Focal Point
Conversations with artists across all industries, taking a deep dive into the nuances, techniques, and philosophies of society's talent.
Focal Point
Ethics and AI in Cinema #53 w/ Producer Marq Williams
How is AI changing the future of filmmaking? Producer Marq Williams shares his perspective on the promises and risks of tools like Runway and Midjourney, exploring how artificial intelligence could empower indie creators while also threatening the human connection that makes cinema resonate. This conversation dives into ethical frameworks, the decentralization of Hollywood, and why emotionally powerful storytelling must remain at the heart of technology’s evolution in film.
Welcome to the Focal Point Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Riggs. Here I take a deep dive into my personal interests of the hidden craftsmanship, philosophies, and passions behind society's talent. If you're intrigued by artistic nuance, please subscribe and follow on my YouTube channel, Spotify, and Buzz Sprout. With that being said, let me introduce you to today's guests. Mark Williams, nice to meet you. Why don't you uh go ahead and introduce well, I guess I technically did just introduce you, so you're welcome. Um do you a favor there. You're welcome. Uh just tell me what you do and how you got started into it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so um I always love that question, man, because you can be as as humble as you want or as arrogant as you want. So I'll try and be in the middle. Like um essentially, I would say that um I'm a producer of certain aspects, but I do love writing, uh, screenplay specifically, sometimes skits, and then uh I love directing as well. I love camera work too. Uh, but the camera work's not my strength, but really gathering people, uh setting up events, setting up movies, uh, and writing about them and putting putting pain and the art and the emotion in a screenplay and stuff that I love to do. So if I had to categorize it, I would say producer slash screenwriter.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so Jack of all traits. Would you consider yourself um at the top of that list uh hype man?
SPEAKER_00:Uh hype man?
SPEAKER_03:The hype man, you're the one who gets uh gets people going to be able to do something around you. That's what I'm sensing.
SPEAKER_00:That's a that's a that's a good way to put it. I think I just do good at eliciting reactions from people. Uh now that's I've been hit in the face several times before, so I know I know what it's like to say the wrong thing and say the right thing, but I think hype man's good.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, all right, we'll go with hype man. That's what I'll put in the title. I don't know. Probably not. We'll we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Well, you've you've also run when I was looking at your podcast, I also noticed that you had your you've had two different podcasts, if if I could read into that correctly. One was a bit more film-related and then the other was a bit more uh theologically related. Um what have you uh left one to go to the other, or are you but still working on both of those simultaneously?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, uh, that's a great question. So um unlike yourself, I do get infatuated with new ideas. You know what I mean? So it's it's nice to play around with that and try and execute new things in my head. Um counter and contrary to that, I have been working on finishing things. So I kind of dropped the last podcast and started this one because it was a more complete idea, complete as in a sense of what I wanted to talk about and who I am as a person. Um didn't want to be too much of a jagged edge in one corner.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Well, very that's very poetic. You want to flesh that out for me?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, essentially, um I do love how businesses are ran, you know, whether that's the movie business or anything in tech, uh, even like brick and mortar stores, I I am fascinated with like building stable businesses. So, and podcasting is a great marketing medium to talk about stuff like that, as well as build a stable business itself. So uh the reason why you see a couple of podcasts of mine, I think there's like one or two more that I tried and just stopped after 10 episodes because I didn't feel the idea was complete enough for me to stay consistent with. Nice. Um, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Well, um, tell me a little bit about your filmmaking endeavors.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I I wouldn't call myself like uh like an intermediary or an expert whatsoever. Um, I really just love how movies make me feel, you know, and in knowing that I try and recreate the same thing, whether that's just writing something for myself or putting ideas on paper or actually fleshing out a full-length feature film or a short film. Like um, I try and recreate the feeling that so many of the famous and not so famous movies have created for me. Um, and that just comes with a lot of planning and a lot of learning, a lot of failing, which I've grown to enjoy. Um, but really it's just fun, man. It's really fun to try and put something together. And I heard uh Stefanika, uh, if if I'm saying her name correctly, but um she talked about how much goes into a project, the bigger it gets. And I definitely experienced that firsthand, uh, trying to direct a feature-length film. Uh, but I wouldn't change it for the world, man. Like the ups and the downs, the highs and lows. I loved it all.
SPEAKER_03:Um, well, tell me about that. What uh led you to be able to do the being willing to pull the trigger on doing the feature?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So at first, and uh Nick, uh he's the director of photography on the the movie, but um I was fighting tooth and nail to keep it a short film, man. You know what I mean? Just uh really reel it in and make a concise idea instead of creating like a super big lore. Um but he took my rough idea of a screenplay. I had fleshed out about like 50 or so pages, and then I handed it to him and had him reform it a little bit, and then he was like, Hey, like at this point, we would have to make this a feature-length film because a minute is a page and you have 50 to 70 of these, and what you're pushing for in the meetings and the pre-production is feature length. And at first I wanted to kind of capture a feature-length film feel inside of a short film, but after a while, um, I don't know if you know Tom Angeletti, but I asked him the same question like, hey, how do you determine when you want to start making feature-length films? He was like, Yeah, no, like I love shorts, but it's just easier to make features because you can sink all the way into it. And I definitely agree with that. So um, I kind of tried to take that on myself um and got a firsthand experience of how collaborative movies are. Yeah, it's really awesome when you write out a story and it's so personal to you, and then you start handing it to the director of photography or an AD or a cast or crew members, people that are filming, and they start to understand the idea too. Uh, that's what really was getting me emotional about the entire process. And then when you bring it to the general audience and they relate to what you're talking about on a deep level to the point where they won't let you out of the conversation because they're like, oh no, tell me more about this thing, the story that you pulled me into. Um, that's really what I started to get into making movies for is to uh encapsulate that same feeling that I would have watching some of my favorite movies ever, like some that I watch on repeat all the time.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. When Nick gets the script for this, that this 50-page script, other than that first um critique that he says like, yeah, you might as well just go for it at this point. What was his reaction to the narrative that you crafted?
SPEAKER_00:He he loved the narrative, honestly. Um, so I should put a little more context into saying it is a movie about faith, it's a movie about finding God and beating addiction, um, which a lot of people can relate to. People are even addicted to coffee. Um, but he he loved the idea, but it was such a raw narrative. The dialogue was really raw in terms of the language I was using. So he was like, hey, based on you know what you want out of the movie and who you want to push it to, we have to switch up some of this writing. And I definitely gave pushback saying, hey, like this is how I would talk to these people in my life if we were really going through it and talking about God. Um, I eventually relented because A, it's a movie that I want people who believe in God and not believe in God eventually see and want to discuss. Um, and genuinely I think it would stand the test of time, not putting such uh you know, vulgar language in it. It wasn't like super crazy or talking about anybody in a in a bad light. It just was very raw, like that's the best way to say it. Um, but I took that I took that dialogue and drew inspiration from the conversations I would actually have in real life. And when people are fighting addiction or going through it or just come out of it, they don't talk about it in a in a corporate manner. They talk about it like, no, dude, you need to see exactly what the heck happened to me, and I have to tell it this way, or you won't feel what I'm telling you. Is that making sense?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Um what where did that um feature or that narrative end up going, actually? Yeah, what ended up happening happening to it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so we we filmed about half of the movie so far. I still want to finish it. Um, but essentially what I had to do is honestly become better at my job, like and make sure that uh the contracts were safe and sound for the casting crew, uh, make sure they're getting paid properly and making sure that the movie gets its proper funding. So we're about 50% as like 50, 60 done with the movie. Um, and we paused production simply because I ran out of money. Um, I was funding the movie out of my own salary. Uh, and after a while, uh, and the more information I got, I was like, okay, there's a better way to do this type of thing. Uh, and before, when I made a short film, it was just kind of ragtag, and the casting crew were so perfect for it and they were so understanding uh about me executing that first idea for the first time. Um, and I really got to shout them out and give them credit for staying patient with me when we had to pivot or when I had a different idea. Um, but yeah, the feature-length film, I still plan to release it, but it's one of those things where no matter how hard I press a deadline or push forward on things, it's gonna get done in its own time.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. When you were realizing the logistical errors that were um contributing to the the project and end up getting paused, what do you think that you would do differently um when you go to finish it?
SPEAKER_00:A hundred percent no BS, I would just budget everything better the first time. You know, you go through and uh there's this Bible verse that I love a lot, so I'll paraphrase it. I don't know from heart, but like you should really count the cost before you start or finish anything. Um, and I definitely, from an emotional and imagination standpoint, was ready to take on everything a feature-length film would bring. Logistically and budget-wise, I wasn't all the way. Um, so I definitely take accountability for that. And I I enjoy that part now, you know. Um, and I'm going so hard still on the back end and funding everything because I want the casting crew to get paid. Yeah, I want them to be paid their value that we agreed upon and more, you know, once the movie finally comes out.
SPEAKER_03:So I see that you all you've also started messing around with um AI. What are your feelings about that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, AI is uh it's an awesome tool. Um, it's very easy to rely on it though. Um, and when I was working through some of those videos, those are like real movie ideas that I had. Um and when I would put the concept out through AI, I would get a lot of backlash, which is okay.
SPEAKER_03:You know, I'm you're referring to those trailers that you made and and put out on your channel.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's one uh one called Race Me Asian and one called Knife the King. Um, and when I started showing those to people, uh especially online, I would get some sort of pushback saying, hey, like you should be using real people, you should be, you know, planning these out. And if you actually want to make this idea, then just make the movie. And you know, my counter was like, hey, getting the proof of concept out is a lot better than taking the 10 years it would it would take to make a medieval film. And I I just know just from research and talking to people who are deep in the film industry, that it looked like I was working backwards by just putting out something AI. Plus, people are just that versed in new technology anyway. Um, but I I still love those ideas. The only thing that I would do is just prompt better um and and try and really hone in the idea from a shotless perspective. You know, it's kind of easy to have the computer do it for you, which is why I completely understand the backlash. Like, hey, if you don't know anything about the shots or the angles or how to set this up or how to work with people, then yeah, it's pretty easy to say you're a film, you're an AI filmmaker, which I'll never claim to be, right? At the same time, if somebody's starting out and they don't know how to do these things and they don't know how to properly shot list or budget a movie and they want to gain traction and get their stories out from an emotional and imagination perspective, it's a perfectly good tool to use. So that's what I was using it for, honestly, to just prove the concept myself.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Well, I've also messed with AI a little bit and the visual effects artist who was working on the feature film uh that I was messing with I was working on for years, uh started he started seeing what was coming down the pipeline even a bit earlier than was actually being released. He he was talking to people that he knew in the industry and he's like there's so many he's he's really worried about the the amount of job disruptions that's gonna be happening. Yeah. He decided to just start adopting the tools and trying to trying to mess with that because for context, he spent many months learning from the ground up the uh not in-house, but the the native coding language that was required to be able to run Houdini software and actually get the physics of the visual effects looking correct and accurate. That him that took him a long time. And now he just is messing with the tools that you know AI is being able to provide. He's like, I can do this in like a few minutes. But the reason uh and this is what people who either aren't filmmakers or don't know anything or haven't messed with prompting tools, is that you have to in order to get a good looking image and an image that is cinematic as well as it does because it uh as well as an image that doesn't just have the camera float, you know, to give it a sense of movement. Right. Um to actually give it d a deliberate narrative um composition, is that you have to baby the tools through the process of filmmaking at each individual layer and then build it and and build it from the ground up. That's what people don't don't seem to understand is by the time and sometimes by the time that you're actually done um messing with the tools, you probably could have just shot it.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:That's the reality. Like depending on how complicated it obviously is, um you know, if you're doing like a cyberpunk thing, then yeah, obviously it's gonna be um a bit easier to mess with AI than it would be to, you know, get like a Visual Effects house and save a lot to do that um or find the funding. But you know, just for like everyday stuff, you know, for classic short films and and everything, it's it's gonna be a great tool for enhancing the narrative and creative outlets that filmmakers, especially indie filmmakers, don't have access or the funding funding to be able to accomplish.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually glad that you that you brought it up because and I'm sure you can understand like context is king. Seriously, like if you don't know what you're doing, when you put your screenplay into the AI tools and you don't know how to angle it or what type of camera or LUT you want to use, you're not gonna be able to get the exact shots you want. So you're correct, like, and that's why I was getting a lot of the pushback there. Like, you could have just shot some of this stuff if you just took the time. And the only reason AI is getting so much pushback in the filmmaking industry, I feel like, is because of the job disruption, like you're saying. But that's when it takes people who are person and people centered to continue to uh bring in people who want to learn and want to innovate, you know. Um, and that goes for any industry, and not just with AI tools in any sense, but if you're not if you don't have like an innovation mindset, you're not gonna make it in the filmmaking industry, you're not gonna make it in in tech, you're not gonna make it in farming, you know, or agriculture.
SPEAKER_03:So I think honestly, where this technology going is going isn't going to be people prompting on computers trying to generate images. What's going to end up happening is that basically with the technology coming down the pipeline of augmented reality, is that we're going to be we're going to be have the innovation of both AI digital creation for images, but in a 3D sense that we're going to be able to plug into the projectors. There's already this technology that we're seeing the beginnings of with, you know, like how they used it with Mandalorian, is that we have live feedback when you're looking on the 3D wall, the the LED wall, and it's changing the angles with it as if it was in a 3D environment while you're filming. Like that's that that that typically is you know, that's post-production work happening live. And I don't so I'm honestly not that worried about it. Um there's certainly some ethical things, but I think honestly, you know, the whole purpose behind uh experiencing art is to be able to experience something human. And right now, because we are in the inception of the technology, it's innately cold. It is. We're worried that this is the final product. And I think this this is not going it's this is not the this is not the final version of the Pokemon evolution of um of AI filmmaking. What's coming, I think, uh genuinely is that we're going to have 3D augmented reality uh stages where most of it's going to be for all intents and purposes holographic. You know, we're we're kind of entering a the Star Trek age.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And I'm here for it. I like it. You know, I would prefer the Star Trek age to the Star Wars age, to be perfectly honest, because at least in this the Star Trek universe, you know, a uh humanity is pretty united and we're uh functioning. So I would prefer to be in that one than in the Star Wars, to be perfectly honest, even though space wizards are cool.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you said it best though, um, with having a unified community. And quite honestly, I'd rather AI be on the back burner and keep the unity of the filmmaking industry because what SAG After did with their strike was beautiful. Like, yeah, no, don't just sit down and lay down and let this stuff take over or take people who need to get started and really follow their dream into acting or filmmaking, don't let it take that away. But at the same time, once it finally settles and the market actually corrects itself, like you were saying, I do think it's gonna be augmented reality. Um, are are you familiar with Mid Journey at all?
SPEAKER_03:Uh I am, yeah. I haven't I've been trying, I've been interested in getting into it. Uh, I've used some level of like concept art creation. Yeah. Uh and prompting it for that and learning how to actually use those types of tools, but specifically for concept art, uh, because I'm a I'm a writer, I haven't done a lot of visual effects, really, anything myself. But that is something that I would like to be able to start getting into because it's a tool that I know I need to be familiar with, at least in concept, to know how to how it works so that I can communicate with people that actually do know how to use the tool for um explaining my vision.
SPEAKER_00:Right. If it was meant to, if we were meant to completely replicate what AI was doing, yeah, we wouldn't need people. But this is why we need that medium of AI and of Mid Journey. Uh, and even like uh the metaglasses and everything, they're they're really pushing this augmented reality. Mid-journey, even they're working on a hardware. Um, there's this guy on X, his name is Nick Floats, and he like works strictly with Mid Journey. And he's like, Yeah, no, this is gonna come down the pipeline whenever they create it. But essentially, uh, you remember those little glasses where you can flick through different pictures?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, that was yeah, wow, that took me back.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's what I'm saying. They they're essentially gonna make that, but with your mid-journey prompts, so you can essentially create a movie with that style of glasses or goggles from like from your home. So it's a lot, it's gonna be a lot a lot to handle for people, and it's gonna be probably easier than ever to make a movie, which is why people who can write, which is why people who can produce, which is why people who can direct, which is why people who can hold the camera and know the technical terms of things, they're gonna thrive more than ever. So if anything, I would just push film education, not necessarily school, but you can even go on Studio Binder to learn what you need and then use the tools.
SPEAKER_03:This is kind of how I see it. YouTube decentralized TV. Yeah. Um apps like Spotify, uh, Naple Music, they decentralized the music industry. The last Titan to fall is Hollywood.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And it's uh the the beast that the Hollywood is was a much, I think in honest in my opinion, was a much bigger beast uh when it comes to the size in terms of its infrastructure. Absolutely. Because it was also integrated a little bit with the the music industry, you know, funding worked. But um it's it's dying a slow death. And that's why we're seeing this max mass exodus out of Hollywood into the Midwest, actually, which is kind of why I started the podcast. I'm like, hmm, maybe if I go set up shop at a time, the city's gonna build up around me, you know, uh, and then uh it'll be it'll be cool. And then I'll be I'll be here organically. But decentralized filmmaking is what's coming. Hollywood is so Hollywood is as it is right now is probably dead. It's just breathing, it's it's giving its last breath.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And it's it's gonna take probably another decade to be perfectly realistic. Um now I'm not saying the companies will die. Right, but the structure of how funding, talent aggregation, and uh technological innovation and incorporation are all fundamentally going to change. I think obviously I still think Disney's gonna be around. You know, all those uh Warner Brothers. Well, I don't know. I don't know. They're they're not doing so hot right now. But um uh, you know, uh the net thing things like Netflix, um, they'll still be around. But the way that the the internal guts of how Hollywood works is giving its last breath right now.
SPEAKER_00:You're absolutely correct. So two things, um not to get political, but Trump with the tariffs and everything that actually affected the the film industry. So you're gonna get taxed if you shoot a Mission Impossible movie in Israel, for lack of a better term. So that's gonna push people inward and to decentralize more. And then, second, there's gonna be so many smaller production companies that are able to produce high-level movies with not only AI but blockchain. So you'll be able to not only put a movie on the blockchain and and sell it through uh crypto or whatever, you'll be able to verify who was on it, where and when it was sold, how it was sold, when it was produced. So it gives somebody like a monkey par an A24 really to create their own universe and their own Hollywood. So I think that I think it it'll honestly be for the best that Hollywood dies, but it does suck, and we have been getting some great movies regardless.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we we have been, and like filmmaking isn't going to die because at all.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_03:And and this is kind of where the the unspoken fear, I think it is for film indie filmmakers, is like we all want to make movies so we can get recognized in the funding, and then we go into the level of Hollywood filmmaking where we can actually realize these big visions that we have.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um well, by the time we actually even if that happens, that structure is no longer gonna be there. We're gonna get to Zion, and then we're gonna realize it's just a desert.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:It's just a desert. And so I I think honestly, indie filmmakers really need to pivot now while they still have a chance. Pivot to uh Pivot Pivot to where the industry is gonna end up going. Right. And it's obvious that at this point the government is going isn't going to really regulate a lot of the way AI is used in the creative space. And so we're gonna have to s basically self-govern in the in the sense that um you know, like the Screen Actors Guild, Writers Actors, Directors, Actors Guild, and you know, all of those agencies self-govern the way businesses run. And we're gonna have to have some type of agency that everyone agrees to uh abide by in terms of their rules in order to be able to do it. Now, I'm not for I'm not one typically to push for regulation, but I think this this is probably gonna end up being needed.
SPEAKER_00:It's yeah, it's a different beast. Like regulation I'm not cool with either, uh, because it can just the disparity between the people who run it and regulate it and the people who are at the bottom trying to get there, it's so large that I would rather it be decentralized and have it have a complete industry decentralized. But at the same time, I would I wouldn't be opposed to an AI regulated uh foundry or an organization that can come in and say, hey, you got to make sure these people are getting their likeness paid for, or hey, you got to make sure that they're getting credited for their prompts or getting credited for the post-production or live action or camera work that they did. Because if you don't, the people at the top, they're just gonna continue at the top because they have the money and influence to push the narrative that it was only them. So that's really why I would want something like that. And you might actually just sparked a good idea.
SPEAKER_03:So like Well, I mean, if you when you go through the credits of at the end of a movie, you see at the very last end all these organizations that put their stamp on it saying they ran it in a way that was in accordance with our company with the way we uh utilize talent as well as uh money.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So you have, you know, yeah, got like SAG Afra, you know, and then all these other sound things to say that they were a part of it, and you know, their seal of approval on the way things were done were appropriate according to the rules that they laid out.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You know, you would you would need and basically an AI version of that saying the way that they used AI was ethical based on our specific guidelines that we laid out for it. And then, you know, when people see that, it's like it's a trustworthy stamp of approval to know that what they received was authentic enough to be willing to believe.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, it would be something that everybody would have to agree on, which might take the 10, 20 years it will take for Hollywood to die out or completely decentralized for a better term. Um, but I I wouldn't be opposed to that at all. And I think a lot of people would get on board if the right people were behind a foundation like that.
SPEAKER_03:Honestly, it could be happening right now, and we just don't know about it. Yeah, it could be it could very well be. I feel like I feel like there's probably been talks about this in Hollywood about starting an organization like that.
SPEAKER_00:The reason why Hollywood is decentralizing is because they keep too many secrets, though. So if that is happening, somebody needs to say something. And if it's not happening, I'm pretty sure somebody in Columbus or Dublin, Ohio will make something like that for at least the Midwestern area to have that. It could even get decentralized to the point where it's regional. Okay, we have the West Coast, we have that AI Foundation and the Midwest Foundation, and they run it and they stamp it in two completely different ways. I wouldn't be opposed to that.
SPEAKER_03:What uh programs have you used to dabble in uh AI generated uh art?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so great question. Before I directly answer you, I want to encourage people to learn programming because the reason why the feature film. Worked up until I still I ran out of money, is because um I thought pragmatically and I thought in a way to where we iterate. Um so with that being said, and using iteration tactics and having a programmer's mind when coming to movies like uh runway uh machine learning, I think it's just runway now. It's probably the best tool because they have uh act one and act two. Act two, you can literally rip apart the background and you can act exactly how you need to, or even change the whole character style. Um, so that mid-journey for sure for like proof of concept art. Uh Hey Luo, it's H A I L U O A I. It's uh it's like a Chinese app for lack of a better term, but they were really big in in getting that started and pushing it forward. Uh Klingai is pretty good, and Pika Labs, they do a good job of kind of incorporating what everybody else does and just iterating from it. So essentially it's just like cell phones, they all do the same thing pretty much. It's just a preference. But runway, mid-journey, and hey Lua, those are the three that I really use when planning anything.
SPEAKER_03:The two that um my uh the visual effects artists that I know started um getting familiar with is the first one's called Alf uh A-L-E-P-H and Kling K-L-I-N-G. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Are you those? Aleif, I've heard of, I've never used Cling is honestly probably the best one. Um, especially if because I heard that the visual effects industry is gonna take the biggest hit inside of uh this whole AI springing up in the film industry. So I yeah, I would encourage people to use Cling. I would encourage people to use Runway uh and use the free credits, don't jump in and pay a$90 or$150 monthly subscription for something you're not gonna use all the time. Really figure out what you need it for, what type of movies you're gonna shoot with AI and then attack it and then get a description. Uh other than that, you're just wasting your money.
SPEAKER_03:How do you hope that AI does not get used?
SPEAKER_00:Man, um no, dude, I love that question because my friends, they're like, dude, you love they like send me pictures. They're like traitor, yeah. Literally, like they'll call me a clanker, and it's like, oh dang. But as much as I love the technology, bless you, yeah. As much as I love the technology, I really don't want it to take away people's jobs at all in the industry. I don't want, and I warn my friends and my brother with with a child, I warn them not to put their child's like image into any one of these because they're training their own data from it. So if you're comfortable with it and you have your own likeness and you have that secured, like legally, like with your IP and your name and everything like that, cool, you can put your face into this AI stuff, but it's it's gonna hurt a lot of people when the next wave comes and you have to make kind of a virtual profile with your same face and everything like that that a company can use and they made you sign for when you hired on that you don't necessarily agree with if you don't have the rights to it. Um, so I don't want it to take away job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no. And I do like what Mark Zuckerberg is doing with the glasses, but I the thing that scared me, he said, I I don't mind losing a couple hundred billion dollars as long as we're not late to super intelligence. And I don't want people submitting their complete will to compute to like a computer or to a program or to a company because there's people running these companies and using your likeness and replacing your job for lack of a better term, and they don't even use the stuff, they don't even have a phone. So yeah, I don't want AI to hurt the marketplace and take jobs to where now people have to be creators and have to have a podcast and are shaking people down for likes and subscriptions so their family could eat. Yeah, that would that would just get very dystopian.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well every I think every century there's a version of the most dystopic possibility that could be actualized is actually end up in lila, ends up being actualized somewhere on the planet. Yeah. You know, if you think about like communism in the uh Eastern Europe for the uh during the like the 1960s and 70s, that is where most inspiration for dystopian literally comes from. Explain it. Visually speaking, um when you look at uh art styles and architecture that arrive arose during the uh period in Eastern Europe as well as Russia, uh it's it's a very uh it's where what's the term where brutalism comes from? You know? Yeah, okay. Uh it's it's where that type of uh visual aesthetic was was born from. And you know, they they they didn't have uh a free-flowing economy, it was very top-down. And you know, architecture is the environment that you grow up in, which causes a particular mindset as well as you know, psychology and and behavioral patterns that leads to how society ends up evolving into. And there's always the worst version of what is possible somewhere on the planet.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that no, it makes a lot of sense after you explained it. Um, even in the faith community, um, when the when the first film camera was made, they brought it to the church, and essentially the church was like, we don't know what to do with a film camera. And then the next thing they took, the next thing they did was take it to Hollywood, and now we have Hollywood. So I do like what you're saying. I didn't know that though. That's pretty awesome.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, if you look at uh uh I mean if you think about I don't know if you've read it, which I haven't read it, but like it's I've read some of it. Um Dosyevsky's uh Crime and Punishment. It's you can smell the world that he he lived in. It was it was brutal, and just the way that the way that you think about life is I think very determined by the environment that you are steeped in. Yeah for Dosyevsky, uh it's it's beautiful literature, but it's so it's the the melancholy, the melancholy, uh colony? No, melancholy, yeah, yeah, yeah. The melancholy, it um how best do I want to phrase it? It steeped too long and then it begun to stink.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that that's powerful. So it's like what could have had a good ending in this book since I haven't read it, it just took a deep turn and now it's some crazy type of dystopia that can actually be actualized. Okay. Would uh would you say that would you say that like writing and screenplays and movies need happy endings? Because I don't. I I kind of hate them.
SPEAKER_03:They don't need to be happy all the time, but they always need to be meaningful.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:They always need to be meaningful. Um if if the character doesn't win, at least let him be healed. Or if the character doesn't um if the character does win, that there needs to be some type of lesson that the character comes to realize about either himself or about life. And I think that's actually what's missing from a lot of modern cinema. It's that they go on an adventure and they don't really learn a lot. You know, they go it's it's it's about cinema has become about the goal uh to accomplish, which I think is honestly represent uh representative of the current cultural climate that we live in. It's it's about it's not about building, it's not about the journey of building the business or uh the people that end up working there, it's about the goal of making money. Why for the sake of it? And I think movies are being made uh for the sake of it. It's not about the lesson. Movies don't feel like pieces of a literature anymore. I think that's the biggest problem.
SPEAKER_00:No, you're hitting it on the nose. That that's also why I hate when they push a sequel or a trilogy from a movie that's just as good on its own. If you make one good standalone movie, um, that's like them. You ever seen the big short? Yes, yeah, that's like them extending it and being like, okay, we're gonna bring the same guys back 30 years later, they're older, they're fat now, and we're gonna reprise all this, and and now we're gonna resolve it instead of just resolving it in the first movie. And it that's one of the also reasons that Hollywood is dying, not only because of the litany of superhero movies, which I enjoy, but they're they're money driven, they're not resolve driven, like you're saying. And it's it's important that people at the bottom, for lack of a better term, continue to resolve their stories. Like you shouldn't be making trilogies when you don't have to. Now, if you truthfully just want to make a three-trilogy movie, do it and and resolve it in the third movie, you know, but don't create this entire world where nothing ends.
SPEAKER_03:Well, it's just I think honestly, I think the way because everyone's been using social media for about uh better part of about 15 years, and short form content has become a part of our everyday life. I think probably for the worse. It has it has also it's affected the way that people see media consciously and unconsciously. You know? Uh, and I think that's also affected filmmakers negatively. Yeah because the the mediums that films used to be made out of was prior to the internet at least, the other than films, it was it was mainly books, I think. You know, TV TV TV was very limited. It was the the bandwidth that you could make a show even up till the year 2000, realistically, it could never be as big as a movie. With ex with a with a few exceptions, you know, like Gunsmoke, where that ran for 20 seasons. Um it just it didn't have that big of a draw. It was much more TV was much more about like the day like a slice of life. It was the day in the life of, you know. Yeah. Um and then you make a world about it. But movies, movies all used to feel like books that you got to watch the shorter version of uh uh of without necessarily compromising the message that the book was. Um and the way that you when you're reading a book, it it builds out the environment for you. You know, and I think filmmakers assume that just because you make an image that the audience is going to be uh automatically steeped into the environment. Right. That's not it. You need to let the image breathe. You need to you need to you need to trick the audience into thinking they can smell it. The way you like with a book, the way it lays it out, you can smell the environment that it's in when it describes the the air, the trees, the breeze that happens to walk through, and then it says the way the character feels about it, which is in on film is supposed to be that moment where we just watch the character exist in that world for a moment and then see their reaction to it, or their lack of reaction to it. Yeah, and so films used to seduce us, now they try to wow us.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. I think, and I do have a question for you, but to expound on that. That's why I love Scott Pilgrim versus the World. It's my all-time favorite movie, dude. It I literally could live in that world. You know, they actually made Harry Potter, like they made it a thing people wanted to live in it. Um, and I think we shouldn't lose that, you know, even if you're making movies at the highest level, don't lose building that for people like a book, like you're saying, don't lose it, should encapsulate and incaptivate people to use all of their senses to look at the screen. Um, so my question was um, you don't think movies do that at all today?
SPEAKER_03:Not at all, but I uh no, not necessarily at all, but you don't you have to today is a game of Russian roulette. Right back back to the room. No, that's perfect, yeah. Yeah, today is a game of Russian roulette when you go to the cinema. Um but filmmakers, I think, prior to like you know, 1995 or something like that, or even before 2000s, realistically before 2000s, um uh when an when a big name was attached to it, you can kind of trust it.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:That it was gonna be that was pretty good. You know, it like uh Tom Cruise's earlier work um and Robert De Niro, you know, when like a name like that got attached to it, it's gonna be a good story. Not that you're just not just going for that. It was it was a stamp of approval that almost you could trust, and that's why they made so much money. No, you're right. Um but nowadays now it's like is the bullet in there or is it not? And we don't know. You know, there'll be a lot of big news around a movie, and then it'll come out and be like, this movie sucked. It's just like, well, that seems kind of deceitful. And so as an audience, we we don't feel like we could trust our eyes and ears anymore.
SPEAKER_00:Right. That's that's honestly partly the audience's fault, though. It is yeah, because it's so easy to hate on something now, like, and it's not that they weren't doing it when it was just TV or just books, but everybody takes everything so seriously, and I think we gotta get back to the medium of hey, this is art, this is not something that's gonna drive conversation for the next 50 years. You know what I mean? There's only a select few movies that actually do that, and when they do, they they encapsulate everything you're saying, they have a book in, you can taste the movie, the characters, they're fully developed and they have a result, and that movie normally works. Yeah, were you saying something there?
SPEAKER_03:No, no, I was thinking out loud. I talked to myself. This is this is this is my uh we'll call it a gift. We'll call it a gift.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's not a good idea. No, it's 100%. Yeah, the gift of writing, uh you guys have the heaviest burden in movies, right? Because you have to you have to be that guy to get credit, you know what I mean? Like in the director, they'll normally get credit, but there's probably not too many directors that are writing most of their stuff. It's normally a team. So, but yeah, back to back to what I was saying a little bit earlier. Um, it's partially our fault that movies suck nowadays, but I want to challenge everybody who writes or produces or who wants to act or everything like that. Make your own movie, like make a make a limited series of something, write out a couple of pages or 10 pages, and then shoot that. Like that's gonna give you the exact mission you're actually looking for. Um, when I first started, I just bought like a$400 Nikon camera and literally didn't have a script down or nothing. I just knew what I wanted it to look like. And once I finally got done with the edit, was the was the project that good? No, it sucked. But at the same time, you have the ability to see something from start to end. And most people, the audience, they're coming in at the end of the finished product and say, Oh, that sucks. And even people who are in the industry or who write, they're like, That sucks, but at least the people in the industry know why it sucks. Like, you know, I talk to a lot of people who who love going to the movies or who love watching Netflix, and they're like, Yeah, I didn't like that movie that much. And it'll be like something like The Substance or something like Wolf of Wall Street. And I'm like, Well, tell me why it sucks. And they're like, I just didn't like it. And it's like, all right, this is this is the issue. Like, if you and I'm not calling anybody in particular out the general you, because I do it too. Like, if you can't tell somebody why something sucks, you didn't love it enough to say it sucked. And that's just an opinion of mine. But if you're gonna take the time to criticize somebody's writing or criticize somebody's movie, mind you, you paid these people 20, 40, 60 bucks if you're bringing your friends to go there to say it sucks. Actually dive in deep, pull out the themes of the movie, pull out the shots you liked, pull out the dialogue that was good, the dialogue that was bad, and depict why it was bad. Like so, but we're used to these 10, 15, 30 second clips showing the coolest shots of something, or the best dialogue, or the prettiest actress, and people bite on it. And yeah, that's part of the part of the movie business, but the reason why film critics and writers and directors have a voice is because they love it, you know, and I just don't think I don't think we love movies like we used to, and we gotta get back to that, you know. But it's on the people that write and make them.
SPEAKER_03:What was the last movie you saw that after you finished it, you felt you felt, yeah, that's what I wanted out of a movie.
SPEAKER_00:Dude, Scott Pilgrim vs. the world.
SPEAKER_03:Um okay, I haven't seen to be perfectly honest. I have not seen that. Yeah, and I hear it's like a great movie, but it looks super quirky. It looks it looks like one of those movies, like it's so stupid, it's fun, you know.
SPEAKER_00:It's dude, I it sounds corny. I shed a tear after watching that movie because that is what a movie is to me, because it's kind of book style, it is quirky, like you're saying, but they that movie was so good, everybody stayed in an email group. So when they reprised everybody for the animated series, they could just contact each other and they stayed in contact. But the reason why I pulled the movie out is because um now you can kind of tell CGI, you can kind of tell what the VFX are um in a movie today, just because our eyes are trained better, especially with AI. But back then, hey, that movie still is perfectly shot, and there was one shot at the end where I saw a little bit of CGI, but before then I couldn't tell at all whatsoever. But the reason why I say that movie, and I'll pick another one too, like is because it it made me feel exactly what the themes were trying to give me to feel in that movie. And I don't want to tell you the things and I don't want to give it away, but okay, it made me feel that and when a movie can do that, it doesn't necessarily have to make you cry, but it'll make you clap, it'll make you hate it, it'll make you love it. Um, I would say the other movie that did that for me is Parasite. Parasite was freaking awesome, and I don't know if you've seen that either. I have seen that um, yeah, yeah, and the reason why it made me feel good is because of what you were saying about how a book would a book would activate all five of your senses. That movie did that to me, even though it was a Korean film. I was like, okay, I really felt like I was in there with them when their house was flooded. Like, yeah, and I really felt that that when they discovered that the um that one of the characters had been down there and they were the nannies or the caretakers of the rich family before, that was a turn that I didn't expect, and I felt that, you know. But if you just look at these superhero movies, or if you look at uh uh any like type of true crime or crime, they don't really make you feel anymore. They're just trying to wow you. Um, but it's very rare that that a movie nowadays makes you feel like those movies do, which is why I agree with what you're saying, even about AI.
SPEAKER_03:The f the last film that did it for me was when uh Brendan Frazier's returned to cinema with The Whale. Okay. The whale. Have you seen that?
SPEAKER_00:I have not. Tell me about it.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, it's it's a uh it's a it's one of those one location movies. So uh he's you know, he plays this absolutely like obese, um immobilized uh person who's estranged from his daughter. And uh and we find this out at the beginning, so it's not spoiling. He's given a week, he's g he's basically given a week to live. You know, and there's uh some characters that pop in and out because they're you know, they're visiting him. And it's the the quality of that film is you know, what would you do if essentially you only had a week left to live and you are almost and you feel completely incapable of being able to make it meaningful? It's it's a very deep dive. I think it's like only an hour and it might be only be like an hour and a half or something like that, but it feels it feels way longer than it is.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and Brendan Fraser, he's like uh he was in the mummy, and I especially liked him in the Looney Tunes back in action movie. So when he came back with that, I was like, I don't know much of his stuff to know if he's dramatized like he should be, but I'll definitely check it out based on your recommendation. Like, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_03:It's it's I wouldn't say it's existential, but it's one of those things, it's a very heavy film, no pun intended, actually.
SPEAKER_02:I like you, man. You're cool.
SPEAKER_03:Uh but uh curiously, because uh I want to give the audience a little bit of um something to work with. What from your experience with using AI tools, what is something that you think you can give as a tip to be able to more expedite their skill to be able to use it properly?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a great question. Um, write out exactly what you want from your screenplay before you try and prompt anything. If you're just going in and you're like, well, I have even if it's a page, make it the best page possible and then use the AI tool for it. Because your your script, your screenplay, it's essentially, for lack of a better term, your encyclopedia for whatever you're trying to prompt or visualize with the AI tool. So if you can't, if you can't like uh audibly or explain to somebody what you're trying to get through or come across with the screenplay, what makes people think a computer is gonna understand? So definitely write that out and then um uh keep it simple, stupid. Seriously, like it'll it'll do more if you take the time to a write that screenplay and b actually study what the tool is good for because they all do the same thing, but some tools do certain things better than others. So if you need movement, probably use cling or runway. If you need just concept art, probably lose Hei Lua or Mid Journey. So that would be my advice to them.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Well, for me, um, when I started messing with it, I I really found actually that it works best when you are being poetic about it and not being technical. The technicality is found uh I think is better understood in the implications of how you are po poetically describing what you would like to have happen. Uh because if it's best to think as the AI as a very intuitive reader, and it is your job to write the book it's reading. You know, and if you only rely on your screenplay uh because you see the vision of what your screenplay is supposed to be, it's not going to interpret the way you see it unless you baby it. So if you don't want to spend a whole lot of time babying it, you really need to expound poetically on your on what the pages specifically mean in uh page by page in a breakdown.
SPEAKER_00:No, that's true because um the stuff that I've written and again another piece of advice, I wouldn't put any of your actual IP into it, right? Just because you don't know what they're training.
SPEAKER_03:Well, for me that's too late. That is way too late. Yeah. I had to see. I had to see what what what would happen if I put uh you know one of my screenplays into it.
SPEAKER_00:Was it effective?
SPEAKER_03:Uh it was well, I I didn't ask it to like generate necessarily any uh concept art from it, but I wanted like uh feedback and analysis. Yeah. Um, like I would be getting. Uh and I told it to here's the screenplay, generate a one-page treatment, focus on the emotional themes and tones of the film. And what surprised me was not how well it described the plot, but how intuitively it understood the subtext that was unwritten within the screenplay.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:Dude, that's right. That's that's when I realized, oh shoot, AI is here.
SPEAKER_00:Dude, yeah, no, that's awesome, actually, because it the computer's only as smart as we make it, right? So that's more credit to you than I would say to AI for having a good screenplay and being poetic about it. So I'll definitely take that advice because I've been tackling it strictly from a technical standpoint, and it'll, I would say about two out of every three of the pictures are good, and it's not gonna get it right every time. But if you need like a one-shot of something, you'll see on the internet, like, oh, AI one-shotted this website, you know. I I agree because the poetry of it, I think that's what the LLMs are programmed to read. So that's really interesting that it caught the subtext. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I also hate writing treatments. Like, I already wrote the screenplay. Why do I want to rewrite it in like a dumber form of it? Like, that's that's something I hate. Or, you know, log lines, I don't mind. I mean, they're like, you know, two sentences or something like that. But yeah, treatments, it's like that's I feel like I'm doing sixth grade homework when I'm doing it. It's it's awful. I hate it. I don't want to do it, it's stupid.
SPEAKER_00:I I pray that you get to the level to where once you're done with the screenplay, you can pass it off to somebody that'll do it for you. Like you deserve it. You deserve it. You mind if I ask you a couple writing questions, though? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Um, how do you feel about mixing mixing genres? Is that something that you've experimented with, or are you very structured and like, no, this has to be a western, no, this has to be a rom com. Um, because I feel like the alpha would come from mixing elements of certain genres to make it feel more real because we're not just one thing. Movie moviegoers aren't just one thing, so it's nice to talk about different things from different genres.
SPEAKER_03:Mixing genres. I think often in indie filmmakings when it comes to mixing genres, um the mistake is not made in what genres you choose. The mistake is made when you swap the assignments that the genres are responsible for uh periodically through the film. So if if tonally you it's let's say let's let's put three genres together. Yeah. Let's say uh you got a sci-fi, drama, and adventure.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:If uh one you need you one describes the tone, one describes the structure, and one describes the theme. And what I see uh indie uh filmmakers doing, and this is just an example, is that sometimes the drama they'll swap the the role that the drama is filling for something in the sci-fi category in a particular scene, and then uh throughout the film those puzzle pieces keep on getting rearranged, and we don't necessarily know what exactly this movie is supposed to be. Right. So if if you're going to have the tone as dramatic, operate on on the bandwidth that that that that genre provides. This is This is where it is. This is where it is. This is exactly where the problems arise. Is that they think that if the genre the if they genre swap, that's going to give them a lot more leverage. And they think uh a lot more leverage and flexibility. When they have another idea as they're coming writing the story along. They're like, oh, well, this is this is a little bit different, but I got different genres, now I can do what I want. You know, and they they take a different, they write the scene differently. As if the movie that they are writing is from a different version of the script that doesn't belong in the one that they are writing. So they think it it gives them the ability to pick and choose, but really you're just trying to define the roles that the genres are responsible for.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And and they're getting sloppy about how those genres are being utilized in their particular story.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. There was that uh there was that movie The Electric State with Millie Bobby Brown and uh I can't think of his name right now. Um he was in Yeah, he's in Guardians of the Galaxy, uh, he's the main character. Uh dang uh Chris Pratt. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's that's why that movie sucked to me because I was like, Yeah, it was shot well. Yeah, they got the star power, but they they didn't have the specific genre assignments like you were saying. And I've never heard it until you said that. So thank you. Like, but that's uh that's why I'm gonna check out everything that you put out movie-wise. Like you I I gotta see where your mind is, you know, how you were thinking of this stuff.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, another another good movie I think um that I thoroughly enjoyed uh was Murder on the Orient Express. I didn't know the original story, I never saw that. Okay. It's uh if you don't know the original story, it is a really well done film that the ending you being able to figure out what the mis the answer to the mystery, you will probably be surprised. And I tend to be a very analytical person if I'm not involved, if I'm not sucked into the world of the film, I tend to analyze it very well. One, I was sucked into the film, so I couldn't analyze it. And even when I was trying to analyze it deliberately, because like, oh, this is a mystery. It's a puzzle. I'm supposed to try to solve the puzzle along with the characters. I could not solve the puzzle, and it it it tricks you with the way the premise is set up. So it's not uh it's not that you are following the mystery along, it's that you realize that halfway through the film this could very well be a different mystery, and we misunderstood the question of what went wrong.
SPEAKER_00:Hmm. Dude, yeah, is where can I watch that?
SPEAKER_03:Uh probably on every streaming platform possible. Okay. It came out in like, I don't know, 2018, 2017, something like that.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so that was a while ago. Yeah. But dude, I love when movies they they exceed expectations when they do that. You know, that you come in and you're like, okay, I'm gonna figure this movie out because I wasn't that invested in the first place. And then you get so sucked in um that you can't stop watching, even if you don't like it at the end or hate something about it. You're like, no, they did a good job on everything else that I don't need to turn this off. Um that's how I felt about the Northmen. You ever seen that?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, that was that was that was one hell of an experience.
SPEAKER_00:Bro, that movie was so good, and I had zero expectations. Obviously, Joe Rogan talked about it, but that doesn't really sway me to go watch something or like something. But I was like, okay, this is gonna be about Vikings, cool. But when it got into the mythology of everything, it made the actors and actresses feel real, even though I know Willem Dafoe is Green Goblin.
SPEAKER_03:Like, right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:It was it made it better because they touched on exactly what you said and completely shifted my expectations. I thought it was going to be complete barbarian, but they got into the religion of it, you know. They even were talking about if the Christians were involved attacking, you know, their Norse mythology and killing people because of it. And I enjoy that because if you don't tackle what people know to be real, now you're just gonna subdue them with an idea of what they think the world should be. And that's when people start getting analytical. That's when people are like, Yeah, your movie sucked. Like, you know, like and I think Hollywood lost that about 20, 25 years ago for whatever reason. Probably when Matthew McCone stopped doing rom-coms, they're like, Well, we don't have our guy.
SPEAKER_03:And then the following years he put out some of the best bangers of movies that we we have in the last few decades, the last like maybe decade and a half.
SPEAKER_00:It's crazy to think about Interstellar being 11, 12 years old right now. Like, and it took me about six years to see the movie itself. But when you watch stuff like that, uh better example is Wolf of Wall Street, like, yeah, it's a three-hour movie, but at the same time, what did they do wrong? Like, you actually can't point it out. Like in the Northman, you actually can't point out what went wrong or why you can't like the movie. Scott Pilgrim Reserve is the world, uh, the Orient Express movie, you were saying, I'm pretty sure you can, because you're in the industry, you can understand where they went wrong or why this was bad. But to the general consumer, the audience member, they can't point it out. So if they don't like something, it's bad to them. And it's like we have to get away from that, we have to be better consumers of what these people are pushing out. Because you know, they call AI slop, right? So they're gonna keep they're gonna keep giving you superhero slop if you're just gonna keep paying for it, like, but there has to be a hard no of like, hey, we don't want this type of genre to be pushed in our face, make something better. Like, literally, if we say um make something better, like they did with the Sonic movies, you know, when they first put out the original Sonic that they that they were gonna live action, people were like, Yeah, no, this sucks. Make them look exactly like Sonic, or I promise you, we're not gonna see it. Like, and they changed it, and three weeks later they came back. Same thing with uh Shrike 5. People were on on X, on Twitter, on Instagram, they were like, Oh, yeah, the plot's gonna go exactly like this, and then the next thing you know, Shrike 5, Shrike 5 is delayed another year because they're rewriting. It's like, oh, okay, yeah, no, do better. Don't just push this stuff with a new animation because you think we're gonna we're gonna love Michael Myers and Cameron Diaz's voice so much. It's like, no, like make us feel, make us think, do it. Like, and if we become consumers of the highest, like highbrow consumers, if we become more highbrow consuming of movies, of limited series of TV shows, they have no choice but to do it because all of their ideas are gonna fail. Now, you got the things that you know people just watch because they're comfort shows, but even in that, people will continually watch stuff because the elements of it are so good that it makes them comfortable. And with movies, if people are gonna get out of their seats, pay for a babysitter, buy popcorn, spend 150 bucks for their family to go there, make this stuff good, dude. That's why Netflix and Tubi and Paramount, that's why they're winning because it's a marketplace, you know. You can pick what you want versus going to AMC theaters and they're forcing you to watch things. Yeah, no, we're it life is too convenient for that. I can turn your movie off at any point, make it good. Um, yeah, no, and that's my soliloquy.
SPEAKER_03:Well, Mark, I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Do you have any final thoughts you want to leave with the audience?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. First, dude, you're you're awesome at this, and I hope people truthfully understand how much effort you put into making this show good, you know, and I can tell the same effort you put into this is the same effort you put into your writing. So I appreciate you for that.
SPEAKER_03:Um, oh thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no worries, man. And the second thought is for people, whether they're in the movie business or just an audience member, don't let adulthood, don't let growing up, don't let adding responsibilities kill your joy. You know, um, the reason why people don't watch anything new is because the nostalgia of something old gives them more joy than pushing the boundaries of something new. So I just want to encourage people to innovate, to push boundaries, and to truthfully seek what they're called to do when they're making these movies or watching these movies. And if you do that, you'll find the meaning in any movie. It could be in Hollywood or it can be in Bollywood or it can be somebody right here in Ohio, you know, um, that that made something that made you feel, and it could have 16 views or 16 million views, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_03:Well, Mark, thanks for coming on.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.