AI-Powered Filmmaking with Waymark's Stephen Parker and Josh Rubin

In this episode, Nathan sits down with Stephen Parker and Josh Rubin of Waymark, and creators of The Frost, an AI-powered 12 minute short film. In this episode, we get a behind the scenes look at their creative process, the prompting and creative techniques they used to generate and animate the DALL-E results, and an overview of the current state of AI art. If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/cognitive We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Episode Preview (00:01:00) Nathan’s introduction for Stephen Parker and Josh Rubin (00:05:01) - The Frost is a 12-minute short film created using DALL-E 2 images. (00:07:06) - The Frost started as an experiment to see if a narrative film could be created completely from AI imagery. (00:10:38) - Parker started generating images with DALL-E 2 when he got access to the early preview. (00:12:26) - Prompt technique to get consistent images by providing context about a hypothetical film. (00:15:57) Sponsors: Netsuite | Omneky (00:19:37) - Compositional continuity, like shot-reverse shot, was hard to achieve through prompting. (00:22:13)- Rubin would request specific shots and the team would prompt DALL-E 2 to create them (00:32:25) - Getting consistent facial features for characters was very difficult. (00:39:03) - The storytelling helped cover inconsistencies that viewers might not notice. (00:40:15) - Working with the images DALL-E provides (00:44:53) Inpainting and compositing to refine DALL-E Images (00:50:43) - The AI art is limited by what exists in the training data. (01:02:05)- Animating the human characters was challenging because of missing or incorrect appendages. (01:07:36) - The team had to find creative ways to convey emotion through the limited animation. 01:02:24 - Animating subtle human movement and emotion is still very difficult. (01:06:35) - A romantic comedy would be much harder to produce with current AI capabilities. (01:12:17) - For Frost 2 they are using text-to-video models like RunwayML. (01:15:43) - AI voicing advancements applied to filmmaking (01:19:27) - The future of AI in Hollywood and filmmaking: quality narratives still require human vision SPONSORS: Shopify | NetSuite | Omneky Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform ✅ head to NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/cognitive and download your own customized KPI checklist. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. Music Credit: GoogleLM