The Truth About the Sphere's Wizard of Oz. Plus Showrunner AI

We dive into the Sphere's Wizard of Oz AI controversy, look at Showrunner AI, and explore how filmmakers are effectively combining practical effects with generative tools to create impressive low-budget content. 

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The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are the personal views of the hosts and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of their respective employers or organizations. This show is independently produced by VP Land without the use of any outside company resources, confidential information, or affiliations.

Transcript

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And In this episode of Denoised, we'll break down The Wizard of Oz playing at the Sphere and why it's not all AI; Showrunner, the new Netflix of AI? And we'll take a look at some AI creators that are blending traditional VFX processes with AI. Let's get into it. All right. What's up, Addy? Hey, how was your weekend? It was good. Uh, so I love IMAX. Yeah. You know, we've talked about IMAX a lot. We both love Im, I enjoyed watching Sinners and F1. Yeah. And you know, Superman in IMAX, but I saw The Naked Gun this weekend. And I have to say, I don't think I've had more fun at a movie theater in a long time. Awesome. Yeah. It, it reminded me of like the Judd Apatow era movies of the early 2000s. Yeah. I have not laughed in a theater that much since like The Wedding Crashers. Right. So yeah, highly recommend if you have not seen it. Uh, and especially you should see it in a theater because seen it with an audience. Okay. And everyone laughing just made it way more funny. Also, it's like 80 minutes, which you is like un unheard of with the three hour superhero movies today. Yeah. Right, right. And uh, Liam Neeson as a comedy actor, I mean, who would've thought, uh, he's so great for it. I mean, you know. Yeah. He's just, he was, he was perfect in it. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember there was a funny joke where he was just like, oh, who knew? Like, all you had to do was find the guy with the similar name to le uh, Leslie Nielsen. That's right. Okay. No, I'm gonna go see it. Yeah. I highly recommend. Okay. Speaking of. Immersive, big theater experiences. Mm-hmm. Got some, uh, brewing stuff happening with The Wizard of Oz. Yeah. And the Sphere. Our viewers like to, our viewers tell us that they hear about things for the first time on this show. So, uh, for those of you who are just listening in on this, and I've first heard about this from you, apparently The Wizard of Oz tickets were selling for about a month now. Some of the first showings are being done over at the Sphere in Vegas. I think it's, I think it opens the end of this month. Okay. But basically this was the first look, so we've known about for a while. Yeah. If you follow VP Land, 'cause we've covered this, uh, for months since they've announced it. Like back in April they announced Yeah. Wizard of Oz and the Sphere or MGM that had a partnership sign up to the newsletter. Exactly. They had a partnership that they were gonna bring the Wizard of Oz to the sphere. Yeah. And use ai. Uh, and Google had an announcement. Using Google's AI to basically take a film that is a four by three film shot a hundred years ago. Oh. And blow it up into a, something that works on a 16 K immersive. Such a tough display thing to do. Yes. And there's a lot of ways to go about that.'cause you could go the matrix route at Cosm, which, yeah, from what we've seen, they kind of put the movie in a box on the screen and then built a, an environment around it. But you're basically watching the movie. Yeah. On a screen in a immersive environment. It, it's really like what I think is ambient backlighting on some TVs. I don't if they still do that, but it was basically like the, the green scenes in The Matrix work. Oh, at the Cosm thing? Yep. The Cosm. It was just like a green background, like a desktop background. Oh yeah. I saw, yeah, it was like where if you're watching on the rooftop, it was like the rooftop, the roof environment. The roof, right. Based on the scene. Yeah. But definitely, but. They didn't really modify the movie from what I, from what I know. Yeah. Uh, we're gonna go see it in this case. We are gonna see it. Yeah. Yeah. So we're gonna finally, finally go to Cosm. Yeah. But for this, they were modifying the visuals of the movie. And so we've known about this for a while, but last Sunday, CBS Sunday morning did a special, that was sort of the first time that we've actually seen like screen grabs what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. And they were playing some demo clips and stuff. Yeah. The internet has. Kind of was upset about some of the visuals and, uh, took it and ran and it became a meme, which, the meme format's actually kind of funny. When is the internet not upset? Come on. Come on. Alright, let's, let's dig into, so got, there's a lot of things we gotta break down here. Yeah. Let's dig into some of the examples of why people are upset. Uh, so the one that I'm gonna start with is, yeah, well gonna show you some, let's, I'll show you some of the visuals. First. Yeah. Okay. Like, so these were some of the, uh, visuals of the original, you know, Scarecrow and then we got the big wide shot mm-hmm. Of Scarecrow, sort of on the bottom of the frame at the sphere, and then this big saturated blue sky. Yeah. So it feels like a complete modification of the existing footage into what I would call inspired by footage. Mm-hmm. These are the memes that happened out of it of basically joke, joke, enlarging classic movies like The Searchers, which I actually saw that for the first time in, uh, at the, uh, American Cinema Tech. Yeah. I don't know if like AI was used in every shot, probably wasn't, because AI quite frankly is not that capable at that resolution yet. Right. Well, yeah, we can take that in a second.'cause we saw some posts from some people that said they worked on it. Yeah. But it feels like out painting, right? Like so, or generative filling or what name? You have for it. It's where you have a limited window and you want to expand that window out to just fill Yeah. You've got a small box. Yeah. And you know, you gotta fill a big box. And, uh, how, what do you fill that with? Yes. And what do you do that with an old, old format? Yeah. That it is old and it's four by three. That deal, doesn't matter. 2K resolution. Yeah. The old part doesn't matter, but I mean, it is a four by three square format. They're trying to blow up onto a big screen. Yep. And also, I mean, the screen is basically. A headset that thousands of people are in the same VR headset. Yeah. Uh, so you also have different considerations with. Movement with motion sickness, with Yes. Uh, the types of shots that can translate over. You can't just like magnify the frame to fill.'cause then you're looking at Dorothy, who's like a hundred foot tall and you're doing this right. Yeah. So that, that obviously won't work and they know it. So you still have to keep the center of frame into somewhat of a movie theater thing. Right. Like an IMAX screen size, and then gotta figure out what to do with the peripherals. Sort of. Right. But if we're looking at some of the demo clips that they did, and I think what I don't know, people, weirded people out is, oh, here's one of the, one of the examples, or this was one of the big AI examples and they demoed it in the Sunday morning clip. Yeah. So this is before Dorothy goes to Oz. This is when she's still in Kansas.'cause it's the CP tone. Yeah. And they're still in the house. Yeah. And so the original film, it.

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3. Mm-hmm. And one of the, the uncle or one of the characters was in the shot, walks outta the shot and then comes back into the shot. But when they blew this up, their take was they were gonna blow up the entire living room and fill the entire sphere with the living room scene. And so when the uncle goes outta frame. They need to AI generate the uncle so that he doesn't just disappear. Yes. And then when he comes back in a frame, it goes back to the original footage. That was one of the examples that they gave of like how AI came into use. But then what I think annoyed or upset people a lot was how they handled Oh, I see Glenda in that video. Nice. Shout out to Glen. Uh, this stuff with Yeah, the scarecrow, with the roads, with Dorothy, like on the very bottom of the screen with the framing here just looks like it looks weird. From this angle that they shot the CBS special with, right. Because everything's so bottom frame, there's like huge blue saturated skies. Darrow looks kinda weird. Mm-hmm. But mm-hmm. I think, I think CVS just shot this at a weird angle. Like I'm gonna give them the benefit of doubt. I think we're looking at this from a very high, a very wide yeah. Angle and. There are a lot of smart people on this project. Like I don't think they're gonna be trying to like, make a like weird looking Experience. Experience. Lemme just put it this way. The people that are on this project have made movies before. Uh, yeah. It's not like, oh. And really capable people on this production. Yeah. It's like, oh, just blew up. Okay. I'll painted. Uh, yeah. Okay. Generate. So I think, I think CBS did not do them many favors. And so like, I mean, if you think about okay, if you're actually lower and your field of view, a normal person's field of view is much more narrower. Yeah. What is the experience for the viewer who's paying to go in the theater? Yeah. We don't know what that is yet. CBS didn't really do a good job of displaying that. Sure. Um, so I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt and think that like, this is just a horrible angle to shoot something that is not meant to be displayed this way. Also in that video, if you go back to where you see Oz, like the green, uh Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean that shot at the sphere is money like that the any Oh yeah. I see the s blown up and floating and the, that's what this is for. That's what the fear is for. Right. And they're also making this like. Interactive. So like when it's the hurricane, they're bringing in giant hurricane fans to blow around. Yes. What did you tell me? Uh, I I, I'm under nd or friend, I can't say. Yeah. But there, there's some surprises in there. Physical surprises. They're bringing interactive stuff to this. So it's not just the movie, but there's wind sound effects. Yeah. There was a separate video came out a month ago too, about how they're re redoing the entire score mm-hmm. For the spheres like massive audio system because the original recording's like a mono audio, I forgot the company. They acquired the audio company. Basically there's 160 speaker elements within the sphere. Yeah. And each one is fine tuned. Alright. So that kind of, no matter where you're sitting, you get a similar audio. Yeah. Like the experience, the oral experience is as equally stunning as the visual experience. Yeah. And on top of that, the seats I think have interactivity to them as well. So like, I think, um, on some of the other stuff they've done, you can vote for things or you can press buttons and things like that. Yeah. So look, I. End of the day, this is, you're not thinking of the, um, the Steve Bomber stadium, the, uh, Intuit Dome, the new one that he opened. Yeah. That has it as well, because that definitely had interactive as stuff. Well, yeah. But I think the sphere has, has it too. Okay. There's a whole department within the sphere that handles interactivity and immersive. Yeah. So. Makes sense. I mean, there's a department that just builds cameras at that resolution. Yeah. Big Sky. Yeah, exactly. So it's, it's a giant science project and to be honest, the other side of it is, uh, and you saw on some of the tweets is there is a ton of VFX work that went into this and quite frankly, at a time when we needed more VFX work in the industry, the sphere has provided. Yeah, I mean, yeah, so like there was a Reddit thread on the uh, VFX Reddit and uh yeah, basically people posting and then other people commented who worked on it or said they worked on, we can't actually that for sure, but Yeah. Wizard of Oz at the Sphere experience was made by real VFX artists and they're being discredited like always. I would say that the actual AI touch, I'm just an outsider looking in, is probably so little. Because then you have to go in and you have to upscale and figure out the, all the errors that AI makes at that resolution. And it, the sensitivity, I think, the sphere didn't quite foresee, and quite honestly I didn't foresee, is like if you have a sacred IP and a sacred film like Wizard of Oz, like Ben Hur, like Gone With the Wind mm-hmm. And then you wanna modernize it, bring into a, like a complete 21st century. Experience. Yeah. With ai, you're gonna run into some trouble. I mean, people hear the word ai and we've talked about this before. Yeah. No matter without, with your context and just like, oh, AI, oh my god, AI. Yeah. You remember the whole Reese feature thing with the brutalist? Oh, yes. So, yeah. I mean, and here in this. In this post, uh, on the, the VFX. I'm a VFX artist and I've been working on this for months. I'm pissed at these news articles. We've had a team of very human artists meticulously rebuilding all the pieces of the set. There's barely any AI being used for the backgrounds yet reading those articles. It's like a machine did it all. No real people have been given work. Real people have been working late nights and weekends to get it done. Uh, and then yeah, the rest absolutely. Yeah. Uh, I mean, uh, we. We both probably have friends that work at the sphere. Yeah. They're like, I don't know, 10 miles from here. Right. They're very, this is like a Burbank, Glendale area company and if you live in the area, you know that Disney is their Dreamworks is there one of like all the major studios that are in this 10 mile radius. So a lot of friends of our, our industry are in there. And from the last six months, all we heard was like, yeah, it's a mat sprint in there to get wizard while it's done. Mm-hmm. It's really complex. A lot of hands are involved and they did it. I, I think for the most part. Yeah. And look, I mean, it's built for the Sphere and I don't think you could judge it from footage and angles that don't, are not the waves intended to be experienced. Yeah. Having said that, like the, I'm sure that there's a few AI folks within that company and they're, they're just like probably sweating. Right now, like, oh my God. I also, I'm thinking too, what have I done? The idea of the, you know, ai, you know, like a brew and like type in and done. Is there even any AI that is trained on 16 K? Like when we've talked about, let alone 32K or 32? Is that Yeah, yeah. What we talked about like generations and stuff and like image resolution. You're lucky to get 1080p uh, yeah. So like maybe, you know, they. Composited elements, maybe they just use it to upscale. Yeah. I mean, I would be curious what the extent of the AI AI was. Uh, someone else commented too that, um, they worked on this for about five months. There were multiple large VFX houses worldwide working on this, but they kept adding work because the AI couldn't do what they needed it to do. Not yet. Yeah. A hundred percent not, yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're talking about maybe AI getting you to like 2K, perhaps 4K, and then from 4K up to 16 k filling in all the detail insertion. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like filling in skin tone. Mm-hmm. Wood, wood beam. Details everything. And then from 16 K going to 32. Yeah. Right. To just make everything work. There's no way. Yeah. One thing also that I'm kind of curious about, or like your thoughts, like the experiment itself of taking an old movie, kind of retooling it. Oh yeah. One thing though that I is sort of a bummer and like probably the most upset, upsetting thing about the whole story is they did cut 30 minutes out of the original movie. Yeah. That's not too, I don't know if it's because the shots were too complex, like we talked about like the wooden. Translate over to the Sphere, it would make people too sick. Or I saw one theory that it was for so they could fit more screenings in the day. I don't really know about that. Hmm. That part I, that part I, I am. What are your thoughts on that? I'm more upset about the cutting the part.'cause it's like, well, you know, you're going there to see the Wizard of Oz experience. I wanna see the full movie that, you know, I have. It certainly doesn't help if you combine it with all this other stuff. Right? Like it is just like, okay, you took this. Intact original IP and now you've chipped away 30 minutes of it and now you've added out painting elements and now you've done new shots that never have existed at new novel camera views. So it all adds up to like, is it even Wizard of Oz anymore? That kind of a question that que right. So yeah. What are your thoughts of just like this experiment of taking something. A classic and remixing it. Retooling it for a different experience, for a modern experience. I would say at that point you are better off just rebooting the entire thing with new actors and reshooting it. Like don't touch the film from the original. Really? You think they should just like recast it and shoot a whole, they should have just used those fancy cameras they have and maybe reshoot them. I mean, they certainly have the budget and the capability to do so, and my guess is it probably would've been cheaper. Uh, than what they're doing, than what they're doing. I don't know. I mean, I look, I mean, if it gets people interested in something that's old, if it's a re-imagining of the thing, also, if you're not into it, don't watch it. You don't have to go foot, you don't have to pay. It's a thought cheap too. I think it's like 200 bucks a ticket. I mean, look, we're, we're out of. Position we're at a time and a place in our industry where we're experimenting and trying new things out, and kudos to this fear for taking this momentous big step into this territory of taking old IP, putting it on a 21st century screen, right? This experiment. Let's see how it goes over the next six months, and if it does cause an enormous, you know, pop culture moment. If it doesn't, I don't think we'll see one of those ever again. You know, I've been talking about the pop culture moment. It's like, it's probably gonna be when you're like scrolling on TikTok and then you see like. Someone who looks like they're in Oz. Yeah. And then you're like, what? Where are they? And then they pan and you realize, oh, they're in the sphere. And then it's like one of those other crazy sphere moment sphere reveal moments. Yeah. Or like Cosm moments where it's like they're on the side of the football game and then they pan. It's like they're not really there. What? They're like watching it in the Cosm. Every, every like, it's gonna be one of. Like viewer capture of a sphere concert. Like I saw some from obviously U2 when it came out. Yeah. The one that was watching last night was Backstreet Boys. Yeah. With the spaceship. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, dude, that's awesome. Yeah. With, yeah. So I was like, uh, the sphere knows what they're, end of the day, it's pretty freaking awesome. Yeah. I think that a lot of this goes just. What's CBS Sunday Morning to, I'd be more upset with them, although they're like, they're formatted most, they should have had a YouTuber cover it instead of traditional media. Like if, if like VP Land, I was thinking we get to the bottom like Mr. Beast, somebody, excuse me, but your boy Mr. Beast. No, I think F-K-B-H-B would probably be more appropriate. Yeah, exactly. They should have had like Abrams or M-K-B-O-C, somebody like that cover it, uh, who really understands tech and knows how to story tell I think the CBS Sunday Morning. I think the audience is what's is is if that is, who's into the Wizard of Oz. You're right. Boomers, I think, yeah. Look, CBS Sunday Morning is a very nice show. I don't think they were the best outlet to try to explain or distill this. Yeah, exactly. Or capture the experience. CBS Sunday morning audience. Wizard Oz overlap. Mm-hmm. Not the, uh, tech literate of, um, audience. Yeah. And the audience that you want is the creator economy, consumers. Right. It's, it's the folks that are growing up on YouTube that wanna experience something that can't experience anywhere else on the planet. Yeah, I think that's for like anyone that wants to go to this, it's like, oh hey, that movie that you've like grown up with and just like has existed forever. Um, you can now experience it in some trippy way. Also, wizard Oz has had some momentum in the last few years. Right. Wicked just came out and before that obviously Wick, it's huge. Yeah. On Pantages and Broadway, like the whole play was on for like a good decade. Wicked. Yeah. Yeah. So Wicked's massive. It never really went away. No, no. Especially, I mean, mainly thanks to Wicked Yeah. For being around forever between the book and the play and the movies. Yeah. The la the last thing I'll bring up on this topic is the broader issue with Las Vegas as a city that is winding down or just slow right now. Yeah. And, and would this bring the traffic back in or would this be hurt from the fact that not a lot of people are gonna Vegas at the moment? Oh, that just the market's not, yeah, like would this actually tourist pull Vegas into, right. Because I mean, I'm guessing the selling point of this too is it's like you're a tourist in Vegas. You got. The, you know, uh, Cirque du Soleil option, like, what you doing in the evening? You go watch Cirque du Soleil, or do you go watch The Wizard of Oz? Mm-hmm. And this trippy experience. Yeah. Does that hurt them overall? We'll see, yeah. I, yeah, I don't know the, the, the, from what I could tell and from all the articles and, and I'm kind of obsessed with this 'cause like, I used to go to Vegas all the time for trade shows and it didn't matter what the economy of Vegas was. We just need to go there for work. I met you there for the first time, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. But even in the Times. That we post COVID with NAB. Yeah, it's NAB has been smaller than pre COVID. Yeah. And so the question is like the international visitors to Vegas are the ones that are really spending, and they'll come in for like a week uhhuh, and within that week itinerary, the sphere is this one thing they probably will pay for and with less and less international visitors. You're gonna see like a Glo. We're already seeing a global decline on all Vegas's revenue, but is that just temporary? Yeah. I'm curious. I don't know what the terms are of like, if this is a couple month engagement or if this is gonna be sort of in the permanent rotation because I mean, they've, I think the, the conversion process is like $8 million. Yeah. Like they invested a lot of money into this, so like, well, they own it, right? Like they, this is not sent to somebody else to do it. The sphere did it themselves. Yeah, but I mean, they still had to license. The movie and the IP from mg. Gotcha. Gotcha. So like, I don't know, that's not a limited license. I don't know. Right. And so, um, I I, 'cause I'm wondering like, does this replace or augment the Darren Aronofsky postcards from Earth film? Right. Which was sort of their always on. Yeah. Like when they didn't have an event or something, but they still, you know, wanted, if people wanted to experience the sphere and see something that was like, you buy a ticket to that, you can go watch that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, does this replace that where it's just gonna be something that's sort of like always programmed where. If they don't have an event and you're like, I wanna go watch experience the sphere, I can go watch the Wizard of Oz, you know, in this experience. I hope so. I hope their catalog only grows with strong projects like this. Yeah. You know, and the like a steady recurring revenue for the sphere will then. Make the case for having spheres all over the planet. Exactly. You need stuff like this too, to, yeah, just to pay the bills. Not having a UFC fight or a big, massive concert all the time. One of the things that they're really smart to do, and I think Cosm is doing as well at a smaller scale, is hosting private events. You say that Delta One? Yeah, the Delta keynote, yeah. That one's crazy. I saw the footage coming outta that big ball, or Delta dude. Yeah. How much did that have to pay for that? That'd be amazing. Yeah. So for those of you who missed it, during CES, the sphere was closed because Delta held their annual conference there for all their employees. Yeah. But have you seen the like keynote footage of the keynote speech? Oh, it was like, was it, it was like an airplane or just had like all this crazy. Like custom built Delta airplane. Um, yeah. Graphics inside Sphere. Did you also see that rave thing? The an, an anima? I think I've seen clips of that where it's Yeah, with robot. Oh, the robot coming through the, the ceiling. Yeah. That was dumb. Yeah, that's stuff very, yeah. Yeah. Just imagine being on substances and that happens. Nobody's ever on substances in Vegas. What are you talking about? All right. I think we've talked about this here enough, but, uh, even though we can keep talking about that, look, if you have comments, let us know either way. If you feel like this is a super, uh, egregious thing to do with prop. Yeah. Let it, yeah. Or if you support VFX and our artist community, either way let us know. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I mean, 'cause there's a whole other just like, you know, do they have permission? Do they have other things? Like even, uh, No Film School had an essay about it. About, uh, I, that's why, 'cause it's one that sort of bothered me. But this is just because the person wrote the essay, the last thing they said. But this is just a computer changing a movie to make money. That's not art, that's just unfettered capitalism running book. That's not true. That's not true. I mean, this is like a silly take that like, oh, they just put it in a computer and like, hey, spit out the AI version of. I wish it was that easy. I know, exactly. It's like, like before you comment about this stuff, like actually try to make something, even for like two seconds on one of these tools, they're not that easy to control. Yeah. And then, uh, a lot of times No Film School nails it a lot of times and that's what, yeah. And then, um, capitalism running out because it's like, it's also like, um, this is the film business. Like we, we are in this to make money. Yeah. We're not, we're not here for charity. For sure. Yeah. All right, let's move on. Okay. What's next? Showrunner AI. The Netflix of AI. The Netflix of ai, which I don't know about that title, but I can play into that title'cause that's what we called it to. And uh, that's what everyone called it. And we called it when we wrote about it. Okay. So it is basically, so it also got some, they sort of teased what their product's gonna be and Amazon has invested in them. So can you just give us a rundown of what it actually I out what it is? Yes. But that's why they like, got some notoriety lately. But basically they're saying it is like a generate your own TV show, animated show mm-hmm. Platform. And their vision is that. Anyone can log onto the platform and you kind of can give it some images of you, your friends, your environment, the stories you want to tell, and it'll make animated episodes. Mm-hmm. Starring you and your friends and your real life in the style.'cause it's so interesting of, I mean, I don't know, maybe to you in the style of like South Park or Family guy, like that animated style, they're just doing animation 'cause that's the easiest to like automate or replicate. Um, the people behind this did the South Park AI. Experiment like a year or two ago where they kind of built the plat machine that would just keep generating South Park episodes on it. I've heard about that. Yeah. And then it got like, shut down. Did you see any of it? I did not watch any of it. Okay. Uh, the only South Park episode I've seen recently is the Trump one from, from last week. Oof. But there, I, I don't know. I mean, I think people were watching it and it got like, kind of popular and then it got shut down'cause of, you know, IP copyright. Um, but uh, that they took that same idea and that is now this. Product showrunner. And so the vision and running through some of their thread highlights, um, or whatever, X tweet, it is an X thread. There's a cool video. Yeah. He's saying, yeah. The toy story. Uh, this toy story of AI moment isn't just going to be a cheap animated film. It's going to be playable movies and shows, rem mixable, multiplayer, personalized. Interactive. All right. Do we do opinions yet? Yeah, I mean, lemme give a, let me give a more of a briefing and then we can do opinions. Uh, their first show was called Exit Valley. It's a riff on Silicon Valley, the show, which was, uh, amazing, um, on like the current players. Amazing. Come you are underselling Silicon Valley. Oh. It was one of the best shows ever made. I wish Silicon Valley still existed. Today because there's so much good material. It's up there with like the wire. Uh, Barry, it's one of HBO's greatest shows. It doesn't seen Barry. I need to watch Barry. Oh dude, you gotta watch Barry. No, ho Hank, um, uh, so the Exit Valley is that in Sim Francisco, you can upload yourself as a character, create your home, and tell your story among the matting Gus of ai. So there's sort of ideas like they have, I guess, maybe a hero version of the show in this world. And then you can make your own spinoff. Side versions of the show in this world and multiply that by like any infinite possibilities. Yeah, any, any IP show worlds. I dunno how the IP works. If you can, can I like, I wanna be in the Simpson. I dunno if that works. Yeah. Like AI is writing the show. I believe AI is writing the show. Ai, I don't, rendering and generating the show, AI is making the dialogue and I think it is like you can give it as much or as little direction as you want. And then like with the images of the characters and the location and I'm maybe story points and then it generates. It generates the show. I don't know if that qualifies as the Netflix of ai, man. Maybe it's the Netflix in the sense of like, there will be a lot of volume of content. Yeah, but Netflix is not, is it good? I don't, I don't know. I mean, I'm curious. Look, I'm curious. So this idea of you can generate your own show and you know, like, you know, starring your own movie of your own adventure, never quite made the most sense to me. They've tried this before with VR/AR. In the past. What, like generate your own movie or show? Yeah. Well, not necessarily generate it, but uh, choose your own adventure. Choose or adventure. Yeah. Right. I mean, it was prerecorded. There was, um, yeah, there Bandersnatch. Yeah. Um, even before that. Yeah. I mean, the chooser and adventure books have been around for a while. Sure. Yeah. This is more like, we'll make a thing for you and you go, you can watch it as you go on the fly. Who, who is that interested interesting to, besides the audience of like you and your friends? Yeah. I don't know. Well, what, what? I don't, probably no one. Yeah. Like I always try to think outside of my brain if that, if that makes sense. Yeah. Like I am a certain demographic, a certain age, uh, you know, we're men. But also what about Gen Alpha? Especially the older Gen Alpha and younger Gen Z, they're in a completely different context. Their mind wants different, so types of entertainment that you and I do. So does this make sense for them? I don't, I mean, do. Kids like to make things or see things with them starring in it. So the only I can I can make is Roblox. Like Roblox is exactly the type of entertainment that I think this is trying to steal. Steal Roblox is a game, it's an interactives, it's a game, but it's also a hang where your friends hang and then they can make stuff. They could dress themselves up however they want. Yeah. But you're still, I mean that's where, that's where I'm getting, that's where I'm sort of like, okay, where's the line? Or I mean, well, not that there needs to be a line, but like. In the types of entertainment. Yeah. This is something that even like Netflix talks about where it's like the lean back entertainment. Yeah. Where it's like, okay, I just want to go chill on my couch and like watch something, Netflix, HBO mm-hmm. Whatever. Mm-hmm. And lean back and watch something and not have to make decisions. Mm-hmm. Or gaming where you're like, okay, I'm actually involved in playing a game. Yeah. And then this, where it's like, I wanna watch something, but I also want to be involved. Right. How it's made or what's making it. So you're making decisions, but it's like, so, but it's not a game. I'm not gonna dismiss it entirely.'cause I do think that there is probably a low percentage that this could actually be big, like in, in the unlikely of scenarios that this could be something exactly what everybody wants, or certainly the younger demographic. Mm-hmm. But the, the, the film loving, uh, scripted entertainment side of me is like, the whole point of watching something on a screen is that you are consuming somebody else's art. Uh, yeah. I mean, the thing that, I mean, even the, the less the art you take, but my initial take of this was like, who are you gonna talk about the thing with if like Yeah. It's a TV show that's just for you. Yeah. Like, 'cause so much of the collective experience of like watching the show on tv. Yeah. And then seeing the podcast takes or talking to your friend about it, like we just talked about, uh, The Naked Gun. Yeah. Who do you talk about that to or that shared experience that Yeah, that's like the collective experience thing. The collective experience. Yeah. And I think Bryn brought that up when we interviewed him, is like, the reason film is film is because we can all talk about it and share in it. Especially, it's true back in the day when a film came out and there was no other way to watch it, you couldn't stream it or anything, you had to wait in line. Watch it with your friends and then come out of the theater and you guys all giggled, right? It's like, oh, that was amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Like that, that was the best part about, uh, what we thought of as, uh, entertainment, as a society as a whole. And now it's become just more and more fragmented. We're watching Netflix at our home. The entire season drops. You're on episode three of the studio. I'm just starting it out. We still can't fully talk about it. Yeah. I mean it's like, I, I, I, some things I think hopefully we're going back to, you know, weekly drops or something where it's like, yeah, we could all talk about this thing at the same time. Yeah. Um, but even on, and also we're sort of tangenting, but like, um, theatrical releases, you know, and it's like, oh, these are like. Part of the zeitgeist and like kind of make a name for itself and like sort of stick around and linger versus Yeah. You know, Netflix dropping movies and then it's like a thing for three days and then you completely forget it exists. Mm-hmm. Not saying every, I mean, you know, not, not saying every movie makes sense for theatrical. Yeah. But we've lost, like, have you seen 28 Years Later. I have not, but I've never, I haven't seen any of them. Okay. But just for context, like it just hit Amazon or Prime video? Yes. Yeah, like a couple, like a couple days ago. Yeah. And I saw it this weekend. It was fricking amazing. Yeah. And of course I should have gone to the movie theater to see it, but you know, me, I just watched, watched stuff at home, but then I can't really share that experience with you yet. Because you haven't seen it. Right. And then who do I like? I'm still having my own personal experience, but it really isn't collective, even though it's meant to be. I know honestly, the most, like outside of like, if I haven't had friends or someone who's seen the same thing, the like collective experience I get sometimes is, um, like TikTok commentary or spoofs where it's like I'm scrolling and then someone's like making fun of the, uh, latest like gilded age episode or something and it's like, oh yeah, we all get the joke. We're all in on the same joke'cause we all watch the same thing. Some meme somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. It blows up. Like if, you know, you know, and it's like, I'll be in the same, in the same Wizard Oz. We'll get to that territory real soon. We'll come back to it. So I did put in each newsletter, we put out a poll. And so we covered this story last week and I put out a poll. Uh, do audiences truly want to create their own shows or just sit back and watch? Um, so actually there were more votes since the last time I checked this. So the, okay. Polling did change, but the second most popular response was, yes, active creators are the future. But then, uh, that was as in like, choose your own adventure. As in Showrunner AI, AI is like, yeah, that's the future. See, that's, um, that was the second most popular. Yeah. Initially when I checked this, that was the most popular and I was really surprised. Yeah. Um, but then the most popular was more what we're talking about maybe for niche content, personal projects, yeah. Is the number one response, which is how I feel about it. Like, cool. Could be a fun thing. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if the model for like why Amazon would be interested in investing in this is, oh hey, maybe we make our, are you kidding me? It's AWS. Oh for that. It's such a big AWS play that that, yeah. Well, that they can just generate That definitely makes sense. Yeah. I'm thinking more on the, uh, Amazon Studios. Amazon like, oh, entertainment. I don't know who specific, I mean, it was just Amazon. I think this just all a big cloud compute play to just churn those GPUs forever. I have a theory of maybe why there could also be useful potential in this for like the Amazon Studio. Okay. Tell me. Yeah, so you know, their thing is like,'cause they have this Exit Valley sort of hero show, and then everyone can make their own little like side quest, side world things inside this universe. Sure. So maybe with Amazon IP or something. Like what? What original animated shows on Fallout, I don't know. Like Fallout? Yeah. Like Lord of the Rings. Yeah. Show or whatever you, everyone could, like they have the hero version, but then everyone could make their personal version in. Yeah. Middle Earth, animated middle Earth with them and their friends or interesting interest. Okay, so like a licensed version of a choose your own venture. So you're right, you could like, yeah, you have the hero main show that everyone talks about, but then if you like, really wanna dig into it more like, kind of in the fanfiction realm, like Fanfiction is a really big industry and so then maybe you could spin off and go make a fun show for you and your friends. Uh, the, the, yes, I agree with you. I think that's, that's an interesting take. Second interesting take, I think. Speculating here. Yeah. Let's say, uh, hit show takes off on showrunner and then there's like a thousand variants of that show that people have generated the top three skim to the top, they've been viewed a million times or whatever. Mm-hmm. They'll just go to the very top thing. Just take that storyline. Uh, put it into live action or put it into, oh, like this. A way to vet, to just figure out just is rapid prototyping. What, remember that was Amazon. That was the, the, the very first thing they did when they were first getting into original content. Do you remember? This was like, you know, 10 years ago, really like Amazon Prime, when they were like, we're gonna make, you know, our own TV shows too. They made a pilot of like five shows. Then they had people vote. Yes. Yes. One of the shows was The Patriot. Yes. Which never made it. It was really good. Yeah. And they remember that had to vote for like, what do you like the most? And one was like, on the the blue, the blue Superhero guy. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh, the, uh, the tick, tick flick, the tick, tick, flick, tick, tick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was, yes. And it was like, vote for your pick. And that was how they determined how to clean this. Is that this shows this? Is that? Yeah. Or it's a combination of everything. It's an AWS play. It's a rise to the top play, and then it is also a licensed model play. All right. Okay. We'll see how it goes. Or it could just totally, you know, not work like a lot of things in the past, like Magic Leap, you know? Yeah. And just, or maybe there are some elements of. Interesting ideas here. This works, this doesn't work. But some of the ideas are good and get adapted into something else. Get, and then the IP gets sold in pieces, likes showrunner technology. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, whatever they're using to auto generate a family guy level animated episode, it's gotta be good technology. Right? That's, yeah. Valuable. Exactly. For sure. All right. And then last stuff, uh, kinda a roundup of been seeing some interesting demos, workflows. Of traditional filmmakers slash traditional VFX artists who are adapting AI into their workflow loving this. And I think we've talked about this a lot, where it's like, this is the future of like, hey, just a good VFX artist, like leveling the power of generative ai. Mm-hmm. But combining the two techniques to create something really cool mm-hmm. On a low budget. Yeah. And I, I think the example here is the pirate RAD VFX breakdown. Mm-hmm. Um, let's give a shout out to the guy that actually made it go, oh, Albert b Boza B. Albert it. See it on the, I see it. Watermarked on the thing. Oh, Albert Bza in. That's, that's the same guy that, uh, Han wrote that, uh, cha grit like thing. Oh yeah. Good catch. Yes, that's right. I'm like, that name sounds familiar. Albert B. Yeah. Oh, that's probably why he made the thing for this project. That's right. Because yeah, he's making a project with ai. Yeah. Well, is even more complicated, but, um. Okay, cool. Awesome. Shout out again. Shout out again. Albert. Albert. Yeah. You're gonna, yeah. Two for two on, on Deno. But yeah, I mean, looking at the original footage, it's like they shot this, you know, cutesy pirate film. Um, can't be pirate film. Yeah. But it's like literally the guys dressed as pirates in their attic, and then they're replacing the background. With generated backgrounds and compositing. Yeah. The, the thing that, um, I love about this is one of the things that I have, uh, kind of a personal issue with this. Anytime I see AI generated humans, and as you know, I come from the world of digital humans. Yeah. And it's still deep in the uncanny valley. Yeah. And I don't get why you're trying to tell a story with an. Digital human that's not quite ready, like it's off-putting, it's gonna take you out of the story immediately. So when I see people use real, people, shoot on green, shoot on environment, whatever, and then just swap out props, swap out backgrounds, I think that's the way, at least for now. Mm-hmm. Until AI generated, humans are fully ready. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, I think this is a really good blend because I've talked to, like with some workflows, or I even talking with Kayvon, the kid when I interviewed him Yes. And he did the fully generated but with SAG actors. Yes. Uh, the, um, Wolf Hunt to the Wolf Night, the, yeah. It was, it was good sci-fi film. Yeah, it was good. Yeah. But yeah, everything was generated when I asked him about the sort of hybrid approach, he was like, well, you know, sometimes the backgrounds don't really look. It looks too weird with real people, but they have a good blend with how they, 'cause they have like practical effects and doors. Like he's touching an actual door that opens. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the hand registration. Yeah. Worked really well. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like he's touching a real door and then they just, they painted over the door. Replaced the door. Yes. Uh, and so the interaction with the. Foreground and background works really well. Yeah. Like, uh, I'm showing this here. Oh, by off the, off the, yeah. Like his elbow is missing the, uh, shadow that you would get. Yeah. But like it's making contact with that bow that's not even there. That's the final composite. I think so. Or that they showed. Yeah. Yeah. I mean for, you know, I'm sure you could find issues and stuff before, like, I'm sure the. Budget and what they did. Um, you know. Exactly. And it shows where it's going. Yeah. And it's, it's already at a level where like a YouTube creator can run with it. Yeah. You know, it's definitely not gonna be on IMAX screen anytime soon, but this is good enough for a lot of things already. Yeah. And I'm, you know, just shooting it in a house or the living room Yeah. And making it look like they're. Pirate to the Caribbean. It just reminds me of some of the creative stuff that John Finger and those guys do all the time. Yeah. It's like, okay, tie all that into a movie. Exactly. Tie it into like a workflow with a story and a full thing. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what probably what happened here. Other creator that I keep seeing stuff pop up and he does these really kind of clever short, um, VFX things, but with like. A lot of open source tools or with Luma is a enigmatic E. Mm-hmm. And so he is got this one that he did where he was like a super Mariel kind of pumping iron and then levels up and turns into like a jacked super Mariel. This looks good. And he just, he breaks down his process and kinda just uses, combine combination of, um, image video workflows and compositing and just does a really good job. And then, yeah, he's, he is like masking out his himself and then filling it with the generative stuff. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, this is exactly the type of experiments that we should all kind of follow and watch closely because. The next generation of VFX tools I think is in this direction. Yeah. Is is all iterative and small pieces that ties into a big massive workflow and existing pipelines that have already worked pipelines. Yeah. For we know work for a while. Yeah. Like what would take this over the top is if somebody actually built a nuke plugin for this and you could just like drop the, all of the outputs into nuke in your existing composite. Interesting. Yeah. So like, I'm sure you can chat GBT or cloud code. Right. That plugin. That's true. Yeah. Clean. Yeah. I would check out his whole fee' cause he's got a lot of good He did this one other one too that uh, I think used a lot of Luma stuff where he built a gun on his arm. Yeah's the full clip gun turns blast blows up a house. Yeah. The gun has accurate, uh, lighting on it, you know, it's pulling from the environment. Yeah. And he just does this in his backyard and yeah. He's missing that shockwave air that hits in the back. Yeah. Like he needs a VFX soup for sure, but just, but he's doing his thing. Super clever stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and then last one, I just saw this one pop up, uh, from Rory Flynn, uh, making of a Colosseum ship battle. So pulled Google Earth images. Wow. From. Uh, yeah, just regular Google Earth stuff of the Cossum, uh, Wey, which I hadn't heard of. It looks like it's similar to like Flora, like another kind of ai. Yeah. Wey is a competitor to like Invoke or LTX or Flora. Okay. Yeah. Just like a pipeline. Yeah. Built out with connecting multiple tools. Right. And then VO three and um, built out this aerial shot of a naval battle in. Modern, modern, modern day coliseum. Yeah. It's cool. You know, um, I, I just hope like some of these guys end up working on real shows and insert, you know, AI shots into real movies. That's the only way we're gonna get the adoption. Yeah. And something that's more cha like, beyond a one shot where it's like, hey, exactly. Let's do it on a scene where it's like consistent, consistent with like, you have to do angles and keep everything consistent. That's like the next step for seeing this stuff come out. Yeah. It's like what ca on the kid did is like, just put out a 13 minute movie or whatever. Yeah. You know. All right. I think we, uh, I think we're good here. Talked about the sphere and a bunch of stuff. A lot, but yeah, let us know what you think. Uh, you know, listen to the comments on YouTube or over on Apple Podcast or Spotify. And, uh, links for everything we talk about as usual@denopodcast.com. Yep. And we are taking the second episode taping of the week, which would drop typically on a Friday, uh, to be the AI. This week in AI review. Yeah. So we're doing Fridays as like review Roundup. Let us know if you like it. Cool. Roundup. Yeah. If, if that's the format that you're after. And, um, you know, we're gonna make the show that you want us to make. Thanks everyone. Catch you in the next episode.