Oh welp, what did I expect? My short film did not make it into Sundance this year.
Incidentally, getting rejected by Sundance and working at AWS has nothing to do with each other, I just wanted both pursuits to work out I guess. Ideally, the pursuit for productivity yields enough money to fund my pursuit for art. No strings attached, full creative liberty.
Did I think my film was actually good enough for Sundance? To be honest, I thought the opening scene was pretty damn good. Upon reflection, it is becoming absolutely clear to me that I didn’t get in because of my camera, so I am now a proud owner of Sony FX30 and 2 lens after a hazy Black Friday afternoon.
Anyways, I am currently starting my new job at AWS's AI/ML team doing BD (Business Development), and I’ll have future essays covering BD stuff as I grow in this capacity.
I’m still onboarding at AWS right now and I have been trying to figure out this question — what do I want people to think of when they hear my name?
One of my favorite bloggers is
, so naturally I thought about AI in defense. I even went to a couple hackathons, but eventually I realized that I would be going nowhere in this field without the right pedigree, a.k.a at least a U.S. citizenship.Then I thought about AI in cybersecurity, but upon more introspection it seems like I just like the sound of it. It sounds serious and important, like Logan Roy. Am I Logan? Kendall? Roman? Shiv? Tom? or GREG? I don’t know, but I definitely was not crazy about CS161.
Still learning about AI in fundamental science, and slowly recovering from the shame of dropping that Quantum Field Theory class in my senior year, sorry Prof. Murayama.
Then I thought, hey what about AI in film? This feels right — here’s my decision making process, I often suffer from analysis paralysis so I’m trying to keep this simple
I like film
Film is big
AI in film is early
See my demo below if you don’t think so, a reference image is supplied and the prompt was “A green alligator leaps out of the water and bites the giraffe's neck. Photorealistic, 4K.”
Clearly, we have some work to do, but I do believe that AI in film will trigger another Cambrian explosion in creativity. It will never replace taste, but I believe it will make it easier for everybody to create with less reliance on experience and capital.
So what will this blog be about? The blog name (
) should be revealing, it’s going to be about many things, but we shall start with a couple essays on AI in film.The next essay will be about the tech stack for AI film making, please subscribe and make me feel needed, thanks.