Josh Daws

VP of Technology at @theblaze | AI Filmmaker | Ex-Disney

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

Episode 4: Mary Sue Thinks the Villain Is Misunderstood

Produced by @capcutapp using Seedance 2.5

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

Episode 3: Mary Sue Doesn't Want Kids

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

@DustinRussell23 Mary Sue is likable.

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

Audiences deserve better. Maybe I’ll just have to give it to them.

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

Which way, modern heroine?

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

Episode 3: Mary Sue Doesn't Want Kids

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

💯

[Josh Howerton @howertonjosh]

Very grateful for many aspects of the Seeker-Sensitive Movement…

But, its fundamental mistake was being more sensitive to what would attract / offend the SEEKER than sensitive to what would please / offend GOD.

As a result, you slowly ended up with churches in which everyone was welcome but God and anything was tolerated except clear Bible teaching.

We do not judge our faithfulness to God by the approval ratings of people who hate God.

[gundamsensum @gundamsensum]

I grew up on this man's movies. Blade 2, Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy 2, Crimson Peak. He's above average and nobody can take that from him. I still prefer the first Blade.

But he's a director who has benefited enormously from the monopoly that is the industry, and that monopoly didn't just corner distribution. It supressed creativity.

He isn't doing the set design. He isn't doing the costumes. He isn't writing the score. All of it is outsourced to other talents, and that's fine, that's how movies get made. But it means del Toro is the race car. The guy with nothing but his wits and his ideas is Usain Bolt. One of them was built by a team with a budget. The other one is just a man with only himself to lean on.

And the car beats the man every time. That's the whole point of the car.

But ai just repossessed that car. Now a guy like del Toro has to race for real. Creativity against creativity, nothing in between.

They don't want that.

Hollywood decided a long time ago that he was in. You can't bring a knife to a fight where the other guy has a bazooka and fighter jets.

And here's the bullshit. When he gave that speech about cinema illiteracy at the BFI dinner, the man who introduced him was Ted Sarandos. Netflix co-CEO. The company that used generative ai in roughly 300 titles this year, and whose CEO bragged about 17 minutes of ai footage made twice as fast at half the cost.

Hollywood is already using it, man. After all these duds, what gives them the idea they get to decide who else is allowed to? That's delusion, bolstered by sheer hubris.

And while we're here, ask how many set design and practical effects jobs cgi and vfx already put out of business. Whole crafts got swallowed and nobody stood at a podium about it. It is what it is.

So yes. The guy who got off work and spent his last twenty bucks on a burrito and a soda is going to use ai to animate that explosion. He'd be a fool not to, when del Toro has the entire establishment standing behind him.

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

Ooh. This looks slick.

[Jason Fried @jasonfried]

For years, maybe a decade, I've wanted to build a writing tool that just did a few things I couldn't find anywhere else.

A system that mimicked how I think when I write. A system that provided clear affordances, features, and places to do the things I wanted to do. A way to play with my writing as I'm writing it. A way to settle into just the right way to say something.

It never made sense to make it a 37signals product because it's not commercially viable, nor would it be worth pulling people off their other work to hack on this. Plus, it would have taken months the old way.

So this weekend I just made it myself, with Claude's help.

It's called Write_On and the short video walks you through it.

Essentially it's "alternative control" at the word, sentence, and paragraph level, plus a way to dim stuff back, and stash stuff near by. Not version control, but alternative control. You'll see what I mean when you watch the video below.

So here it is. Write_On.

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

@Thatbrian Yesterday.

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

Same. My dad was a pastor for 50 years and was the same guy at home as he was behind the pulpit. I was blessed with parents that loved Jesus and modeled what it looked like to follow him.

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

Rejecting AI is like refusing Wonka’s golden ticket.

Anything you want to, do it
Wanna change the world?
There's nothing to it

[Google DeepMind @GoogleDeepMind]

Introducing Gemini 4 Argon – our new frontier model.

It’s built for complex workflows across coding, enterprise knowledge work, and cybersecurity defense – rolling out today to a set of trusted testers through our Fairwind Program.

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

@jj_4884 I haven’t done much with local models but I’d like to.

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

RT @BenjaminABoyce: This kids are alright

#USAaremypronouns

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

I wish we had made it to five. Be fruitful and multiply!

[DHH @dhh]

I'm not envious of many people in this world, but I am of people who made it to four (or five!). We stopped at three, but if we had met earlier, there coulda-woulda-shoulda have been more. Be fruitful and multiply!

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

@LinkedIn_Chad @JonasJCampbell When is the release date?

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

To get rid of it, you have to change what's bad about it.

To change what's bad about it, you have to understand why you hate it.

You don't hate it because it's pure bad. You hate it because it's almost good. It hits some of the right notes, but fails to deliver. And that disappoints far more than getting everything wrong.

I'll explain.

This is "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".

Basic plot trope. Unskilled character tries to use powerful tool, powerful tool backfires. Unskilled character learns lesson about Dunning-Kruger effect.

You don't hate that.

The unskilled character, in this case, is a cute cartoon girl with exaggerated facial expressions and affect.

You don't hate that, either. You think you do, but you don't. You actually hate something else. We'll get to that.

So, there we are. The tools are laid out on the workbench.

Sorcerer's Apprentice plot. Cute cartoon girl.

There is nothing wrong with the tools.

The problem is that there are TWO Sorcerer's Apprentice plots here.

The first is cute cartoon girl mishandling magic.

But the second is unskilled filmmaker mishandling Sorcerer's Apprentice plot and cute cartoon girl.

See, the vital bit of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, what makes it narratively satisfying, is that the cocksure and unskilled character gets a lesson about messing with powerful tools carelessly.

She doesn't have to learn it right away. Perhaps, over the course of the film, you want to run this subplot several times before it sinks in.

But the lesson has to be delivered to her. It has to be there. The consequence has to be negative.

In the moment when the scary monster appears, the monster must be scary. And since the tool we have selected for conveying emotional meaning is "hyperexpressive cartoon girl", she must display the appropriate emotion.

She must be scared.

Otherwise, the monster is not scary, the consequence is not negative, the lesson is not delivered, and the subplot falls flat for the sake of a badly-told joke.

It's okay to have her say the line. It's not a great line, but it's not so terrible that the scene can't survive it.

What the scene actually cannot survive is that the emotionally expressive girl, who up to now has displayed the appropriate emotions that told the story (mostly nervousness mixed with callow arrogance), has suddenly broken away from the appropriate storytelling reaction.

If you want to have her say the line, make her look and sound scared when she says it.

If you want her not to be scared when she says the line, have her say it later, when she has escaped the monster.

If you want her to not be scared at all, don't have a scary negative consequence like a monster, but a humiliating negative consequence. She can say the line just that way, with zero fear, if she has just been drenched in mud and there is a frog sitting on her head.

You can use the tools any way you want. You just have to know how to do so, and stick to your plan.

It is okay to tell a story about Catholic space knights fighting demons. It is okay to tell a story about a talking pig who plays the saxophone.

But if the pig shows up to play a sax solo in the middle of a demonic incursion, then the audience isn't going to enjoy that very much.

Even if they like stories about Catholic space knights AND they like stories about talking pigs.

You may love fish, and everyone likes ice cream, but if I serve you salmon ice cream, only two or three weirdos are going to be willing to even try it.

And even they probably won't enjoy it very much.

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

Come on. You know you want to watch this.

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

First trailer for ‘THE MAN WITH THE BAG’, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Santa.

The film follows Santa Claus as he enlists the help of a petty criminal after his sack of presents is stolen.

Releasing December 2 on Prime Video.

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

@Andrewnsnyder 3d printer nook.

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

First clip from Disney's new animated film ‘HEXED’.

The film follows a girl who discovers she has magic abilities & sets out on an adventure into a magical realm.

In theaters on November 25.

[Open Panic @openpanic]

@DiscussingFilm I wonder if she's be a brave girl finding her way in a hostile world that wants to make her forget who she is, all the while challenging gender roles and preconceptions about leadership and believing in yourself. It would be such a fresh take.

[Panaviscope @panaviscope]

Spill.
#dreaminacpp @dreamina_ai

[Christopher Fryant @cfryant]

@JoshDaws He's saying the quiet part out loud - that he can't compete and he considers this unfair.