How I Generate It
Conversations with people creating things with generative AI
How I Generate It
Haydn Rushworth: Making a watchable AI feature film
Haydn Rushworth is on a quest to turn a screenplay he's been working on for 10 years into a watchable movie using generative AI. Documenting his filmmaking journey on his YouTube channel, Haydn highlights different tools and storytelling techniques while being very realistic about the current state of AI and its drawbacks.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8CRQs68Jr8
Welcome to how I generate it. Or I talk to AI, filmmakers and creatives about their process, their projects. And of course, how they generate it. This episode is with filmmaker in utuber Haydn. Rushworth one year ago in June, 2023. Heightened realized the potential of AI and started a quest to turn a screenplay he'd been working on for 10 years into a watchable movie. He's been documenting this journey on his YouTube channel, highlighting different tools and storytelling techniques. He's also very realistic about the current state of AI. And it's very good at articulating the drawbacks of using AI to create a watchable movie. Now, since we recorded this interview a little over a week ago, there've been two major video models released Luma labs, dream machine, and runway gen three alpha, I bring it up because one thing Haydn talks about is the importance of storytelling. And the faster technology advances, the more important storytelling becomes. He has a lot of great insights, so I hope you'll stick around. Thank you for listening. Here's my interview with Haydn. Rushworth.
Mike (2):Haydn, Rushworth, thank you so much for being the show today. Um,
Hayden:Absolute pleasure. Thank you, Mike.
Mike (2):You've been starting a journey, , to create a watchable movie using AI technology., I, I love how you kind of started where you're very realistic about like, The potential of what AI technology can do, but also like the current state, you're very realistic about like where we're at now and what some of the drawbacks are. Um, if you, so you started this a year ago in June, 2023, and now it's June, 2024. What are some of the things that you've been excited to see happen in the past year? Yeah.
Hayden:where you, you get your initial impression and you see something like Sora, um, or to be honest, everybody's first experience with AI is one that leaves you going, Whoa. And, um, the journey for me, I think is being one of there's this initial kind of blown away and that's what caught my attention and thinking, well, as soon as I created my first still shot from one of my scenes, it was the first moment that I'd begun to see in real life. Well, in real life, at least in visual, uh, something that had only existed in my imagination for 10 to 15 years. It was a thrilling moment, an absolutely thrilling moment, because I don't expect my screenplay, a screenplay that I spent more than a decade writing, um, for a story that I absolutely love with a passion. Um, I genuinely laughed and cried a lot when I wrote that thing. And so I really love this story. It's just with current Hollywood economic models, which I'm fine with, by the way, it's unlikely that this screenplay will ever see the light of day as a finished movie, because it's perceived as being too expensive to make for an audience that's perceived as being too small. And that's, that's just economic model as it's just business sense. And I'm fine with that. But when I, so I'd given up on the idea of ever seeing this movie brought to life. Going the traditional route, but I didn't write it to read it. I wrote it to watch it So from my perspective the job, I mean the screenplay is finished to first or second draft level So I'm satisfied with it at that point and I do keep going back and revisiting and tweaking and working on it and updating it For me the job's only half done. I want to see this movie and I mean
Mike (2):Okay. Bye.
Hayden:It may just be a given, this may be self evident, that something that I was willing to spend 10 years of my life working on, on the side of my real job. I'm quite happy to spend another 10, 15, 20 years working on it until I get to see the thing finish, so I'm, I'm playing the long game.
Mike (2):Mm hmm. Yeah. You do get a really good job in your first video showing like, you know, the budget and you kind of raise your hand up like the budget was up here. Um, but the audience is down here. But I think that audience for stuff, um, There's kind of like this underserved audience, you know, like they're only making things that appeal to everyone in a way or appeal to the widest audience possible. And now people who can tell stories that look as well, eventually, like you said, this is a long game here that will look as good as those movies, but they'll appeal to a smaller audience. So you have a individual person creating a movie that appeals to a smaller audience. Um, and. To me, that's a really exciting thing. And I think there's, you do a good job of bringing people along and saying like, I can't be the only one, or I know I'm not the only one who does this and I agree. You're not, I feel like this is something that there's probably a lot of people who are in the same boat that are like, I know that there's a thousand people out there who in the world, at least who must want to watch this movie too, and those are the people you're trying to reach.
Hayden:Yes, that's
Mike (2):million or 10 million or something. So,
Hayden:no, and it's a deliberate choice not to go chasing views from the, but I mean, there are tools like vidIQ and TubeBuddy, uh, that are brilliant at helping you to figure out what are the trending titles and keywords and themes and subjects. Um, problem is you don't create a niche that way. And the problem with a niche is you never get big audiences that way. So I had to decide, right, which way am I going to go with this? Am I going to pursue the quest to make the movie? Or am I going to begin a new quest to build a YouTube channel that one has to prioritize over the other? And for me, I've decided to stick with, I'm aiming for a quality audience rather than a quantity audience. And yes, people like me, I'm trusting that the audience is going to grow. I'm trusting that once we start to create. AI video content that is credible for writers and storytellers, then they'll start to go, Oh, I want to be on that bandwagon at the moment, all of most of the. AI video content I see on social media is not made by storytellers. It's not made by professional writers. It's not made by professional filmmakers or directors. It's made by social media enthusiasts who are playing with the toy and I'm fine with that. But unless we move beyond that, unless we get the writers on board and saying, look, look, this is an opportunity for you to bring a big vision to life or at the very least, and I think we're at this point. Almost now, this is an opportunity for you to test out a concept to test out an idea for a script before you go to all the effort of writing it. Um, and so that's, yeah, definitely looking for the writers to try and say, you guys need to be going, getting onto this bandwagon and using it because, I mean, you'll know how it is at the moment. Writers and actors are terrified of AI. And from my perspective, ironically, Those are the two groups of people who AI would be hardest. It would be hardest for AI to replace
Mike (2):Yeah.
Hayden:because go ahead.
Mike (2):Oh, I was just, I was gonna say the same thing. Like, I feel like everyone's afraid that AI is going to take certain types of jobs, but anyone who's tried to have AI write a script for them or, you know, you instantly realize like, this is not AI strong suit. It can summarize things really well. You can give it a bunch of stuff and say, Hey, tell me what this is about. And it does An incredible job of that. But when you say, you know, write a prompt for this kind of thing, the prompts, they all sound the same. Like you can tell that, they're written the same. And when it comes to scripts, they're just like the most hacky worst version of scripts. You know, there'll be things that like, it's cool that a computer did this, but at the same time, like, It's not really that it's not good, you know, like the novelty has worn off as far as like, I can't believe you can do this, um, for the creative part of it, at least.
Hayden:Yeah, exactly. And the one point I keep hopping on about is the, this idea, artificial intelligence is artificial head, but not heart. It's all logic with no emotion. It's all reasoning and no feeling. AI at best will only be able to spot patterns of human behavior and replicate it. But it will never understand it, , organically
Mike (2):Yeah.
Hayden:that side of our humanity is, is what divides the, the, the artificial intelligence from, from, from, from human emotions. Entertainment, I often say it's made up of two primary core ingredients, surprise and emotion. And that's a whole different subject. Cause then that's gets really interesting, but to =create that emotion, to create that feeling and the same as in music, same in every area of the entertainment industry, to be a great creator. You're not a filmmaker. You're not a musician. You're not an actor. You're not a writer. You're a feeling maker. And at its heart, when you're great at what you do as in the entertainment industry, you become highly skilled in the art and craft of creating emotion In the, in the consumer, in the, the audience and the viewer, and AI has no idea how to do that because it can, it will never understand that. And that's our, that's our remaining strength. And I believe it will be that way for a long time. So to write a really engaging story that you really feel for the characters, you're really, um, the, the ones that really move you think of a Forrest Gump type movie. Um, I, I, I watched the crown and I'm, you know, there's, we've all got our favorites. Something that really moves you emotionally and you think AI wouldn't have been able to do that.
Mike (2):Yeah.
Hayden:But a great writer with using AI tools might be able to shortcut the process a little bit.
Mike (2):Yeah. And I think one thing that's really interesting about the project that you're taking on your screenplay is that it relies so much on emotion. I feel like you, I feel like you've set a higher bar for yourself because of the fact that you're doing a romantic comedy where you have to respond to the characters and you have to respond to the emotion.
Hayden:Yeah, well spotted. And I've deliberately done that. I've deliberately done that. Or, or, or without shame, I am not shying away from this because I'm like, if this thing is ever going to work, it needs to be able to make my movie. And if it can make my movie to my satisfaction, you'll be able to do anything with this.
Mike (2):Agreed. When you started, one of the things that you did is you highlighted some of the problems, not the problems, some of the things that AI had a really hard time doing. And I think some of those, it still has a hard time doing, but it's getting better. So one of them was, um, consistency in characters and just consistency in general of hairstyle, props, everything. Another one was authentic movement of faces, the big one I think is just like, I, this has bothered me so much as well. It's just like the fourth wall problem. Um, if you could just kind of talk about like any of those really, but like, especially I want to go into the fourth wall problem. Cause I think that's the thing that really makes AI movies, um, unrealistic that it really easy to spot right now, at
Hayden:Yeah, I had a great time a couple of nights ago at the LTX studios, um, new product launch down in London. And I got to talk to the most senior people at LTX studios and just, I got so engaged in these conversations. I didn't think to film anything. So the content I have to share in my next video has very little from the event because I got so engaged in these conversations and it was really, really exciting one of the panelists she's a prompt engineer amongst her many other job titles. I thought, since she's a prompt engineer and one of the panelists, I'll go ask her how I can solve this problem. I went to her and I said, look, I'm having an incredibly hard time creating authentic emotions in AI characters. Um, I can get blank face, no problem at all. And I can get. happy face. That's okay. But anything beyond that is really hard. And she said, she said, actually, I'm not sure. She said, I don't know about that one either, actually. Oh, great. Thanks. But she, but she did give me one great tip. I mean, she, she pointed out that AI can only really identify and replicate something that it has been told what it is. So you have to first show it something and say, this is a ball. This is an elephant. This is a giraffe. This is a human. And until it's been told that it just sees all this stuff and goes, well, that's interesting. And it might be able to pattern match, but it still doesn't have any meaning for what those patterns mean. And so, um, At some point, by the way, I think there's a real opportunity and need for somebody to specifically train AI models with a massive range of human emotions, not just people's faces, but the sound of their voice. Um, you have to get some actors and just go through a bunch of Scenarios where they are creating these emotions. You know, it's, it's how our faces move. It's how we interact together, like a woman and a man who are flirting together, moved, moved differently to a woman and a man who are fighting together and a woman and a man who are on an awkward date. Move very differently together to a woman and a man who are on a date that's going really well I mean that and again in a in a scenario where you've got a boss interviewing a subordinate and So, you know, there's so many different scenarios where the interaction between the humans is It cannot be disconnected from the facial expressions, the movements, the intonations in the voice, so many things. And unless the AI is specifically trained on human behavior and told what all of these things , are, it will be very, very difficult to replicate it.
Mike (2):You were talking about the training and I feel like if you think about images that you see in In magazines and things like that, it's usually people who are looking directly at camera. They're kind of moody. Like no one's showing real emotion.
Hayden:Like, I'm beautiful. I don't have to smile. I can just stand here and look at you and you'll fall over yourself.
Mike (2):I have found that like putting the state of mind of the character in the prompt sometimes helps where you know you'll say um with a you know friendly and curious look on their face you can get a little bit there and then you'll have to sometimes negative prompt too like as I've mentioned this before but a lot of times anytime I generate a picture of a man I have to put in brooding it seems because they always think that men should be brooding about things but um To me, like that combination of trying to find like the prompt and the negative prompt can help a little bit, but it's still, it's not there yet. You know, it's especially for like what you're trying to do. It's definitely not.
Hayden:Yeah, actually, what I, what I meant to, I got sidetracked, that she did have one useful suggestion for me. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounded good. She said, if you go and get an image of somebody with the expression that you want, pull it into mid journey and have it reverse engineer it.
Mike (2):Yeah. I do that a lot lately too. Cause I just get tired of writing prompts and I'm trying to think of what am I trying to say? And that's something that I've been doing a lot too, to be like, okay, help me out with this. And it iterates it really quickly. So could you just really quickly talk about that reverse engineering using the describe function in major? How, how do you use it?
Hayden:I've used it very little, if I'm honest, so essentially you have the opportunity to, to import into mid journey, a picture, just upload an image. And then the prompt that you type is just describe and mid journey will then feed back to you. the AI's interpretation of what it's looking at.
Mike (2):Mm hmm.
Hayden:And so if you've got somebody with a subtle place, uh, a suspicious look, For example, you know, there are obvious ones like laughing and angry and you know, you've got the extremes, but I'm also I'm desperately interested in all the nuanced emotions in between. In theory, you may be able to get a hint of what meaning AI has in its bank against that type of expression. And so her suggestion was start there. And that may give you a clue as to where to drill down and go looking.
Mike (2):Yeah. It's like, we're almost having to learn like AI is trying to understand our world and trying to figure out what we mean by prompts and like, this is a helpful way of, you know, Looking at it from, well, from our perspective, what is AIC in this picture? What is important to it? And I like in the mid journey, like when you do that, you get like four prompts, basically like four options and you can generate them all. But really what I like to do is just look at the, like, find the words that like, Oh, I wouldn't have used that word. Um, or that word didn't occur to me and then include the prompt and kind of, but it gives you kind of a palette of words to start playing around with, which is really nice. Yeah.
Hayden:Right. Have you had some success with that described, that
Mike (2):I, I, yeah, I have for like certain styles that I'm looking for. Sometimes like where it's like, I really like that, but I don't know what that's called, you get a lot of, words that like, this isn't one of them, but you know, translucent or opalescent, , if you're looking for a certain style, like, oh, I wouldn't have thought of that word necessarily, but yeah, that's, that's what it is, you know? Um, yeah. I can't think of the ones for emotions, but like when I've tried to put in, images of people, the look that it said, like that the character had, I was like, yeah, that's, what I'm looking for. And it was like an emotion I wouldn't necessarily have written down myself. But when I use that word, I could always get the look on the character that I was going for. So it is helpful, I think, for sure.
Hayden:It's never as straightforward as you think. So all those times that we first came across these AI images, we were like, Oh, this is amazing. Type a little bit of this and amazing stuff happens. And it does until you try to control it. I often say AI is like a wild horse. It's incredibly impressive. It's dazzling. It's powerful. It just, it blows you away, but incredibly hard to control, but it is becoming easier and easier to control. And I think part of that is learning to speak the other language. Um,
Mike (2):is, can you just
Hayden:Oh, sorry. Yes.
Mike (2):that? Yeah,
Hayden:Lightrix is the name of the organization. So I guess LTX is an abbreviation for Lightrix. and um, LTX Studios is , their software that they are hoping to do something that I'm excited about that's different, where you have a one stop shop for telling your story. And this is what they're trying to do. I have to say the reason why I'm excited about LTX studio, even though I've come, I've used mid journey, Leonardo, the whole list of the popular ones I either use or have used, and, um, I've been waiting for a long time for, for companies to get to this point for AI companies. In fact, I've got video from five years ago that I recorded saying somebody needs to do this. And it's this idea that the movie industry and the gaming industry. If you were to draw a Venn diagram between the two of them, they have been slowly crossing over more and more and more into each other's territory for decades now. But it's, it's by accident rather than by design. The gaming industry still thinks of itself as the gaming industry that's expanding into movie stuff. The movie industry is still the movie industry expanding into gaming. Nobody is owning the crossover point, like genuinely saying this is our territory and that crossover point in the middle is one of the final areas of democratization of the entertainment industry. It's where you can have a writer with a big vision story. And they can use a tool that is as simple to use as a video game to turn their big vision story into a watchable end product. That, for me, I've been waiting for that for years, because I've been writing my movie for years, and all the way along I've been writing it, trusting that when I get to the end, then I'll figure out what to do next. But I always said that if this movie never gets made, I don't want it to be because I didn't finish writing it and that's what kept me going. So I finished writing it and then, but I all the way for the last few years for about since about 2015, I started looking at the market and going, somebody needs to create a tool because all the, all the elements were there. All the elements for, for example, having actors in zip up motion capture suits,
Mike (2):huh. uh,
Hayden:that with a video game, you're essentially controlling the characters with just a few variables with a hand controller. Well, a zip up motion capture suit, Uh is just an input device with many, many more variables. And so you could have your characters inside of a room inside of an environment or spaceship on a 17th century French galleon, you know, it could be anywhere and then you can kind of record these two actors playing out this scene. And then in theory, you ought to be able to then replay it from multiple different angles with multiple different lighting setups with multiple different lenses on there. Yeah. And that for me, I was watching all this technology that's already floating around thinking, can somebody please pull it together and turn it into a tool that will help me get my movie made? Well, nobody is doing, but then Last year, when I saw all the AI stuff, I thought, okay, maybe this is where my dreams are going to come true. And that's when I started looking for a company, kind of scanning the horizon for somebody who would pop up, that would say, we are going to become, we're aiming to become the go to platform for storytellers to turn their big vision. Into a watchable version and LTX studio is the only one it's they're the best so far. I think other platforms are offering multiple services, but they're doing it from the perspective of these are the features that we offer. What I needed was a tool that said, Let us guide you through your storytelling creative journey. And as you need a tool to complete the next task, we'll provide that tool for you. And that's what I want as a, I need something that writers will use because it's instinctive and it works the way their creative processes are working, rather than them having to go pulling different tools from everywhere to try and do one bit here and one bit there.
Mike (2):I feel like the tools that we have now are, The reason we have the content that we have now. So like you can generate some really nice aesthetic video. So you have like these liminal dream core videos or Panavision 70, type things and people will really be able to like create an aesthetic. because the tools help you create content that is in a certain type of aesthetic, but the tools aren't there to help you create a story or a movie. And that's, I think once we have those tools, people actually be able to, to make the things better. And I can tell based on the fact that you're excited about this one tool, that you see this, I imagine it's something that will help you achieve your goal of creating a movie, which is
Hayden:Eventually,
Mike (2):Eventually, Yeah. Yeah. It's still not
Hayden:this is what was great about going down to the event in London and actually talking to the guys, the senior guys of the company, because I got to ask all kinds of questions to gauge where they're going with this and whether or not this is a horse worth backing. So, you know, so to speak. We talk about character consistency a lot, but it's a lot more that's needed. The word we should be using is continuity. Character consistency is an important part of continuity. But continuity involves things like the, all the scenery remaining consistent, it involves things like being able to cut to and fro shots of three people together and they're in the same place in the same position each time. It's about making sure that the right kind of props are there that you think about the amount of. stories where something subtle visually changes and the camera is out on that, so the audience gets a clue. Oh, something's just happened and that's important. There's an open window there. Uh, that cat that just walked past was the same one that walked past a few moments ago, you know, and all kinds of little clues until you can have complete continuity. You can't tell stories that show something that isn't quite as it should be.
Mike (2):yeah,
Hayden:Because with AI, most of things shot to shot aren't quite as they should be.
Mike (2):yeah,
Hayden:So we can't tell those kind of subtle visual stories yet. That we're a long way from that as well. And we need continuity for that.
Mike (2):You can do text to 3d video assets. Um, and you know, text to game assets., I feel like what you, When you say, when you talk about this stuff, it's making me think of like, if you could just generate, um, a set the way you would do in, um, you know, a map or something. So I was like, here's the room. Every time I talk about this room, this is the exact room. And then I want to have these characters do things in this room. So
Hayden:And I think that it's
Mike (2):for sure.
Hayden:I think that's where it needs to go. I think that we need to move. I think where we're at with AI right now is important, but I think I needs to blend with, um, current gaming technologies to give us that consistency so we can lock down the things that we need to lock down.
Mike (2):That'd be cool. Do you just out of curiosity? I don't know if you ever used because I've also been interested in this world of like, how could you use video game technology to tell a story? A long time ago. There's this movement called machinima where people were trying to use video game engines You know, create animations and stuff. And there was this popular red versus blue series that, just used Halo, um, game engine to create,, stories like short little videos. And then this one tool came out called Plotagon. I don't know if you ever remember Plotagon, but I feel like it was so ahead of its time in a way, because what it did is it used video game technology, but you would, to use it, you. Would type in a screenplay, just like final, is it final cut, final draft or whatever? Um, it looked like, yeah, it, so it looked like screenplay software and you would type the character name in, and then it would say, which character do you want to use? And then you would add that character and then you would have them type in there, like what they were going to say. And then for an action, you would say walks across the room. And then you could have another character and you could have them interacting. A lot of the things that you're talking about. Consistency of the set consistency of characters, the dialogue, the voices that went with them was all there but the problem was, it was like the voices like text to audio was still really bad. So everything was very monotone. Everything was, not very believable.
Hayden:Well,
Mike (2):but it's like, to me, it was like, so that was like probably 10 years ago. I had the same feeling that you did of like, I want this tool where I can just generate my own characters and generate my own sets, you know?
Hayden:Yeah. Well, the trailblazers in this that are being completely ignored is Minecraft.
Mike (2):Yeah. Mm
Hayden:you look at the amount of Minecraft videos on YouTube where the kids are, they're voicing characters, they're acting out scenes. And they're doing it in this world that's consistent. Yeah, all of the elements are right there and the kids are playing and using that and the movie and TV industry is just off in their own world. The gaming industry is off in there. Nobody's paying attention to the potential size of the demand for a tool that will let you live out your dreams for real and record them and to turn your stories into reality. Yeah, so you watched it in the Minecraft videos that, that for me was like, these kids are already doing it. It's showing that there's a demand. It's showing that there's an appetite. But nobody's going up from there. So no, I had great conversations with the, the team at LTX Studios. Uh, they, uh, some other things that are coming down the line that are exciting are things like audio. My goodness, they're building an audio room to try and get Dolby surround sound and to create so they can start bringing in, uh, cinematic soundtracks. Wouldn't it be great if you could map the emotional flow of a scene and put. points along the scene at different timelines to see where's the crescendo, where's the tension building, where's the tension being released, how does the emotional flow go? This is for, for small creators like me, this stuff is amazing.
Mike (2):Yeah.
Hayden:And, um, oh, and
Mike (2):to, oh, go ahead.
Hayden:That, by the way, while I remember, they do have a plan to try and tackle the fourth wall problem. They reckon that in, within weeks, they'll have something that will improve fourth wall continuity. They watched my video. They said none of them had thought about it until they watched my video. And now none of them can unsee it. Now all of them are watching it going, Oh man, it's such a giveaway. It's such a, um, but it's one of those things, you know, Until, until storytellers and filmmakers start to use the tool, you don't quite realize what the needs are and the demands.
Mike (2):I wanted to say one thing about the fourth wall piece too, it's I've gotten to the point now where I can generate people looking off to the side in a pretty good realistic way. But then, um, I've noticed this, you've pointed this out too, but then a lot of the The things that would lip sync don't work if the head is at an angle. You know, so it's like
Hayden:hmm. Totally.
Mike (2):the characters have to be staring directly at the camera for the lip sync to work and, or it will work, but it looks just really awful so there's this gap in the capability of What it's able to do. So, okay. And now we can finally do this piece, but we still can't, , have them speaking realistically in a scene yet. So,
Hayden:But you know,
Mike (2):we're getting there though,
Hayden:well, I mean, I keep seeing white papers for different tools and I forget which ones they are, but I've seen, every now and again, you see little pieces of the puzzle. And so that's why I'm still trusting that this is going to work out just because I see little pieces of the puzzle like being able to lip sync to with your head to one side. So I'm just trusting that market demand will lead to multiple players trying to figure out how to how to create the solutions to these problems
Mike (2):Yeah. Let, let me ask you one kind of like hypothetical question. Cause I know that you have a high standard for what you want to achieve with your movie and you're very realistic about like the, the technology isn't there yet, but you're, Bringing everyone along for the ride as this technology changes and showing tools and what, what they do and what they don't do to achieve your goal. But let's say that like today, June 2024 technology no longer advances. You have to deal with only the tools that are available now. Do you feel like you could make the movie? That you want to make with what's out there now, assuming that you have like 10 years to make it, but with current technology,
Hayden:Nowhere near. Nowhere near. And I wouldn't want to because it would be so bad that it would be embarrassing. Because the technology,
Mike (2):So I went, I went to like, what is the thing that you feel like, what are the big drawbacks right now to the current state of, of the technology? Yeah,
Hayden:need the focus of the audience's attention to be on the characters and not on the tools that are being used to tell the story. So the AI needs to become invisible. You need to not think about it. Let me give you a great example. Uh, 10, 10 years ago or so, I, I have two sons who, um, they're in their early twenties now. And at the time they were kind of 10 and 12. And I sat down with them to watch back to the future for the first time, right? They weren't having it. They were like, Oh dad, this is old. Why are we doing this? Please come on. I said, look, just give me 10 minutes. I'll, and I had to explain the first scene a little bit. Um, but,
Mike (2):Yeah.
Hayden:but, but they were in, once I got them on board, they were in, it became one of their favorite, most watched, most rewatched movies. Now, is that because the CGI was so magnificent that it was dazzlingly impressive? No, it's because the story was brilliant. The story was so timeless. So you could, I mean, if you stop and look, you can see the, the, the eighties kind of CGI doesn't matter. Yeah. And that's great storytelling. The tool should be out of the way of storytelling is so that you either don't notice it because the story is so good, or it becomes invisible. In which case it's about adapting your story to meet the needs or the limitations of the tool. So let me give you an example, tell you what I would do if I had to freeze it today and say, right, this is all I've got. I, and this is what I'm already planning on doing. I've already uploaded an ebook of my movie in kind of story form to Amazon. I need to tweak it and make some changes, but before I start actually promoting it, um, but then I want to do a picture version where I've got still shots from the movie that will never get made. And then I want to do the audio book, but then I want to do the audio book with still shots for the movie that won't get made. I want to have the sound design sounding really engaging and that we can do right now. And so I could sell those and even with the, the movie, if I were to kind of create the audio book with voices. Uh, for dialogue, uh, that where you've got characters delivering dialogue lines and then narration going on to carry the rest of it. And then just with video, they could be still shots or these slightly animated. versions of photos, most AI video is just slow motion, slightly animated.
Mike (2):hmm.
Hayden:what I would do. And I would upload those videos to YouTube in, in scene, one scene at a time and promote it and try and get to the point where I'm building an audience. And I, I would, so you could monetize eventually with enough views on the visual audio book. And the other thing that I would do is create real social media accounts for my fictional characters.
Mike (2):Yeah.
Hayden:So asking the question, the characters in my movie, What would happen if they were real and if they had social media accounts, what would they post?
Mike (2):Yeah,
Hayden:character, it's not real. Okay, the people are fine with that. So I want to take it a next step further and say, well, let's, let's take characters from a movie. and have them post and try and build up an audience and then point them back to the book, to the audio book, to the video audio book where I've got stills and photos and that's, and then I would probably create a comic book version as well, which we can do at the moment with AI, um, just for entertainment. And I would sell that through Amazon. I think it would be possible with hard work, hard work to create a cartoon movie because cartoon movies are the audience's expectations are much lower. So you can get away with a lot more. And all of those things are more or less possible right now,
Mike (2):I really like that idea. Reality games were a thing for a while that I was really interested in and people would have like social media profiles for fictional characters, but it
Hayden:Oh, yeah.
Mike (2):done in text, you know, so it was just like their profile picture and then them in character in text sending tweets or whatever. But I love this idea that you mentioned where now you can actually have like, Um, Take care. Your main character's Instagram account and it's like pictures of them, whatever is tied to your movie , or, you know, I'm going out camping in the woods or something if there's, you know, for a horror movie or something.
Hayden:Yeah, exactly.
Mike (2):see the character, you know, as if they're a real person on social media. And to some extent they, you know, it is just another account on social media that you would follow. So that's a really fun. Idea, fun tip for someone to,
Hayden:I'd be interested to see how it goes, but it's, um, yeah, because I mean, you've got to have something interesting to say as well, and I, I would, I'm going to stop at the point where they begin the movie, so I'm basically padding out the backstories.
Mike (2):and
Hayden:So that by, so if these people become real and you're feeling their pain and you're feeling their hopes and you're feeling their dreams and you're rooting for them, but you don't know how their life is going to turn around. That's the beginning of the movie
Mike (2):I
Hayden:and that's when it gets started. So I'm hoping, I'm hoping to be able to just breathe life into the wider world of the story that I've created.
Mike (2):that's a really good way to tie it into like what you said at the beginning of like, there's, the budget versus audience thing, all of these things that you mentioned are a way to find that audience or for that audience to find your story. And I think that's, that's great. You know, that's what is needed. I think.
Hayden:So it'd be interesting to see how it, uh, how it plays out. But to give you an example, my two main characters, it's a romance, and the two main characters, they are young people who have been landed unwittingly with dysfunctional superpowers. I probably will play out one at hers, because hers, she got telepathy, before she really gets going in the movie, she goes through a whole long period of, of heartache and heartbreak, uh, working with the police, getting inside the heads of the most villainous scumbags in society, and losing every boyfriend she ever has, because the guys can't stand it, that she knows. Everything that they're thinking She concludes that the telepathy is the problem, not her impatience. And then the guy himself, when we meet him in the story, he is a recovering alcoholic, who was homeless after he was On the X Factor or a big shots TV talent show shot to stardom and just absolutely burned out and ended up homeless and bankrupt and, uh, alcoholic. And then he kind of turned his around and just, uh, he refocused the thing that keeps him going every single day to stop him going backwards. Is that, uh, he met a great mentor who helped him to understand one of life's great secrets that a life of focusing on helping other people with their problems. means that your problems just disappear or they're minimized and you don't have to turn to other substances for happiness. When you focus on other people's happiness, that becomes a drug, almost a drug all by itself. And so he lives his life kind of just trying to help people. Genuine nice guy, which is why he gets landed with this dysfunctional superpower, when he comes into contact with another person, the other person's thoughts become real in an instant, and, uh, he, he thinks it's great because if they're thinking of world peace, he's going to solve world peace, but then he realizes that if they are thinking about Armageddon, then he'll wipe out the world and it's just as easy to do one as the other by accident. So he's like, Oh no, I can't do this on my own. So he goes to try and persuade telepathic girl to help him, uh, until he learns how to control his powers. But she's not interested because she's a cynical soul, but she thinks she can use his power for something on her shady agenda. So she agrees to help him whilst the whole time she's just playing him. That was a really
Mike (2):Yeah. No, I was wondering what the, the, how the two superpowers we're going to like, cause I feel like they have to be part of the, um, it's not just the characters, like the superpower becomes a character of how they interact it's like, they are the thing having. That relationship almost like incompatibility, the incompatibility, but also the total compatibility, you know?
Hayden:Yeah. Both of them have, uh, have a tremendous love hate relationship with their power. Once I get going on that, telling that story, I love the story. I'm only just beginning to get started, but yeah. So consequently I'd still love to bring the story to a wider audience. And so there are tools that will let me do that. And I figured, you know, I'm just going to do what I did with the screenplay. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep moving forwards and trust that the next step will open up when I reach the next milestone.
Mike (2):yeah, that's great. Well, I'm really glad that you're bringing people along on your journey. And for people who are interested in joining you on this journey, what's the best way to, follow you along?
Hayden:Thanks for asking.
Mike (2):Where can they find you?
Hayden:It would be the YouTube channel is the primary space. Haydn Rushworth. Um, that's just my name and that's the name of the channel. That's the, from there, everything else will start to spread out. Um, but I figure I need to get that working first. Um, whilst I create the content gently, I'm in this thing, the long game. So unfortunately it's not going to happen fast, but it is happening.
Mike (2):Yeah. I love , your realistic approach, your, your enthusiasm for the technology, but also your realism about where things are at now, you know, sometimes, sometimes you get one or the other,
Hayden:yeah, yeah, yeah,
Mike (2):that you have both, you know,
Hayden:yeah, yeah.
Mike (2):so, well, thank you so much for being here. I would. I feel like I had a list of things that I wanted to talk to you about. And we covered about a third of them. So it'd be great to
Hayden:Well, you do
Mike (2):uh, you know, over the time, uh, as you're, you know, you're, I know you're in it for the long game, so it'd be great to check in with you periodically and, and see how things are going.
Hayden:Because I have a bunch of questions for you as well. I mean, I saw your posts and the stuff that you were posting. I'm like, this guy, his head's in the right place. That's a big part of what I'm trying to do here is connect with, with kind of soulmates and kindred spirits who are going, yeah, I'm trying to do that too.
Mike (2):Yeah, absolutely.
Hayden:So thank you.
Mike (2):Thank you very much.
Mike:And thank you listener for being here. I hope this made you think about your own project in a new way. Or helped you see there are other like-minded people out there experimenting with AI. If you enjoy conversations with AI creators like this, don't forget to subscribe. And until next time, keep generating.
