Richard Linklater Unveiled As EP On Temple Baker’s 'Deep Eddy’ With Paul Walter Hauser, Sasha Lane & Hassie Harrison As Filming Wraps In Austin https://t.co/2VYET3rasA
Great new episode of Big Screen Sports this week with me and the great @temple_baker breaking down “The Social Network”
Talking it’s legacy 15 years later, the standout performances, and how much Facebook absolutely sucks. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
This is ass. AI aside, this shit sucks. Nothing here. The first 30 seconds are generic but passable. As soon as an idea matters, derivative trash. Management brain dreck. All the tools in the world can’t create a spark. Fuck this guy and his Pokémon 1998 plot rip off foxes.
KITSUNE 🦊 💫
When I embarked on this project a month ago, I didn’t expect it to consume holidays, evenings, and far too many nights—but here we are. From the first scenes, I knew I had something special, and I don’t want audiences to watch an “AI film”—I just want them to watch a film, and hopefully, a good one at that.
( Sound On 🔈)
👇
KITSUNE is a tale of love between two souls separated by everything except their shared feelings of loneliness.
I grew up in front of beautiful cartoons, from timeless treasures like those of @DonBluth, which I watched again and again to the point of damaging my VHS tapes, to early 90s anime, and later, of course, plenty of Studio Ghibli. And yes, before you ask—I know Hayao Miyazaki would disapprove of this film 100%, but then again… I’m not (only?) seeking approval.
I’ve had goosebumps many times while reviewing the evolving states of this film, and I hope at least some of you will feel the same. Another famous director (@RealGDT , I see you) recently said AI could create “semi-compelling screensavers,” and I see this as a step toward proving him wrong.
Because you’ll ask: under the hood, there’s been tons of writing, re-writing, and switching directions mid-way.
All shots were generated with Google’s text-to-video hashtag#VEO2. I faced countless challenges and hoops to bring my vision to life, finding ways to prompt and structure within the limitations of text-to-video despite VEO’s excellent prompt adherence.
So, is VEO magic? No, not really—and the 1,700+ curated sequences on my hard drive (out of an estimated 5,000–7,000 total generations) are proof of that. What impressed me most was the global consistency, adherence, and how I could achieve tweaks by simply adjusting a few words.
But what mattered most to me was creating something warm, nostalgic, and full of heart, avoiding the cold, clinical feel of so many films leveraging AI.
Also, I’m a 40-year-old kid who grew up in front of the TV, has been creative his entire life, and has been designing professionally for nearly two decades. The more time passes, the more I know I can relate to what Nick Rubin said in that now-famous interview, where he mentions having no technical knowledge but trusting and building his own taste. If you like this film, this isn't just "Oh, AI is magic." You need to steer the damn ship.
Then there’s MMAudio for sound effects, regular good old stock sound libraries, music on Udio for this version (yes, there’s a second version—more on that later), and tons and tons (and tons!) of editing, sound design, and small post-processing touches.
Is this exposing risks for animators? Perhaps. Or it could also be their greatest companion, because once again, this is the worst it will ever be, yada yada yada.... No, it isn’t perfect, and if you look close enough, you’ll find defects and variations, but this is a film I’m proud of, not just an AI one...
Enjoy.
Wanna see a clean uncompressed version? https://t.co/hoYbVvphOo
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
Andrew Garfield talks to Elmo about missing his mother after she recently passed away.
“When I miss her I remember it’s because she made me so happy, I can celebrate her & miss her at the same time”