2024 12 23
While at a holiday party a few nights back, the subject of Ai came up and sent me off into a dark headspace. My animator/editor friend had just seen some new examples of Google’s Ai video capabilities and it sent her spiraling into doom, declaring her job was now dead and gone. Sadly, I largely agree with her, tho of course it’s more complicated and won’t happen overnight. I’ve been largely ignoring (avoiding) checking in on Ai advancements over the last six months because I know it will only bum me out, and I’ve been too busy anyway, thus had been feeling more optimistic about the state of our creative industry. That moment at the party was like pouring cold water over my head.
This morning, I awoke to a post showcasing a fully-Ai-generated short film (see below). All of the sound, music and editing was done by a human but the visuals are fairly impressive, considering they were made by typing commands into a computer (I’d love to know how much time he spent repeating commands over and over before throwing his computer out the window). Surely, this will only get much better in the coming months. That said, I’m still not fully convinced Ai will ever become so good that it replaces all human-made visuals. Art is in the choices, and outsourcing a majority of your decisions to a computer will dilute your art and/or take lots of time to perfect, thus minimizing the advantage it provides in the first place. Also, while impressive for what it is, the film is kind of shit.
The sun setting on my photographic career. St Germain, Wisconsin. July, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
While at a holiday party a few nights back, the subject of Ai came up and sent me off into a dark headspace. My animator/editor friend had just seen some new examples of Google’s Ai video capabilities and it sent her spiraling into doom, declaring her job was now dead and gone. Sadly, I largely agree with her, tho of course it’s more complicated and won’t happen overnight. I’ve been largely ignoring (avoiding) checking in on Ai advancements over the last six months because I know it will only bum me out, and I’ve been too busy anyway, thus had been feeling more optimistic about the state of our creative industry. That moment at the party was like pouring cold water over my head.
This morning, I awoke to a post showcasing a fully-Ai-generated short film (see below). All of the sound, music and editing was done by a human but the visuals are fairly impressive, considering they were made by typing commands into a computer (I’d love to know how much time he spent repeating commands over and over before throwing his computer out the window). Surely, this will only get much better in the coming months. That said, I’m still not fully convinced Ai will ever become so good that it replaces all human-made visuals. Art is in the choices, and outsourcing a majority of your decisions to a computer will dilute your art and/or take lots of time to perfect, thus minimizing the advantage it provides in the first place. Also, while impressive for what it is, the film is kind of shit.
Last week, I hosted a Filmmaker Fridays event at my studio and the topic was film festivals. Two panelists were invited to talk about their roles in choosing which films are accepted to the festivals they work for. My broad takeaway from the event was that there is such a robust and enthusiastic demand for filmmaking generally, that I can’t even imagine a world in which the art form is completely outsourced to automation, regardless of how profitable it may become to do so (I’m not convinced this will be the case, either!). That said, Ai will surely transform the industry in ways comparable or even greater than the recent mega-change from film to digital. That change ushered in an explosion of new participants (myself included) and content is now so plentiful it’s impossible to watch even a small percentage of what is made annually. Sundance supposedly sees fourteen-thousand submissions each year, of which they likely don’t even view many of the entrants’ films because there’s just not enough time to do so.
At the event, I ran into the younger brother of a friend who I hadn’t seen in over a decade. He mentioned that he wrapped a feature horror film which he made for $3,000 and premiered to a sold-out audience at The Music Box. Check out the trailer below. It’s laughable how much better it is when compared to the Ai-made video above.
None of us have any clue what’s next. Nuclear war or impending alien invasion may soon make all of this a moot subject. While I will surely still go through periods of depression about how my job is about to be replaced by robots, I’m choosing to largely disregard these dark proclamations and barrel ahead with a positive mental attitude and the understanding that things will change, perhaps quite dramatically, but the world has a need to remain more or less in balance in order for anything to get accomplished.
-Clayton
2024 12 13
The drones / UFOs over New Jersey situation is really something. I always suspected that we’d eventually see some kind of UFO / Space Invaders story in my lifetime and it would be an International News Sensation. I never suspected that we’d get nonstop continual UFO stories each and every day and almost zero people would bring it up in real-world conversation. As someone who loves a good internet conspiracy, I want this one to be based in truth. It probably is, but it’s probably not in the way my fantastical brain wishes it to be.
One minor piece of evidence is this image.
I’ve done long exposure night images once a year while up in the Northwoods or Wisconsin and the takeaway I’ve had over the last five-or-so of them is that the sky is filled with shit. Satellites appear in almost every image now. Whatever is flying over NJ these days are not satellites, however, they could be any number of things that are far less interesting than alien beings. My money is on murky government experimenting. Ho hum.
-Clayton
The night sky is full of mystery. St Germain, Wisconsin. July, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
The drones / UFOs over New Jersey situation is really something. I always suspected that we’d eventually see some kind of UFO / Space Invaders story in my lifetime and it would be an International News Sensation. I never suspected that we’d get nonstop continual UFO stories each and every day and almost zero people would bring it up in real-world conversation. As someone who loves a good internet conspiracy, I want this one to be based in truth. It probably is, but it’s probably not in the way my fantastical brain wishes it to be.
One minor piece of evidence is this image.
I’ve done long exposure night images once a year while up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin and the takeaway I’ve had over the last five-or-so of them is that the sky is filled with shit. Satellites appear in almost every image now. Whatever is flying over NJ these days are not satellites, however, they could be any number of things that are far less interesting than alien beings. My money is on murky government experimenting. Ho hum.
-Clayton
2024 09 23
Last night, we watched Ren Faire, the three-part mini series on HBO, and I was kind of blown away by the project. Going in, I’d assumed it was a documentary and my brain was primed for a good doc-viewing experience. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that I categorize it in a new still-developing genre of filmmaking that blurs reality with narrative forms of storytelling, and I’m not yet fully sure what to think of it. Much like news has largely become a facts-optional landscape of entertainment-minded-viewer-pleasing content, the genre of documentary filmmaking is going through a similar transformation, with modern tools of moviemaking allowing for some clever new approaches. Stylistically speaking, Ren Faire was one of the best films I’ve seen in recent memory (also, I’m such a sucker for the anamorphic lens work they used).
Today, I came across this quote from Stanley Kubrick:
“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”
While I’m not sure the quote ties in with my thoughts on Ren Faire, I will add that oftentimes I find movies pay too much attention to style and not enough attention to story. While they did some amazing work on the project, especially with editing, audio, and cinematography, you started to get the sense that this crew could make damn near any group of people interesting, so what’s the point of spending so much time learning about this specific group?
All that said, if you are into film at all, give Ren Faire a watch. And now I’m off to try and find a reasonably-priced anamorphic lens.
-Clayton
Preparing for dinner at the Northwoods lake cabin. St Germain, Wisconsin. July, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Last night, we watched Ren Faire, the three-part mini series on HBO, and I was kind of blown away by the project. Going in, I’d assumed it was a documentary and my brain was primed for a good doc-viewing experience. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that I categorize it in a new still-developing genre of filmmaking that blurs reality with narrative forms of storytelling, and I’m not yet fully sure what to think of it. Much like news has largely become a facts-optional landscape of entertainment-minded-viewer-pleasing content, the genre of documentary filmmaking is going through a similar transformation, with modern tools of moviemaking allowing for some clever new approaches. Stylistically speaking, Ren Faire was one of the best films I’ve seen in recent memory (also, I’m such a sucker for the anamorphic lens work they used).
Today, I came across this quote from Stanley Kubrick:
“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”
While I’m not sure the quote ties in with my thoughts on Ren Faire, I will add that oftentimes I find movies pay too much attention to style and not enough attention to story. While they did some amazing work on the project, especially with editing, audio, and cinematography, you started to get the sense that this crew could make damn near any group of people interesting, so what’s the point of spending so much time learning about this specific group? It started skewing into style over substance territory.
All that said, if you are into film at all, give Ren Faire a watch. And now I’m off to try and find a reasonably-priced anamorphic lens.
-Clayton
2024 09 22
Writing is hard. I woke up this morning with a great story playing out in my head. Often, I’ll awake in the middle of the night, in the midst of a dream which seems like an amazing story, only to wake up hours later and reassess the dream in the light of day as not very interesting after all. That said, today’s story was formed in my waking moments, while fully conscious of what I was crafting. Excitedly, I rushed downstairs to my laptop and began to jot down my thoughts on the screen before immediately hitting a wall and losing all momentum. The sentences sounded fantastic in my head but proved impossible to get onto paper. Likely, my conscious brain began to over-think and harshly judge the words once they existed in the actual world, where other people might end up reading them.
All that said, I’m considering this a step in the right direction. Writing is not easy, art is not easy. I know this, but I’m optimistic that continued effort to translate these thoughts into real-life words will eventual pay off, much as my decades-long efforts into photography have given me a more comfortable approach to turning my ideas into photos.
-Clayton
Allison at the cabin in the Northwoods. St Germain, Wisconsin. July, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Writing is hard. I woke up this morning with a great story playing out in my head. Often, I’ll awake in the middle of the night, in the midst of a dream which seems like an amazing story, only to reassess the dream in the light of day as not very interesting after all. That said, today’s story was formed in my waking moments, while fully conscious of what I was crafting. Excitedly, I then rushed downstairs to my laptop and began to jot down my thoughts on the screen before immediately hitting a wall and losing all momentum. The sentences sounded fantastic in my head but proved impossible to get onto paper. Likely, my conscious brain began to over-think and harshly judge the words once they existed in the actual world, where other people might end up reading them.
All that said, I’m considering this a step in the right direction. Writing is not easy, art is not easy. I know this, but I’m optimistic that continued effort to translate these thoughts into real-life words will eventual pay off, much as my decades-long efforts into photography have given me a more comfortable approach to turning my ideas into photos.
-Clayton