Howdy Storytellers 🤠,
First, Movie Machine Madness Week 4 is taking place at 5 pm ET today. You can RSVP for free HERE.
Just about a year ago, Sashv and I started working on what would become the Movie Machine and Creatorwood.
At the time, I can’t tell you what I expected to happen in the first year of this company.
What I knew was two things: 1. there was a future coming soon where 1 billion+ viewers would be watching AI movies and shows. 2. As an author of 12 books, I’d do anything to turn one of my stories into a film.
My mission is to help Storytellers Rule the World. To take power back from gate keepers and big tech platforms that so often take control of our IP rights and our audience.
A new category of creation felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity to do just that – to rethink the storytelling industry from the ground up.
So we began Creatorwood.
Back when we started:
Short-form AI videos were just starting to become mainstream, mostly through memes on social media
It was impossible to make a movie or show with AI with consistent characters, voices, and continuity of scenes
Just 1 year later:
It isn’t easy, but it’s now possible to make movies and shows with AI. We are premiering our first feature film in Austin on July 17th AND have a slate of ~10 microdramas + feature-length movies to release this calendar year.
Our VIP Production Team is now making hundreds of minutes of content for clients each month, and we expect to be producing thousands of minutes each month before long
Tens of thousands of people from around the world have downloaded the Creatorwood book with 1,000+ unique projects created using the Movie Machine
We’re grateful for all of you 💚.
What was once just a dream is now becoming a reality. Every month, every week, I desperately wish things were even further along. But when I look back a year ago to today, I can’t say I imagined things progressing this quickly.
Here’s the 5 Lessons We’ve Learned 1 Year into Creatorwood and AI filmmaking:
Creators and viewers want this – this new industry is real and about to explode. We’re already seeing the first signs of creators beginning to make real money from viewers paying to see their AI films (early days, but we’ll share some success stories in the coming months).
It’s possible to get impressive film from AI. Is it perfect? No, no film is. Is it Hollywood-quality? That would be a stretch. Is it good enough for viewers to watch and enjoy? I’ll let you be the judge, here’s an example.
Humans are the most critical part of AI filmmaking. And there are already many new full-time jobs being created in this industry. I made some big claims a year ago – I envisioned creators making $10 Billion+ a year doing this and there being tens of thousands of jobs. Early days… BUT there are already 20+ AI Directors working for Creatorwood (most full-time) and this doesn’t count a number of our pro creators who are now building AI-native studios full-time off the back of the platform.
Brands, talent, and big IP holders are entering the space. We are starting to see the first brands officially sponsor ads for upcoming shows on Creatorwood’s streaming platform. Best-selling authors are beginning to go into production with their own films. We are even seeing early signs (although no one officially on screen) of established social media creators and actors having their likeness featured as characters in AI movies and shows.
AI filmmaking is still not ready for a mainstream creator audience. What do I mean by this? At the time of writing it takes someone with skills in video editing, sound design, and deep knowledge of working with AI video models 5 hours and sometimes even up to 10+ hours to get out a finished minute of film. On average compute costs (the coins on Creatorwood), after regenerations, are anywhere from $40 per finished minute and sometimes even up to $100 per finished minute. To be absolutely clear, Creatorwood charges $20 per minute of video generated (pending on the model you pick), HOWEVER, in nearly all cases people have to regenerate specific shots (spending more compute in the process) to get their desired output.
This means right now, on average, it requires thousands of dollars and often 1,000+ hours of your time to make a full-length film with AI.
And even if you have the time and the money – 90%+ of the time without intense training and acceptance that the models are probabilistic (I discuss this in detail HERE) and that you will have to regenerate sometimes many times to get what you want – AI filmmaking can be a challenging experience.
This is why we are putting the Movie Machine on a waitlist.
With Movie Machine 2.0, experienced AI Directors are moving faster and making better films than ever. Some folks can even get multiple finished minutes done on a good day, meaning the future where one person can make a high quality feature film with AI working over just a few months is now here (and sometimes even as little as ~1 month).
But these are the exceptions, not the norm.
Despite the power of the Movie Machine, most people who use it on their own face frustration and disappointment.
We hate seeing it just as much as you do. And I get it. Despite it being possible to make great films with AI, as I mentioned it takes great patience, the willingness to regenerate and constantly tweak your prompts, and also being a pretty good video editor.
This doesn’t mean you are “bad” at using the Movie Machine if you have faced struggles. Candidly, everyone who has ever used the Movie Machine finds it difficult in many moments – that’s just the stage of AI filmmaking that we are at right now. There’s tons to learn and tons of challenges and, of course, opportunities the new technology presents.
So why are we going on a waitlist for the Movie Machine?
FIRST, IF YOU ALREADY HAVE ACCESS TO THE MOVIE MACHINE, THEN YOU WILL CONTINUE TO BE ABLE TO WORK ON YOUR PROJECTS. WE ARE ONLY WAITLISTING NEW CREATORS WHO HAVE NOT YET JOINED THE MOVIE MACHINE.
Let me repeat that, just in case you missed it.
If you have already used the Movie Machine, you STILL have access to it and are welcome to continue using it.
So then if we are still allowing our existing creators in Movie Machine 2.0, why are we waitlisting new creators?
Due to the challenges and struggles people face, there is a heavy support burden on our small team. Our ticket volume per average creator is extremely high. Rather than drowning in letting new waves of people in, we’d rather serve our existing creators.
We know for a fact that the vast majority of people who enter the Movie Machine will either come away disappointed due to the pricing, time, or difficulty it takes to achieve their desired outputs. We just never want people leaving Creatorwood with a sour taste in their mouth. It’s a waste of your time. It’s a waste of our money cause we typically refund folks or give coins back which results in us incurring heavy losses. It’s just not a recipe for success for anyone.
We do NOT make the underlying AI video, image, or audio generation models. We work with 3rd parties to provide these AI models to you AND make it easy to achieve consistency, continuity, AND adapt your story to film. Think of us as an app built on top of the App Store. Except instead of the App Store powering our app, it’s AI models. These models are simply not ready for a general creator audience at this time. Despite rapid improvements in the past year, they are a bit too expensive, a bit too hard to use, and a bit too slow (yes all of those 15 minute wait times for videos to generate… that’s because of the rate of video generation our third party providers can handle… a universal problem in AI video right now).
When will this all change?
We think soon. How soon? We have no idea, no one does. It could be in a few months. It could be closer to a year. With the rate of progress, we are pretty convinced it won’t be a few years (it’s likely 12 months or less).
We are at the pioneer phase of AI filmmaking technology. When it progresses to the point that it’s ready for a mass adoption curve – you’ll be the first to know, because we will have real proof to share with you AND a much easier and better experience waiting for you inside the Movie Machine.
So what to do in the meantime?
We are hard at work on making the Movie Machine even better so that as the underlying AI models improve, you can have an even better experience inside of the platform.
BUT, you don’t have to wait till the Movie Machine is open to the general public to turn your story into a movie or show today.
As we saw many of you struggling to turn use the Movie Machine, we started 8 months ago completing productions for you end to end. The pitch was simple: give us your story and your vision, and our team of talented AI Directors will turn it into a movie or show for you with a 100% money back guarantee if you are not happy.
I won’t say it’s been easy getting that service started.
Demand has been high and that required learning how not only to recruit AI Directors at scale, but train people up. It also meant we needed to get really solid data on how much these productions truly cost us in time (which is money) and AI compute (which is money).
We’ve landed on a model that is sustainable for us, our AI Directors, and allows you to get your story made into a film (whether it’s a script, musical, book, or any story) at an unbeatable price and quality.
If you want to learn more about our VIP Production Service, you can schedule a free consultation call with our team HERE. We have a limited time deal ending June 15th where you can spend just $200 per finished minute as a thank you for being one of our first VIP Production Projects of the summer.
We can do photorealistic movies, animated shorts, vertical microdramas – you name it and our team has experience in it and is super excited to bring your story to life.
We recommend this service to nearly anyone using the Movie Machine to bring their story to life because it’s the place where we have had much better outcomes for our customers at much better prices (instead of paying for every regeneration, you ONLY pay for footage that makes it to the final film and that you like… if your film is 10 minutes long in the end but we generated 60 minutes+ of video to get that… WE pay that fee and you just pay one flat rate for finished film to our VIP Production Team).
Where most people using the Movie Machine on their own walk away disappointed, nearly everyone who has worked with our VIP Production Team walks away excited to share their film with viewers.
If interested, you can schedule a call HERE, or reply to this email with the word INTERESTED and we can share more information.
We’re not going anywhere. We’ll still be sharing more information than ever to help you learn how to grow a business in this new world of AI movies and shows. Now is the best time to learn. Now is the best time to have fun.
Welcome to the frontier, partners.
And as always don’t forget…
Storytellers Rule the World,
Michael and the Creatorwood Team