How I AI

How a Hollywood Sculptor Turned AI Filmmaker Is Reimagining Cinema

• Brooke Gramer • Season 1 • Episode 17

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This week on How I AI, I’m joined by James Jones, a Hollywood sculptor turned award-winning AI filmmaker and the creative force behind Satire AI. With credits on X-Men, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, and Into the Wild, James brings decades of practical effects and storytelling experience to the world of generative cinema.

Now, he’s using AI to create surreal shorts, reconstruct childhood memories, and explore social commentary through tools like Runway, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. His projects have been recognized at Berlin Independent Film Festival and beyond..and he’s just getting started.

If you’ve ever wondered what AI filmmaking actually looks like behind the scenes, or how to get started, this episode will give you a whole new perspective.

🔥 Topics We Cover:

  • How James transitioned from big-budget Hollywood sets to solo AI filmmaking
  • Why he used Stable Diffusion to recreate a childhood trauma, and how it became unexpectedly therapeutic
  • Behind the scenes of Runway’s AI Film Festival and how it's reshaping independent storytelling
  • His approach to character consistency using tools like Photoshop and reference prompts
  • What it means to "greenlight your own work" and why AI makes it more possible than ever

🛠️ AI Tools & Workflow James Uses:

  • Image Generation: Midjourney (style refs, omni refs), Stable Diffusion, Krea
  • Video Generation: Runway, Veo, Luma Ray 2, Kling, Minimax, Higgsfield
  • Editing & VFX: Photoshop (for character isolation), CapCut, Premiere, Filmora, DaVinci Resolve
  • Voice & Sound Design: 11 Labs, Udio, Sono.ai, BBC Sound Effects, YouTube Audio
  • Language & Accessibility: Translate Mom, Subtitles in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and French
  • Writing & Conceptualizing: Claude, ChatGPT

🎥 Links & Resources Mentioned:

  • YouTube: Satire AI – watch his shorts and experimental films
  • Machine Cinema WhatsApp Community – global collective of AI filmmakers
  • FLEX Tech Summit – AI x creativity conference
  • FilmFreeway – submit your work to indie and AI film festivals
  • Dream Recorder – an AI tool for visualizing dreams

📲 Connect with James Jones:

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"How I AI" is a concept and podcast series created and produced by Brooke Gramer of EmpowerFlow Strategies LLC. All rights reserved.

Brooke:

Welcome to How I AI the podcast featuring real people, real stories, and real AI in action. I'm Brooke Gramer your host and guide on this journey into the real world impact of artificial intelligence. For over 15 years, I've worked in creative marketing, events, and business strategy wearing all the hats. I know the struggle of trying to scale and manage all things without burning out, but here's the game changer, AI. This isn't just a podcast, How I AI is a community. A space where curious minds like you can come together, share ideas, and I'll also be bringing you exclusive discounts, free trials and insider resources so you can test drive the latest tools and tech yourself. Because AI isn't just a trend, it's a shift. The sooner we embrace it, the more freedom, creativity, and opportunities we'll unlock.

How I AI is brought to you in partnership with The Collective designed to accelerate your learning and AI adoption. I joined the collective and it's completely catapulted my learning, expanded my network, and show me what's possible with ai. Whether you're just starting out or looking to refine your AI strategy, The Collective gives you the resources to grow.

Brooke:

Stay tuned to learn more at the end of this episode, or check the show notes for my exclusive invite link.. Some of you may or may not know I started my career in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. Well, I tapped into my network, and if you've ever wondered what the conversation around AI is really like in Hollywood right now, this episode is for you. My next guest is James Jones. He's worked behind the scenes on films like X-Men, Spider-Man, Pirates of the Caribbean. And now he's using AI to turn dreams into films. In this episode, we talk about what it's like to enter the world of generative AI as a longtime artist. How he's using AI tools to recreate childhood memories and bring surreal storylines to life. He talks a little bit about what's happening in the film festival route, specifically with AI film festivals. We touch on how creatives are secretly using AI behind the scenes, and why now might be the most empowering moment in history to create on your own terms. This one is part Hollywood Insider and Part Mini Masterclass in what's possible when you combine vision, tech and play. Alright, enjoy today's episode. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of How I AI. I'm your host, Brooke Gramer. Today's guest is James Jones. He's a Hollywood sculptor turned award winning AI filmmaker. He's helped bring Blockbusters like Into the Wild and X-Men to life. He designs massive public park sculptures, and now he's pushing the boundaries of creativity with his viral satire project called Satire AI. I'm really excited to host James today. James, welcome.

James Jones:

Thank you, Brooke, for having me. I appreciate it.

Brooke:

Yes. I really appreciate you taking your time today to speak to me, especially because you're a creative and I love exploring creativity, how it merges with AI. So before we dive in, please, I'd love to just give you the floor to share more about yourself and your background.

James Jones:

Sure. Thank you again, Brooke. I started working in film. In'94 as a sculptor. So traditional film first project was Independence Day, and then I worked on Pirates of the Caribbean, 1, 2, 3, Spider-Man, one, two X-Men, two, things like that. And I did that for about 17 years. I left that after I got quote unquote tired of working in that industry. It's very demanding as maybe a lot of people might know. And then I got my master's in architecture and I took my love of art into architecture and I started working at a small firm that does large scale public art design build. And then about two years ago, kind of started getting wind of ai, like generative AI and what that meant for images. And i've always been a vivid dreamer, and I decided like I wanted to try to make one of my dreams come to life as a visual. And that was I was having a dream that my dog and I a little Frenchy pug, we were robbing banks for pennies. And so I wanted to see what my dog would look like as a bank robber with a whole bunch of pennies in front of'em, and AI was able, I was using Stable Diffusion to make those images, and I was surprised at how good I was able to do when, when I knew nothing. I mean, I literally had never played with any AI before. And then it took three to four months before I started to try to make my first, movie. Even though I worked in film for forever, I still didn't understand, like, I wasn't an editor, so I didn't really know how

Brooke:

Right.

James Jones:

But I went to a Runway event, Runway's, second film festival that they had, and I was just blown away at what I was seeing that people were able to do. It was so amazing that people were bringing they're unusual stories. They're they're stories, you know, which are you, you'd never see any other way in my opinion, you know, maybe in a student film context maybe,

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

that would be about it. So just inspired by watching what other people were doing. I was like, all right, let me give Runway a try. So I went on over and I got a subscription to Runway, just the basic'cause I didn't know what I was gonna be doing with it.

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

And then I came up with my first story I wanted to tell, which was a reconstruction of car accident my family was in when we were four. It's something that was traumatic for me, but I later learned after I did this little project I was at an another event called Flex a few years later, or a year and a half later, and I met a Spanish director who was working with the government of Barcelona and he was helping people with dementia recreate their memories. So. AI was being used in a therapeutic way for that. And when I explained to him my project that I did my car accident memories, kind of made it all fit. And he was, you know, so I didn't realize I was doing something that was already being done in AI. And I found that kind of like of like a coming home moment, like refreshing and, what I'm getting at there is there's so much out there. It's not like just people aren't just trying to use AI film generation for traditional narratives. They're using it for all

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

kinds of experimental ways, and I found that super fun.

Brooke:

Wow, what a unique entry point into this space. And I just love that you wanted to recreate childhood experiences or dreams and you have the technology to bring it to life and just have fun and play. I find that some of the best ways to enter the AI space are just kind of to put your guards down of expectation or need to produce something. Right. That's a really good way to approach it is I have no expectations. I'm here to play and have fun. And it sounds like you were surrounded by a lot of peers leaning into it the same way. So my next question I have for you is to tell me a little bit more about the entry point of using it and what you used. You said Runway, was a software you were into. Were there any other tools that you were using to support your journey into adapting your creative projects using AI and animation?

James Jones:

Right. So it's definitely, it's play. I love that you, you mentioned that because in the beginning you have to get over the kind of fear of maybe failure or not understanding, and I am not a super tech person. I'm an artist who has visions and I literally see things in my head and it's just a getting them out. So the toolkit grows as you get more comfortable with one tool. You know, first you start doing images. So you can use, uh, a stable diffusion model, which I was using Krea or you, you know, midjourney, which everyone's heard of. Midjourney has come so far. In the two years that I started playing with Midjourney, it used to be on Discord and you had to write all these kind of complicated prompts. And now Midjourney has a, an a very easy to use image ref. A style ref and what's called an omni reference. And prompting isn't as difficult as it used to be, but kind of like people used to ask like, oh, what's your kind of prompt secret sauce? And, you know, you learned how to do that and you learned specifically I bought books or like real world books on camera angles and like, you know what, what lenses do what,'cause again, I worked in film, but I'm not a camera person. And these visual tools understand camera language too. So, you could mix that into your prompt. And I, also learned a lot from, I would say the AI community is incredibly supportive and I don't know if that's a counter reaction to kind of the general unsupportiveness or the kind of fear of AI that a lot of people can have in the creative space.

Brooke:

Hmm.

James Jones:

It's very helpful. And I'd also say finding like a group on WhatsApp. There's a great group called Machine Cinema that I'm part of, and it's literally worldwide. It's started in LA but it quickly grew, and we're over 2000 maybe more. I.

Brooke:

Wow.

James Jones:

misquoting probably because it is much bigger than even I can keep track of. But it's filmmakers from all around the world, so, let me go back to your toolkit questions

Brooke:

Yeah,

James Jones:

so run.

Brooke:

and I'll be sure if you could send me that link. I'll share it with the audience and put it in the show notes so people can look into joining.

James Jones:

Sure. Absolutely. Runway was the first video Gen that I started using. And it was Runway version two. Now they're on Runway version four within, I'd say every six months, these platforms like do a major advance and they're all in, you know, rough competition with each other. So it's healthy because then it allows you to find what's new, what's new, and then I started using Luma. And specifically their newest feature inside of Luma is called Luma Ray Two. And it was able to handle more complex actions than Runway was at the time. Again, they keep, like one does one thing, the other one does the other thing. The other one starts to, you know and then the Chinese software started coming out. Which are Kling and, uh, Minimax. Those are the two big, big competitors there. And so each video gen does kind of specific things better than the other. It's like practicing and learning anything you learn which tool does what best. So, you know, like a certain type of paintbrush makes a straight, like a smooth a line. Another one is a more about a, like a wide brush stroke. It's not dissimilar from, from that kind of mentality. And then, as we all know, then Google came in with Veo and all the big titans of tech are starting now to, I think, I don't know what took them all so long, if it was that they were, if they were afraid of what happened with the metaverse and they wanted to wait to see if AI was really gonna do what it was gonna do. But now they're all

Brooke:

I think

James Jones:

Yeah, go

Brooke:

that's what I hear. This is all you know, speculation, but from what I hear is they're waiting to trickle out the intelligence to us so that it isn't such a shock to society.

James Jones:

That wouldn't shock me. And right now they're all poaching each other's highest, paid creatives

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

That's also interesting. They're letting the little ones fight it out to see who's gonna become the medium one before the big one comes in and just, know, kills it.

Brooke:

Yeah.

James Jones:

but again, I think that the competition is very healthy. Then once you start video generating and you start, I don't use an AI editing software. I understand that if you're trying to like pound out daily, content that an AI editor, is gonna be great for you because, I think that also is something really important. There's no one AI fits everything solution. It's in the public view, it's thought of that way, but when you really start getting into AI, there's AI for mortgage management, there's AI for like, you know cancer screening. And I've been to those festivals and it's amazing to see AI like doing all this other stuff outside of the one kind of creative and, and I love that about your podcast, that I'm able to like hear what, how other people are using it. So it's kind of exciting.

Brooke:

Yeah. Yeah, I would love to just hear the overall process of even making a short from start to finish and if it's you, if you have multiple people on your team you work with, gimme the behind the scenes look.

James Jones:

So I would say the next steps are whenever I've started video generating, then I start taking it into a traditional editing software, like a Premiere, or I use Filmora. There's CapCut, CapCut's kind of connected to TikTok. There's also, um, DaVinci if you're really like super into already editing each tool again does something certain better than others or different than others. And, but I always start to create my edit, once I start video generating, but then the next step is starting to add sound and, that I actually use a lot of free sound sites. There's two that I really love and one of them, the BBC actually now released their entire sound catalog free of use. So, and that's a monster catalog of, sounds like you can find everything from like Lions roaring to, you know, Harrier, jets

Brooke:

Wow.

James Jones:

Yeah, it's an incredible resource and you know, as long as you're not using it commercially, you can just put it into your films or whatever you want. And then I have another one that I really love that's actually a, a communal based sound. So people are outright, they're just sound freaks, I guess. I don't know what to say. Like, they're, they're fan sound fanatics. That would be better. And they love to record stuff and put it up on the internet. And again, it's just. you get to use it if you want to use it, as long as it's not commercial. Every now and then I'll go on to YouTube if I need something, like a score or something, a little bit more than I normally would put into something. And they just want credit. And so that's a pretty simple thing to do just add that in your credits. And for sound I also do have one friend who's a music producer who does a lot of like, kind of ambient sound work that I also work with. And then the final is voiceover. And there there's all kinds of platforms. The the big one is called 11 Labs, and that one is pretty fantastic. People probably have heard about that. You can do sound effects, they've just started their V3 version where you can clone your own voice. You can take your own voice, you can change it. But you can now create whole characters by pure text description. And I was having a particular hard time with, I wanted a woman, new Orleans accent, white woman, alcoholic speech, kind of slurring, like that's the character I needed for a project I'm working on right now. It was able to give me something that worked. I would still say if you have the time and you can work with a voiceover artist or you have a friend who's really good at it, that's great. But I don't have that. And, and it's weird because I'm in Hollywood, but I don't have that access. I don't have those connections. And I also find that no matter what AI works on my schedule. So if I'm working at 2:00 AM and I wanna move forward on my project and I need that voice to say that thing that I need it to do right now, just so my little brain can move on. Then I needed at 2:00 AM and I'm not really waiting to wait for somebody else to get back to me and, you know, all that fun stuff. So,

Brooke:

Yeah, of course. That's so interesting. What was the name of that? BBC Library of Music. Do you remember?

James Jones:

Yep. Let me, let me look it up.

Brooke:

because I'm currently in the process of finally uploading all my videos to YouTube of my podcasts that I've been recording since February. But the music's like a little bit tighter, the regulations for YouTube because they will add ads and everything on it. So I'm in the process of going through music libraries myself right now, so it's so coincidental we're having this conversation.

James Jones:

Music. So BBC is sound effects. It's not so much, so the two things that I was talking about

Brooke:

Yeah.

James Jones:

are sound effects. I'll give you, but then that you, now you're making me think of one of the final tools in,

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

my AI stack is Udio, which is music. And Udio and Sono, I haven't used Sono much but I've used Udio a lot. And like I wanted a glam, pop, rock kind of like a T-Rex or a David Bowie, like from Spiders from Mars sounding thing for a piece that I did. You wanna use the general term of the, style of music. You don't use

Brooke:

Yes.

James Jones:

artist names. But you, you will get things and you can add your own lyrics. You can have it auto generate lyrics you could have it instrumental. I've done K-pop with that.

Brooke:

Wow.

James Jones:

I've actually had a Korean friend double check my K-pop song to make sure that,'cause it blends between English and and Korean. And I wanted to

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

like, one in tone it sounded correct, but two, the language made sense. Like it wasn't off the wall, you know, mishmash words

Brooke:

Yeah.

James Jones:

or total gibberish. So, I've also used another platform, I'll have to look it up. I think it's called like

Brooke:

Yeah.

James Jones:

translate mom, or Mom translate.

Brooke:

Okay.

James Jones:

I had a film festival that I entered, I needed Spanish and then I entered another one where a Brazilian one where I needed Portuguese, and then I entered another one where I needed French. And then one were Italian. So I've had four different films I've had to subtitle in different languages. And having your friend listen to it and write it all out and time code it for you would be really annoying. But this, you just feed it in, it'll bring out the the subtitles. And then I luckily my producing partner, she speaks both Spanish and Portuguese. I have a friend that speaks

Brooke:

Great.

James Jones:

Italian and it wasn't that hard to find another friend for French, so I, I often then just have them double check it that's it. And then give me the corrections.

Brooke:

Nice. Awesome. So take me back to when you were first entering the AI space and having fun and started to create short film projects in the beginning. Were there any challenges to your adoption that you could share on?

James Jones:

Sure. I would say the beginning is the most challenging. I think once you get fluent. In the different platforms, it, feels like second nature. I mean, it's like anything that you practice, right? Let's use a bicycle, for example. You fall over a lot in the beginning and then you don't after a while and you don't even remember falling over. So for me, I would say probably the trickiest stuff in the beginning was prompting, because prompting was still in an, in its infancy. And it's gotten like for image prompting, how do you see refs? Which is uh, a cross reference. So CREFs is cross

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

reference or

Brooke:

Okay.

James Jones:

character consistency, like making sure, because I'm an architect too, I like spacial and character consistency. I don't want the room to be changing too much in like wood tone, color, or. As much as I don't want a person's face to be, transforming I used a lot of Photoshop in the beginning for that to

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

isolate a character and then keep a character consistent through Photoshop and, I would say that something I learned quick was that you create a character on a white background in a visual in an image generation. And then you

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

take that into your video generator, and you just rotate the camera around the character. And that way you get from a front profile, a front view to a side profile view to a back view. And it'll

Brooke:

Wow.

James Jones:

that will help you be able to then keep character consistency better, especially if you're using a Photoshop type

Brooke:

Cool.

James Jones:

program. So you can cut them out of a clean background and add them in.

Brooke:

Love dining out. Here's a little gift for you. I've been using InKind and it's honestly a game changer for food lovers. It's like a universal dining wallet that earns you 20% cash back at amazing restaurants, cafes, and bars nationwide. And as I thank you for being a listener, you can grab$25 off your next$50 tab when you sign up with my link in the show notes. Just pay with InKind, earn rewards and use them on your next outing. A quick heads up. This offer is for new InKind users and covers food, drinks and tax, but no tips or fees. The credit expires 30 days after you claim it, so don't let it go to waste. Check the show notes for my affiliate link and enjoy your next meal on me. Well kind Of. On the other end of that I like to touch on what do you feel was immediately a benefit when you started using AI? You spoke about being able to create projects and be on your own time schedule not having to rely on scheduling with others. What else do you feel like was such a major aha moment in the beginning?

James Jones:

That definitely was probably the biggest kind of aha moment because I, like many other people have a day job. AI isn't paying my bills. It's more of a passion art project and it's play. I really, almost don't watch content anymore. I'm always kind of busy creating my own stuff. And I find that super refreshing.

Brooke:

Yeah.

James Jones:

so able to work from 10 to two in the morning, or eight to midnight, eight to one, whatever it is if you think of something even like a VR experience, you have to create an entire world. And that takes a lot of time and energy that AI doesn't really require. There's enough free entry for people to play around in and then you can kind of pick what you're willing to pay for, what platform you know, which one you're vibing with the best. It allows you to create something and get it moving forward without needing the green light as they always say in Hollywood. And also, when I create, I've never used chat or like a Claude to write for me, because I already know

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

what it is that I want to quote unquote say. I know what I want my films to talk about. So I start with visuals almost immediately, like when I come up with an idea as I'm like, whatever out in society has inspired me to do what I want to do, I then start to see visuals and then I go in immediately into mid journey or into stable diffusion and I start around with what those characters could look like, what the settings look like. And I'd also say that for somebody new if you are like quote unquote seeing things the way that I do it takes, like 20, 30, 40 generations before you click with what you're seeing. So you're like, oh, that's what I'm seeing. And so I would say never get frustrated. Kind of in the beginning of, oh, I'm not seeing what I want. And also I think when you're writing your prompts, really look word for word with what you're saying and how you're saying it. I was working on a project with somebody else and they wrote hand drawn, they were talking about writing and it kept putting a hand in it. And they didn't understand why. And then finally I was like, hand drawing. That's, it's seeing the word hand and it just thinks you want a hand in there. So like

Brooke:

Yes,

James Jones:

little things like that, things you think are obvious or you almost don't see them because they're so obvious. And AI's gonna be a little bit of a literalist for you, and you're gonna get like, well wait. Why, why are you doing that? So it, also say that AI is, like a conversation with yourself. You are it one thing and then it shows you that visual of what you said, and then you kind of ask yourself, well, why are you showing me this? And I'd say that's actually maybe a secret sauce for me is I'm always trying to understand why the platform or the AI that I'm using is doing what it's doing so that I wanna think more like it because it is already pre-programmed, it has already been fed a bunch of things. So I'm trying to understand why are you doing it this way when I want that. And so once you start asking those deeper questions, then you can start to what they call unlock or, pull off the guardrails of AI and you can start to outthink it by how you then word your responses.

Brooke:

Yeah, I like where you went there, because that makes a lot of sense, right? You have to get to know the languaging of each tool get to understand the system and processes behind how it works and why it does the things it does to better be able to speak to it and use it effectively. Thank you so much for sharing more about the challenges and positive outcomes. I would love to shift gears a bit since you're very involved in the film industry and active in award ceremonies and festivals and things of that nature. What's it like in the industry and what's the conversation around AI? Do you feel like it's mostly fear, excitement, a balance of the two? How are people reacting and adapting to the space? I did a bit of research and I saw that there's an AI film festival now, which I think is so interesting because that probably wasn't created two years ago. How are your peers reacting to it? And what do you think is on the landscape of the next two years?

James Jones:

Sure. So for me, because I worked in film for so long and my undergraduate, at Cal Arts. I have a lot of people who are in animation who maybe feel one way about AI that I don't feel, and the fear always comes from loss of work. I think now ethical AI models like Moon Valley are just coming out. They're trained on already owned IP and that they're trained on, you know, high definition. So you're not getting these kind of, hallucinogenic ish images. And I think as the ethical question gets asked, the fear of losing a potential job in the future is going to remain. And my always response to that is, having worked in film for so long, and, I was a sculptor and I would work sometimes in art departments, but there was no way I was ever gonna be anything quote unquote above the line. I was never gonna be like directing my own thing there's no way. So any little thought that I would've had of like, oh, what if I could make a movie like this would go dead in my brain, because there's no outlet for it. So with AI, I'm able to have an idea, create it, you as an artist are no longer allowed to sit in the passenger seat, waiting for someone to call you, waiting for someone to hire you. You now have to take your ideas and become the master of your own destiny. Like you have to push forward the thoughts that you are having about content. And it's scary because you're kind of starting all over in a really. big field. But it's also very similar to traditional film festivals and directors in that have to build an audience for your vision, your voice, your way of looking at the world. And it takes time. And you know, right now, there isn't a clear path to how this financially makes any sense. What the ROI is. I've had a lot of producer types from friends of my EP ask me like. Their first question is well, how are you gonna monetize this? And I'm like, well, that's not really, not where I start from. I start from, I want to become the best that I can be at whatever I can do. And then as I have enough content, as I have enough work built up, then I can start. And so all of this was true with YouTube way back when nobody knew how to make any

Brooke:

Right,

James Jones:

money with YouTube. I mean, it was like, what the hell? You know, you just stick stuff up there and see. But now you have people who are crushing it and able to do exactly what they want and be creative. Or Issa Rae, you know, getting her TV show deals out of coming out of YouTube. Like there,

Brooke:

right.

James Jones:

there and a lot of YouTube people do look at it as a stepping stone to either, you know, getting into standup comedy or getting into, film or television or what. And some people are very happy with where they're at. And that's, that's, again, that's great. So I would say inside of the film festival circuit. I had entered as I I was inspired by the second Runway film festival that I went to. I just saw these amazing people doing all this great work, and I was

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

the heck do I do this? And then the next year I entered our, so my partner and I, we had two behind the scenes, which made it into a semi-final round. But our actual films didn't go forward. And instead of being discouraged or like, you know, I'm definitely one, if you tell me no, I tell you yes. Like I'm not gonna listen to your No. And so then I went out and I found the FilmFreeway site. That's the festival site and it's a mix of AI film festivals, it started with traditional film festivals and now some places have pure AI. A lot of places have traditional film with all those subcategories and then they'll have an AI subcategory. And I'd say the most important part for me on that is to speak to a question you had a little while ago about, do I have a team or not. I have an executive producer who's my partner in life also, and I bounce ideas off of her and I share the under the hood of where my rough edits are. She's actually really great at doing the music side of things in Udio. She's fantastic with that. But creative wise, it's pretty much just me. I have one real world music producer who I sometimes get some music from. But it's really'cause, it all goes back to AI on my schedule. I wanna work, when I wanna work on it, I need to move forward. All of my deadlines are almost self, imposed. I'm not trying to like, push any product out. That's something I really like too, I don't have a platform or a group that's expecting something out of me every week so I can work at my pace and my pace in two years, I've done about 30 shorts, anywhere from one minute to 12 minutes long. And, it's a lot. Um, I would say about, Four hours worth of work for me gets about 10 seconds of usable, rough edit material in the end so I'm very fastidious about how I set up my shots. When I talked about like using Photoshop, I set up a shot'cause I think about each image as setting up a shot before I. I don't just take an image out of midjourney and then just run it straight through because I'm specific. I'm a little bit neurotic almost, so I need things to be a certain way before I'm ready. Now hopping back to your film festival question, because I'm

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

working alone all the time and because I'm working at night and I've gone to countless real world traditional film premieres and, it's so wonderful to watch a director and all of their actors and all of their crew and everyone's having a great time. And I joke to my EP like, Ooh, if I went to one of those, it'd just be me with, you and that's it. So there's no community. And so going to these festivals and meeting other AI directors and other people kind of in the AI space. That's the most, it's the human connection. I know it's so funny because we're talking about computer connection the whole time, but really there's this moment of, and everybody's work is so vast and so different and so. And also too when I go to a film festival, I don't want my thing to be the best thing. I wanna see other people's work better than mine. That's inspiring me. Maybe it's technical, maybe it's story, maybe it's the way that they're visually telling that story. Maybe it's how they edited it. I'm not a master of anything. I'm good at all kinds of things. So watching other people's work and getting inspired to try harder and to keep going and keep going, that to me is super important.

Brooke:

That's beautiful. You touched on something it reminded me of when we were speaking just before this call, about the macro and the micro on how empowering AI can be. For in the Hollywood sense to be able to green light your own projects and be able to move forward and not wait until the stars align, the funding's there for you to put stuff out into the world. And I related so much to that being a founder and a creator. I'm not having to knock on people's doors I can get in the driver's seat with AI and do something like produce a weekly podcast. It is really empowering and it's interesting to hear that perspective about what's going on and Hollywood and what it's like to be around creatives in the film festival scene. So thank you so much for sharing that. My next question is one of my favorite ones to ask each guest, get in the creative seat and think about what it is that you wish or want to create using AI that you haven't seen in the market yet. Do you have any projects in your back pocket that you're working on right now or a really big dream something you wanna put out there with AI?

James Jones:

Absolutely. For me it's as simple as a full length feature film that is a biopic about two individuals in the medical world that transcends decades of accomplishments and goes through World War II all the way up into the sixties in America. They both start in Europe during World War II and it's a personal project. One is a relative of my producing partner. They're an absolutely inspiring person in what they did with their life, where they had to start from. And the reason why, for me, that's my AI dream is it's actually what got me into doing these little shorts. I had already started to research this idea. Traditionally through like real book.'cause Google wouldn't, and Wikipedia didn't cut it. They only gave a little bit of a glimpse and so traditional books and reading about these people and collecting kind of probably 40 pages of notes and research on who they were and what they did. And I wanted to turn this into a film, but I was like now you gotta go through the traditional, you've gotta write the whole script. You've gotta storyboard out the whole thing, make a pitch deck, then the hardest part, you gotta meet the right person who's willing to give you x millions of dollars just to move forward with the next step. And then you gotta find more fundraising. And I'm like, ugh, that's not, my artistic vision is to not be bogged down with all that crud. So in AI there's two different worlds to approaching film. There's one called, which is what I do now, is pure gen AI. It's, everything is generated from text, but the thing that's actually happening in Hollywood right now and people that are making money with it and are using it in a financially beneficial way. It's called, AI assist. It's people who either have an ad agency or they were in special effects or they're in editing, so they already kind of know the industry, but now they're augmenting their careers with AI. They're kind of the first adapters who aren't afraid. And what's funny is whenever I go to like a true, Hollywood premiere party, because my producing partner is actually in the business still, and so we go to all kinds of things and whenever I'm talking to somebody. They'll often confess that they're kind of using AI in the background, like, you know, in their own stuff. And so I started calling it the dark arts because everybody's so scared. They're so scared and closeted, admitting that they're using it. And I, I get it. There's a lot of backlash, so you have to be careful. But,

Brooke:

Right, right.

James Jones:

going, going back to my dream is I wanna use this to do an AI assist. So I wanna film real people in real scenes. But using AI to create the backgrounds that I need for the timeframe and seamlessly, at the level of a Marvel movie, you can seamlessly blend background with foreground in AI using all kinds of methods. So that's what I wanna use it for and to age the characters through, not through prosthetic makeup, but through actual like what was done to Tom Hanks in the movie Here, and use that technology to actually age the actor so I can keep the same actor but move them through time at the same time. So I don't wanna recreate the world of AI, I wanna harness a very specific piece of technology and get used to using it in a way and create the team that can get that done. That's my big lofty goal.

Brooke:

Love it. I try to think of one thing I want to create with AI every episode. I didn't come with one prepared today.

James Jones:

Are, are you a vivid dreamer?

Brooke:

Because I feel like. I am, and it's so funny that you brought that up about translating your dreams to AI because I've lately have been served this ad on Instagram about a dream coder or a product that similar to what you do is you wake up in the morning and explain your dream and then it depicts it and almost creates an AI short. But it, it makes it kind of foggy and dream scapey.

James Jones:

Right.

Brooke:

Isn't it so fascinating they say that the moment that you have an idea for a product or creation, there's probably, seven other people that have that same idea, and it really is who goes to market quickest?

James Jones:

I am a firm believer in quality, so it's both to me. You've gotta find both of those things. Like what's the best quality you can put out at a, fast pace. I agree with that.

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

we're to think that you've created something nobody else has ever thought of. Uh, that's a little, that's a little heavy. we're all humans, so we're all kind of going through the same things and, and that's why people

Brooke:

Yeah.

James Jones:

That's why people relate to your ideas, because it might be a fog in the back of their head and they just didn't figure it out. But AI can definitely help with that. And I would say you mentioned in this film creation, it kind of makes the fogginess or the soup of a dream. In AI for video, like people making music videos. You can add all kinds of, in your AI prompts, you can add light bleeds, you can add flicker. You can tell that in the video generator and it will do that for you. You don't have to add it in editing software. I'd say that

Brooke:

Wow.

James Jones:

the two biggest things right now that a lot of people are using Gen AI for are one, or for commercials because a commercial

Brooke:

Mm-hmm.

James Jones:

owns, you know, Tiffany's owns Tiffany's IP. There's gonna be no lawsuits over that. They own what they own so you can go ahead and use like Toys R Us or like the Coca-Cola ad. Those are pretty good examples of, well, they own the IP so no one's gonna sue them so they can go ahead and start making commercials that way. And then music videos is right now also something where a lot of people are doing that because if you're some little homegrown band who doesn't have any, access to that stuff, you can use AI to get your video out there because you can't really just release a song anymore, you have to release the video that goes with it.

Brooke:

Absolutely. I love to always close and leave space for if you have one key takeaway you want listeners to know. It can even be a message to your former self, getting into AI. Anything that you wanna share.

James Jones:

Sure. I would say one is getting over the fear. Just leaving the fear behind and going into it and as you used the word play, it is play. So play with it, get, get familiar with it, get comfortable with it. Don't be afraid of it. And as you say in your podcast intro, it's not the future, it's the now. It's happening right now. And what's so beautiful about it happening right now actually is no one's mastered it. No one's on top yet. You're in a fresh area you're your own master of your own destiny in this. And I think that's incredibly exciting. I'm gonna say this to creative people, but I think it applies to everybody'cause I actually am one of those who believes that everybody inside has some kind of artistic something in them, but our society doesn't promote that. It doesn't like tease that out of us. And I think that if you're a creative, there's no way you can not look at AI. You have to, and message to my former self when I was in film school back in, in the nineties, I so wish this technology existed. It would've changed the absolute direction of my life. I mean it, even though I ended up in, I worked in film for so long, which is what I wanted to do. It would've changed my position and my relationship inside of film for sure.

Brooke:

Wow, what a beautiful final point to share. Thank you so much for your time. And speaking a bit about behind the scenes, behind the lens, look into what's going on in real time in Hollywood and filmmaking. And I'm excited to see what projects you come out with next. And love hearing about how everybody is using this technology in such an empowering way to move their creative projects and dreams to light. I really appreciate you.

James Jones:

Thank you, Brooke, for having me. This is such a wonderful way to get the messages out. I think it's wonderful. And I think you also say that, you know, this is How I AI I love that because it's not how to, it's kind of the like, why of why am I doing this? And I think that's fantastic.

Brooke:

Yes, thank you. I appreciate you for recognizing that.

James Jones:

thank you.

Brooke:

Wow, I hope today's episode opened your mind to what's possible with AI. Do you have a cool use case on how you're using AI and wanna share it? DM me. I'd love to hear more and feature you on my next podcast. Until next time, here's to working smarter, not harder. See you on the next episode of How I AI. This episode was made possible in partnership with the Collective AI, a community designed to help entrepreneurs, creators, and professionals seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows. One of the biggest game changers in my own AI journey was joining this space. It's where I learned, connected and truly enhanced my understanding of what's possible with ai. And the best part, they offer multiple membership levels to meet you where you are. Whether you want to DIY, your AI learning or work with a personalized AI consultant for your business, The Collective has you covered. Learn more and sign up using my exclusive link in the show notes.

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Brooke Gramer

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