A.I. Filmmaking Is Not The Future. It's a Grift.

Summary

This episode of "Patrick (H) Willems" scrutinizes the rise of AI in the creative industry, questioning its impact on filmmaking. Willems shares his skepticism towards AI-generated content, emphasizing that while AI can imitate art, it lacks the human touch and depth real artists provide. He presents AI as a tool favoring instant results over genuine craftsmanship, potentially hindering aspiring filmmakers from gaining hands-on experience. This critical view highlights concerns over AI replacing human creativity with algorithm-driven substitutes.

Highlights

• Patrick experiences the vibrant culture of Rome but returns home annoyed by AI trends. 🏛️
• Wes Anderson's style is both admired and saturated in the AI realm. 🎥
• The triviality of imitating Wes Anderson's style using AI doesn't impress Patrick. 🤔
• Curious Refuge uses AI to create popular but artistically shallow videos. 🎭
• Willems critiques AI's failure to capture the emotional depth of true films. 😢

Key Takeaways

• AI can't replace genuine artistry—it's all about the human touch! 🎨
• Wes Anderson parodies are officially over—we've seen enough! 😂
• Film should be about human connection and effort, not AI shortcuts. 🎬
• AI uses mimicry, while real art comes from unique perspectives. 🧠
• AI filmmaking promotes 'content' over genuine storytelling. 🕵️‍♂️

Overview

Patrick Willems recently returned from an invigorating Roman holiday but found himself confronted by the growing trend of AI-generated creative work—a trend he finds deeply troubling. During his episode, he delves into the nuances of AI's role in filmmaking, particularly how it dilutes the artisanal process of crafting films.

AI-generated content capitalizes on shortcuts and compromises the depth and originality characterized by human creators. Willems elaborates on AI's inability to capture the essence of Wes Anderson's films, reducing them instead to mere aesthetic imitations without any deeper emotional or thematic incorporations.

While acknowledging AI as a tool that could assist real artists, Patrick stresses the fear of AI's implications in the creative fields when left unchecked—especially concerning young filmmakers who might miss out on the learning process experienced through traditional filmmaking endeavors.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Sponsor Message The chapter begins by addressing the marvel and magnificence surrounding the birth of Artificial Intelligence in the early 21st century. It highlights a critical perspective on the predominant use of A.I., which is to plagiarize art. The episode is sponsored by Nebula, where viewers can access the companion video.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Return from Italy and AI Filmmaking Discussion Patrick returns from a trip to Italy where he experienced the excitement of a movie premiere, walking the red carpet and mingling with stars, likening his experience to a 'Roman Holiday'. The trip to Rome was revitalizing, filled with history, culture, and Italian cuisine, and he's back with a renewed vitality for the new episode.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Tom Cruise's Hairstyles and YouTube Landscape The chapter delves into two main topics: Tom Cruise's hairstyles and the current landscape of YouTube content. It starts with a discussion on a definitive ranking of Tom Cruise's hairstyles, indicating its perfect timing amidst a seemingly hollow phase on YouTube. This emptiness is attributed to the recent trend of AI-generated Wes Anderson parodies.
• 03:00 - 05:00: AI and the Future of Filmmaking The chapter explores the impact of artificial intelligence on the filmmaking industry. A conversation highlights worries about AI replacing traditional filmmaking techniques, as characters discuss advancements that allow AI to create videos. Concerns are raised about AI potentially making some roles in filmmaking obsolete. Additionally, current trends in using AI in video production are examined, along with feelings of uncertainty about the future of human roles in movie creation.
• 05:00 - 06:00: AI Wes Anderson Parodies The chapter delves into a critique of AI-generated content, particularly mimicking the style of director Wes Anderson. It describes a scenario where AI creators are metaphorically punished for their complacency and lack of originality. The imagery of ancient gods and vengeance paints a dramatic picture of human superiority and creativity triumphing over artificial creations. The chapter ends with a whimsical reference to Fig Newtons, likening them to fresh figs from Italy, possibly implying nostalgia and authenticity contrasting AI's impersonation.
• 06:00 - 09:00: AI Filmmaking Experiment In the chapter titled 'AI Filmmaking Experiment,' the focus is on preparing individuals for being on camera. The process involves some preparatory steps to ensure that the participants are ready and composed before filming begins. The chapter underscores the importance of preparation in filmmaking, likely exploring how AI can assist or streamline the steps leading up to the actual filming. Although the transcript provides limited content, it seems to highlight the theme of preparation and readiness in the context of a filmmaking experiment involving AI.
• 09:00 - 15:00: Wes Anderson's Filmmaking Style The chapter 'Wes Anderson's Filmmaking Style' likely discusses the distinctive elements that characterize the works of Wes Anderson, a renowned filmmaker. These elements may include his unique visual style, choice of color palette, use of symmetrical compositions, whimsical narratives, and recurring themes. The chapter could explore how these aspects contribute to the storytelling and overall cinematic experience, as well as influence the audience's emotional responses. Furthermore, it might delve into Anderson's influence on modern cinema and how his style has evolved throughout his career. However, as the transcript only includes '[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]', specific details from the chapter are not provided.
• 15:00 - 18:00: Critique of AI Wes Anderson Parodies The chapter titled 'Critique of AI Wes Anderson Parodies' opens with the author celebrating a successful trip to the World premiere of 'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1' in Rome. However, upon returning home, the author is perturbed by certain events or content they encountered, compelling them to create a video venting their frustrations.
• 18:00 - 25:00: Human Creativity vs. AI The chapter "Human Creativity vs. AI" opens with a discussion about the prevalence of AI-generated art, highlighting the speaker's typical focus on positive topics to emphasize the seriousness of the issue. AI tools such as Midjourney and ChatGPT are mentioned as examples of technologies enabling the creation of this art.
• 25:00 - 30:00: AI's Impact on Filmmaking This chapter explores the revolutionary impact of artificial intelligence on the filmmaking industry. It highlights the technology's capability to auto-generate detailed and realistic artistic content such as imagery, writing, audio, and animation, significantly lowering the barriers to entry for producing professional-looking art. The chapter notes how AI-driven art has started viral trends, particularly those mimicking the unique styles of well-known filmmakers like Wes Anderson.
• 30:00 - 35:00: Writer's Strike and AI The chapter titled "Writer's Strike and AI" explores the concept of imagining popular franchises through the unique lens of director Wes Anderson. The discussion begins with mention of images and videos that visualize how franchises like The Avengers, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Avatar might look if directed by Anderson. This creative reimagining gained popularity when it was shared by notable directors, the Russo Brothers, and further escalated with a series released by Curious Refuge.
• 35:00 - 40:00: AI in Studio Decision Making The chapter discusses the influence of AI on creativity in studio decision-making, highlighting the trend of using AI-generated content to reimagine popular media franchises. It mentions the proliferation of AI-generated images and videos that emulate the distinctive style of filmmaker Wes Anderson, applied to various popular franchises like Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, and The Matrix. The text humorously notes the long-standing existence of films in Anderson's style, such as The Royal Tenenbaums, to point out the novelty and limitations of AI in replicating human creativity and decision-making in media production.
• 40:00 - 45:00: Secret Invasion and AI in Title Sequences The chapter discusses the topic of AI-generated videos, specifically relating to Wes Anderson parody trailers. The narrator shares a personal connection to the subject through a video they created in 2015 titled 'What if Wes Anderson directed X-Men.' They reflect on the difference between spending months making a video with human collaborators versus using AI technology to produce similar content in a much shorter time.
• 45:00 - 50:00: Potential and Pitfalls of AI The chapter discusses the trend of creating 'What if Wes Anderson directed' videos, highlighting that such content has been around for years. The author expresses a mix of frustration and intrigue over the new wave of these videos, noting that despite the concept being explored numerous times, there are still elements that continue to annoy and captivate audiences. The chapter reflects on the evolution of this video genre from early creations like a Wes Anderson-inspired Spider-Man video made in 2010, to the current iterations and their impact on both creators and viewers.
• 50:00 - 55:00: AI Perspectives and the Future of Art This chapter discusses the implications of technology on the future of art, specifically focusing on how innovative tech experiments, currently viewed as mere curious explorations on platforms like YouTube, could signal a significant paradigm shift in traditional filmmaking and artistic expression. The narrative suggests that these burgeoning tools and experiments could soon play a crucial role in shaping the future of the film industry, indicating a potentially serious impact beyond just entertaining tech enthusiasts.
• 55:00 - 60:00: Video Conclusion and Nebula Marketing This chapter discusses the impact of AI art beyond just YouTube videos, hinting at negative effects. It poses the question of why Wes Anderson's style is frequently parodied, and gives insights into the author's personal motivation, referencing a series of videos reimagining superhero movies.
• 60:00 - 65:00: Epilogue and Next Episode Teaser The chapter discusses the allure and distinct style of filmmaker Wes Anderson. It compares his work to other directors such as Sergio Leone, Ingmar Bergman, Noah Baumbach, and Werner Herzog, highlighting Anderson's unique ability to blend art house aesthetics with mainstream appeal. The chapter acknowledges that even though Anderson's films may not achieve blockbuster status, they are recognizable and relatable to a wide audience, making him one of the most distinctive filmmakers of his time.
• 65:00 - 80:00: End Credits and Personal Note The chapter discusses the distinctive and recognizable style of Wes Anderson's films compared to other famous directors like Spielberg and Scorsese. It highlights how Anderson's unique cinematic elements make his films easily identifiable and prone to parody due to their consistent characteristics, such as symmetrical framing, static shots, and specific camera movements.

A.I. Filmmaking Is Not The Future. It's a Grift. Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 what we know for certain is that at some point in the early 21st century we marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to A.I and then we mostly just used it to plagiarize art that's what this episode's about this episode is brought to you by nebula where you can watch the bonus companion video right now [Music]
• 00:30 - 01:00 bonjourno Patrick you're back how is the premiere it was incredible I walked the red carpet and mingled with the Stars it was a true Roman Holiday and I was Audrey Hepburn not Gregory Peck nope Rome was invigorating the history the culture the spaghetti and I'm ready to bring this sun-kissed energy to today's episode in pursuit of Cruz her suit a
• 01:00 - 01:30 definitive ranking of Tom Cruise's hairstyles it's perfect timing YouTube's been feeling really Hollow lately must be all these AI Wes Anderson parodies people are making Wes Anderson parodies I did that years ago yeah my younger days I studied Wes Anderson's whole style wrote a script made costumes my friends and I shot it all over the city I mean it took months of work but you have memories that'll last a lifetime well people aren't making them make
• 01:30 - 02:00 eye to do all the stuff you just said oh hey you're back from Italy what are you guys up to ciao Dave I'm just showing Patrick how people are using AI to create videos possibly rendering our careers obsolete what is this don't people understand this isn't real filmmaking okay Emma we're bumping the Tom Cruise Hair video this is what today's episode
• 02:00 - 02:30 is going to be about yeah these lazy AI bums need to be taken to task we can come crashing down on them like the vengeful fist of an unforgiving ancient god laying waste to all non-believers their screams will be the cacophonous motif to your Ascension on a throne made of their skulls Fig Newton it's like the fresh figs of old Italian
• 02:30 - 03:00 we're gonna need you to get that all out of your system before you get in front of a camera thank you foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music]
• 03:00 - 03:30 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]
• 03:30 - 04:00 thank you [Music] well folks we did it we pulled off Mission impassable I went to Rome I attended the dead reckoning part 1 World premiere everything is going great and then I got back home and saw some stuff that annoyed me so much that I just have to make a video about it and
• 04:00 - 04:30 look if you watch this show you know that I mostly stick to talking about things that I like I hate being a bummer so that's how you know this is a big deal Patrick there's still time to Pivot back to the video about Tom Cruise's hair that can wait Emma this is more important so over the past year there has been an explosion of AI generated art and I'm putting art and quotation marks here you using tools like mid-journey and chat GPT now all one has
• 04:30 - 05:00 to do is type in some prompts and in no time at all the programs will auto-generate shockingly detailed and realistic imagery writing audio and animation now you no longer need any Talent skill practice or education to produce art that looks like it was created by professionals some of the airs that has garnered the most attention going viral multiple times in the last six months are imitations of the work of Wes Anderson imagining what
• 05:00 - 05:30 various franchises might look like if directed by him this started with a handful of images visualizing a theoretical Wes Anderson Take On The Avengers that really blew up when enthusiastically shared by those lovable scamps the Russo Brothers but it really kicked into another gear in April when a company called curious Refuge released a series of videos imagining Wes Anderson directed versions of Star Wars Lord of the Rings and Avatar since then there
• 05:30 - 06:00 have been countless imitators that haven't quite achieved the same degree of viral success West Anderson versions of Harry Potter and Jurassic Park and Spider-Man and Justice League and Hunger Games and multiple versions of the Matrix just a few days ago Instagram recommended me a series of AI generated images imagining a Wes Anderson version of succession and come on guys that has existed for 20 years and it's called The Royal tannenbaums
• 06:00 - 06:30 part of why I wanted to talk about this is that I sort of have a special connection to the subject of Wes Anderson parody trailers back in 2015 I released a video called what if Wes Anderson directed X-Men which honestly still might be the thing I'm best known for it's kind of the same general idea as these new AI videos except that I spent months working on it with my actual human friends instead of having a computer make it in a day and to be
• 06:30 - 07:00 clear I wasn't even the first person to make a what if Wes Anderson directed video Jeff loveness writer of Ant-Man and the WASP quantumania made Wes Anderson Spider-Man all the way back in 2010. So anyway on the one hand I'm looking at these new Wes Anderson videos going uh guys we did this years ago it's over but even despite the been there done that aspect there's a lot more that bothers me about them I can already hear some people
• 07:00 - 07:30 saying now hey man these are just some fun YouTube videos where people are playing around with some new toys why are you making a whole video about this instead of talking about real movies well hypothetical straw man I'm making a whole video about it because what right now seems like just some tech curious people playing around with new tools could actually be the beginning of a very serious shift that will affect real movies actually I'm willing to bet that by the time I finish writing this essay
• 07:30 - 08:00 enough new evidence will have appeared to confirm that yeah AI art is affecting way more than just YouTube videos and not in a good way before we get into the videos themselves we have to answer the question why Wes Anderson why do people keep parodying him more than any other filmmaker why did I do it in the first place well in my case I actually had a whole series of videos on this channel imagining what various superhero movies
• 08:00 - 08:30 would look like if made by directors ranging from Sergio Leone to ingmar Bergman to Noah bombach to Werner Herzog but I totally understand why the Wes Anderson one was the most successful Anderson straddles the line between Art House and mainstream even if his movies don't do Blockbuster level box office even the most casual moviegoers are familiar with him and understand what his movies look and feel like there's probably no other filmmaker working today with such an immediately
• 08:30 - 09:00 identifiable style like sure Spielberg and Scorsese are more famous but ask a random person to describe what one of their movies looks like and you're not going to get a clear answer but everyone knows what a Wes Anderson movie looks like you can spot it a hundred yards away it's ripe for parody because there's a set of characteristics that apply to just about every film he's made we're talking about symmetrical framing static shots camera movement
• 09:00 - 09:30 either parallel or perpendicular to the action almost always on a dolly Bill Murray flat backgrounds the camera almost always at eye level warm color palette leaning into yellowish Hues Owen Wilson dry subdued performances from the actors perfectly tailored clothing insert shots of books and objects shot from straight overhead Jason Schwartz handmade analog filmmaking and stop motion animation anyway you get the idea because the characteristics are relatively simple they can be imitated
• 09:30 - 10:00 pretty easily with little to no budget you can see this on display in the recent Tick-Tock trend of my day but make it Wes Anderson where people just shoot a montage of an average day in their life but with the visual tropes of a Wes Anderson movie which brings us to the AI versions as I mentioned earlier the whole AI Wes Anderson thing began with those Avengers images late last year and honestly even aside from how they were made I think
• 10:00 - 10:30 these are pretty weak they don't even have the framing or lighting of a Wes Anderson movie like plenty of people doing fan art over the years have done it way better but the main thing I want to focus on here are the videos produced by curious Refuge Star Wars by Wes Anderson Lord of the Rings by Wes Anderson and Avatar by Wes Anderson all three released within the span of a month before this the company curious Refuge wasn't in the business of
• 10:30 - 11:00 narrative storytelling at all welcome to curious Refuge this channel is going to be super random but that's exactly the way it should be they made tutorials about Adobe After Effects and other software they had a course called the Curious millionaire that taught how to make money as an entrepreneur and then one day they released the Star Wars by Wes Anderson video which I gotta say delivers on its premise a lot better than that Avengers stuff it has the framing it has the cast of actors even
• 11:00 - 11:30 if the person they claim is Scarlett Johansson looks like Millie Bobby Brown instead but overall yeah sure that looks like a Wes Anderson Star Wars the video went viral and in the YouTube comments section at least got an extremely positive reaction curious Refuge immediately changed their entire business to focus on AI filmmaking and they currently have an AI filmmaking course available for the low low price of five hundred dollars
• 11:30 - 12:00 positive YouTube comments a sure sign of trouble to come in an interview curious Refuge co-founder Caleb Ward the guy who uh made these videos broke down in detail how they were put together it turns out he didn't even come up with the idea himself he asked chat GPT to give him a list of potential viral YouTube videos and one of the ideas it generated was Wes Anderson Star Wars we
• 12:00 - 12:30 used AI to come up with the idea for the video I basically went to Chachi BT and I was like give me some ideas that people might enjoy and it came up with a bunch of ideas in Star Wars by Wes Anderson was one of them and instantly I was like oh yeah that I think that would do well chat GPT also wrote the script and generated the shot list then mid-journey was used to create the shots with human animation added by did and narration by 11 Labs the only actual human element in the entire thing came
• 12:30 - 13:00 from refining the images and adding some subtle animation to make the still images seem like live action part of the reason Wes Anderson has become the go-to filmmaker for AI users to imitate is that his visual style works with the limitations of AI right now ai animation software capable of creating complex movement isn't widely available to the public and also looks pretty janky so most people are working with mid-journey which only creates still images but
• 13:00 - 13:30 since Wes Anderson's movies are full of static shots of people posed carefully in the center of the frame his style can be replicated fairly accurately so true if they really wanted to impress us they'd do Oliver Stone Star Wars or Tony Scott's The Avengers look I'll admit I came in here pretty skeptical about this whole AI thing but I try to give everything a fair shake and I always like to do my research so I hopefully know what I'm talking about so I decided to try an experiment
• 13:30 - 14:00 since the Curious Refuge dude gave a full breakdown of his process for making one of these videos I thought hey maybe I should use that same process to make one of my own and I'll use it to make a Wes Anderson X-Men I already did this the difficult old-fashioned way so let's see how this new version Compares did this feel weird yup am I using tools that are ethically pretty questionable yup is this hopefully in service of the
• 14:00 - 14:30 greater good and therefore justifies my actions I hope so so anyway here's what I did first I went to chat gbt and gave it the prompt script for an X-Men movie trailer directed by Wes Anderson then I instructed chat GPT to turn that script into a shot list then I spent a few minutes learning how to use mid-journey to get the right results turns out mid-journey Works through a Discord server weird anyway then I used mid-journey to create each of the shots
• 14:30 - 15:00 on the shot list then I ran those through did to make the people move a little bit and finally I used 11 labs to generate the narration and so here it is my AI generated Wes Anderson X-Men in a world where mutants live among us meet the X-Men an extraordinary group of individuals led by Professor Xavier the master of the Mind Jean Gray the guardian of all things fragile Quicksilver the fastest thing on Earth
• 15:00 - 15:30 at least for now Rogue the one who steals life's Hues but when a Sinister Force threatens to tear their world apart Magneto the master of magnetism will stop at nothing to achieve his vision in a world of chaos they'll discover the strength of their bonds and the power of their differences this summer witness the extraordinary world of the X-Men as reimagined by Wes Anderson starring Bill Murray as Professor X
• 15:30 - 16:00 Tilda Swinton as Jean Gray Owen Wilson is Quicksilver sir Ronan as Rogue Adrian Brody as Nightcrawler Jason Schwartzman is Gambit and Ralph fianz as Magneto X-Men asymmetrical Harmony [Music] okay so after spending a whole day of my life making that I have to say it sucks like that is a bad video and I don't just mean it sucks because
• 16:00 - 16:30 mid-journey is awful at group shots and some of the faces are kind of [ __ ] up like if that's your argument against AI you are missing the forest for the trees because the truth is this AI stuff is rapidly improving and those issues will be fixed soon like remember when we all laughed at the weird hands with too many fingers and now hey they took care of all that and if we want a nitpick there are also easy things to complain about like where did they get that X-Men team there's no Cyclops or Wolverine or storm and yet Quicksilver makes the cut this
• 16:30 - 17:00 is an embarrassing mistake for AI but it is a great win for Quicksilver like a real Cinderella story like a 16th seed winning March Madness good for you Pietro but look the real problem here is that this doesn't even feel like a Wes Anderson movie or even a trailer for a Wes Anderson movie like the title X-Men asymmetrical Harmony that sounds more like a Prague Rock album than a Wes Anderson movie his titles are always to the point like the name of the setting
• 17:00 - 17:30 of the film asteroid City The Darjeeling Limited I love dogs The Grand Budapest Hotel it's the same thing with these other videos like the galactic Menagerie the Whimsical Fellowship what is this these aren't imitating Wes Anderson movies they are imitating the 2013 SNL Wes Anderson parody the midnight codery of sinister Intruders and the thing about that parody is that it had narration by Alec Baldwin which was a
• 17:30 - 18:00 riff on the Royal ten bombs which Alec Baldwin also narrated Royal Tenenbaum bought the house on Archer Avenue in the winter of his 35th year and so all of these AI parodies also have narrators despite the fact that a they don't sound like Alec Baldwin and B none of the actual trailers for Wes Anderson's real movies have narration so if you don't have Alec Baldwin there's no joke and it's just an inaccurate imitation these videos reduce
• 18:00 - 18:30 Wes Anderson to an Instagram filter a checklist of style tropes to be pasted onto something there is no effort to engage with his work on a deeper level than just skimming through some trailers with no sound for one thing despite what AI would have you believe his movies do not consist entirely of static shots with the same framing from the very beginning his work has been incredibly kinetic there are the Epic slow motion Dolly shots the sparingly used chaotic
• 18:30 - 19:00 handheld shots his stop-motion work has even more energy as the camera tracks perfectly alongside characters running and flipping and dancing through scenes Wes Anderson movies have action scenes why do people forget this and while he's had a consistent aesthetic Baseline through his entire filmography it has evolved over time the French batch looks wildly different from Rushmore and depending on the film he'll use different aspect ratios and film stocks
• 19:00 - 19:30 and color palettes none of these AI videos bother to get into the actual stories of these hypothetical movies they deliver the basic premise of the original film but do nothing with how Anderson might approach it there are no scenes our dialogue or relationships between the characters the thing that annoys me the most about these videos is that they completely ignore the humanity of his movies which is as important if not more so than the Aesthetics see
• 19:30 - 20:00 while all West Anderson's movies are fun they're also all sad nearly every one of his movies is about people dealing with grief in some way at the start of his latest film asteroid City Jason schwartzman's character is struggling to figure out how to break the news to his children that their mother has died The Darjeeling Limited is about three brothers processing the recent death of their father The Life Aquatic is about a man seeking revenge for the death of his best friend and along the way he meets
• 20:00 - 20:30 his estranged son who spoilers also dies almost every one of his movies is about people who are broken in some way or another finding some kind of meaning or purpose or belonging in a unique location or community in Asteroid City it happens when the characters are quarantined in a small desert town in The Grand Budapest Hotel a young Refugee finds his purpose under the tutelage of an eccentric Hotel Concierge in the French dispatch it's the collection of
• 20:30 - 21:00 writers for the titular magazine In The Life Aquatic it's the boat in the Royal Tenenbaums a dysfunctional family reunites in their childhood home to try to mend their many emotional wounds the thing is if these AI parodies were actually any good and they wanted to put in any effort they could absolutely Embrace those themes like for example in the Star Wars one they could have Luke Skywalker grieving the deaths of his aunt and uncle and finding a new purpose
• 21:00 - 21:30 on board the Millennium Falcon with this eccentric group of rebels Lord of the Rings is already about a strange collection of people on a potentially doomed Quest like The Life Aquatic there are difficult group dynamics and tension everyone's dealing with their own [ __ ] you could have like I don't know Gandalf as the emotionally manipulative leader who gets angry and takes it out on the group when gladriel won't sleep with him but none of that is in the AI versions these are unable to probe any deeper
• 21:30 - 22:00 than going Bill Murray is in Wes Anderson movies and he's an old man Gandalf is an old man so here nightmarishly is Bill Murray's face pasted on Gandalf's head also there's this really important fact that everyone keeps overlooking which is that Wes Anderson makes comedies she's been murdered and you think I did it and none of these videos are remotely funny like there are zero jokes it sucks
• 22:00 - 22:30 I mean artificial intelligence more like short official into my pants that sucked yes Emma it did suck but it sucked in a way that only a human could suck as I've mentioned already I've made a Wes Anderson parody before and I'm not saying there's only one correct way to do it I'm not even saying mine is amazing there's a lot I do differently now but I do think that mine is pretty
• 22:30 - 23:00 solid so here is how I tried to do it years before using AI was even an option my goal with the video was for it to be less of a parody and more like a filmmaking exercise I didn't want to do what that SNL video had done and just plug in characters and moments from his other movies into a new context I tried to do my best take on how I thought Anderson might actually approach that material I picked X-Men because in a lot
• 23:00 - 23:30 of ways it already was a Wes Anderson movie it was a group of brilliant teens or gifted youngsters living in an elaborately decorated mansion with an emotionally distant Father Figure and they all wear coordinated yellow and blue jumpsuits like that is all just a part of the original premise and making this video did not just take a couple of days first I went through and re-watched all of Anderson's movies taking notes on recurring themes and types of characters and relationships the idea was to go
• 23:30 - 24:00 deeper than just a checklist of stylistic elements and wow I am really sorry if this sounds way too pretentious for a silly YouTube video but what I'm getting at is I put a lot of effort into it anyway since Anderson obviously has a fondness for media from the 1960s I went back and used the original core X-Men team from 1963. Big Sci-Fi Action isn't really his thing so I thought it made sense to have
• 24:00 - 24:30 Magneto be a pretentious author who's like an intellectual rival of Professor X we built a scale cross-section model of the Mansion so we could add the characters in with green screens and have these shots like in the Life Aquatic oh and our real secret weapon was that we used the actual Royal tenenbaum's house because at the time I lived like five minutes away in Harlem so the point of all this was to study a filmmaker that I love and actually try to figure out to the best of my ability is okay how would he actually make this
• 24:30 - 25:00 movie and then of course the other point was to have fun with my friends this whole thing was a big collaboration my friend Kendra made the uniforms and also played Storm my sister has supervised the rest of the costumes and we had a big day finding all the pieces at various thrift stores my friend Zach played Wolverine and his brother Ben built the model for us and then the usual crew including original Chloe and dearly departed Jake played the rest of
• 25:00 - 25:30 the characters we had a couple of fun frantic weekends running all over New York City filming it and if you'll allow me to get sentimental for a minute part of what depresses me about these AI videos is that they might discourage people from doing what I did all those years ago getting a group of friends together to make a fun low budget project if you had the budget and the time you could actually have done this without all of these tools but you
• 25:30 - 26:00 wouldn't have because it would have been prohibitively expensive right but what you made you could make another way it's just you wouldn't have it's just too time consuming but now I think you told me when we were talking the other day these take you a couple of days to make at this point so Congress rats dude you made three Wes Anderson parody videos in one month you have officially killed this kind of thing forever no one is ever gonna make one again but beyond Wes Anderson parodies because honestly those should be over by now anyway I worry
• 26:00 - 26:30 that young aspiring filmmakers will see these and choose to use AI instead of actually going outside and putting their hands on a camera and that to me is just depressing as hell the funny thing about all this AI talk is that really none of this stuff actually is artificial intelligence it's not thinking for itself it is incapable of coming up with new ideas this is machine learning it's large
• 26:30 - 27:00 language models the idea behind each one of these programs is that they aggregate a ton of stuff that already exists and then regurgitate something similar so when you open mid-journey and tell it to put an image in a Wes Anderson movie it looks at a bunch of images of Wes Anderson movies and then does something that looks like an approximation of those the Curious Refuge guy says that this is the same as artists having
• 27:00 - 27:30 influences that all artists borrow from other artists so I am definitely more in the camp of the whole like steel like an artist uh realm of thinking about creativity and that idea is essentially that all of us are pulling our creative ideas from other inspiration in our past we just don't as humans know off the top of our head where those sources are coming from which I think is a pretty astounding misunderstanding of what artistic
• 27:30 - 28:00 influence actually is Artistic influence is Wes Anderson taking his love of Hal Ashby Francois truffaut and Jacques de me and processing them into a unique approach that expresses his own view of the world AI art is just a machine for plagiarizing existing art this guy says that AI is democratizing storytelling all of these tools are democratizing creativity and making it possible for
• 28:00 - 28:30 anyone to be a filmmaker no I'm sorry but this is an insane take democratizing storytelling is what affordable filmmaking equipment did it's what like iPhones did it's what the internet did those things gave people outside of traditional structures without huge budgets and resources the tools to create films and a free platform with which to reach a wide audience arguing for AI filmmaking is
• 28:30 - 29:00 saying that people no longer need talent or skill like by this logic why would you learn to play the violin when you can use AI to create a fake violin recording of the piece of music that you want to play the Curious Refuge website proudly says that they are quote empowering non-traditional artists which is hilarious to me because that is just another way of saying bad artists it's
• 29:00 - 29:30 like a steakhouse saying we serve non traditional meals and then giving you a plate with a charred black hockey puck on it AI filmmaking is a grift it is a way to make something that looks professional without putting in any of the work to learn how to do it for real and without paying an actual cast or crew look I'm not generally one for criticizing other folks on YouTube or starting feuds and I wouldn't do it if I
• 29:30 - 30:00 didn't think that this really truly genuinely sucks and if the Curious Refuge people take offense to my comments all I have to say is you shouldn't because you didn't really make those videos in that interview you say that you didn't even come up with the idea itself there is not a shred of personal expression or taste or Humanity in there I don't even know if this guy likes Wes Anderson movies this is a
• 30:00 - 30:30 machine suggestion for what would be a video that would get views on the internet so I'm really only criticizing the work of a soulless program that is not alive and I'm fine with that after all there is a good chance that my video from eight years ago is one of the sources that the AI pulled from to create these new ones so if anyone is entitled to criticize it it's me and also Wes Anderson it should be clear
• 30:30 - 31:00 by now that I'm not really a fan of using AI to produce creative work but this is not an entirely black and white situation see what we're calling AI is really just something trained on data sets to perform actions and that kind of thing has been in use for years and has some uses that I think are not just okay but genuinely positive there are several tools and programs like Adobe After Effects and Photoshop that meet this
• 31:00 - 31:30 definition of AI like rotobrush a tool that detects objects and movement within a shot to automatically rotoscope are content aware fill which scans an image to remove a selected object and creates an extension of the background to fill that space this is still technically AI but here it's a tool meant to replace a tedious repetitive process it benefits create activity rather than replacing it giving more time for artists to make
• 31:30 - 32:00 actual creative choices and this has been happening in the film industry for decades one of the major technical breakthroughs on the original Lord of the Rings trilogy was the software massive developed by Steven regolis at WETA digital which could create huge animated crowds with each character behaving individually with limited artificial intelligence instead of requiring visual effects artists to animate every single digital person one
• 32:00 - 32:30 by one and more recently the spider-verse movies used machine learning tools to replicate details like cross hatching or bende dots on characters faces and in instances like these the tools are not replacing human jobs like across the spiderverse reportedly had the largest crew of people of any animated movie in history but again this is a very very slippery slope the slipperiest slope perhaps like a steep Mountain covered in ice and
• 32:30 - 33:00 banana peels and KY Jelly with a whole bunch of spikes and wolves and spike-covered Wolves at the bottom what seemed like helpful tools used by talented artists can easily be abused by the executives at the top who want to increase profits it's the same kind of thing that happened with the rise of Robotics in the Auto industry and here we are arriving at a point where AI can and will start eliminating certain middle-class computer-based jobs in the
• 33:00 - 33:30 past few years extensive research has been done into using AI to edit movie trailers the idea is that you feed a full movie into the software and it spits out a trailer based on its own learning of what kind of images and beats have been used in other trailers for successful films now this seems a lot more feasible than like creating a movie from scratch using Ai and you can argue that trailers aren't really art anyway they're merely marketing tools so
• 33:30 - 34:00 who cares if they're automated other than you know the editors who make movie trailers and have jobs in that industry but the thought trailers is there's still Artistry in them AI never would have made the choice to edit the trailer for The Social Network to a girls choir cover of creep R to cut the trailer for a serious man around the repeated rhythmic slamming of a man's head against a wall these moments of actual
• 34:00 - 34:30 Innovation the ones that create something that sticks with people for decades can only be done by real human creativity AI is improving all the time but at its very best you will only ever get serviceable imitations of mediocre products but the question then is do the people in charge care about that not to point fingers but plenty of successful mainstream movies
• 34:30 - 35:00 are merely mediocre recycled products if a piece of software can create that automatically do the shareholders care about giving up the potential for an amazing Masterpiece the current writer's Guild of America strike has been going on for about two months now and one of the many issues the writers are striking over is AI and the question of whether Studios and production companies are going to try to use AI to replace human
• 35:00 - 35:30 writers as in of course they're going to try and the writers obviously don't want that no one should want that people who run movie studios the David zazlabs of the world whose primary motives are usually to increase profits and please shareholders and drive up stock prices are always looking for ways to eliminate risk the major reason that the film industry has leaned so hard into franchises and IP is that making movies and TV based on familiar properties
• 35:30 - 36:00 seems safer than an unknown original idea and so you can see to them the appeal of AI the whole idea of recycling and regurgitating existing things that have already proven commercially successful sounds great what if you no longer had to deal with temperamental artists with their own perspectives who might make choices that turn out to be divisive after all how is this really all that different from Disney's ongoing
• 36:00 - 36:30 line of live action remakes of their animated movies the great irony of this whole situation is that AI could also replace the people at the top it was always the job of Studio Executives to decide what projects would get made they were expected to have good business sense like to know how best to spend their budget but also good taste so they could tell what might make good movies that would resonate with audiences and
• 36:30 - 37:00 then make a profit but in recent years new AI software has been evolving that can theoretically determine how movies will perform commercially and what projects should be greenlit in 2020 Warner Brothers signed a deal with a company called synolytic to use their Predictive Analytics to help guide decision making about what projects to Green Light it can apparently determine the monetary value of different movie stars in different International
• 37:00 - 37:30 territories to predict how a movie will will perform so hey maybe the people we should really be worrying about are those poor Executives with their 30 million dollar salaries I hope they're gonna be okay the weird thing about making a video like this is that the story is evolving on a daily basis like I was almost done writing this and then the news broke that secret Invasion the new Marvel show on Disney
• 37:30 - 38:00 plus used AI to create its opening title sequence people immediately freaked out since it seemed like what we were afraid of was happening sooner than we expected and here it was the biggest Studio on the planet doing it but it's more complicated than that see method Studios the VFX company that designed the sequence apparently did employ a team of designers and animators and they claimed they used AI simply as a tool in the process not as a means of
• 38:00 - 38:30 replacing skilled human workers without knowing the step-by-step process I guess we have to trust them on this the director of the show is less helpful saying that he doesn't really understand how the AI process works look the fact is that this AI stuff is here and it is not going away and if we trust the people at method Studios this does seem like the ideal implementation of the
• 38:30 - 39:00 technology as merely another tool that skilled artists can use in their work but Lucy most excited about AI are not actually artists themselves they are the tech Bros who pay for a blue check mark on Twitter who view AI art as a win over those pretentious artists and their dream is of a future where it can make movies tailored to their exact specifications not like the [ __ ] Hollywood is making now they love the
• 39:00 - 39:30 idea of using AI for filmmaking because they don't actually have any Talent OR skill for them AI is like a cheat code that allows them to seem like actual artists without doing any actual work the moral of this story is that AI art sucks unless it's the Steven Spielberg film AI artificial intelligence which is a masterpiece and everyone should go watch that instead of shitty plagiarized
• 39:30 - 40:00 videos made by stupid pieces of software see the thing about AI art is that it isn't really art at all art by its very definition has to express some kind of human expression this stuff generated by AI deserves a label that many of you know I really truly hate so much this is content something utterly disposable
• 40:00 - 40:30 something meaningless content is such a nebulous term because it means everything and nothing Patrick before we devolve into the most nebulous topic possible maybe we could get in a word from our sponsor yeah that's probably a good idea okay so speaking of nebulous things I'd like to tell you about nebula in my ongoing efforts to show that AI attempts
• 40:30 - 41:00 at Art are usually extremely bad I decided to try another experiment and see what AI thinks of Patrick H Williams video is like so we made one and by that I mean I had a I write it and I used their script to make the video it turned out pretty much like you'd expect but I think it's funny but I couldn't really find a good place to fit it into this episode see all season long for every episode we've been releasing an Extended Cut on nebula the streaming platform I
• 41:00 - 41:30 helped build where you can also watch my feature-length film night of the coconut or my feature length class on how to make a movie so I decided that starting with this episode instead of a nebula exclusive extended cut each episode will have a nebula exclusive bonus companion mini video covering something that didn't quite make it into the main video plus this way if you tend to watch the videos on YouTube first you will have no trouble finding the bonus stuff on
• 41:30 - 42:00 nebula I'm choosing to say bonus stuff not bonus content even though most people would but anyway what I'm getting at is that nebula is the place where you can watch all of my regular videos but with no ads plus tons of amazing exclusive stuff that you can't get anywhere else also if you're a fan of jet lag the game new episodes drop there a week before they go on YouTube nebula is now the exclusive place where Lindsay Ellis releases new videos and look
• 42:00 - 42:30 nebula is a thing that I helped build alongside my friends like Dave the agent and we've now got close to 700 000 paying subscribers and we're all really proud of it and the cool thing is that right now if you just click the link down there in the description you can get 40 off of an annual subscription which comes out to only two dollars and fifty cents per month that is in my opinion an incredible deal and it it doesn't just benefit you by giving you cool stuff to watch it also helps
• 42:30 - 43:00 support this Channel and contributes to our ultimate goal getting me out of debt and one day hopefully being able to afford a real desk not a plastic table nebula watch good stuff help Patrick get a desk okay I think we got it so the guy's name is Baker dill and he's a fisherman and he's obsessed with catching a tuna fish and the tuna fish is named justice and he uh I'm gonna put
• 43:00 - 43:30 you on hold nothing like a nice aperol Spritz after a hard day at the office huh you know there's more to an app or all Spritz than just aperol right ah Dart do you need something yeah I felt like this episode could use an epilogue you know where we sum up what we learned today sprinkle in a few dumb gags can you tag in your roommate for this I would but Chloe's busy writing a musical about her life that's interesting basically I'm just looking
• 43:30 - 44:00 oh say that anymore Tara could you check on that I'm on it look when I got here today all I wanted was to make a nice two-hour video about Tom Cruise's hair and then I got caught up trying to solve the whole problem of AI art how's that going not great Dave turns out AI is just the latest tool for lazy greedy people to exploit artists in the ongoing March toward everything becoming that thing I hate so much my least favorite word in the world Here Comes content a term so broad as to render it utterly
• 44:00 - 44:30 meaningless yeah I know Patrick I've heard this speech if you hate the word so much maybe this is the wrong line of work for you people are gonna say it you're not gonna get them to stop saying it if you want my advice and you should Drop It Roll the credits and do your Tom Cruise Hair video no you know what Thomas's feathery updos can wait this is more important I'm gonna take on content show the world how evil it really is Dave the agent
• 44:30 - 45:00 I think we got a new series on our hands Patrick complains Patrick what is rule number one here at nebula no villain arcs no villain arcs we've been through this before we know how it ends so maybe more like Patrick gives an impassioned plea like Jimmy Stewart and Mr Smith Goes to Washington
• 45:00 - 45:30 I think that could work all right done this has been a very productive little chat all right Emma roll cameras we're taking on the whole system you still there yeah no I had to do a thing to set up the next episode some meta I don't know why he makes this so complicated anyway so his ex-wife shows up and her new husband is a real piece of [ __ ]
• 45:30 - 46:00 hello and welcome to the end of the video you made it you made it all the way through congratulations and what you just saw up there on the screen uh next time content uh it's not a joke that is really happening uh we're making the content video if you've ever spoken to me in person or especially like if you follow me on Twitter you're aware that I have a long-standing beef with the word content when used to describe creative work I don't like it and I've been
• 46:00 - 46:30 threatening for years to make a video about why I don't like calling things content and um and I finally reached the point where I was like let's do it now is the time we got we gotta gotta get it out there I can't wait any longer and uh yeah I think it's gonna be a fun one it's gonna be a bit different than usual it's not you know about like specific movies uh and the script is almost done which is great um yeah these we've got like a loose maybe kind of sort of series forming the
• 46:30 - 47:00 like a few videos we're working on are all like thematically connected and uh like this AI one this is way more topical than we ever really get with the video so I kept getting stressed out while working on it being like is this still going to be relevant by the time uh the video is done will it be old news by then and um no AI is still constantly in the news so I I think I think it's still relevant um I hope you you enjoyed it um I wish I could have tied in stuff about the new Mission Impossible movie uh because
• 47:00 - 47:30 that is uh that has that also has a big beef with AI so anyway um look if you wanna you know get your name in these credits here you know scrolling up and help support the channel uh you can join the patreon uh all the money the patreon brings in you know goes toward like funding the videos and paying the team that works on them you also get access to like our little monthly patreon streams on the last one I told the whole full in-depth story about Mission impassable and how you
• 47:30 - 48:00 know how it actually all came together in the end um and they're fun we hang out you know I edit while we do them anyway I think we're at the end now I should wrap this up thank you for watching I'll see you in the next one