Mackay Bell

The secret of AI video was lost on the battlefield. We found it. #GrokImagine #xAI #GrokFun #FunnyAI

DAY 9 - Grok Imagine Feature Here are four versions of the Fat People Dancing billboard coming together from objects in the alley. All four work. So which one goes in the film? That's the strange new problem with SI filmmaking. You can generate limitless versions of any clip, and no two are the same. Some have obvious defects, like a missed line, a blocking error or a melting hand. Those are easy to toss. But many just give you a variety of good alternatives. So how do you choose? Do you take the first good one? What if a better take is waiting a few generations later? When do you stop? The answer, I realized, is Walter Murch's Rule of Six. In his classic book on editing, In the Blink of an Eye, Murch ranks what makes a cut work, with a percentage for each: Emotion (51%) Story (23%) Rhythm (10%) Eye trace (7%) Two-dimensional plane of the screen (5%) Three-dimensional space (4%) Emotion outweighs everything else combined. And that's the answer. You stop when the emotion hits. You can generally tell when a clip lands the right emotional beat: "Oh, that's good." After that, you rarely get the same feeling again, and you can move on. When more than one clip makes that emotional connection, you move down the list. Does clip A or B tell the story better? Does A or B have a better rhythm? And so on. What strikes me is how much of the creative discussion about AI video, especially the emphasis on storyboards, focuses on rules 5 and 6: building a perfectly consistent two- and three-dimensional space. I agree with Murch that those are the least important parts of creating a cut film. Which might be many AI videos feel stiff and don't connect emotionally. Which of the four would you pick? We picked the one that made us say, "Oh, that's good.” #FPD #FatPeopleDancing #GrokImagineFeature #NoScriptNoStoryboard #GrokImagine

DAY 8 - Grok Imagine Feature I have huge admiration for directors who fill their films with striking uses of color, like Wes Anderson's meticulously planned palettes, or Bertolucci and Vittorio Storaro's color theory in The Conformist and The Last Emperor. But I lean more toward how Tarantino uses color. It's brilliant too, but it doesn't call attention to itself. It hides in the narrative. I'm more of an "it needs to further the narrative" guy than a "show off the director's visual style" guy. Not that there's anything wrong with showing off. But many directors try and fail to achieve Wes Anderson. I lived through the inception of the pretentious horror of digitally grading every single film in teal-and-orange. Twenty some years ago, I sat in a post-production facility with a supposedly expert color timer and asked, "Why does the director want to make every shot look the same?" The angry reply was, "Because it looks great!" It didn't. Still doesn't. It seriously needs a military intervention. So on Fat People Dancing, I had no interest in wasting time making a color statement. On my own films, I'm a guy who shoots guerrilla style in an alley, timed by how long it takes before the store owner calls the cops. Afterward, in editing, I might say, "Wow, that sign with the red lettering is really cool. Maybe I'll hang on it a few more frames." Discussing a Super 16mm gradient with Grok seemed like the only decision I needed to make to give the film a unique look. Done. Let's move on to the narrative. What do I cut to when he steps off the landing? But then a conversation with Grok about Riley Brooks went down a rabbit hole. We invented a fictional Disney Channel supporting character who stole the spotlight from the stars. Super savvy about branding, she gets her own show and leverages it into a pop career (even though she can't sing or dance). That's how I bumbled into pink and blue. She's smart enough to make them her signature colors (kind of tomboy androgynous, but not really). Then I put her on Walter's phone. Then I tossed her colors into the credits. I realized they could be a theme, one that contrasts strikingly with the drab of Walter's world. Her colors and her pop persona loom over the film. He's her opposite, trapped in a world she confidently dominates. It's something I never would have thought of on my own, unless I had a great art direction staff to talk to on someone else's dime. I do have opinions, just not the time (or money) to pursue them. But thanks to Grok, Hyper Geek Studio has the most amazing world-class art department to work out these kinds of details. See what you think. It's likely to be a big theme throughout the film. #FPD #FatPeopleDancing #GrokImagineFeature #NoScriptNoStoryboard #GrokImagine

Yes, you can learn to adapt to the ups and downs of being a writer in Hollywood, and depending on the approval of others to get anything accomplished. Waiting for a phone call that might change your life or set you back. Or never comes. At the end of your life you can assess whether it was worth it. Or you can just write your own stories and self-publish them and make your own films with AI. teapaw.org/spyderdobro/status/211…

DAY 7 - Grok Imagine Feature How do you keep character consistency? For most of our HGS cartoon videos, we didn't worry about it much. We love the style of cartoonists like Bob Clampett, Tex Avery and John Kricfalusi, who did a lot of off-model animation. And those videos were just tests, so we were trying to find the best look for each character. (The early Simpsons characters changed radically as the series went on.) But mostly it was because we knew Grok Imagine was evolving, and it seemed like a waste of time to worry about it too much. There were a lot of other things to learn about the tool while it sorted out character consistency. For our Odyssey contest video, we didn't want to break the illusion, so we spent more time on it, mostly by capturing video frames and using those as references. But midway through, we started testing character sheets, and they seemed promising. So for this feature, we're definitely using them. The problem is, there's no agreed-upon standard. We've seen a variety of different styles. The team behind the official Grok Imagine Odyssey series says your sheets only need one close-up plus a front and a back view. (And a new sheet for each costume change.) We're still testing, and we aren't sure that's right, but we might try it on a couple of characters. Below is our first character sheet, which seemed to work pretty good. But because Walter's hands were in his pockets, his fingers sometimes came out too thin. Also, because we didn't have a back view, Grok Imagine would sometimes create a new logo for the back of his shirt. So we fixed that. Finally, based on suggestions from other creators, we cut off his head in the long shots, forcing Grok to go back to the close-up for the face. That seems to work better so far. Some of the medium shots of Walter had gotten soft, as if Grok were enlarging the face from the full-figure references rather than shrinking it down from the hero close-up. The best practices for reference sheets are still being refined, but here are some of the one's we're working with currently. #FPD #GrokImagineFeature #NoScriptNoStoryboard #GrokImagine #FatPeopleDancing

They made me tap the sign. 1. Works created with AI can receive copyright protection when they have sufficient human authorship. The rules for determining that authorship are not substantially different from works created without AI. 2. The Copyright Office has registered more than 7,000 works that include AI material following its guidance. (Which is not law, just guidance to current laws. Human authorship is protected regardless of what tools you use.) 3. You don’t need to register your work, AI or non-AI, if you don’t want to. (Generally only when you decide to sue someone for violating your copyright.) You can register later at any time if you choose to. 4. Anyone who copies a work created with AI can still be sued for copyright infringement. teapaw.org/karatademada/status/21…