Howdy Storytellers, 🤠
It’s been about a month since I’ve written to y’all.
How have you been?
At Creatorwood, we moved into a new office right in the heart of San Francisco.
We’ve also grown our team, hiring one of the former leads of Author Partnerships at Spotify onto our team (he’s awesome).
And I’ve spent most of the last week using the Movie Machine myself as an AI Director for one of our VIP Production Clients (our service where we bring your story to life as a movie or show end-to-end with AI).
Lol, when you realize your AI Director is the CEO 😆.
Recently, I generated this clip myself using the Movie Machine. It was a remarkable clip with beautiful acting, near picture-perfect photorealism, and it really struck at my heart strings.
You can watch it below:
A year ago, when we launched the Movie Machine at Creatorwood, it was impossible to get anything even close to this good from AI filmmaking.
Now, just one year later, as unbiased as possible, when I look at a clip like that I go “Yeah, this may just be at Hollywood quality.”
But it’s so easy to show one clip, one impressive demo, and just start the hype train galore.
“OMG GUYS! Look, I made one amazing clip with AI, therefore, it is obviously super duper easy for anyone to bring their imagination to life with the Movie Machine in full glory. Bye bye gatekeepers!”
Look, this moment is coming.
And after a week inside of the Movie Machine, I can tell you it’s not here yet (unless you are willing to spend 1,000+ hours of your own time or hire a professional to make your AI movie for you through our VIP Production Service).
That’s because the underlying infrastructure for the entire industry (that every company involved in AI filmmaking uses) is still just not through the last mile yet.
The 3 big challenges with AI filmmaking right now 🤠
AI has a tough time generating hyper-specific outputs.
This often means that a specific voice or look for a character takes many, many tries to get right (to the point where I have personally wanted to throw my computer through the wall). This isn’t just true for character looks or voice — it extends to the look of every shot.
AI is unreliable. It’s remarkable sometimes, garbage others – and no one can predict when or why.
AI models work like a blackbox. Input in (what we typically call a prompt, or shot, inside of the Movie Machine), output out (which is typically a video, image, or audio).
What happens in between? A series of weights dictate how likely one input is to yield a specific output. These weights constantly change. And just because there’s a likelihood that an input will yield a desired output, it’s far from a guarantee.
As the models mature, this feeling of randomness will go away as the inputs and outputs get extremely dialed in. In the meantime? Sometimes you’re stuck running the same shot with the same prompt several times just to get it right. That’s not exactly fun.
AI audio is still just kinda meh.
It definitely has its glorious moments. But in general, I find that it requires immense tweaking and regeneration to get right so that the intonation and emotion are strong.
What does this mean for you?
Well, in general, the best way to succeed with AI filmmaking is to be adaptable to what the technology gives you. It may not be exactly what you envision – but often times these creative compromises are the most economical in terms of your time, cash, and sanity.
But is that really what you want to hear? After years of Hollywood not even allowing you to bring your vision to life, now you have to bastardize it, just because of the limitations of AI?
No, that’s not the future we are creating. That is NOT a world where Storytellers Rule the World.
As a result, this means we are still keeping the Movie Machine closed to new sign ups (don’t worry, if you already have access, you can keep using it).
We know how much storytellers want to make movies with AI. We know how much this will change the world when we get this right. In the meantime, there’s no point in calling it too early.
I know, because I am personally using the technology myself, and we just last week collapsed hierarchy on our team even more so that every one of our 25+ AI Directors has their work directly reviewed by me, my co-founder, and our engineering team.
Doubling down on VIP Production
And we are continuing to double down on VIP Production.
Instead of spending the endless stress, time, and coins regenerating your film inside of the Movie Machine, you can have our team of trained AI Directors use the Movie Machine for you to bring your story to life. This is just the best option for almost every storyteller right now.
It costs just $250 per finished minute, and we have a 100% money-back guarantee if you don’t like your film. It’s the most accessible and reliable way to get a high-quality film with AI, tailored to your story and vision.
That’s because we do the hard work in pre-production, editing, and working with the Movie Machine itself to create the film of your dreams. You have approval at every step of the way.
And instead of paying for regenerations, wasted footage, mistakes, or editing time, you pay just one flat fee of $250 per finished minute of film on the final timeline (about $15,000 per hour of film). We incur all the risk on every project and are all in on making something you love.
It’s a one-of-a-kind service, and it’s continued to grow so fast that we’re launching a new platform on top of the Movie Machine to facilitate collaboration between AI Directors and Producers/Storytellers (aka you).
That platform is being rolled out over the coming weeks, and from using it myself early on, it’s a game changer for streamlining communication, clarifying your creative vision, and making the entire production process transparent and fun.
If you are interested in working with VIP Production, schedule a free production consultation call with the team here.
I’ll be at NINC in Florida this week hanging out with hundreds of bestselling authors and sharing with them where our industry is going.
We are no longer authors. We are no longer writers. We are storytellers.
Words just happened to be our weapon of choice.
Soon we’ll be creating worlds. Because Storytellers Rule the World. 🤠
What’s next
In addition to massive progress being made to make the Movie Machine more powerful (it’s come SO FAR in the last few months alone), we’ve been experimenting with bringing viewers to Creatorwood (similar to how we started with storytellers a year ago).
It’s early days, but I think we’ve cracked something really interesting.
This time next year, I’m confident that AI movies & shows will not only be even better and a lot easier to make, but we will be seeing the beginning of a new economy for storytelling.
My only goal is to make the GDP of Creatorwood, and the money we pay out to storytellers, equivalent to that of a small nation.
I’m confident by 2030 we’ll get there.
In the meantime, we have endless work to do. We are literally working harder than any of us have in our lives – and that’s coming from a workaholic 😅.
We have one chance to remake this industry in a way that puts Storytellers in control.
There’s no guarantee the future that’s best for you all is the one that wins.
And I don’t take the opportunity in front of us for granted.
We have one shot to take power away from the gatekeepers and give it to you all.
Our time is now.
And in my next email, I’ll share more specifics on the new economy we are building for filmmaking, and the steps we are taking from day one to build the most creator-friendly platform in the world.
In the meantime, don’t forget…
Storytellers Rule the World 👑,
Michael and the Creatorwood Team