stuff that Geriff developed that Thomas Hardman played. There's a recording of it from the 50s. It's really cool. A lot of people use it for writing.
It's kind of hypnot self hypnotizing. And uh so everything there is kind of like him, his world and her voice. Yeah. A little haunting. A little And when you have like the stuff that looks like grainy, it looks like it's adding that. It's adding that. I'm saying Yeah. I'm saying in the description of the prompt. Yeah. I'm saying add uh film scratches. Add film grain. And it would do it. Sometimes it would do it weird. Yeah. You know, even since this was made in March, the other way to do it is to go to Canva and put like a filter over. You could put a filter after, but I feel like you can tell and somehow when it's embedded in the footage, it almost looks more real.
And then I add grain. I did add a filter, a grain filter afterwards in post-production. Um, yeah, that's a different kind of thing. And I really love that because again we this is my other use case for this stuff is let's go let's time travel somewhere that wasn't filmed so much. Now I will tell you and this is interesting. It doesn't work as well before the invention of the camera. So the film camera is invented like in 1890s the first versions. If you try to do like an Egypt thing it just feels like a very bad T made for TV costume drama. But if you do 1920s or I've done 1950s60s SLN totally works.
It's like our brain buys it because of the it's the medium is the message. I guess it's some some kind of Mc Luhan weird thing. Yeah. Where we buy it. Um but yeah, I want to encourage everyone. I know I have to leave in a few minutes. I want to encourage everyone to use the stuff. Don't just don't just be here to listen to me or to Daniel or I mean listen to Daniel. He's got or the other guests. Um we all have something to share and we're all specialists in different places. But try them because it's really been made the easiest now for you to try.
Maybe uh in the time before Ari leaves we could uh all workshop some kind of ideas. Like I was thinking maybe something of like the um as I mentioned like an Epstein comes back to haunt Trump kind of a ghost story. Uh maybe something with ice agents like finding love and turning into hippies. Uh anything that strikes you guys as like an iconic little Yeah. moment. Let's m let's mine the field. I will have to leave and Yeah. Sorry. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us. But I want to thank you Daniel for assembling this incredible group. I feel the collective power and the um I can sense where we're at and it's great because often when I'm speaking about this in groups that are not quite there yet, the conversation becomes very much about the tools and very much about like but here we're really talking about the thing I want to talk about and I feel that and I feel um grateful and lucky to be you know invited.
So thank you for putting it together and thank you everyone for contributing and holding the the field and uh please write please export these ideas and let's continue the conversation. We will do though. Cool. Great to have you all.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.