E60 - AI's Impact on Filmmaking: How Do We Move Forward From Here? with Jagger Waters

00:01 - David Brown (Host)

Jagger, welcome to the podcast, thank you. So I ran across you, I think on LinkedIn, because you'd won a film competition and we want to get to that in a minute. But how did you get to the point where you were actually creating an AI film in a contest?

00:21 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Well, last year, during the Hollywood writers' strike I started educating myself about AI.

00:28

I didn't know a lot about it, but it was a hot topic during the strike negotiations so I peeked my head in.

00:34

I started seeing what the tools were really capable of, um, and it really expanded my mind pretty quickly and I started thinking very differently about my career and the things I wanted to create as a writer, producer, storyteller.

00:50

So I realised then that I don't think we really succeed when we resist a new technology, and I do believe that's what this is.

00:59

So I chose to embrace it and a few months ago I went to NAB show in Vegas and there was a after party hosted by Curious Refuge, which is a wonderful educational resource for learning AI filmmaking, and they had a generative AI esports tournament as part of this party and I competed and I won, which was very fun and totally unexpected and that became a stepping stone to this 48-hour generative AI filmmaking competition I got invited to be a part of, which was part of AI on the Lot hosted by AI LA, which is just a wide group of creatives you know, entertAIners and people in tech here in LA and competing in that competition was very fun. It was also a crash course in the tools that I was starting to learn, and I had to speed up that process in order to keep up in the competition. So it was a blast, and the film we created was called Love at First Bite, and my collaborators were Nem Perez and Adriana Vecchioli, incredible filmmakers who I'm grateful to be great friends with now.

02:16 - David Brown (Host)

Excellent, and just I'll say this now so that nobody tries to write anything down, but we'll put all the links to all this stuff in the show notes later. So if anybody wants to come and find it, just come find the show notes, and I'll have links to all this stuff, so obviously, to the film and everything else. Um, so what tools were you using to actually create? There's so many questions, and I did watch some other videos and some other interviews and stuff, and I know you've talked a little bit about like esports and how you ended up winning that competition, which might be interesting to go into, but what were the tools you were using to create the videos at the time?

02:54 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

We used Midjourney image generation and we upscaled those selections in a tool called Magnific, which will really give you a fine detail. It'll just refine the photo that you upload and there's a lot of settings you can play with. There's now a relight feature, which basically relight means you can totally change the set and the feel and the look and the tone of the picture while retaining the subject in the image, um. But that tool really gave us like a much more of a crisp image to work with so that when we upload that to runway uh, gen 2 or we could now use luma, which didn't exist, uh, luma is dream machine, um, uh, when you upload an image that's been much more upscaled and there's a much greater detail, then when you introduce motion, it doesn't have that sort of smoothed over, glossy look that a lot of the AI content has. It can retain a bit more detail. Interesting.

04:01 - David Brown (Host)

It helps with that, it prevents that smoothing over process that happens.

04:07 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

That's how we created our B-roll footage of the world, but we also shot our film. I was an actor. The other, Adriana, was an actor in the film, so it felt very traditional. It felt like making a short film on the beach with your friends, which is what we did. So it felt very traditional. It felt like making a short film on the beach with your friends, which is what we did. And we took that raw footage and ran it through a style transfer in tools called Kyber and LensGo, which really just created a different aesthetic, really this kind of like pop art look that we ended up selecting, that aligned visually with the B-roll that we had created. So we shot our film and I think that that stood out and and, yeah, kind of made it a love note to cinema, in my opinion.

04:57 - David Brown (Host)

It's pretty cool. I mean I did. I've watched it and I also. I was laughing as well because I saw you on IMDb, and you're credited as a torso, which I thought was pretty funny.

05:08 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Didn't see that. Oh my God.

05:09 - David Brown (Host)

Have you not seen it?

05:10 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

I didn't see that that's great, it just says, it's Love Bites Love at. First Bite.

05:18 - David Brown (Host)

Yeah, sorry, Love at First Bite. And it says torso.

05:22 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

I didn't see that, but that's yeah, we. That's the, the nickname we gave the character because and the other characters actually was- it was named legs legs, yeah, had legs, yeah um and that was the, this odd couple pairing of these, these lesbian zombies that we created. Um, we turned it into a love story. Um, that's hilarious, that's then. That's how we refer to the character torso, and legs.

05:44 - David Brown (Host)

That's too funny. So that's what's in I, so you're now forever torso, and wow um, which I think is too funny.

05:52

Hang on one second. Let me just open this window because, for once, I'm boiling hot in the uk, which is sorry about that. We have a casual show here. Great, I could take my sweatshirt off, that might help. But, um, that's really cool, and there are so many tools out there to use at the minute, um, and they're getting better and better every day. I mean, how, how long ago was that that, that that you actually did the work to make the film?

06:27 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

That was two months ago. Yeah, almost exactly so in that eight weeks the tech has advanced already.

06:38 - David Brown (Host)

I mean it's crazy. There's some of the I'm in a ton of different WhatsApp groups that are all related to AI and and different flavours, and one of them a bunch of guys have got into the video stuff that's been coming out and some of it's some of it's quite freaky, particularly the way it does like animals moving and the way it morphs, and when people move it tends to like morph them into different shapes and stuff. But it's like it. It's almost like you'll start off with a cat and then you'll end up with like a fox in the middle and then it goes back to a cat and it's got its own aesthetic and I think some of it is actually really really cool and I'm quite curious to kind of see where it goes as a medium in itself right, because it's now becoming its own medium. It's not the same as photography and it's not the same as film and it's not the same as video. It is its own separate thing right.

07:33 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

I agree, I think so. I think that it is its own separate thing and it is cinematic, it is storytelling, so those aspects of it are similar to film, but I do think it's interesting. There is a bit of defensiveness around the word film itself, but I fully embrace AI creation storytelling as its own separate thing. I hope that we have our own platform and our own place to upload this content, because it's totally understandable if people don't want to see this on Instagram or Twitter or any of the other main social media platforms. I think that we would be happy to have our own space.

08:22 - David Brown (Host)

It's funny that you mentioned that, because something that I've been working on in the background is an AI Art Awards.

08:29

Um, for exactly that reason, to give people who are artists and and we were, we've been thinking, we haven't been thinking video, we've been thinking more like photography and kind of your traditional kind of art and and the idea was is that people could submit their AI generated art and in different categories, and then we would have some traditional artists judging that, picking a short list.

08:58

The short list of each category would then be printed to on museum quality paper and gallery quality paper paper and actually hung in a gallery for public viewing. Because I think something that happens a lot of times with that stuff is no, like, people create tons and tons of stuff and they, a it never gets recognized and b it never actually makes it into the real world in any meaningful way. And so I, my idea is to give artists an outlet where they don't have to enter AI art in a normal art competition. They can have their own competition and it can sort of be its own thing. So it's fun. You know, it's kind of funny that you mentioned that and I hadn't thought about. Maybe we should add film to it and have a film category and or or a video category and let people submit videos as well, although that doesn't we'd have to figure out Anyway sorry, I'm just on a little tangent.

09:51 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

I know plenty of people, myself included, who would love to submit to that.

09:55 - David Brown (Host)

Who would love that? Yeah, yeah.

09:57 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

In the film sense.

09:59 - David Brown (Host)

Well, and it's interesting. I mean we've had I think I may have mentioned this before, but I had Daniel Bedingfield on, who's a musician. You know, he was a judge on. Um. Um, it wasn't the voice. Um, I'll look it up. Um, it's like the voice. New Zealand. Um, it's not the voice. What's the other one?

10:20 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Like the mask singer. No no, Is that? This is really

10:24 - David Brown (Host)

embarrassing. Now I can't think of it off the top of my head.

10:26 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

I'm gonna have to Google it while we're talking just because it's driving me crazy um but I think that disclaimer that you're talking about, you know, creating a sort of separate category where it says, yes, this is AI, and that we're being fully transparent, that that's what it is and that's what we use to create it, and I think that distinction is important and to honour and respect artists that don't use it, but also carve out a niche for those of us that are.

10:52 - David Brown (Host)

Exactly, it's X Factor.

10:54 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Ah X.

10:55 - David Brown (Host)

Factor. Thank you, you saved me while I was looking it up. Yeah, x Factor. Anyway he's. He's you know, million selling artist. You know he's had loads of songs and he uses it very effectively. He uses AI for inspiration and to help him come up with new ideas for songs. I know other artists that are more traditional, that have, you know, have fine art degrees and, you know, have been musicians, but they also do actual art Like they can. They can take anything that they do in AI and actually do it themselves physically in paint if they want to Right Either improve either use the basis of the image as like okay, this is the goal and recreate it, or tweak that image itself.

11:36 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

This reminds me, um, I did find a tool and a platform, uh, last week, called Exactly AI, which is yeah, this is that, the platform where you can upload your own style and your own artwork, but you can keep a privately trained model that only you use, or you use it to generate images for clients and then you can touch them up, make them better, or you can sell the model and monetize it. And I'm really craving the writing version of this tool. I would really love to upload all of the content that I've written and see what it thinks. You know some, what are some ideas? You know, like idea generation based on my style and my writing preferences, and kind of see what it spits out, which would be really interesting because I'm a bit submersive, subversive and satirical with my writing, so I would be interested to see if we could even detect that if it would take it too seriously.

12:35 - David Brown (Host)

I'm sure it probably would and just so you know, I had Tanya on my podcast last week.

12:39 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Oh my gosh, I can't wait to hear it.

12:46 - David Brown (Host)

So, yeah, you should go and listen to it, because I, I saw it and you know, kind of thought exactly the same thing. That sounds amazing and the ability for an artist to take their body of work and create a private, a privately trained model that can then help them and and I was really curious more about it from like there's a lot of artists who maybe they either get injured or they get old and they can't you know, they can't physically do the fine movements that they need to do anymore.

13:12 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

That reminds me of Celine Dion, yeah is one.

13:16 - David Brown (Host)

I think Shania Twain had a lot of trouble with her voice as well, so you know there could be something there. But but I was thinking more like you know, if you, if you develop MS or you develop something like that, that's a physical thing for someone who did you know sort of some sort of art like watercolour or oil painting or line drawing or whatever, where they can't, they just don't have the physical shaking.

13:36

You know they can't do it anymore, but they still want to be creative and they're still creative people. You know you could just upload a load of their art and then you could have them. You know they can learn how to do the prompting to get what they want, and it then becomes more of a curation right.

13:58 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

You become a curator of all the stuff that you have, which that word seems to feel controversial to some people, and I've seen this argument that, you know, curation is not creation, these bold statements like that.

14:10

But even in that 48 hour film competition that I did, I became very aware that there's so many micro decisions that you have to make about taste, especially when you're filtering through. You know, you have 20 generations of an attempt of the same movement and you have to not only choose the, not not only the best one that has the least amount of morphing or hallucinations, but also the one that really aligns with your vision the most, so that that taste, um, and you know, when it comes to creating an aesthetic that you know retains throughout an entire piece, like you, you have to be able. You know, when it comes to creating an aesthetic that you know retains throughout an entire piece, like you have to be able, you do need storytelling skills. You do need to be able to curate and have good taste. So I think that that is a skill and it matters a bit more than people are giving it credit for.

15:01 - David Brown (Host)

Well, it's just good editing.

15:03 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

I mean, isn't it?

15:04 - David Brown (Host)

At the end of the day, it's just editing, and I for one, isn't it?

15:05 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

At the end of the day, it's just editing, I mean and I for one, as a writer, I love editing my work. It's that you know that first draft is the hardest thing, but when I, when I after I have that, it's like, oh great, yeah, I know how to fix it, I know how to tweak and adjust it and really, you know, amplify the, the story, the narrative, storytelling in it. So, so I love editing.

15:27 - David Brown (Host)

You're probably the only one I don't know.

15:29 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, no I I actually. I did chat with a friend about that. She was like what are you talking about? She's like I love brain dumping. She's like I hate having to review my work.

15:39

I'm like, oh, that's the part I like Um, but the, the, the advancement of the tools and then getting better, actually reminds me of. I listened to a panel last week with the founder of Wonder Dynamics, which was acquired by Autodesk recently, but he was describing how, with a lot of these video tools do still have that morphing effect and it doesn't understand animal anatomy or human anatomy, but Sora, which is not publicly available yet, that model was actually trained with they understanding of of physics and science before they trained it um with with the knowledge of filmmaking or shot composition, and I think that's really smart um and probably that's that.

16:34

That's that way of training a model. You know you're speaking that, the computer's language, you're speaking the language model's language, before trying to introduce something creative, and I think that that is really intelligent and I would look forward to using Sora when it is available.

16:52 - David Brown (Host)

Yeah, same, but again there's so many cool things coming. I'll ask you about Neo Cinema in a minute. I don't know if you know what that is, but I saw a post that was about that as well, so I'm curious. All right, let's get into the meat of this. So you live in Hollywood. You're right in the epicentre of probably all the discussions about this. Like when you go to parties or when you go out and you see people, whatever, I'm sure it's a topic of discussion. Like what's your analysis of the general feeling? It may not be how you feel, but how do you, how would you interpret how everybody around is feeling? You know in your circles.

17:35 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Well, I've noticed that a lot of these AI centred events that I go to, um, I am one of the only either writers or person with a like traditional entertainment background.

17:48

Um, most of the people I encounter, uh, have worked in tech, gaming, um, extended reality, um, but also many, many VFX artists and graphic designers, um, artists who have used cgi, and they have their finger on the pulse, because I think, as VFX artists and some of them that I spoke to, have said you know, this happens every couple years there's a new thing and I have to learn it if I want to keep my job. So that's been a really interesting conversation to have. And then, among writers and directors you know who have spent their time, you know conversation to have. And then, among writers and directors you know who have spent their time, you know, in writers rooms or creating short films or making their own features. There is a pretty strong sensitivity and rejection of AI and I'm encouraging my friends who feel that way to come with me to these events and to just learn a bit more about it.

18:41 - David Brown (Host)

But it's yeah, it's pretty divisive at the time Is the worry that they feel that they'll be completely replaced or that their work will be devalued somehow.

18:55 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

What's the?

18:55 - David Brown (Host)

what's the core of the? Is it? Is it literally just they won't need us anymore, or is it something else?

19:03 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Yeah, my, my observation is that there's an opinion of like this is this is a push towards, like, total replacement of creatives, um, which I don't think will happen again because of that curation aspect that we've, that we chatted about, um, and you know ethical concerns too. You know the training of the models, like what you know, whose, whose art was used to train these generative AI models, which is a very important question to ask and, I think, something that will, over time, get smoothed out regulated audio platforms that are currently being sued by Universal Music Group, sony and Warner because they train the models on this vague, publicly available music. But I think that that's happening because Universal, sony and Warner want their own version of these models. So I think that those platforms will be acquired or shut down and those music groups will develop their own, again for private use, for them to use. Take an artist, all of an artist's discography, and upload it and say, like you know, let's test out what could be the next hit for this artist using their signature sound, which is, you know, I think, an advanced version of producing.

20:29

So I think that, yeah, that ethical concern is big and it's definitely an important conversation to keep having, but I also think that the backlash from the writers and directors, from the creatives in Hollywood, it's a very, it's a kind of exhaustion that is coming after years and years of frustration, of feeling this industry, you know, contract, which it did after. You know, during and after COVID, you know we didn't bounce back after the pandemic. There are these historic losses across the industry. You know you open deadline of variety and you see, you know Bob Eiger said that Disney lost four billion dollars on their streaming platform. You know what it like when you zoom out and it's like well, what does that mean for me as a creative?

21:18

or even these other huge pieces of ip, like um, Netflix had a Horizon Zero Dawn series in production which is, you know, based on a very successful gaming franchise, yeah and um, it was in the middle of production and you know, I don't know what the budget that had been spent so far, but probably upwards of tens of millions, and they just shut it down. Uh, there was a Coyote versus Acme, uh, movie that was completely finished. You know it cost 70 million dollars.

21:49

That's looney tunes IP you think that kind of IP is bulletproof, right like as a creative I understand, okay, my, my, my totally original weird period piece drama that might be a hard sell but you would think as a writer or director it's like well, if I'm working on Looney Tunes IP, then I'm safe, then my, my work is going to get valued and shown and screen and they're, they're not they. They took a tax loss for that film.

22:11

Same thing with Batgirl, which is DC, um and you know, hbo max has removed um entire animated series from their platforms and the creators don't have access to the content that they created.

22:25

So even when you've gotten to the point where you're writing a film or you've worked on one, even by the time you've wrapped and you're done and it's, and it's tied up with a bow, it can still never be released and taken as a tax loss instead of that. So I think that that's what we're dealing with on the inside. So I think that this response is an exhaustion and a frustration and anger towards like this isn't working. What are we doing? But for me, all of those reasons are the reasons for seeing this IP getting thrown in the trash, even when you're working on something that's tied to a big franchise, there's such a big chance it'll never be seen. You know, there's such a big chance it'll never be seen.

23:08

That's a reason to embrace AI and try to move, move at least in a direction where it's like well, can I start to develop my own portfolio as a filmmaker, because that's the other thing is like I don't have. You know, a lot of this work in Hollywood is convincing people to give you money to then develop a portfolio that you use to get more work. But so many of us are at the point where it's like I can't even I don't have anything to quote show for it yet. Um, and I want to develop a portfolio where it's like, hey, this is my style, this is my, this is my look.

23:35 - David Brown (Host)

Um, you know, I've, I've created these teaser trailers, these, these pitches, that use this, these these tools that can at least show you hey, this is like, this is my pre-visualization, this is what I want to create. Um, it's gotta be super helpful for that. Yeah, like, like you have access to tools to do that. That you know. Two years ago even you didn't have access to do that.

23:59

You know you can create a sizzle reel on your own, like quite easily, with way higher perceived production value. Then maybe you could even do yourself. Do you know what I mean? In a much, much shorter time period, which I guess could be a nightmare for the studios because they're just going to get inundated with all sorts of content. But from a creator perspective, I can see how that could be much more exciting because it enables you to do something that you couldn't do before and you can get that visualisation across and you can say this is what I have in mind. And if you can, you know if and you'll know this just from you know, trying to create the film, like you have to get super creative in the way that you create prompts and how you, you know, maybe play systems off of one another and you give one prompt to one system and the same prompt to a different one and then you ask them to improve it. And you know you can. You can kind of play them off each other, and you know it.

24:54 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

it to get something that you really really like is actually quite difficult, and there is a skill in that, and I think, a way to put your own original stamp on it, and this is something that I'm going to choose to do, which is, I think there will be legalities that come down to like well, what was the prompt that was used here?

25:14

And I think that there is language that you can use. You can say something like in this you know, when you're prompting, you can say in the style of George Lucas, in the style of Steven Spielberg I don't believe in doing that because that's a bit lazy and you can achieve, you can have a vision of like okay, I am thinking I'm feeling inspired by this shot from ET or whatever, but you can get creative in how you describe that shot and achieve it with language that doesn't deliberately pull from the reference of a specific director or filmmaker, and I think that's important, and I think that that's just that. That's something that I will stick to with prompting, because there's a way to get creative without using that as a crutch.

25:56 - David Brown (Host)

Yes, I agree, and I think, and I also agree that I think where we'll end up is that the prompting will become the IP, not the result. So it's how do you get the result out of a system that actually becomes the IP? I know an artist who has a very particular style and he has a very particular way that he uses AI to get that style. He has a very particular way that he uses AI to get that style and it's very repeatable and very successful and it's a very complicated process that he's worked out how to do it. But it now gives him the results that he wants that are commercially viable quite often. And I've said to him, hey, come on the podcast or come and talk to us about it. And he's know. I've said to him you know, hey, come on the podcast or come, and you know, talk to us about it. And he's like, it's fine, but I won't talk about how I do it because I don't want anybody else to figure it out.

26:52

So I think I agree I think you know the IP is going to be in the in the prompting.

26:58 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Yeah, or and for for filmmakers who do create these teaser trailers or something you know it's. You know many years ago, when you know, studios started optioning Twitter threads for TikTok video. You know like we're living in a world where you know, TikTok series are being video series are being optioned Twitter threads are being optioned Threads on on x, if we want to call it that yeah, and so if that's the game, then yeah we, as creators, need to be like okay, well, here's my teaser trailer.

27:32

Can I get enough people on these platforms interested enough sharing, liking, commenting on my content to show these studios, hey, this is a valuable idea. And if they need that, if they need the public opinion to be like oh look, this has 4 million views, if they need that in order to justify optioning a creator's work or taking the basis of the idea, and then having an original creative team recreate that work without using AI. I think that's the direction we're going in in the next three to five years.

28:03 - David Brown (Host)

Interesting. That's the direction we're going in in the next three to five years. Interesting I as a non, as someone who doesn't, you know, come from that world, and just just somebody who watches films. Um and this is going back a little bit to something that you were saying about the fatigue and everything that you were talking about a minute ago I I can't help but think, though, that the studios, not the writers I don't think it's the writers' problem, it's the studios' problem because of what they're funding.

28:31

But, as a filmgoer, the last thing I want to see is the 14th version of a Marvel film and the 11th Star Wars film or the 15th Star Wars, like that. Like I get it, it's a, you know, it's sort of a traditional sort of IP and a story that people have engaged with in the past, but I think what's happened is is that a lot of people have become the viewers have become fatigued at only being able to go see another freaking Marvel film and another DC film, and it's like we don't care. We want original content again. We want new films with new IP. Like, I refuse to go and see the.

29:16

You know, the 14th installment of you know saw 12 or whatever number it's on at the minute, like do you know what I mean? And it's and I think it was you actually, and correct me if I'm wrong in our, in our pre-chat that we had the other day, didn't you say that kind of the way it works is you can kind of go to a you, you go to a company and you say, hey, it's a little bit of this and a little bit of this and you put them together and then you figure out that that's what's going to get funded right was it you that was saying that yes.

29:48 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

So when you're pitching a show or a movie, you know something they want to hear. The creative executives want to hear is okay, well, what is it? Like? You know, like, make a, make a comparison. So you reference you say oh it's, you know it's the Sopranos meets Breaking Bad or whatever, like you actually reference existing material and say this is what my show is. And if we're already doing that in our pitches, then yeah, I think that connects directly to using AI, to sort of like demonstrate that visually.

30:19 - David Brown (Host)

Yeah, yeah, and I know there's some actors I know the acting community is is very broadly split on AI as well, Cause you've got actors like Tom Hanks who said, yeah, totally fine, Licence my licence, my image, use it for whatever you want, as long as you pay me for it and pay my estate for it, it's fine and pay my estate for it, it's fine. Make all the you know, do all the stuff you want to do with it. And then there are other people who I can't think of one off the top of my head but are like absolutely not not having any of it, I'm not doing it, you know, I mean, we know Scarlett Johansson and you know, her.

31:06

Allegedly her voice has been used in OpenAI, but I don't know what. Again, in your sort of circle of who you know what, what would you say? The sort of split is Is it like 50, 50?, is it 60, 40, or I?

31:14 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

I think it's hard to tell because people aren't being publicly vocal about it, um, but I think this, actually this, this question actually relates to what you were saying about Marvel franchises as well which is this is commercialization, this is the business aspect, right? So I think Tom Hanks knows, oh, this is my path to a bigger paycheck, um, and so do you know, if you, if you look at the fine print of some of these companies and the advisory boards Wonder Dynamics, which uses machine learning and CGI elements to reduce the cost of VFX and post, you look at who's on their board? It's Steven Spielberg, Joe Russo. So you have these big players, these established veterans of filmmaking, who are quietly either adopting or endorsing these tools, who are quietly either adopting or endorsing these tools. So I look to that as a signal to move in that direction, because these are master. You know, all three of those names are pretty. Those are commercially successful artists who understand the business. So I think that following you know, noticing that and moving in that direction is wise.

32:25

But, yeah, the commercialization of what you're saying with you know, like the 14th Marvel film or the, you know, 10th instalment that comes from you know, that's a business decision. This is a for-profit industry and you want to show your investors, your shareholders, people giving you money. Hey, we know this is going to work because it follows this formula from before, and this is something that I think connects to a widespread problem that everyone in the industry is trying to solve, which is how do we use data to predict successful narratives? And it's not. It's sort of working, it will kind of work and then it won't, and it's a combination of like science, data and like mysterious alchemy of like what are people attracted to? And I think you're not alone in wanting original, different content, but the people who are writing these checks don't want to make that bet because they don't want to lose um, but there's also there's, but they poison the well anyway but they, but they poison the well.

33:33 - David Brown (Host)

This is my point is that there is a limit to that and they keep poisoning the well. And so what happens? As a viewer, you just get fatigued and you're just like, oh God, they're doing it again. And it's like, oh God, they're making another. You know, they're making another spinoff.

33:51

Oh God, they're doing it. And it's like just just make the show and make a you know TV, make a successful show, do it for three seasons or whatever it is, and then leave it and let people have enjoyed it. Do you know what I mean? And then don't, don't come back for the. I mean I can't imagine that law and order, if it's still running, that law and order still has the same like. I'll be amazed if it's, if it's got the same numbers as it as it had in the beginning, but maybe it does. Um, it's. It was like 25 years that show was going on or something ridiculous. You know well, this is also and the IP.

34:28 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

You know, even beyond marvel, beyond saw, um, there's a, there's a tier of IP sort of below that which is like okay, well, it was it a book, has it been published, or yeah. And this is where even those twitter threads and TikToks fall into this category of like hey, what's optionable.

34:43

And it's basically this obsession with IP where it's like we have to only produce things that have had, like, that have a proven audience somewhere else. And I think that why me and other artists and creators call bullshit on that, is because that doesn't translate. It. Just it's not actually translating.

35:02

And yes, maybe if the book series is big enough you know something like Hunger Games or even Big Little Lies, which I do believe is based on a book. I hope that's true, I do, I think it is, you know, sure there's some of that audience will translate, right? You know, maybe something like 30% of the people who read the book are going to be like no-transcript, they just it's, it's on, you know, it's the first thing that pops up when they open their streaming platform. So I think the IP thing is a bit bullshit because it doesn't. Yeah, people aren't, they're not paying attention. It's the same reason why a lot of like new creators can't sell original shows which they're like oh well, like you haven't sold a show in the past, right, they're like you didn't, you haven't produced, or you haven't been a showrunner, and that's another thing you want to work your way up.

36:02

You don't want to jump to being a showrunner too quickly, but the reason you can't is because they're like well, we need a writer who is a name that we recognize here in the industry and it's like sorry, but the person in Nebraska watching the show isn't going to recognize a single writer's name, like, maybe Shonda Rhimes, maybe that's a name that they'll recognize, right, because so prolific, but other than that they're not going to be like, oh well, this wasn't a senior writer with six other TV shows, then I'm not going to watch it Like the average viewer is not making these decisions and it's just this.

36:30

It's a bit of an echo chamber over here of people only wanting to give senior level people a chance and only taking a chance on things that are very safe, and that creates a pipeline issue for people you know at my level or lower.

36:48 - David Brown (Host)

That prompted a question in my mind. I don't know about in the US, but Netflix certainly in the UK. One of the things I found, just personally, really interesting is the absolute takeoff in documentary. Interesting is the absolute it like takeoff in documentary, like there's so many documentary films on netflix and they seem to do so well and so many people watch it and nobody ever watched documentaries before. Like when I was younger, no one would ever watch a documentary like it just didn't happen. And now it seems to be one of the kind of flavors of the day and maybe it's just because you know that. That's the, that's the bubble that I'm in, because I tend to watch them and I see more, but I just hear people talking about them and stuff like that.

37:34

My point was is that I think the online platforms like Netflix and this this is I'm going to reach back to something we talked about earlier you talked about earlier which is Disney losing money on the Disney platform.

37:49

The reason Disney lost money on the Disney platform is because nobody wants to watch just Disney. Right when it was on Netflix, it did really well and they went oh wow, people really like this. They want to watch online. We want to watch it all in one place. We don't want to pay Disney separately and we don't want to pay HBO separately and we don't want to pay Discovery separately. We want the one platform where it all is, and we'd actually pay probably a little bit more for that platform if it meant we had it all in one place. But I'm not going to pay a separate subscription to every single one. And this was the business model that they all missed and they thought oh, we can just make loads of money because we'll just put all our content and nobody can see it anywhere else. And everybody went okay, see ya, like the only people that subscribe to Disney that I know are people who have kids.

38:37

And as soon as their kids get older, they cancel the subscription because they're just not going to watch it.

38:47 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Yeah, and we also don't know where to find anything. Yeah, it's hard to. It's like oh, where's the that thing I like? And you don't necessarily associate a certain show with a certain brand, you just think of the characters. So how do you? Exactly like where is it?

38:55 - David Brown (Host)

yeah, what's that western show that everybody started watching um?

39:00 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

oh, um Yellowstone.

39:03 - David Brown (Host)

Yeah, Yellowstone, thank you. I have no idea where to find Yellowstone. I can't find it over here at all. It's not on anything.

39:09 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Yeah, it took me ages.

39:12 - David Brown (Host)

Yeah, it's on Paramount. Okay, yeah, and I'm like I'm not going to sign up just for a subscription to Paramount? Just to watch Yellowstone right.

39:22 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Yeah, and you know, Paramount is for sale.

39:24 - David Brown (Host)

I saw that, yeah, Paramount is for sale.

39:26 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

I mean, you read that and you're like, oh my gosh, this household name is being sold for parts. Like what's happening to this company? But I also saw on LinkedIn they're hiring for a VP of Generative AI Programming, which pays a lot of money, and I'm like what are you doing? I'm like you don't exist.

39:44 - David Brown (Host)

You should go for that.

39:45 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

What are you doing? Like yeah, maybe I could apply. But it's also like it's like then that's where some of this anger comes from, with the writers and directors. Again, where it's like you know, this big company wants to pay, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to a person, to you know program AI content. It's like $300,000 would go very far. With creatives at my level, you could staff a lot of rooms with that kind of money. And they're showing you like hey, we have the money, but we're not going to spend it on you, we're going to spend it over here. And that is definitely generating some bitterness. That I totally understand. But by the time these tools are adopted as like hey, we're using these in the writer's room, we are using um claude or you know these other tools. Yeah, I want to be in line and say, yep, I know how to use them yeah, here I am exactly.

40:35 - David Brown (Host)

Yeah, yeah, and that's. I mean, I think that's where it's going to go. Um, certainly, I think. Well, because I live in the world of like it's all I ever talk about, right, so because I live in that bubble, I just assume that everybody uses it. And then I sort of, you know, sometimes I step out, I go to a family event or I go to some other sort of place or something, and then I start to talk about it a little bit and people are like, yeah, I don't know what you're talking about.

41:02

Like who's it? And I'm just like, how can you not?

41:12 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

But, then I totally feel like a tech pro, right. I can't believe that nobody uses this thing. Yeah, but it kind of goes back to what I was saying about this. You know, they only want to green light shows with. You know, senior level writers who maybe they're popular, they have Emmys here, but the average person doesn't know that. I think that's the same thing. Where there's there's a veil between what we're doing in the industry and what the viewers are noticing, and I think viewers across the country and the world there will be a point where they don't know that something was created with AI and they don't really need to. It's not really going to affect their viewing experience and they're not going to clock it the way that we will here. So we have to remember at least the people in my industry. It's like we're very much in a bubble. We're in a big bubble. These are conversations that are happening, you know, kind of behind the, I guess, the closed doors of of our, of our groups.

42:01 - David Brown (Host)

But then we talk about all that stuff that you know, the random stuff that doesn't get funded. And then you look back a few years and you go, Westworld came out of nowhere, right Like it. Some old film from the seventies that somebody decided, hey, let's do something with that. Now I get it. They sort of it was existing IP that somebody went back to, but they did something with it. That was completely different and new and felt very modern and was actually more relevant than maybe they even knew at the time. But that was amazing. It came out of nowhere. You know Game of Thrones, that was a book series and if you were slightly geeky and you read that kind of stuff, then you already knew about it. But I would venture to guess that for 98% of the people that eventually came on to the game of thrones thing, that was totally out of the blue, like that, was complete left field.

42:54

It was so different than anything else, it was on tv and it was hugely successful.

43:00 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

So I feel. I mean, I feel the same way about come out right yeah, yeah, well, and I don't want to trash talk Big IP too much, because I think what I see in Big IP that these producers don't is that like, okay, the IP is successful because the story is successful, because there are and there is, foundationally there is a certain it's a good story.

43:22

Well, I hesitate to use the word formula, but there’s kind of art, like you know Aristotle's poetics, you know tragedy and comedy, it's still, it's relevant. You know, thousands and thousands of years later, like our myths, even our myths and legends across cultures.

43:33

You know religious texts, epic poems, like they're successful and we remember because there is a, there's a hero's arc right and that's I think that there's a mistake, that that you know the producers see like, oh, IP means it's good, it's like, well, the IP is good because there's an underlying story that is really effective. But original work can do that too. It's just not going to come with the proven numbers that something like Game of Thrones has. But I think, as a non-gamer, two of the most successful shows that I've watched recently the Last of Us and Fallout incredible achievements, cinematically powerful, based on something based on IP, and I think that that is a really successful marriage of tech and gaming and Hollywood. That really excites me and I, like I love those shows and I enjoy watching them.

44:28 - David Brown (Host)

And they, yeah, well, we can, we can. We could spend an hour talking about a couple of shows as well the whole gaming thing. One thing's interesting when I very first started the podcast like this was over a year ago, one of the first people I had on was a filmmaker and he was. He runs a program and what they do is they help people with ideas and new IP, but what he helps them do is to. I want to get it right, basically to help them understand what's the ecosystem that they can build out of it. So when they come, they're like it's not just a film and this gets back to the book and everything else Right. Basically to help them understand what's the ecosystem that they can build out of it. So when they come, they're like it's not just a film and this gets back to the book and everything else Right, but it's the.

45:13

What are the ancillary revenue streams that can go with that? So this is a film, but could it be a book? Could it be a video game? Could it be comic books? Could it be like how do you, how do you build that out into like a universe, and then when you take it to a company, you say I want to do this film and I've got plans. And here's how we can turn it into a game. And here's how we turn it into a podcast.

45:37

and here's how we turn it into a YouTube thing and it's and and I think that's something that's relatively new is a is having to think about all of that, and then B I'm involved in a project personally where we sort of somebody had the idea it's not the book wasn't even written yet, but they had the idea for the book and then somebody who works in films that that would be a really good show.

46:00

We should turn that into a show. And we started off with the idea of a podcast and you know we've expanded it. But now the idea is that we'll have probably the idea is we want to have a broadcast show and then we'll have a youtube channel that will show similar, like, like extra footage that doesn't make it to broadcast. So it'll be the kind of the same show, but it'll be different footage, and then we'll have a podcast that will have even more different footage in that. So you've got, from a creator perspective, you're building a whole world where you've got. You've got a broadcast, you've got, you know, a YouTube channel where you can give extra content. You've then got the podcast. You've got a physical book that will come out later and you could even go around and you could tour this thing in different cities and you could do live shows with the people that are in it.

46:50

And then when you take that as a package, right, you're now you're saying it's not just a film, or it's not just a broadcast show that we want to do, or it's not just a Netflix documentary series of 10 episodes that we want to do. And then you go and all of that's a franchise and it could be franchised and it can be repeated in every country around the world, because every country has something that's a similar topic to this, that could be its own little encapsulated thing. And then people start to go okay, there's some legs there right, yeah, no.

47:28 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

and I'm smiling because, as a writer and creator, that excites me deeply and that is a new way of looking at creating content.

47:37 - David Brown (Host)

Is that something you've run across?

47:39 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Well, it's something that, yes, there's people I know who are developing either companies, organisations you know, having a creative vision for like hey, here's a complete and total picture of what it can become, which you know. Sorry, but like everything that you just described, and some people I know that they're, what they're working on is like that's just producing work. You're just doing producing work that these companies aren't willing to do for you anymore.

48:01

And I think we're going to get to a point where it's like not only what you just said, but also you need an a-list actor attached and you need it to just be done already and they'll just acquire it like that's like I think we're going in that direction too is like, oh you have to be fine this, yeah, this polished product.

48:18

You found the money, you produce it, and then you have a streaming platform or or any platform you know be like, yep, we like, and here's your, and then they give you they that that's your portal to having access to millions of eyeballs. But everything that you just said is that that's creative IP franchise building. And even as a writer I've tried to think of I'm like what is this job that I know I want to have, that I don't know how to describe, and it's a cross between, like, narrative design and producing and curating. You know, it's. What are these words? And to me, that's where I get really creatively stimulated, because I'm like Ooh, there's a, there's a job that, um, we don't even have words for yet, which means that it's from the future.

49:05 - David Brown (Host)

Yeah, you're right, and I I know they keep saying, you know, don't worry, all the jobs, you know people find other jobs and yeah, they will. To a certain extent I do worry about that because I see a lot of, even in the intern roles and stuff like that just aren't there anymore because they don't need to.

49:25

And people who are using AI to pick up the slack in some of the work that they do, and I've been very vocal about this and very, very open about the fact that I use it on the podcast. If I didn't have the AI tools that are available now, I couldn't do the podcast in the way that I do it. I just don't have the time or the money to pay that I do it. I just don't have the time and you know, or the money to pay someone to do it, Because if anybody wants to sponsor the show, give me a.

49:54 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

DM me.

49:56 - David Brown (Host)

But you know, I don't have any sponsors or anything like that. I basically, you know, do all this off my own back because I enjoy it and I want to have the conversation. But, like I said, you know, I couldn't do it if it wasn't for that. And that was why I started the show in the beginning was because what I'm worried about is the steady, long-term erosion of those junior roles, because if you don't, if you can't, get the junior role then you can't become a senior right.

50:23 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

And they just won't be the people. Yeah, I mean, it might be circumvented completely, though, and this is why I think that you know Right, and they just won't be the people.

50:42

I'm producing my own work. When that is replaced, when those entry-level positions are replaced, it is, yeah, I see what you're saying, but it's also an opportunity for those new creators to be like great. I'm going to skip that step and I'm going to go straight to curating my entire brand, which I think this younger generation just they have an eye for it, they do, they see how that works. It's less of a stretch and they need less of a. You know they don't need those. Six years as an assistant, that's a long time you know six to twelve years.

51:17 - David Brown (Host)

Yeah, they've done it on social media they've done on social media.

51:19 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

So it's like you we're already at this point like with a smartphone and with you know what you've done with this podcast. It's like you're a complete you. You're an in-house creator, you know, and for filmmaking it'll be like you can, yeah, you go straight to being the auteur and the director, and so I do. Yeah, I worry about entry-level jobs, but I think that the people who want those entry-level jobs at least the younger generation will just jump to making and creating and then gathering attention, and then that becomes that's a platform for them to get, to get hired, to work on something even bigger than their own work.

51:52 - David Brown (Host)

Yeah, somebody said to me and I don't remember it was again, it was, it was quite a while ago and we were talking about it and I said we were talking about the fact we were talking about robots. Actually, we were saying, you know, robot maids and that kind of thing, and it's like only rich people would have them and you know, because they you know they could afford to do the upkeep and all the other stuff. And they said, yeah, but eventually what's going to happen in like a cyberpunk future? Is that really where you're going to end up? Is that the super rich people are going to have humans do everything, because humans will be expensive?

52:27

and they already are more expensive but, but it will, but it will kind of come full circle, right. So you'll, you'll, we'll get this proliferation of AI tools and robots and everything else will come along, and then it'll. You know, it will probably take loads of jobs and stuff, but the humans will never go away and what will happen is is that the humans will then actually become the super premium ones and people will pay, you know, amazing amounts of money and will that will become the really wanted thing again is that people will just want humans to do stuff and yeah, okay, fine, you know, I can, I can have the AI, I could do my grocery shopping like I don't care, but you know, the, the, the things like the filmmaking and music and art and all of that.

53:11

And pornography just to put it out there, like I think that human, you know.

53:16 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

certified human made you know everything from yeah Service jobs films and pornography is that's going to be like oh yeah, yeah, like let's, that is it's, it's higher value. This reminds me of a conversation I had with someone who told me that cars, because you know, there's so much tech in cars that have been manufactured in the last 10 years.

53:38

s and early: 2000

54:23

It's like that is so. That is a feat, and I have nothing but respect for that. As a filmmaker and a writer, it's like it's nearly impossible to make a film. It's you know, it's a miracle when it comes together. So I think that kind of celebration and that's something I celebrate deeply and, even though I'm interested in AI, I will go to all of my friends' screenings and my peers when they create work that it's like it was all people. I applaud that and it's hard because ensuring that many people is expensive and hard.

54:52 - David Brown (Host)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's I. I also think it's interesting that we've seen a resurgence of films using physical sets again. Um, for exactly that reason, because the physical set feels different, right like you can cgi everything to death and you can use. I know they've got the led panel walls and whatever. Now that they use that, that looks slightly more realistic, but but there's nothing like having the physical set and I think it was one of the the later star wars films that came out recently and they use a lot more physical sets again and you could tell it had that old feeling to it and you could just it was something that that just translated onto you know, onto the film, and made it feel that way and some of the stuff impressed by it yeah, yeah.

55:37 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

And like Matt, I think of fury road, at max fury road, and knowing that, like there was each of those vehicles that they made in those, in those sequences, they had to make five of every single one and they made those you know, and and and. When you watch that film and you're like, oh my god, this is real. You know there's explosions and there's someone with a guitar like standing on a semi.

56:01

You're like this is crazy. It's kind of like watching it's I mean, it's stunt performing it's, it's like why we go to the if, even if you think of like the old circus, I guess, or watching someone like swallow a sword or like breathe fire, it's like, oh my god, you could get really hurt and you're taking a massive risk. And there's something that we are so entertained by when we see that it reminds me of Vaudeville theatre, where you'd show up and you would peek through a window and be like Ooh, like what's this thing doing? What's, what's this person? What's happening here? Um, and we're impressed by it and morbidly attracted to, to danger and risk and filmmaking is. Is that um? So I agree. I think that'll continue to be celebrated.

56:46 - David Brown (Host)

Yeah, some of us even remember that stuff. I'm not quite old enough to remember vaudeville, but, but I certainly do. I saw Star Wars when it came out in the cinema the first time and that you know that was really the beginning of. You know, a lot, lot of the tech that we see now and the stuff that Lucas did at the time was like incomprehensible to anybody who'd seen any films, because literally everything we'd seen you know, nearly up to that were.

57:16

You know, they were real actors and real stuff and we'd never seen anything like that before.

57:21 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Yeah.

57:21 - David Brown (Host)

And you know it was. You know we didn't, we didn't have any tech, there were no computers, there wasn't. None of that existed. Like you know, like when I was a little kid, like you didn't even use the phone and you know the TV had three channels. I know old people bang on about this crap all the time, but it sort of makes your point.

57:47

And it's really nice for us to see some of the films being made in that way again and some of it coming full circle finally, that it's like even the kids with all the whizzy tech have gone. Oh my God, I just can't deal with this tech anymore. And you know, they kind of want to, they want to take a step away. So it's good to see and who knows what's going to happen. I'm conscious of time. Thank you very much. We've we sort of 58 minutes in already, which, which that went super fast. Um, is there anything, anything else that you think we should talk about that we haven't talked about yet?

58:32 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Um, any burning issues you want is. You know? This claim that, oh, AI isn't good for creatives is neither are the actual human beings making these devastating choices about the content that we've created for you know, back to what I said about Netflix, Looney Tunes, dc, these shows that have just been stripped off of streaming platforms without even notifying the creators. So AI, maybe it feels like it's not good for creatives, but neither is the business as it stands right now, and this is an avenue to reshaping the industry that I think creatives can benefit from.

59:18 - David Brown (Host)

Love it Awesome. Where can we find you? Like I said, I'll put everything in the show notes and I know you have a sub stack and you have loads of stuff. So tell everybody, everybody, where can they go and find all your stuff and where can they see your film.

59:31 - Jagger Waters (Guest)

Yeah, my sub stack is where I'm going to put, you know, my thoughts on AI and what I'm experiencing here on the ground in LA, so that's jaggerwaters.substack.com and also, yeah, Instagram I use. Uh, I use pretty often. I talk, I share resources, I talk about um, you know things happening in the AI news cycle and my Instagram is glamorousreptile uh, which does have a background story.

59:58 - David Brown (Host)

I grew up in a house of reptiles, uh, my father breeds and sells reptiles and um, that's it, that's for a different podcast but yeah, we totally, I totally forgot about that, because I did see your note when you sent it through.

:: 00:11

It's a moniker that's a glamorous reptile. It’s really a moniker.

:: 00:14

It's a virtual presence um and it's the version of me that exists online, um, so, yeah, check out what I'm doing and um, love at first bite, the film from AI On the Lot, Cinema Synthetica's 48-hour filmmaking competition. It is on YouTube. If you search Cinema Synthetica AI on the Lot, Love at First Bite you will actually see a channel. There's a channel and I'll send you the link as well, but there's a playlist of the videos, because there were three films in the competition and we all used the same script, so you can watch all of them as well as ours, um, to see how it was different. Um, and the process I described.

:: 00:54

That's great, that, and that reminded me I totally was we. I got sidetracked with something else, but I was going to ask you about the script. So, um, but that's, it's just quickly. So you all had the same script to work from and then it was just about creating the visuals that went with the script, because I was going to ask where did the script come from?

:: 01:11

The script was written by Emmy Award winning creator Bernie Hsu, and he gave us a script that was very bare bones. It was really just like character one, character two, dialogue, no place setting, no action, and we imposed all of that. So, uh, what my team did is I'm what I'm glad we did is, uh, we went in a uh, comedy direction and you know, when I read the script initially I was kind of scanning it for joke opportunities. Like there's a, there's a comment about, um, there's a character that says, did you try the appetisers? As a line. So that indicates okay, maybe we're at some kind of party, where are we.

:: 01:44

But I know, kind of comedically, with there's a character that says, did you try the appetisers? As a line. So that indicates okay, maybe we're at some kind of party, where are we. But I know, kind of comedically, with that beat, if you say appetisers and you cut to something that's not food, that's going to be funny. So that, that and that, that. That I felt that pretty early on. And we shaped this little lesbian zombie rom-com, uh, with it's got humour, it's got heart, it's got action, um, there's gore, there's love, uh, and I think underneath it is is a very, um relatable uh human experience, which uh was ironic, I guess, considering the use of AI. But it also shows that our humanity can still shine through when we use these tools.

:: 02:30

Brilliant, and you're a torso, I'm a torso, torso forever. Torso forever. That's your new handle, brilliant Jagger, thank you very much for your time today. That was really good.

:: 02:42

Thank you, this was a wonderful chat. Thank you so much for having me speak to you soon. bye-bye.