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[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, welcome back to another episode of Mix and Matchbox.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm your host Brent Feldman and we are joined today by Carl Reed, Carl is the CEO of Composition Media.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, Carl, how's it going?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, I am doing well, close to the media.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, definitely.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for joining us today.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I know we got a chance to chat and connect a little bit.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But I'll just jump right into the first question here for you because you've worked across traditional and digital animation.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I know that you currently have a boot camp that you're running at that savvy coders.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But you know,
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[SPEAKER_03]: from working between both of these lines across traditional and digital, how did you see this moment with kind of AI coming, comparing to kind of like that earlier shift that you saw when analog turned into digital?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So there are like direct parallels, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: In those times, you used to take literally 30,
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[SPEAKER_00]: original drawings with pencil and paper on a pegboard and you just have to swirl the paper as you're doing it so you could see the animation as it's going you get paper cuts and you know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: things.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But it was part of the process and part of those things people come to hate and love.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so when the transition to digital and specifically rapid digital like flash and tone boom, there was a lot of hesitation and fear to, you know, you hear a lot of the things you hear about AI now,
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[SPEAKER_00]: The quality will never match up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You could never I would never see that on a on TV or in film and then literally You know months later.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, excuse me, a couple years later rather every single show on TV is Done in one of these programs and it's new studios have popped up and and it kind of Took the entire industry and you you have folks that were just as hesitant as they are now
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[SPEAKER_00]: and for for good reason, you know, whenever your jobs has the potential to be impacted.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the word jobs impacted, you don't see as many ink and paint artists for instance.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You still have to have that skill just in case you need to know this specific show.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But you don't see that many dedicated ink and paint artists and you don't see many, you know, scanners like that was a job for humans.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the actual, you know,
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[SPEAKER_00]: animation slides in.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, it did affect the job.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But what it also did was, it widened the field.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, but at that time, you weren't even able to really do animation in America.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You could do fees and things like that, but she had to send it all overseas.
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[SPEAKER_00]: just because our wages here are a lot more than over there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it directly led to the opening of studios that wouldn't have been able to open in the other way like our house, or tip-mouths, or a lot of the studios here in the US that employ hundreds of animators that have been given time.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's so cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and actually you touch on the, you know, that transition and my son was logging on the Simpsons, the episode where it turned from, you know, yeah, the old style of the new style and you could see it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It was so, you know, kind of evident obviously, you know, retain the character.
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[SPEAKER_03]: No pun intended.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You know, evolve all the, you know, the sort of animation, but at the same time, you could tell that that transition happened.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, and it is.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's so cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I guess I'm sure from, yeah, you're experienced to see all these new studios crop up and, you know, it actually creates, yes, while it was challenging, I'm sure, but, you know, crop up a whole bunch of new opportunity for a lot of other people, which was neat.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, there's another parallel.
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[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, you'd see like,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because the tools were so accessible versus having to learn how to do everything and have these big drawing tables with pegboards and have to have all the equipment and cameras to record the different slides and things like that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You had 10-year-olds and 12-year-olds uploading video games
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[SPEAKER_00]: that led to a whole lot more content that most of it was bad because these people are new, start and off, and they weren't professionals.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But as soon as it was in the hand of the professionals, clearly it had a professional expectation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that did lead a lot to the quality of the
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[SPEAKER_00]: comparisons and like, oh, this would never be ready for prime time, but, you know, it's just waiting for the tools to be in the hands of professionals or for those early adopters to become professional.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, wow, we could probably get down a whole rabbit hole of the.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the, you know, elevating the quality, you know, no matter what the medium is, but yeah, when people who know what they've got, you know, the eye of what they're looking for, but actually to be honest, that leads right in the next question pretty well, because right now your course at savvy coders essentially in AI.
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[SPEAKER_03]: animation, you know, bootcamp, you emphasize the idea of owning a style, so why is defining and training, you know, the AI on a personal style so critical for artists working with AI.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, it's a little bit different, it's a little different.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So you technically can't own a style.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's no owning a style.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But you also don't like cookie cutter, you know, the same old look that just an AI would spit out by the fall.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because of the way these things are trained,
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[SPEAKER_00]: and because of the, I guess, conditioning that these models go through, they could spit out something that looks the same as what every person that wants to type in a prompt and that's it could do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, then you would stifle innovation, you how could we have a spiderverse or something that kind of
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[SPEAKER_00]: bins the what people bins expectation it with their style choices.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So just because it's a different medium and you can rely on an AI agent or assistant.
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[SPEAKER_00]: as opposed to human areas, that doesn't mean you skip the steps of defining a unique style or giving a unique voice to your content.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's going to be a lot of cookie good stuff because a lot of folks won't take those extra steps to make their content professional.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there's going to be a lot more
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[SPEAKER_00]: things that become kind of generic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like I don't know about you, but I'm a little sick of Ghibli style, caricatures on the Middle East.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there's no disrespect to Ghibli.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's still classics, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, as of right now that interpretation of what a Ghibli style is, is a little kind of over-saturated at the moment.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I know people, including myself.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my gosh.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Don't don't judge me.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I know like where you find out you can do something.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, like, that goes back to like, yeah, the dawn of computer, you know, people get Photoshop.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And they're like, oh my god, I can do something.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And then it ends up just being regurgitations of regurgitations and nothing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing is good or different original until, you know, you get a chance to play with it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But I did.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I used the the Jeeply, you know, kind of
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, oh, look, it's my kid in Jubilee's animation style.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's my dog, and that was fun.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, what I found out the other day from you and I chatting too, which was very interesting about terminology.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And you mentioned the importance of using the right industry terms within prompting, almost like you would be giving direction in anybody else, possibly on set.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You know, can you share an example of how precise language changes the quality of what AI generated content really comes out?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, one difference between amateur content and professional content no matter how you do it is consistency, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: panning or I want pushing or a pedestal up or a tracking shot.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so the same thing with AI, you know, we kind of see we in the course that we were doing with sabbicoters.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We are encouraging the students and teach them of foundational kind of set of terms and language that they can use so that there's consistency across the board.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So when we're asking the camera to do the certain thing, it's been established by filmmaking for years and years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And as an amateur, you may not know these filmmaking terms.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so, leveraging the hundred some ideas of filmmaking is a lot easier than trying to come up with things yourself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That being said, AI does interpret things in unique ways.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you have to be able to make sure that you're speaking to your, we like to see AI as a DP or a cinematographer, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And just like you speak to your human AI or cinematographer,
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[SPEAKER_00]: uh you want to make sure that they understand you as well because if you say you can go into a human cemetery where I say I want this to feel emotional.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then you get back what you get back because you didn't give any detail.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It might be, we'll definitely come back emotional, but that emotion might be pure adject joy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're crying to his enjoying an inappropriate part, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And they might have tone, the scene, or gotten specific shots for that emotion, but you have to be specific and you have to be clear and have a understanding that your DP
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[SPEAKER_00]: In this case, an AIDP or cinema photographer understands what you're saying.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And is able to give you back that deliverable that you're looking for.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's very cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: All right, I'm probably going to butcher the way I term this, but I happen to be somewhere and watching the Hanabar Barbaric cartons the other day.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I think it was a little bit of yogi,
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I watched him do the like a frame shake, you know, where it was almost like, yeah, something happened, but it looks like, you know, obviously whatever they were doing with a camera, the actual camera shook, not the animation in and of itself.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, oh, that's so cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Not, you know, like, but it just makes me think of like how that kind of thing could be translated in what you're telling in AI, you know, just the same way, you know, I'm sure that that person had to go tell another person after animating it and saying, hey, I need you to do this with a camera,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what, you bring up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: a great moment in animation history because there's some parallels between Hannibal Barbarra and those in that movement in TV to AI as well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That was an inability to produce TV animation before then because of costs and the time that it takes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And they revolutionize it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They use symbols and they have colors so they, you know, they may chain turn their head without having to animate
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[SPEAKER_00]: had all of these tactics that they came up with to increase the speed, reduce the cost, so that they could create content for TV.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then you have the Flintstones, which revolutionize not just animation, but sitcoms in general.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You have, you know, every hand of Berbera and every
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[SPEAKER_00]: from Scooby-Doo in everything afterwards that followed their model they're basically revolutionized animation at that time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we have the potential for that's happening again.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's super fun.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I guess, you know, what models or platforms are you experimenting most with right now?
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[SPEAKER_03]: And what do you see as maybe individually there, you know, their strengths or their limitations?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So here at Composition, we kind of follow a principle where we have like three pillars.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever tool we use has to be accelerated.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It has to speed up our process of us, why are we even using it, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then it has to be adaptable or adaptive.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So we have to have control over it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, we can't get the professional results that we expect.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, it has to be artists to driven, which means we have to be able to add those styles.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and had those artists influence or else we wouldn't be able to have any difference from anything anyone else can do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so with that said, our models that we choose and any tool, even outside of AI that we choose has to fit within their rubric.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so some of the ones that we're
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[SPEAKER_00]: really love it right now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of them are open source because we're able to actually get in there and modify and create our own tools and our own workflows with open source tools and so when 2.2 with base.
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[SPEAKER_00]: going back in and making corrections, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: You have, of course, nanobananas pretty popular right now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it does it's very similar thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And also seeduring for is like nanobananas, both nanobananas seeduring for are like for images, it's like modifying images, like editing models.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So those are pretty exciting right now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We love the open source, not only because it allows for us to create clues that work directly for our pipeline and modify those workflows and the tools, we can do it through coffee, why we can do it through custom tools.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But we can generally also set our own models and lore as a
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[SPEAKER_00]: On our characters, on our styles without worrying about, you know, licensing, and if it's going to be retrained because this is local right.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Actually, I'm glad you stepped into the licensing sort of aspect of it because.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That is, I think that will be, it's interesting now, it's interesting how it will progress, but compared to your big studio experience, what sort of new opportunities does AI open up for either individual creators or people small studios that when it comes to retaining
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[SPEAKER_00]: interesting time ever and the most the biggest opportunity for individual creators that I've ever seen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time that you have these tools that are democratized and access to content creation, you also have in the last 10 years that the democratization of distribution platforms.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So now, you can not only create the content, you can get it out to people and
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, unlimited number of people to reach the amount of people that you have access to through social, through YouTube, through other platforms, through A vibe and things like that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the past, it was just undoable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You just couldn't do it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You had to be green lid by a studio or a broadcast or a streamer in this case.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And nowadays, you can green light yourself and get your content.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you can produce it and you can figure out a way to produce the full content within a reasonable amount of time that doesn't, you know, have you on the streets.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then you can actually distribute and monetize your content and actually own their audience, have a direct one-one content, whole, whole developer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: with an audience.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can then, you then retain all of the ownership of your content.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's to the point where, you know, in the beginning of YouTube, the studios would experiment with the creators and say, hey, you know what, we want you to write this film because you're so popular.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, well, I do 45 second content.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What am I writing into our film?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not what I do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's not terrible.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it got to the point where now you can't early go to
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[SPEAKER_00]: a huge influencer and say, hey, I want you to do this thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, okay, great.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, here's what we want to pay you and we want to own all the rights.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And they're like, well, I make more than that in a month of streaming.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I cannot own everything.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Why would I give you anything for this?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it's an exciting time for creators, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: where you're able to really own things.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's scary for the big studios.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, again, it's unprecedented times.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's a little bit of seeding of these fear-mongering of, you know, copyright issues and like, theft, art theft.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But never in the history of time has been
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[SPEAKER_00]: you know, an art style ever been protectable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Never in the history of time has the way that the means of production of image ever been copyrightable or protectable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Never never in the history.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I guess you can patent a
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[SPEAKER_00]: the means of production, but you can never, never could copyright a trademark that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's always the improv, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're in product, whether you create it, you can take a picture of Mickey Mouse off the internet and put it in Photoshop, and then put it on a product and you fly away Disney's rights.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And Disney's not Photoshop's, uh, you know, problem.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, you can generate something that violates the Disney's rights right now, and it's up to you as the creator to say, here's my original idea, and ensure that he didn't violate anybody's rights.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And no one's lost any copy right for protection or any rights, any ability to protect their content.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They only really, you know, they just have to you have to
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[SPEAKER_00]: media yourself and make sure that you're not violating other people's rights.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Definitely, actually, maybe that comes from a whole, you know, another set of education people might want to think about is like, yeah, increasing their own media literacy and their understanding of, you know, the things that could affect them as they as they do start creating.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But in your own program, you know, I know you're coaching students to, you know, move from just playing with prompts to really bringing a vision to life through AI animation.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So how do you do that?
19:21.692 --> 19:26.813
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you kind of get people from like, you know, just playing around to like, oh, no, this is a reality is a career path.
19:27.413 --> 19:28.434
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, we don't we don't.
19:30.658 --> 19:41.001
[SPEAKER_00]: If most people think, and they're scared that someone typing some prompts into a video engine, or AI, the integration engine, is what they have to feel, right?
19:41.821 --> 19:43.962
[SPEAKER_00]: You're never going to get anything professional.
19:44.002 --> 19:48.743
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get some really neat looking stuff, but make a half hour out of it, right?
19:48.823 --> 19:49.503
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to work.
19:49.963 --> 19:51.684
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to unbestem, filmmaking.
19:51.744 --> 19:53.364
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to understand animation.
19:53.444 --> 19:56.105
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you do, and you have those tools,
20:00.062 --> 20:01.022
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
20:01.042 --> 20:08.504
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we are encouraging and I'm encouraging with the course where we're teaching this new AI enable animation.
20:08.524 --> 20:12.385
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not about necessarily just the AI tools.
20:12.565 --> 20:26.569
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about filmmaking and about taking, being given the superpowers of those tools and then joining the X-Men and my bald professor X-ness will sit there and say, you know, this is how you use your
20:29.990 --> 20:32.271
[SPEAKER_00]: because you can create things faster.
20:32.831 --> 20:36.892
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't mean you just, you know, spew out a bunch of garbage that nobody wants.
20:37.992 --> 20:40.752
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you have to follow tools and techniques.
20:40.772 --> 20:42.613
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to be responsible about what you do.
20:42.633 --> 20:44.713
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to meter how you do things.
20:44.753 --> 20:49.394
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to follow process E. So you don't, so you get the result that you want to hold community.
20:50.375 --> 20:51.715
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that you could be employable.
20:52.694 --> 21:03.297
[SPEAKER_00]: because one thing about that art school transition, sometimes folks come out of art school and a lot of art school is structured practice.
21:03.317 --> 21:07.037
[SPEAKER_00]: So you get a lot of who long time to practice your craft, so you become good.
21:07.438 --> 21:11.498
[SPEAKER_00]: But also you often define us, you get stuck in your own style.
21:11.879 --> 21:17.880
[SPEAKER_00]: When you step into a production environment, your style is no longer important.
21:18.140 --> 21:20.901
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever the style is, if the style is your style,
21:22.961 --> 21:36.827
[SPEAKER_00]: But if it's somebody else's style who is usually the art director or someone else brought in, then you have to understand that style and you have to assimilate in order to produce consistent professional content.
21:37.387 --> 21:48.291
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's always a hard test from art school to production when everyone wants to be artists and take a million years on a production,
21:50.492 --> 21:54.836
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, these professional content not be a be a star of an artist.
21:55.456 --> 21:55.836
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
21:56.137 --> 21:56.377
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
21:56.477 --> 21:56.777
[SPEAKER_03]: Actually.
21:56.797 --> 21:57.258
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
21:57.298 --> 21:58.278
[SPEAKER_03]: So that this one.
21:58.298 --> 22:09.648
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't have an list, but now I'm really curious based on, you know, how you're talking about how people, you know, you trying to monetize what, you know, this is for them and turn it into a real career.
22:10.028 --> 22:11.009
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it, it, it, it, it,
22:11.669 --> 22:33.313
[SPEAKER_03]: And especially because like eventually after you go through a bunch of boot camps, I'm sure you're going to see, you know, different people who want to do different things, but even now, do you kind of notice the people who are coming in with the eye of either an animator and illustrator, and I have like, you know, the director and I have a writer and I of like, you know, do you see that, you know, maybe even after this they.
22:33.853 --> 22:44.578
[SPEAKER_03]: may want to hone in on something very specifically to that career, you know, that would help them accelerate, you know, their ability to execute their own vision the best.
22:45.378 --> 22:47.619
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, yeah, are you seeing that already?
22:47.639 --> 22:56.383
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I think everyone in the beginning wants to be a generalist and they want to be good at all things, but, you know, even everyone goes through the, uh,
22:58.283 --> 23:04.688
[SPEAKER_00]: the trial of determining what they're best at, or they might not get to determine that.
23:04.728 --> 23:09.471
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes the studio they work for or the projects, determine whether what you'll be working on.
23:10.051 --> 23:17.657
[SPEAKER_00]: But everyone typically starts out broad scale and then they get better in one area and are asked to do that more.
23:18.137 --> 23:23.861
[SPEAKER_00]: And so oftentimes you get to choose that, but oftentimes the world is choose it for you.
23:24.882 --> 23:29.746
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's no difference because you have superpowers now, right?
23:30.067 --> 23:34.071
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you still wound up, you know.
23:35.193 --> 23:40.279
[SPEAKER_00]: on certain tasks in certain places, depending on how good you are there.
23:40.299 --> 23:54.315
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, because generalists are always valuable, but especially this is just as valuable and oftentimes more valuable because they're, you know, the master of none, trope.
23:55.190 --> 23:55.410
[SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm.
23:55.910 --> 23:56.110
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
23:56.551 --> 23:57.091
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
23:57.111 --> 23:57.491
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
23:57.531 --> 24:02.353
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I must thank you because you've really chosen to invest in St.
24:02.413 --> 24:07.795
[SPEAKER_03]: Louis as a hub for, you know, this kind of creative and tech talent you're looking to develop.
24:08.836 --> 24:15.879
[SPEAKER_03]: What is your long-term vision for the the city's role in the future of animation and storytelling?
24:16.999 --> 24:23.482
[SPEAKER_00]: See, just like this is a great time for, you know, people to get into the content because of the demand.
24:24.582 --> 24:27.123
[SPEAKER_00]: the democratization of distribution and production.
24:27.943 --> 24:30.204
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a great opportunity for us to do it from St.
24:30.244 --> 24:30.524
[SPEAKER_00]: Louis.
24:31.504 --> 24:35.085
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the reasons is because we have a great cost of living.
24:35.765 --> 24:38.746
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we have four seasons.
24:38.966 --> 24:48.609
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get a home, you know, you live on the coast, and you've been working for Disney for 20 years and you're still four people in an apartment, right?
24:48.869 --> 24:50.169
[SPEAKER_00]: Who would for roommates, right?
24:50.669 --> 24:52.670
[SPEAKER_00]: And you've worked on big movies and everything, right?
24:53.210 --> 24:59.055
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's notoriously hard to really really have things in L.A.
24:59.395 --> 25:01.456
[SPEAKER_00]: as a production for me.
25:02.097 --> 25:05.699
[SPEAKER_00]: And so here you can actually have a living and have a family, etc.
25:05.740 --> 25:19.830
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that's huge and in the past you weren't able to work from here and have big studio partners or have professional content out because all of that happened on the coast.
25:22.601 --> 25:29.588
[SPEAKER_00]: What's happened over the last 10 years, and especially accelerated due to the pandemic, is, you know, our ability to work from anywhere.
25:30.348 --> 25:38.076
[SPEAKER_00]: And because of that, we can do business overseas, we can do business on the coast, off from cozy, comfortable St.
25:38.116 --> 25:40.618
[SPEAKER_00]: Louis, and we can eat some toast to rave while we're at it.
25:42.405 --> 25:43.085
[SPEAKER_03]: that sounds great.
25:44.226 --> 25:44.786
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm in for that.
25:45.787 --> 25:51.750
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, for young animators or filmmakers, what skills should they be focusing on?
25:52.110 --> 26:03.916
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's say maybe they are going to a traditional college or school right now, what should they be focusing on in order to stay relevant in the industry or where AI will be part of the creative toolkit in the future?
26:04.656 --> 26:06.297
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's going to be a lot of
26:08.958 --> 26:12.782
[SPEAKER_00]: animation that aren't traditional artists.
26:13.402 --> 26:14.964
[SPEAKER_00]: So they may not know how to draw.
26:15.444 --> 26:16.925
[SPEAKER_00]: They may not know how to animate.
26:17.346 --> 26:19.968
[SPEAKER_00]: They may not know how to do these traditional things.
26:20.869 --> 26:26.314
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's going to be a place for them in the production lineup in a pipeline.
26:27.435 --> 26:31.158
[SPEAKER_00]: But definitely if you do have all of those skills,
26:35.570 --> 26:43.519
[SPEAKER_00]: and you'll be able to ask kind of a higher price because you have those skills.
26:43.539 --> 26:49.366
[SPEAKER_00]: So I encourage folks to continue to have a great knowledge of traditional means.
26:51.242 --> 26:53.164
[SPEAKER_00]: But also don't be discouraged if you don't.
26:54.345 --> 27:00.592
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to get in and you do not know how to draw or you don't have any animation experience now.
27:00.672 --> 27:06.238
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's how I'm going to really hop in because you can get your foot in the door without having those skills.
27:06.638 --> 27:08.300
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you can build those as you go along.
27:09.768 --> 27:26.047
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great for anybody who has like a fear of what AI is sort of bringing to the industry to the potential career paths of everybody, what do you say to anybody who's afraid of that, who's maybe just getting started?
27:27.405 --> 27:30.666
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what's the worst that can happen, right?
27:31.326 --> 27:36.648
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the worst that can happen is your content is rejected, which it happens to the best of, right?
27:37.009 --> 27:41.930
[SPEAKER_00]: You hear so many knows when you're shopping, come on to it, when you're creating content.
27:42.231 --> 27:55.155
[SPEAKER_00]: As a matter of fact, a note isn't necessarily a bad thing, where a note could be a hit to your ego, but it could also be a sign that you need to massage your content or you need to massage what you're doing
27:57.856 --> 28:01.738
[SPEAKER_00]: a wider group of people to accept your content, right?
28:02.658 --> 28:13.442
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that fear nowadays, you need to, you know, eat it up, accept that fear as a sign that there's something you need to work on.
28:13.822 --> 28:19.504
[SPEAKER_00]: And even, let's help people, you know, post-content immediately.
28:20.678 --> 28:25.001
[SPEAKER_00]: as broad as possible, as terrible as you are, most did immediately get feedback.
28:25.402 --> 28:30.245
[SPEAKER_00]: And initially, that feedback might be mean, it might be terrible, we have you've seen these comments section.
28:30.746 --> 28:36.030
[SPEAKER_00]: They are mean and there's no picture, there's no, you don't see the person in real life.
28:36.450 --> 28:42.215
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're unfiltered, and they get as direct and as mean as possible with no consideration to your mental health.
28:43.494 --> 28:58.387
[SPEAKER_00]: But with that said, try to accept it and have a tough skin, because even the worst trolls may have some point of somewhere that they're right.
29:00.095 --> 29:17.650
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you just miss it because of the tone or because of, you know, group think or because of anything, then you could be missing something like a really take it to the next level and a lot of people get stuck by not accepting commentary or it.
29:18.471 --> 29:31.985
[SPEAKER_00]: criticism, and a lot of it has to do with tone, but those that can even comment back and say, hey, you know, under a comment that's this, because this is a high slap, it's trash.
29:32.485 --> 29:34.868
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, this looks terrible blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
29:34.888 --> 29:36.910
[SPEAKER_00]: You say, hey, what do you suggest I do better?
29:38.145 --> 29:51.491
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're coming with the if they are interested, they might come in with the list stuff and then apply it to your thing When you when you respond and it looks better guess what those people are going to see that and they're going to be like It's a little better, but it's still slack, right?
29:51.992 --> 30:03.517
[SPEAKER_00]: And it'll be less things and then over the time they would they will feel committed and then we'll feel him best it in your growth and your content But they have contributed to it a long the way and then
30:04.197 --> 30:14.024
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the greatest joy is taking what can be considered a troll or a hater, and they're now a fan and inspiring you along the way.
30:14.724 --> 30:20.188
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you can make that transition, you my friend are a Jedi.
30:22.312 --> 30:27.657
[SPEAKER_03]: That's cool, because like, you know, yeah, even, you know, derisive commentary can hurt.
30:28.017 --> 30:41.629
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like one of those things where if you can use that, if you take, you know, not just the feedback, but like you said, the engagement of somebody who's willing to participate in the process of making a creative product better, that's so valuable, you know?
30:42.850 --> 30:44.431
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we also have to deliver too.
30:45.072 --> 30:47.213
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the biggest thing is delivery.
30:47.374 --> 30:53.438
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I say, post immediately, like post something because you have to finish to post.
30:54.019 --> 30:54.299
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
30:54.939 --> 30:57.722
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing about being a hearty story, star of an artist,
30:58.442 --> 31:10.846
[SPEAKER_00]: is you want to spend a million years and get things perfect and redo and redo and redo and fix and polish and polish or production pipeline, you have to turn it in by a due date and that's it.
31:11.346 --> 31:20.268
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have to have a floor that you have to, that you have where you're saying, okay, if I need to bring it here and it's good enough to ship.
31:20.809 --> 31:25.330
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if I get there and I still have time left, I'm going to elevate it and I'd like it to be a P.
31:26.325 --> 31:28.978
[SPEAKER_00]: but I've met my threshold, I need to deliver.
31:29.655 --> 31:41.457
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and at delivery, you might be terrible, but you don't have all the time in the world's practice because someone else is gaining audience and gaining fans and putting out content that they may overlap with yours.
31:41.897 --> 31:45.378
[SPEAKER_00]: And so get up there and publish.
31:45.798 --> 31:49.559
[SPEAKER_00]: And also another thing is, until you publish, there's no way to correct.
31:49.639 --> 31:55.800
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way to do something different because without publishing, you can't analyze.
31:56.520 --> 32:00.708
[SPEAKER_00]: you are what you did differently, what you did wrong, and then apply it to the next project.
32:02.100 --> 32:02.340
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
32:02.620 --> 32:03.200
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
32:03.220 --> 32:06.141
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I've just got one more question for you.
32:06.561 --> 32:16.603
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's really like looking ahead, how do you see AI changing the balance between artistic direction and technical execution?
32:16.623 --> 32:22.245
[SPEAKER_03]: Because, you know, there's a lot that can happen on both of those fronts and all the way in between.
32:22.705 --> 32:26.426
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, how do you see that changing, you know, that sort of balance?
32:27.046 --> 32:27.326
[SPEAKER_03]: And then,
32:32.787 --> 32:39.830
[SPEAKER_00]: You know how to promote that balance with shift, because you know you have to be, you have to deliver.
32:40.010 --> 32:42.251
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have to, for professional content.
32:42.271 --> 32:45.832
[SPEAKER_00]: You're doing an art piece, play around all you want, be as artistic as you want.
32:46.332 --> 32:52.615
[SPEAKER_00]: But from a professional standpoint, if you want to get a TV show out or an email or something like that, you have to deliver.
32:52.675 --> 32:57.076
[SPEAKER_00]: So the technical prowess and the technical execution has to always be there.
33:01.338 --> 33:07.447
[SPEAKER_00]: understanding what people want to see and what's aesthetically giving is huge.
33:07.988 --> 33:16.239
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, so I don't think that sort of war will ever change, but if now folks are able to do way more in lift.
33:17.680 --> 33:20.162
[SPEAKER_00]: what they're capable to do in the given time.
33:20.182 --> 33:22.663
[SPEAKER_00]: So aesthetics are going to shoot through the roof.
33:22.844 --> 33:26.506
[SPEAKER_00]: We can already get higher quality in less time.
33:26.626 --> 33:28.147
[SPEAKER_00]: So what would that do to productions?
33:28.447 --> 33:31.269
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll hopefully, you know, people don't say, oh, we have less time.
33:31.289 --> 33:33.230
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's produce, or we have more time.
33:33.590 --> 33:35.692
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we can execute in a faster time.
33:35.952 --> 33:36.832
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's produce trash.
33:37.673 --> 33:44.497
[SPEAKER_00]: Believe that people will use that extra time or deliver higher quality within that time, right?
33:46.118 --> 33:48.660
[SPEAKER_00]: artistic level will increase.
33:49.181 --> 33:52.503
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, like I said earlier, there's going to be a lot more stuff.
33:52.943 --> 34:06.253
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you have to realize that before a win an entry level person animation would hop in, it would be terrible hard to even know that they're doing animation.
34:06.954 --> 34:07.534
[SPEAKER_00]: Or, you know,
34:11.649 --> 34:16.733
[SPEAKER_00]: that even at the basis, it may still be not perfect, but it's way higher.
34:17.434 --> 34:22.078
[SPEAKER_00]: You can just type a prompt and get something that's pretty neat, might not be professional, but it's pretty neat.
34:22.738 --> 34:27.602
[SPEAKER_00]: So that floor has already risen, so that ceiling is going to rise as well.
34:28.023 --> 34:39.232
[SPEAKER_00]: And then on the technical expertise, if we're able to be a small team of artisans, they can get together and produce a film they competes with Disney.
34:40.950 --> 34:46.855
[SPEAKER_00]: within reasonable amount of time that we don't, you know, all get thrown out of the house.
34:48.433 --> 34:51.514
[SPEAKER_00]: that, you know, that's groundbreaking.
34:51.574 --> 34:53.095
[SPEAKER_00]: It's from a technical standpoint.
34:53.495 --> 35:04.479
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have been working at these places and, you know, there's some folks that work at Pixar for the last 20 years and are only the only person that they'll let touch a particular cactus.
35:04.499 --> 35:07.500
[SPEAKER_00]: They've been animating that cactus specifically for 20 years, right?
35:07.900 --> 35:10.661
[SPEAKER_00]: Or they built up such a great skill set.
35:11.422 --> 35:15.303
[SPEAKER_00]: And they'll come to me and pitch me some content that they've been working on for 30 years.
35:16.103 --> 35:17.484
[SPEAKER_00]: And that everybody has said, no.
35:18.264 --> 35:18.424
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
35:18.784 --> 35:35.389
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, there's always been that gatekeeping thing, but what if they could get together small group and put together something with that technological expertise and their artistic expertise that rivals some of the largest companies?
35:35.770 --> 35:41.071
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we truly are in a different world and it's a great time going to be allowed from a creative standpoint.
35:41.091 --> 35:42.572
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little scary from a company
35:46.790 --> 35:47.070
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
35:47.470 --> 35:47.870
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, wow.
35:48.150 --> 36:00.852
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, I really appreciate all you said and actually I remember this is a fair comparison, but you know, a lot of it seems to like parallel that of like, you know, the music world to, you know, is essentially in like, yeah, there's a lot of it out there.
36:01.192 --> 36:15.835
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you really have to work on obviously building up your, you know, your fan base or whoever is, you know, potentially going to pay attention to your media, but just also the tools enabling creators where, you know, before, where, you know, maybe somebody, you know, they weren't able to play a particular
36:16.675 --> 36:26.657
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, now they can plug in a track and program it and then boom, they're able to be, you know, maybe an artist alongside another bigger artist where they wouldn't have had that opportunity further in the past.
36:27.017 --> 36:42.900
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, I think it reinforces the fact that new tools and things that AI is bringing to the table just will hopefully enable a new set of artists or maybe, yeah, the artists who have been pigeonholed like you're saying and, you know, haven't been able to, you know, execute on a larger vision.
36:43.260 --> 36:47.222
[SPEAKER_03]: they can now bring that to life because they have everything that they're disposal to do that.
36:47.322 --> 36:52.365
[SPEAKER_03]: So I like you I think this is it's a cool period of time to be in.
36:53.086 --> 36:56.268
[SPEAKER_00]: It really is, but but what you said is it's very accurate.
36:56.648 --> 36:57.328
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not new.
36:57.869 --> 37:02.952
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that same discussion, you know, you had folks going from tape.
37:03.992 --> 37:08.293
[SPEAKER_00]: in digital, I mean, tape and analog and analog mix boards to digital.
37:08.673 --> 37:12.654
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't hear the crackling and the music sounds terrible now.
37:13.094 --> 37:15.875
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the same thing with digital cameras to traditional.
37:16.215 --> 37:19.676
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to see the grain and, you know, it's the same conversation.
37:19.716 --> 37:21.596
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I've got to put photographer's out of business.
37:21.616 --> 37:22.977
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do it from your iPhone.
37:23.557 --> 37:25.977
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, it just didn't happen, right?
37:26.437 --> 37:27.838
[SPEAKER_00]: It changed differently.
37:27.858 --> 37:32.399
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people lost their job, but the medium grows and it continues to grow.
37:32.939 --> 37:33.159
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
37:33.559 --> 37:36.120
[SPEAKER_00]: And in those cases, we're in the same period of time.
37:36.500 --> 37:44.463
[SPEAKER_00]: What you really have to focus on, you know, all of the people that really took hold in those times are the early adopters.
37:44.884 --> 37:55.528
[SPEAKER_00]: And the people that hopped in and said, you know what, I see there's change and I'm not afraid to dive in, you know, dive in understanding that I'm going to get a little bit along the process.
37:56.488 --> 37:57.969
[SPEAKER_00]: And take that leap.
37:59.229 --> 38:06.420
[SPEAKER_00]: and you emerge on the other side as a leader sometimes, so you have a hit start.
38:06.480 --> 38:14.172
[SPEAKER_00]: So I encourage that's one reason why we're doing our course, and we're hoping to not only bring on folks that we can directly hire
38:14.472 --> 38:31.304
[SPEAKER_00]: for our studio, but also folks, there's a lot of folks in our first cohort even that they want to start their own studio and maybe they may be a comic artist or some of their kind of tangential artists that they're like, I just want to add to my personal industry and my personal fans and everything.
38:31.845 --> 38:38.930
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're hoping to help build the ecosystem and see the next generation
38:42.392 --> 38:42.992
[SPEAKER_03]: That's awesome.
38:43.133 --> 38:43.593
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great.
38:43.633 --> 38:49.897
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, yeah, any other plugs for, yeah, composition media, your course with savvy coders that you want to put out there.
38:50.938 --> 38:52.840
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, we were starting another cohort.
38:53.360 --> 38:56.422
[SPEAKER_00]: It starts October 20th, I think.
38:56.662 --> 39:03.928
[SPEAKER_00]: And so now's the time to kind of really get your beading and go to savvy coders.com and sign up for the course.
39:04.728 --> 39:05.108
[SPEAKER_00]: We take.
39:05.949 --> 39:16.958
[SPEAKER_00]: everyone from beginning to professional, we end with a demo day where we bring businesses and everything over to potentially hire folks as they come through.
39:17.899 --> 39:24.485
[SPEAKER_00]: In the course, you build not only a portfolio, but your Capstone project is a two to three minute short film.
39:25.205 --> 39:28.547
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I've won a few awards for short films.
39:28.887 --> 39:32.629
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're really not taking shorts on the short films.
39:32.649 --> 39:34.650
[SPEAKER_00]: We're really producing things we can be proud of.
39:35.230 --> 39:45.696
[SPEAKER_00]: And it should be a testament to our students skillset and be able to hopefully land them some strong placements.
39:46.016 --> 39:48.317
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just with us, but with other partners as well.
39:49.146 --> 39:50.066
[SPEAKER_03]: That's awesome.
39:50.106 --> 39:50.526
[SPEAKER_03]: That's cool.
39:50.566 --> 39:56.208
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I'm really looking forward to what you're doing with AI in general, with obviously with St.
39:56.228 --> 40:03.270
[SPEAKER_03]: Louis, and then also just all the talent that you're growing here in the area.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's awesome.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for chatting about it on the podcast here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No, any time.
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[SPEAKER_03]: awesome.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, this has been another episode of Mix and Matchbox.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm your host Brent Feldman.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We'll be back soon with more content.
40:17.169 --> 40:18.672
[SPEAKER_03]: Please like and subscribe.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks.
00:00.723 --> 00:04.587
[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, welcome back to another episode of Mix and Matchbox.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm your host Brent Feldman and we are joined today by Carl Reed, Carl is the CEO of Composition Media.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, Carl, how's it going?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, I am doing well, close to the media.
00:16.257 --> 00:16.877
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, definitely.
00:16.917 --> 00:18.619
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for joining us today.
00:18.639 --> 00:22.901
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I know we got a chance to chat and connect a little bit.
00:23.442 --> 00:30.567
[SPEAKER_03]: But I'll just jump right into the first question here for you because you've worked across traditional and digital animation.
00:31.147 --> 00:35.750
[SPEAKER_03]: And I know that you currently have a boot camp that you're running at that savvy coders.
00:36.330 --> 00:36.831
[SPEAKER_03]: But you know,
00:37.351 --> 00:51.235
[SPEAKER_03]: from working between both of these lines across traditional and digital, how did you see this moment with kind of AI coming, comparing to kind of like that earlier shift that you saw when analog turned into digital?
00:52.175 --> 00:55.416
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are like direct parallels, right?
00:55.857 --> 00:59.858
[SPEAKER_00]: In those times, you used to take literally 30,
01:00.999 --> 01:11.419
[SPEAKER_00]: original drawings with pencil and paper on a pegboard and you just have to swirl the paper as you're doing it so you could see the animation as it's going you get paper cuts and you know.
01:12.377 --> 01:12.657
[SPEAKER_00]: things.
01:13.017 --> 01:17.620
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was part of the process and part of those things people come to hate and love.
01:18.120 --> 01:31.028
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when the transition to digital and specifically rapid digital like flash and tone boom, there was a lot of hesitation and fear to, you know, you hear a lot of the things you hear about AI now,
01:32.492 --> 01:34.274
[SPEAKER_00]: The quality will never match up.
01:34.334 --> 01:41.000
[SPEAKER_00]: You could never I would never see that on a on TV or in film and then literally You know months later.
01:41.020 --> 01:58.434
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, excuse me, a couple years later rather every single show on TV is Done in one of these programs and it's new studios have popped up and and it kind of Took the entire industry and you you have folks that were just as hesitant as they are now
01:59.355 --> 02:04.857
[SPEAKER_00]: and for for good reason, you know, whenever your jobs has the potential to be impacted.
02:05.117 --> 02:10.640
[SPEAKER_00]: And the word jobs impacted, you don't see as many ink and paint artists for instance.
02:10.660 --> 02:13.981
[SPEAKER_00]: You still have to have that skill just in case you need to know this specific show.
02:14.501 --> 02:22.544
[SPEAKER_00]: But you don't see that many dedicated ink and paint artists and you don't see many, you know, scanners like that was a job for humans.
02:22.925 --> 02:23.425
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
02:23.465 --> 02:25.806
[SPEAKER_00]: And the actual, you know,
02:26.686 --> 02:27.827
[SPEAKER_00]: animation slides in.
02:28.287 --> 02:30.649
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, it did affect the job.
02:30.669 --> 02:34.472
[SPEAKER_00]: But what it also did was, it widened the field.
02:34.552 --> 02:39.256
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but at that time, you weren't even able to really do animation in America.
02:39.296 --> 02:42.719
[SPEAKER_00]: You could do fees and things like that, but she had to send it all overseas.
02:43.299 --> 02:46.443
[SPEAKER_00]: just because our wages here are a lot more than over there.
02:46.984 --> 03:00.880
[SPEAKER_00]: And it directly led to the opening of studios that wouldn't have been able to open in the other way like our house, or tip-mouths, or a lot of the studios here in the US that employ hundreds of animators that have been given time.
03:01.548 --> 03:01.808
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
03:02.028 --> 03:02.269
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
03:02.309 --> 03:02.949
[SPEAKER_03]: That's so cool.
03:03.490 --> 03:14.019
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and actually you touch on the, you know, that transition and my son was logging on the Simpsons, the episode where it turned from, you know, yeah, the old style of the new style and you could see it.
03:14.039 --> 03:17.622
[SPEAKER_03]: It was so, you know, kind of evident obviously, you know, retain the character.
03:17.642 --> 03:19.043
[SPEAKER_03]: No pun intended.
03:19.323 --> 03:25.204
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, evolve all the, you know, the sort of animation, but at the same time, you could tell that that transition happened.
03:25.624 --> 03:27.084
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, and it is.
03:27.184 --> 03:27.765
[SPEAKER_03]: It's so cool.
03:27.805 --> 03:40.427
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess I'm sure from, yeah, you're experienced to see all these new studios crop up and, you know, it actually creates, yes, while it was challenging, I'm sure, but, you know, crop up a whole bunch of new opportunity for a lot of other people, which was neat.
03:40.507 --> 03:42.987
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, there's another parallel.
03:44.128 --> 03:45.688
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, you'd see like,
03:46.388 --> 04:02.794
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the tools were so accessible versus having to learn how to do everything and have these big drawing tables with pegboards and have to have all the equipment and cameras to record the different slides and things like that.
04:03.274 --> 04:08.976
[SPEAKER_00]: You had 10-year-olds and 12-year-olds uploading video games
04:14.425 --> 04:24.312
[SPEAKER_00]: that led to a whole lot more content that most of it was bad because these people are new, start and off, and they weren't professionals.
04:24.833 --> 04:29.756
[SPEAKER_00]: But as soon as it was in the hand of the professionals, clearly it had a professional expectation.
04:29.836 --> 04:33.259
[SPEAKER_00]: So that did lead a lot to the quality of the
04:38.798 --> 04:50.171
[SPEAKER_00]: comparisons and like, oh, this would never be ready for prime time, but, you know, it's just waiting for the tools to be in the hands of professionals or for those early adopters to become professional.
04:50.852 --> 04:52.133
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
04:52.353 --> 04:54.596
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, wow, we could probably get down a whole rabbit hole of the.
04:55.009 --> 05:12.979
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the, you know, elevating the quality, you know, no matter what the medium is, but yeah, when people who know what they've got, you know, the eye of what they're looking for, but actually to be honest, that leads right in the next question pretty well, because right now your course at savvy coders essentially in AI.
05:14.641 --> 05:28.182
[SPEAKER_03]: animation, you know, bootcamp, you emphasize the idea of owning a style, so why is defining and training, you know, the AI on a personal style so critical for artists working with AI.
05:28.975 --> 05:31.676
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, it's a little bit different, it's a little different.
05:31.876 --> 05:34.277
[SPEAKER_00]: So you technically can't own a style.
05:34.697 --> 05:36.358
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no owning a style.
05:36.698 --> 05:45.782
[SPEAKER_00]: But you also don't like cookie cutter, you know, the same old look that just an AI would spit out by the fall.
05:46.222 --> 05:48.063
[SPEAKER_00]: Because of the way these things are trained,
05:48.623 --> 06:00.652
[SPEAKER_00]: and because of the, I guess, conditioning that these models go through, they could spit out something that looks the same as what every person that wants to type in a prompt and that's it could do.
06:01.313 --> 06:08.739
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, then you would stifle innovation, you how could we have a spiderverse or something that kind of
06:09.299 --> 06:15.226
[SPEAKER_00]: bins the what people bins expectation it with their style choices.
06:15.726 --> 06:24.456
[SPEAKER_00]: So just because it's a different medium and you can rely on an AI agent or assistant.
06:25.157 --> 06:34.288
[SPEAKER_00]: as opposed to human areas, that doesn't mean you skip the steps of defining a unique style or giving a unique voice to your content.
06:34.848 --> 06:41.436
[SPEAKER_00]: There's going to be a lot of cookie good stuff because a lot of folks won't take those extra steps to make their content professional.
06:42.277 --> 06:43.959
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's going to be a lot more
06:45.726 --> 06:48.647
[SPEAKER_00]: things that become kind of generic.
06:49.047 --> 06:57.489
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I don't know about you, but I'm a little sick of Ghibli style, caricatures on the Middle East.
06:57.789 --> 06:59.349
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's no disrespect to Ghibli.
06:59.389 --> 07:01.690
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's still classics, right?
07:02.210 --> 07:12.112
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, as of right now that interpretation of what a Ghibli style is, is a little kind of over-saturated at the moment.
07:12.957 --> 07:13.577
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
07:13.757 --> 07:13.998
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
07:14.218 --> 07:16.199
[SPEAKER_03]: I know people, including myself.
07:16.299 --> 07:16.779
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my gosh.
07:16.799 --> 07:18.940
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't don't judge me.
07:18.980 --> 07:21.701
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I know like where you find out you can do something.
07:21.761 --> 07:26.123
[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, like, that goes back to like, yeah, the dawn of computer, you know, people get Photoshop.
07:26.143 --> 07:28.244
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're like, oh my god, I can do something.
07:28.264 --> 07:31.625
[SPEAKER_03]: And then it ends up just being regurgitations of regurgitations and nothing.
07:31.986 --> 07:36.148
[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing is good or different original until, you know, you get a chance to play with it.
07:36.208 --> 07:36.968
[SPEAKER_03]: But I did.
07:37.208 --> 07:39.209
[SPEAKER_03]: I used the the Jeeply, you know, kind of
07:41.730 --> 07:45.913
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, oh, look, it's my kid in Jubilee's animation style.
07:46.733 --> 07:48.454
[SPEAKER_03]: It's my dog, and that was fun.
07:49.915 --> 07:57.420
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, what I found out the other day from you and I chatting too, which was very interesting about terminology.
07:57.781 --> 08:08.408
[SPEAKER_03]: And you mentioned the importance of using the right industry terms within prompting, almost like you would be giving direction in anybody else, possibly on set.
08:09.208 --> 08:18.490
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, can you share an example of how precise language changes the quality of what AI generated content really comes out?
08:20.191 --> 08:28.973
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, one difference between amateur content and professional content no matter how you do it is consistency, right?
08:37.293 --> 08:45.239
[SPEAKER_00]: panning or I want pushing or a pedestal up or a tracking shot.
08:45.520 --> 08:47.241
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean, right?
08:47.801 --> 08:55.788
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the same thing with AI, you know, we kind of see we in the course that we were doing with sabbicoters.
08:57.028 --> 09:07.874
[SPEAKER_00]: We are encouraging the students and teach them of foundational kind of set of terms and language that they can use so that there's consistency across the board.
09:07.894 --> 09:14.937
[SPEAKER_00]: So when we're asking the camera to do the certain thing, it's been established by filmmaking for years and years.
09:14.997 --> 09:18.759
[SPEAKER_00]: And as an amateur, you may not know these filmmaking terms.
09:19.559 --> 09:27.826
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, leveraging the hundred some ideas of filmmaking is a lot easier than trying to come up with things yourself.
09:27.846 --> 09:32.389
[SPEAKER_00]: That being said, AI does interpret things in unique ways.
09:32.470 --> 09:40.896
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you have to be able to make sure that you're speaking to your, we like to see AI as a DP or a cinematographer, right?
09:41.397 --> 09:45.140
[SPEAKER_00]: And just like you speak to your human AI or cinematographer,
09:45.820 --> 09:53.292
[SPEAKER_00]: uh you want to make sure that they understand you as well because if you say you can go into a human cemetery where I say I want this to feel emotional.
09:54.375 --> 09:57.676
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you get back what you get back because you didn't give any detail.
09:57.956 --> 10:03.678
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be, we'll definitely come back emotional, but that emotion might be pure adject joy.
10:03.738 --> 10:06.759
[SPEAKER_00]: They're crying to his enjoying an inappropriate part, right?
10:07.019 --> 10:17.663
[SPEAKER_00]: And they might have tone, the scene, or gotten specific shots for that emotion, but you have to be specific and you have to be clear and have a understanding that your DP
10:18.343 --> 10:22.586
[SPEAKER_00]: In this case, an AIDP or cinema photographer understands what you're saying.
10:22.846 --> 10:25.608
[SPEAKER_00]: And is able to give you back that deliverable that you're looking for.
10:26.329 --> 10:27.130
[SPEAKER_03]: That's very cool.
10:27.510 --> 10:36.457
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, I'm probably going to butcher the way I term this, but I happen to be somewhere and watching the Hanabar Barbaric cartons the other day.
10:36.997 --> 10:40.159
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think it was a little bit of yogi,
10:42.621 --> 10:53.790
[SPEAKER_03]: And I watched him do the like a frame shake, you know, where it was almost like, yeah, something happened, but it looks like, you know, obviously whatever they were doing with a camera, the actual camera shook, not the animation in and of itself.
10:54.110 --> 10:55.691
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, oh, that's so cool.
10:56.152 --> 11:11.003
[SPEAKER_03]: Not, you know, like, but it just makes me think of like how that kind of thing could be translated in what you're telling in AI, you know, just the same way, you know, I'm sure that that person had to go tell another person after animating it and saying, hey, I need you to do this with a camera,
11:12.446 --> 11:12.929
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
11:13.110 --> 11:14.961
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what, you bring up.
11:15.691 --> 11:27.016
[SPEAKER_00]: a great moment in animation history because there's some parallels between Hannibal Barbarra and those in that movement in TV to AI as well.
11:27.076 --> 11:34.219
[SPEAKER_00]: That was an inability to produce TV animation before then because of costs and the time that it takes.
11:34.759 --> 11:36.299
[SPEAKER_00]: And they revolutionize it.
11:36.420 --> 11:43.102
[SPEAKER_00]: They use symbols and they have colors so they, you know, they may chain turn their head without having to animate
11:45.023 --> 11:54.730
[SPEAKER_00]: had all of these tactics that they came up with to increase the speed, reduce the cost, so that they could create content for TV.
11:54.870 --> 11:59.693
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you have the Flintstones, which revolutionize not just animation, but sitcoms in general.
12:00.314 --> 12:03.356
[SPEAKER_00]: You have, you know, every hand of Berbera and every
12:05.437 --> 12:12.338
[SPEAKER_00]: from Scooby-Doo in everything afterwards that followed their model they're basically revolutionized animation at that time.
12:12.879 --> 12:15.379
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we have the potential for that's happening again.
12:15.939 --> 12:16.479
[SPEAKER_03]: That's cool.
12:16.679 --> 12:17.359
[SPEAKER_03]: That's super fun.
12:18.480 --> 12:25.661
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I guess, you know, what models or platforms are you experimenting most with right now?
12:26.301 --> 12:30.942
[SPEAKER_03]: And what do you see as maybe individually there, you know, their strengths or their limitations?
12:31.892 --> 12:36.015
[SPEAKER_00]: So here at Composition, we kind of follow a principle where we have like three pillars.
12:36.875 --> 12:39.357
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever tool we use has to be accelerated.
12:39.397 --> 12:43.860
[SPEAKER_00]: It has to speed up our process of us, why are we even using it, right?
12:44.920 --> 12:47.762
[SPEAKER_00]: Then it has to be adaptable or adaptive.
12:48.142 --> 12:50.364
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have to have control over it.
12:50.524 --> 12:53.886
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, we can't get the professional results that we expect.
12:54.326 --> 12:59.850
[SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, it has to be artists to driven, which means we have to be able to add those styles.
13:00.270 --> 13:08.654
[SPEAKER_00]: and had those artists influence or else we wouldn't be able to have any difference from anything anyone else can do.
13:09.114 --> 13:18.058
[SPEAKER_00]: And so with that said, our models that we choose and any tool, even outside of AI that we choose has to fit within their rubric.
13:18.118 --> 13:19.499
[SPEAKER_00]: And so some of the ones that we're
13:20.519 --> 13:21.560
[SPEAKER_00]: really love it right now.
13:21.700 --> 13:31.766
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of them are open source because we're able to actually get in there and modify and create our own tools and our own workflows with open source tools and so when 2.2 with base.
13:45.753 --> 13:48.174
[SPEAKER_00]: going back in and making corrections, right?
13:48.674 --> 13:52.815
[SPEAKER_00]: You have, of course, nanobananas pretty popular right now.
13:52.855 --> 13:54.415
[SPEAKER_00]: So it does it's very similar thing.
13:54.775 --> 14:05.978
[SPEAKER_00]: And also seeduring for is like nanobananas, both nanobananas seeduring for are like for images, it's like modifying images, like editing models.
14:06.478 --> 14:08.619
[SPEAKER_00]: So those are pretty exciting right now.
14:08.639 --> 14:23.809
[SPEAKER_00]: We love the open source, not only because it allows for us to create clues that work directly for our pipeline and modify those workflows and the tools, we can do it through coffee, why we can do it through custom tools.
14:24.949 --> 14:29.372
[SPEAKER_00]: But we can generally also set our own models and lore as a
14:30.010 --> 14:38.498
[SPEAKER_00]: On our characters, on our styles without worrying about, you know, licensing, and if it's going to be retrained because this is local right.
14:39.258 --> 14:40.620
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's cool.
14:40.720 --> 14:46.185
[SPEAKER_03]: Actually, I'm glad you stepped into the licensing sort of aspect of it because.
14:46.725 --> 15:03.940
[SPEAKER_03]: That is, I think that will be, it's interesting now, it's interesting how it will progress, but compared to your big studio experience, what sort of new opportunities does AI open up for either individual creators or people small studios that when it comes to retaining
15:13.473 --> 15:20.315
[SPEAKER_00]: interesting time ever and the most the biggest opportunity for individual creators that I've ever seen.
15:21.555 --> 15:32.578
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time that you have these tools that are democratized and access to content creation, you also have in the last 10 years that the democratization of distribution platforms.
15:32.698 --> 15:37.899
[SPEAKER_00]: So now, you can not only create the content, you can get it out to people and
15:38.709 --> 15:48.577
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, unlimited number of people to reach the amount of people that you have access to through social, through YouTube, through other platforms, through A vibe and things like that.
15:49.338 --> 15:51.459
[SPEAKER_00]: In the past, it was just undoable.
15:51.720 --> 15:52.780
[SPEAKER_00]: You just couldn't do it.
15:52.821 --> 15:59.146
[SPEAKER_00]: You had to be green lid by a studio or a broadcast or a streamer in this case.
16:07.052 --> 16:10.375
[SPEAKER_00]: And nowadays, you can green light yourself and get your content.
16:10.816 --> 16:17.523
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can produce it and you can figure out a way to produce the full content within a reasonable amount of time that doesn't, you know, have you on the streets.
16:19.204 --> 16:27.353
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you can actually distribute and monetize your content and actually own their audience, have a direct one-one content, whole, whole developer.
16:27.773 --> 16:28.574
[SPEAKER_00]: with an audience.
16:28.954 --> 16:33.156
[SPEAKER_00]: You can then, you then retain all of the ownership of your content.
16:33.716 --> 16:44.482
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's to the point where, you know, in the beginning of YouTube, the studios would experiment with the creators and say, hey, you know what, we want you to write this film because you're so popular.
16:44.502 --> 16:46.663
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, well, I do 45 second content.
16:46.963 --> 16:48.264
[SPEAKER_00]: What am I writing into our film?
16:48.304 --> 16:48.984
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not what I do.
16:49.305 --> 16:50.325
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's not terrible.
16:50.745 --> 16:53.407
[SPEAKER_00]: And it got to the point where now you can't early go to
16:54.147 --> 16:57.430
[SPEAKER_00]: a huge influencer and say, hey, I want you to do this thing.
16:57.450 --> 16:58.310
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, okay, great.
16:58.590 --> 17:02.073
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, here's what we want to pay you and we want to own all the rights.
17:02.794 --> 17:07.797
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're like, well, I make more than that in a month of streaming.
17:08.638 --> 17:08.878
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
17:09.138 --> 17:10.219
[SPEAKER_00]: I cannot own everything.
17:10.539 --> 17:13.461
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would I give you anything for this?
17:14.362 --> 17:14.562
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
17:14.842 --> 17:17.825
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's an exciting time for creators, right?
17:18.662 --> 17:22.985
[SPEAKER_00]: where you're able to really own things.
17:23.065 --> 17:25.106
[SPEAKER_00]: It's scary for the big studios.
17:25.706 --> 17:27.848
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, again, it's unprecedented times.
17:27.888 --> 17:40.215
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's a little bit of seeding of these fear-mongering of, you know, copyright issues and like, theft, art theft.
17:40.295 --> 17:42.877
[SPEAKER_00]: But never in the history of time has been
17:44.258 --> 17:46.939
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, an art style ever been protectable.
17:47.660 --> 17:58.286
[SPEAKER_00]: Never in the history of time has the way that the means of production of image ever been copyrightable or protectable.
17:58.526 --> 17:59.727
[SPEAKER_00]: Never never in the history.
17:59.747 --> 18:01.588
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I guess you can patent a
18:02.208 --> 18:05.472
[SPEAKER_00]: the means of production, but you can never, never could copyright a trademark that.
18:05.792 --> 18:07.534
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always the improv, right?
18:07.895 --> 18:16.585
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're in product, whether you create it, you can take a picture of Mickey Mouse off the internet and put it in Photoshop, and then put it on a product and you fly away Disney's rights.
18:17.186 --> 18:20.590
[SPEAKER_00]: And Disney's not Photoshop's, uh, you know, problem.
18:21.731 --> 18:32.395
[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, you can generate something that violates the Disney's rights right now, and it's up to you as the creator to say, here's my original idea, and ensure that he didn't violate anybody's rights.
18:32.956 --> 18:41.539
[SPEAKER_00]: And no one's lost any copy right for protection or any rights, any ability to protect their content.
18:42.679 --> 18:48.282
[SPEAKER_00]: They only really, you know, they just have to you have to
18:49.403 --> 18:53.344
[SPEAKER_00]: media yourself and make sure that you're not violating other people's rights.
18:53.844 --> 19:08.388
[SPEAKER_03]: Definitely, actually, maybe that comes from a whole, you know, another set of education people might want to think about is like, yeah, increasing their own media literacy and their understanding of, you know, the things that could affect them as they as they do start creating.
19:09.028 --> 19:20.391
[SPEAKER_03]: But in your own program, you know, I know you're coaching students to, you know, move from just playing with prompts to really bringing a vision to life through AI animation.
19:20.712 --> 19:21.632
[SPEAKER_03]: So how do you do that?
19:21.692 --> 19:26.813
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you kind of get people from like, you know, just playing around to like, oh, no, this is a reality is a career path.
19:27.413 --> 19:28.434
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, we don't we don't.
19:30.658 --> 19:41.001
[SPEAKER_00]: If most people think, and they're scared that someone typing some prompts into a video engine, or AI, the integration engine, is what they have to feel, right?
19:41.821 --> 19:43.962
[SPEAKER_00]: You're never going to get anything professional.
19:44.002 --> 19:48.743
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get some really neat looking stuff, but make a half hour out of it, right?
19:48.823 --> 19:49.503
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to work.
19:49.963 --> 19:51.684
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to unbestem, filmmaking.
19:51.744 --> 19:53.364
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to understand animation.
19:53.444 --> 19:56.105
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you do, and you have those tools,
20:00.062 --> 20:01.022
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
20:01.042 --> 20:08.504
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we are encouraging and I'm encouraging with the course where we're teaching this new AI enable animation.
20:08.524 --> 20:12.385
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not about necessarily just the AI tools.
20:12.565 --> 20:26.569
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about filmmaking and about taking, being given the superpowers of those tools and then joining the X-Men and my bald professor X-ness will sit there and say, you know, this is how you use your
20:29.990 --> 20:32.271
[SPEAKER_00]: because you can create things faster.
20:32.831 --> 20:36.892
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't mean you just, you know, spew out a bunch of garbage that nobody wants.
20:37.992 --> 20:40.752
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you have to follow tools and techniques.
20:40.772 --> 20:42.613
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to be responsible about what you do.
20:42.633 --> 20:44.713
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to meter how you do things.
20:44.753 --> 20:49.394
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to follow process E. So you don't, so you get the result that you want to hold community.
20:50.375 --> 20:51.715
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that you could be employable.
20:52.694 --> 21:03.297
[SPEAKER_00]: because one thing about that art school transition, sometimes folks come out of art school and a lot of art school is structured practice.
21:03.317 --> 21:07.037
[SPEAKER_00]: So you get a lot of who long time to practice your craft, so you become good.
21:07.438 --> 21:11.498
[SPEAKER_00]: But also you often define us, you get stuck in your own style.
21:11.879 --> 21:17.880
[SPEAKER_00]: When you step into a production environment, your style is no longer important.
21:18.140 --> 21:20.901
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever the style is, if the style is your style,
21:22.961 --> 21:36.827
[SPEAKER_00]: But if it's somebody else's style who is usually the art director or someone else brought in, then you have to understand that style and you have to assimilate in order to produce consistent professional content.
21:37.387 --> 21:48.291
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's always a hard test from art school to production when everyone wants to be artists and take a million years on a production,
21:50.492 --> 21:54.836
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, these professional content not be a be a star of an artist.
21:55.456 --> 21:55.836
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
21:56.137 --> 21:56.377
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
21:56.477 --> 21:56.777
[SPEAKER_03]: Actually.
21:56.797 --> 21:57.258
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
21:57.298 --> 21:58.278
[SPEAKER_03]: So that this one.
21:58.298 --> 22:09.648
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't have an list, but now I'm really curious based on, you know, how you're talking about how people, you know, you trying to monetize what, you know, this is for them and turn it into a real career.
22:10.028 --> 22:11.009
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it, it, it, it, it,
22:11.669 --> 22:33.313
[SPEAKER_03]: And especially because like eventually after you go through a bunch of boot camps, I'm sure you're going to see, you know, different people who want to do different things, but even now, do you kind of notice the people who are coming in with the eye of either an animator and illustrator, and I have like, you know, the director and I have a writer and I of like, you know, do you see that, you know, maybe even after this they.
22:33.853 --> 22:44.578
[SPEAKER_03]: may want to hone in on something very specifically to that career, you know, that would help them accelerate, you know, their ability to execute their own vision the best.
22:45.378 --> 22:47.619
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, yeah, are you seeing that already?
22:47.639 --> 22:56.383
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I think everyone in the beginning wants to be a generalist and they want to be good at all things, but, you know, even everyone goes through the, uh,
22:58.283 --> 23:04.688
[SPEAKER_00]: the trial of determining what they're best at, or they might not get to determine that.
23:04.728 --> 23:09.471
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes the studio they work for or the projects, determine whether what you'll be working on.
23:10.051 --> 23:17.657
[SPEAKER_00]: But everyone typically starts out broad scale and then they get better in one area and are asked to do that more.
23:18.137 --> 23:23.861
[SPEAKER_00]: And so oftentimes you get to choose that, but oftentimes the world is choose it for you.
23:24.882 --> 23:29.746
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's no difference because you have superpowers now, right?
23:30.067 --> 23:34.071
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you still wound up, you know.
23:35.193 --> 23:40.279
[SPEAKER_00]: on certain tasks in certain places, depending on how good you are there.
23:40.299 --> 23:54.315
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, because generalists are always valuable, but especially this is just as valuable and oftentimes more valuable because they're, you know, the master of none, trope.
23:55.190 --> 23:55.410
[SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm.
23:55.910 --> 23:56.110
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
23:56.551 --> 23:57.091
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
23:57.111 --> 23:57.491
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
23:57.531 --> 24:02.353
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I must thank you because you've really chosen to invest in St.
24:02.413 --> 24:07.795
[SPEAKER_03]: Louis as a hub for, you know, this kind of creative and tech talent you're looking to develop.
24:08.836 --> 24:15.879
[SPEAKER_03]: What is your long-term vision for the the city's role in the future of animation and storytelling?
24:16.999 --> 24:23.482
[SPEAKER_00]: See, just like this is a great time for, you know, people to get into the content because of the demand.
24:24.582 --> 24:27.123
[SPEAKER_00]: the democratization of distribution and production.
24:27.943 --> 24:30.204
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a great opportunity for us to do it from St.
24:30.244 --> 24:30.524
[SPEAKER_00]: Louis.
24:31.504 --> 24:35.085
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the reasons is because we have a great cost of living.
24:35.765 --> 24:38.746
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we have four seasons.
24:38.966 --> 24:48.609
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get a home, you know, you live on the coast, and you've been working for Disney for 20 years and you're still four people in an apartment, right?
24:48.869 --> 24:50.169
[SPEAKER_00]: Who would for roommates, right?
24:50.669 --> 24:52.670
[SPEAKER_00]: And you've worked on big movies and everything, right?
24:53.210 --> 24:59.055
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's notoriously hard to really really have things in L.A.
24:59.395 --> 25:01.456
[SPEAKER_00]: as a production for me.
25:02.097 --> 25:05.699
[SPEAKER_00]: And so here you can actually have a living and have a family, etc.
25:05.740 --> 25:19.830
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that's huge and in the past you weren't able to work from here and have big studio partners or have professional content out because all of that happened on the coast.
25:22.601 --> 25:29.588
[SPEAKER_00]: What's happened over the last 10 years, and especially accelerated due to the pandemic, is, you know, our ability to work from anywhere.
25:30.348 --> 25:38.076
[SPEAKER_00]: And because of that, we can do business overseas, we can do business on the coast, off from cozy, comfortable St.
25:38.116 --> 25:40.618
[SPEAKER_00]: Louis, and we can eat some toast to rave while we're at it.
25:42.405 --> 25:43.085
[SPEAKER_03]: that sounds great.
25:44.226 --> 25:44.786
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm in for that.
25:45.787 --> 25:51.750
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, for young animators or filmmakers, what skills should they be focusing on?
25:52.110 --> 26:03.916
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's say maybe they are going to a traditional college or school right now, what should they be focusing on in order to stay relevant in the industry or where AI will be part of the creative toolkit in the future?
26:04.656 --> 26:06.297
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's going to be a lot of
26:08.958 --> 26:12.782
[SPEAKER_00]: animation that aren't traditional artists.
26:13.402 --> 26:14.964
[SPEAKER_00]: So they may not know how to draw.
26:15.444 --> 26:16.925
[SPEAKER_00]: They may not know how to animate.
26:17.346 --> 26:19.968
[SPEAKER_00]: They may not know how to do these traditional things.
26:20.869 --> 26:26.314
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's going to be a place for them in the production lineup in a pipeline.
26:27.435 --> 26:31.158
[SPEAKER_00]: But definitely if you do have all of those skills,
26:35.570 --> 26:43.519
[SPEAKER_00]: and you'll be able to ask kind of a higher price because you have those skills.
26:43.539 --> 26:49.366
[SPEAKER_00]: So I encourage folks to continue to have a great knowledge of traditional means.
26:51.242 --> 26:53.164
[SPEAKER_00]: But also don't be discouraged if you don't.
26:54.345 --> 27:00.592
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to get in and you do not know how to draw or you don't have any animation experience now.
27:00.672 --> 27:06.238
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's how I'm going to really hop in because you can get your foot in the door without having those skills.
27:06.638 --> 27:08.300
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you can build those as you go along.
27:09.768 --> 27:26.047
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great for anybody who has like a fear of what AI is sort of bringing to the industry to the potential career paths of everybody, what do you say to anybody who's afraid of that, who's maybe just getting started?
27:27.405 --> 27:30.666
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what's the worst that can happen, right?
27:31.326 --> 27:36.648
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the worst that can happen is your content is rejected, which it happens to the best of, right?
27:37.009 --> 27:41.930
[SPEAKER_00]: You hear so many knows when you're shopping, come on to it, when you're creating content.
27:42.231 --> 27:55.155
[SPEAKER_00]: As a matter of fact, a note isn't necessarily a bad thing, where a note could be a hit to your ego, but it could also be a sign that you need to massage your content or you need to massage what you're doing
27:57.856 --> 28:01.738
[SPEAKER_00]: a wider group of people to accept your content, right?
28:02.658 --> 28:13.442
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that fear nowadays, you need to, you know, eat it up, accept that fear as a sign that there's something you need to work on.
28:13.822 --> 28:19.504
[SPEAKER_00]: And even, let's help people, you know, post-content immediately.
28:20.678 --> 28:25.001
[SPEAKER_00]: as broad as possible, as terrible as you are, most did immediately get feedback.
28:25.402 --> 28:30.245
[SPEAKER_00]: And initially, that feedback might be mean, it might be terrible, we have you've seen these comments section.
28:30.746 --> 28:36.030
[SPEAKER_00]: They are mean and there's no picture, there's no, you don't see the person in real life.
28:36.450 --> 28:42.215
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're unfiltered, and they get as direct and as mean as possible with no consideration to your mental health.
28:43.494 --> 28:58.387
[SPEAKER_00]: But with that said, try to accept it and have a tough skin, because even the worst trolls may have some point of somewhere that they're right.
29:00.095 --> 29:17.650
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you just miss it because of the tone or because of, you know, group think or because of anything, then you could be missing something like a really take it to the next level and a lot of people get stuck by not accepting commentary or it.
29:18.471 --> 29:31.985
[SPEAKER_00]: criticism, and a lot of it has to do with tone, but those that can even comment back and say, hey, you know, under a comment that's this, because this is a high slap, it's trash.
29:32.485 --> 29:34.868
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, this looks terrible blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
29:34.888 --> 29:36.910
[SPEAKER_00]: You say, hey, what do you suggest I do better?
29:38.145 --> 29:51.491
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're coming with the if they are interested, they might come in with the list stuff and then apply it to your thing When you when you respond and it looks better guess what those people are going to see that and they're going to be like It's a little better, but it's still slack, right?
29:51.992 --> 30:03.517
[SPEAKER_00]: And it'll be less things and then over the time they would they will feel committed and then we'll feel him best it in your growth and your content But they have contributed to it a long the way and then
30:04.197 --> 30:14.024
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the greatest joy is taking what can be considered a troll or a hater, and they're now a fan and inspiring you along the way.
30:14.724 --> 30:20.188
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you can make that transition, you my friend are a Jedi.
30:22.312 --> 30:27.657
[SPEAKER_03]: That's cool, because like, you know, yeah, even, you know, derisive commentary can hurt.
30:28.017 --> 30:41.629
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like one of those things where if you can use that, if you take, you know, not just the feedback, but like you said, the engagement of somebody who's willing to participate in the process of making a creative product better, that's so valuable, you know?
30:42.850 --> 30:44.431
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we also have to deliver too.
30:45.072 --> 30:47.213
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the biggest thing is delivery.
30:47.374 --> 30:53.438
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I say, post immediately, like post something because you have to finish to post.
30:54.019 --> 30:54.299
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
30:54.939 --> 30:57.722
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing about being a hearty story, star of an artist,
30:58.442 --> 31:10.846
[SPEAKER_00]: is you want to spend a million years and get things perfect and redo and redo and redo and fix and polish and polish or production pipeline, you have to turn it in by a due date and that's it.
31:11.346 --> 31:20.268
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have to have a floor that you have to, that you have where you're saying, okay, if I need to bring it here and it's good enough to ship.
31:20.809 --> 31:25.330
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if I get there and I still have time left, I'm going to elevate it and I'd like it to be a P.
31:26.325 --> 31:28.978
[SPEAKER_00]: but I've met my threshold, I need to deliver.
31:29.655 --> 31:41.457
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and at delivery, you might be terrible, but you don't have all the time in the world's practice because someone else is gaining audience and gaining fans and putting out content that they may overlap with yours.
31:41.897 --> 31:45.378
[SPEAKER_00]: And so get up there and publish.
31:45.798 --> 31:49.559
[SPEAKER_00]: And also another thing is, until you publish, there's no way to correct.
31:49.639 --> 31:55.800
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way to do something different because without publishing, you can't analyze.
31:56.520 --> 32:00.708
[SPEAKER_00]: you are what you did differently, what you did wrong, and then apply it to the next project.
32:02.100 --> 32:02.340
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
32:02.620 --> 32:03.200
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
32:03.220 --> 32:06.141
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I've just got one more question for you.
32:06.561 --> 32:16.603
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's really like looking ahead, how do you see AI changing the balance between artistic direction and technical execution?
32:16.623 --> 32:22.245
[SPEAKER_03]: Because, you know, there's a lot that can happen on both of those fronts and all the way in between.
32:22.705 --> 32:26.426
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, how do you see that changing, you know, that sort of balance?
32:27.046 --> 32:27.326
[SPEAKER_03]: And then,
32:32.787 --> 32:39.830
[SPEAKER_00]: You know how to promote that balance with shift, because you know you have to be, you have to deliver.
32:40.010 --> 32:42.251
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have to, for professional content.
32:42.271 --> 32:45.832
[SPEAKER_00]: You're doing an art piece, play around all you want, be as artistic as you want.
32:46.332 --> 32:52.615
[SPEAKER_00]: But from a professional standpoint, if you want to get a TV show out or an email or something like that, you have to deliver.
32:52.675 --> 32:57.076
[SPEAKER_00]: So the technical prowess and the technical execution has to always be there.
33:01.338 --> 33:07.447
[SPEAKER_00]: understanding what people want to see and what's aesthetically giving is huge.
33:07.988 --> 33:16.239
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, so I don't think that sort of war will ever change, but if now folks are able to do way more in lift.
33:17.680 --> 33:20.162
[SPEAKER_00]: what they're capable to do in the given time.
33:20.182 --> 33:22.663
[SPEAKER_00]: So aesthetics are going to shoot through the roof.
33:22.844 --> 33:26.506
[SPEAKER_00]: We can already get higher quality in less time.
33:26.626 --> 33:28.147
[SPEAKER_00]: So what would that do to productions?
33:28.447 --> 33:31.269
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll hopefully, you know, people don't say, oh, we have less time.
33:31.289 --> 33:33.230
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's produce, or we have more time.
33:33.590 --> 33:35.692
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we can execute in a faster time.
33:35.952 --> 33:36.832
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's produce trash.
33:37.673 --> 33:44.497
[SPEAKER_00]: Believe that people will use that extra time or deliver higher quality within that time, right?
33:46.118 --> 33:48.660
[SPEAKER_00]: artistic level will increase.
33:49.181 --> 33:52.503
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, like I said earlier, there's going to be a lot more stuff.
33:52.943 --> 34:06.253
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you have to realize that before a win an entry level person animation would hop in, it would be terrible hard to even know that they're doing animation.
34:06.954 --> 34:07.534
[SPEAKER_00]: Or, you know,
34:11.649 --> 34:16.733
[SPEAKER_00]: that even at the basis, it may still be not perfect, but it's way higher.
34:17.434 --> 34:22.078
[SPEAKER_00]: You can just type a prompt and get something that's pretty neat, might not be professional, but it's pretty neat.
34:22.738 --> 34:27.602
[SPEAKER_00]: So that floor has already risen, so that ceiling is going to rise as well.
34:28.023 --> 34:39.232
[SPEAKER_00]: And then on the technical expertise, if we're able to be a small team of artisans, they can get together and produce a film they competes with Disney.
34:40.950 --> 34:46.855
[SPEAKER_00]: within reasonable amount of time that we don't, you know, all get thrown out of the house.
34:48.433 --> 34:51.514
[SPEAKER_00]: that, you know, that's groundbreaking.
34:51.574 --> 34:53.095
[SPEAKER_00]: It's from a technical standpoint.
34:53.495 --> 35:04.479
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have been working at these places and, you know, there's some folks that work at Pixar for the last 20 years and are only the only person that they'll let touch a particular cactus.
35:04.499 --> 35:07.500
[SPEAKER_00]: They've been animating that cactus specifically for 20 years, right?
35:07.900 --> 35:10.661
[SPEAKER_00]: Or they built up such a great skill set.
35:11.422 --> 35:15.303
[SPEAKER_00]: And they'll come to me and pitch me some content that they've been working on for 30 years.
35:16.103 --> 35:17.484
[SPEAKER_00]: And that everybody has said, no.
35:18.264 --> 35:18.424
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
35:18.784 --> 35:35.389
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, there's always been that gatekeeping thing, but what if they could get together small group and put together something with that technological expertise and their artistic expertise that rivals some of the largest companies?
35:35.770 --> 35:41.071
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we truly are in a different world and it's a great time going to be allowed from a creative standpoint.
35:41.091 --> 35:42.572
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little scary from a company
35:46.790 --> 35:47.070
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
35:47.470 --> 35:47.870
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, wow.
35:48.150 --> 36:00.852
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, I really appreciate all you said and actually I remember this is a fair comparison, but you know, a lot of it seems to like parallel that of like, you know, the music world to, you know, is essentially in like, yeah, there's a lot of it out there.
36:01.192 --> 36:15.835
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you really have to work on obviously building up your, you know, your fan base or whoever is, you know, potentially going to pay attention to your media, but just also the tools enabling creators where, you know, before, where, you know, maybe somebody, you know, they weren't able to play a particular
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[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, now they can plug in a track and program it and then boom, they're able to be, you know, maybe an artist alongside another bigger artist where they wouldn't have had that opportunity further in the past.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, I think it reinforces the fact that new tools and things that AI is bringing to the table just will hopefully enable a new set of artists or maybe, yeah, the artists who have been pigeonholed like you're saying and, you know, haven't been able to, you know, execute on a larger vision.
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[SPEAKER_03]: they can now bring that to life because they have everything that they're disposal to do that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So I like you I think this is it's a cool period of time to be in.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It really is, but but what you said is it's very accurate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not new.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that same discussion, you know, you had folks going from tape.
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[SPEAKER_00]: in digital, I mean, tape and analog and analog mix boards to digital.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't hear the crackling and the music sounds terrible now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then the same thing with digital cameras to traditional.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I need to see the grain and, you know, it's the same conversation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think I've got to put photographer's out of business.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can do it from your iPhone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, it just didn't happen, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It changed differently.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Some people lost their job, but the medium grows and it continues to grow.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And in those cases, we're in the same period of time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What you really have to focus on, you know, all of the people that really took hold in those times are the early adopters.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the people that hopped in and said, you know what, I see there's change and I'm not afraid to dive in, you know, dive in understanding that I'm going to get a little bit along the process.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And take that leap.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and you emerge on the other side as a leader sometimes, so you have a hit start.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I encourage that's one reason why we're doing our course, and we're hoping to not only bring on folks that we can directly hire
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[SPEAKER_00]: for our studio, but also folks, there's a lot of folks in our first cohort even that they want to start their own studio and maybe they may be a comic artist or some of their kind of tangential artists that they're like, I just want to add to my personal industry and my personal fans and everything.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're hoping to help build the ecosystem and see the next generation
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's awesome.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's great.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, yeah, any other plugs for, yeah, composition media, your course with savvy coders that you want to put out there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, we were starting another cohort.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It starts October 20th, I think.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so now's the time to kind of really get your beading and go to savvy coders.com and sign up for the course.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We take.
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[SPEAKER_00]: everyone from beginning to professional, we end with a demo day where we bring businesses and everything over to potentially hire folks as they come through.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the course, you build not only a portfolio, but your Capstone project is a two to three minute short film.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I've won a few awards for short films.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're really not taking shorts on the short films.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We're really producing things we can be proud of.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it should be a testament to our students skillset and be able to hopefully land them some strong placements.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Not just with us, but with other partners as well.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's awesome.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I'm really looking forward to what you're doing with AI in general, with obviously with St.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Louis, and then also just all the talent that you're growing here in the area.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's awesome.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for chatting about it on the podcast here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No, any time.
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[SPEAKER_03]: awesome.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, this has been another episode of Mix and Matchbox.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm your host Brent Feldman.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We'll be back soon with more content.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Please like and subscribe.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks.
