Indie tabletop roleplaying game designer, zine publisher. (he/him) "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto."
Joined April 2009
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I wrote Return to the Stars, a tabletop science fiction role playing game, which helps players create their own stories in an optimistic space opera setting. Pop culture collides with political machinations to determine the fate of the galaxy!
#hopepunk
msabalau.itch.io/return-to-t…
In 1961, Drake wrote an equation for the question: Is anyone else out there?
In the 27th century, humanity has crossed the galaxy and found that fife is everywhere, but we’ve never found anyone to talk to.
Watch SEVEN TERMS, my new sci-fi short film:
youtu.be/BELiqfDSUW0
A great haunted house shouldn't just be a backdrop—it should function like a machine for producing anxiety.
In my latest vlog, I break down how The Others uses corridors, thresholds, and household routines to build dread without relying on cheap shocks:
youtu.be/n9inqnpc4hA
Mark Sabalauskas retweeted
Hey Argon, make me some awesome space timelapses, stitch them together in a video with title cards and a soundtrack
I've been doing some hobbyist astronomy with Argon. Here's one of my experiments, where I tasked Argon with reproducing the first black hole images (from 2017/18) using the same raw data.
Argon:
- pulled raw 230 GHz radio fringes (UVFITS) from the Event Horizon Telescope archives.
- built an interferometry solver using 3-dish closure phases to cancel atmospheric noise
- started each run from a plain Gaussian blob with no ring templates or masks
- recovered M87* (2017 & 2018) and Sgr A* at a 91% to 98% match of the official EHT images
Rosemary’s Baby is about bodily autonomy. The Exorcist is about a crisis of faith. The Omen is mostly about... confirming its own premise. Why a film with almost zero subtext still works.
youtube.com/watch?v=8KtfY9hE…
Just wrapped a 22-minute creative experiment with Gemini Argon: sci fi stand-up comedy from TTRPG universe of my Return to the Stars. Used Argon for script and storyboard, generate consistent 16:9 hopepunk art, and assemble the final video.
youtu.be/4JlQBtI0jYw
“I wasn’t in love with Christine.”
John Carpenter treated Stephen King’s killer-car novel as pure work-for-hire to keep his career alive after The Thing. Yet that lack of sentimental attachment is precisely why the film works.
youtube.com/watch?v=okwnRtsq…
In 1958, an evangelical film outfit in Pennsylvania needed money to make religious movies. Their solution wasn't passing the collection plate—it was cooking up a flesh-eating monster out of red dye and industrial silicone. Let's talk about The Blob.
youtu.be/Db4k3ebYtHE?si=XIRq…
You can draw a straight line from Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962) to the bleak dread of George Romero and the surrealism of David Lynch.
Breaking down how an overlooked regional indie quietly shaped modern horror:
youtu.be/UjnYcr9GTyY
I'm experimenting with automation of ElevenLabs Audio, starting a new series: a five minute news broadcast from the setting of a number of my short films.
Fun micro-fiction if you just want a good listen:
youtu.be/5aldUi3d0b8
Mark Sabalauskas retweeted
Dead simple, character swap for any video. On your PC.
Maestro by @blizaine won many fans for making local AI image/video generation super user friendly. Now it supports a highly efficient implementation of Viggle-Animate: replace any character in any video. Local. Free forever.
Which film actually captures the energy of a music scene without turning into a formulaic rise-and-fall biopic? For me, it's 24 Hour Party People. Vlog here:
youtube.com/watch?v=8-Yh4esC…
Mark Sabalauskas retweeted
@Taiwan_FilmFest kicks off tomorrow at the @svilletheatre with HERO!HITO!, the true story of Chinese Taipei's climb to a world championship baseball win.
Plus, on 9/17, check out BLIND LOVE, a story of queerness, gender, and cultural expectations.
🎟️ taiwanfilmfest.org
Mark Sabalauskas retweeted
FFmpeg Skill Update 🎬
Ver.0.9.2→Ver.0.12.0
「この動画を9:16にして」「無音カットして」「字幕入れて」
に加えて、今はこんな指示もできます。
「この部分だけピクセル単位でクロップして」
「この写真、ズームしながらクリップにして」(Ken Burns風)
「動画を回転/反転して」
「この動画にロゴ動画を合成して」「グリーンバックを抜いて」
「この動画、逆再生にして」
「手ブレを直して」
「連番の画像から動画作って」
「単色/グラデーションの背景クリップ作って」
「劣化なしでそのまま書き出して」
「字幕は画質そのままで、後から切り替えられる形で入れて」
「ハイライトは音量じゃなくて長さで選んで」
「AI解析用に軽い解像度でプレビュー書き出して」
できることが21→28個のツールに増えました。
🔍 AIが「わかった上で」処理するように
・「今この環境でこのツールが実際に使えるか」を実行前に事前チェック
・GPUエンコーダー/フォント代替の有無も把握
・複数の音声トラックを持つファイル(吹き替え・別言語版など)で、使うトラックをほぼ全ツールで指定可能に
・字幕トラックの言語などの詳細も読み取れるように
・字幕タイミングをタイムコード(hh:mm:ss:ff)形式でも指定可能に
・9:16化などのクロップで、切り取る位置(左寄せ/右寄せなど)も指定可能に
・音声を再エンコードするかしないか、各ツールが正直に申告するように
✅ 「壊れない・嘘をつかない」を徹底
・書き出しが本当に成功したか毎回確認してから「完了」と報告、失敗時のゴミファイルも残さない
・元の動画ファイルを誤って上書き・破損させない安全策
・失敗した時、原因とやり直せるかをAIが判別
・色変換で再エンコードが必要になった場合も、字幕や追加の音声トラックをできる限り残すように
・同期のズレを検出した時、信頼度が低い場合はAIに警告
・最新FFmpeg / Windows環境でも安定動作(Windowsのパス周りのバグ修正含む)
🛠️ 開発・保守の仕組みも強化
・「AIがして良いこと/判断すべきでないこと」を明文化(勝手にAIが「見た目の良さ」を判断しない設計)
・生FFmpegコマンドへの逃げ道を塞ぐテストを追加
・ドキュメントと実際のコードの挙動がズレたら自動テストで検知
・OSSとしてのContributing手順を整備、バージョンタグを打つとGitHub Releaseが自動生成される仕組みを追加
・GPU対応について「対応してるとは言うが動作保証はしない」ことを正直に明記
Claude Code / Cursor / Codex対応、MCPあり、ローカル処理でクラウド不要は変わらず。
Current: v0.12.0
github.com/kajisho5/ffmpeg-s…
#FFmpeg #AIVideo #AI #MCP #ClaudeCode #OpenSource
Mark Sabalauskas retweeted
Open-sourcing a set of screenwriting skills, and why it matters
Repo: github.com/jtydhr88/screenwr…
I collected 20 books on screenwriting and distilled them into a set of screenwriting skills.
I ran an interesting comparison of my own: I had Claude write a 100-minute feature screenplay using this skill set, then had it write one without relying on the skills at all, and compared the two.
Mark Sabalauskas retweeted
I wrote some guidance on how to:
- extend videos
- use tags to refer to inputs in your prompts (eg mark something as a reference as opposed to a video to edit)
ai.google.dev/gemini-api/doc…
No villain. No epic battle of the bands. No epiphanies. Linda Linda Linda refuses every trope of the high school music film—and that’s exactly why it works.
youtube.com/watch?v=wP8QTVcn…
ATTENTION CITIZENS: The Corp has deemed this mandatory viewing. 🤖 Thrilled to announce that my short film, An Honest Message From Your Favorite Dystopian Corporation, is an Official Selection at the 2026 Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival! Made with
@FlowbyGoogle
🤖 Made with AI
ALT Laurels showing that "An Honest Message From Your Favorite Dystopian Corporation" is an official selection of the Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival
Hollywood forgot how to make movies like The Mummy or The Rocketeer. Amazon’s Masters of the Universe isn't perfect, but it revives that Saturday-matinee escapism.
My full review:
youtube.com/watch?v=X0Qmvg22…
