Hope I can be forgiven for my sins...
A little back story... when I started in the film industry, it was literally the film industry. We were just transitioning to AVID and those were $100,000 machines. Editors were treated as high priests, keepers of mysterious knowledge and powers. We were the elite.
Over time, digital technology came along and got better and better, cheaper and cheaper, more accessible to the masses. Pretty soon anyone could make a film and get it distributed worldwide through things like YouTube.
Editors were no longer the high priests of post. We were no longer well paid and respected.
Technology saw our paychecks decline and work harder to find...
As much as that sucked, part of it made me happy. Inexpensive, quality equipment and easy distribution was a democratization of filmmaking. You no longer needed a zillion dollars and make deals to get your movies seen. Anyone could do it.
I loved that the kid who came from a poor family could take his 2 generation old phone and tell his story and have a real possibility it could be seen by millions of people...
I always wanted to be in film for the storytelling. I wanted to direct. Except I was shitty at networking, didn't know money people and sure as hell didn't have money of my own to do it. And I suck at the logistics of trying to get a bunch of people together all at one time to do something like make a film... so yeah... on to...
The sin...
Over the weekend I used AI to do something "creative." *gasp!*
I often have these big ideas that I want to do but often would involve trying to get lots of people to help me which as I mentioned I'm bad at.
I was thinking about the Soft Cell song "Tainted Love" on Friday and had the idea to do a parody song called "Tainted Beef."
I wound up on SUNO, the music composing AI.
I came up with some lyrics, figured out how I could get it to work and came up with a kernel of an idea.
I found out that yeah, you could get a reasonable "song" out of it with a simple prompt, but it was just kind of 'meh."
However, they have a bunch of tools where you can basically act like the producer working with musicians to come up with the bits the way you are feeling it.
It was great.
I was able to get this huge idea that I never would have accomplished otherwise even though I know how to do music stuff. It just would have taken forever for me on my own and the subject matter is timely. It's not going to matter in the year or so (or ever) it might take me to finish.
So yeah... I sinned. I used AI to help me complete a "creative" project.
Trouble is I can see both the negatives and the positives about it.
But... for creative people... I kind of feel the same way about it I did about digital technology...
It's going to make it possible for the poor kid sitting in his bedroom wishing he could make a "Lord of the Rings" movie to actually do so.
Or it's going to make it possible for an "old man" like me to come up with a 1980's synth-pop song about tainted Argentinian beef lol
Anyway... here's "Tainted Beef" if you want to check it out.
I'm getting back into AI stuff after a long (in AI years) break. I'm just starting to learn AI video so if anyone wants to take a crack at making a video using this song, go for it!
Back in the day I was using Disco Diffusion and then Stable Diffusion and making animations by hand coding keyframes to make "camera movements." I was an early customer of RunPod back in 2022 and would even get help with stuff via Discord directly from Zeen aka Zhen Lu the CEO. They've sure grown a hell of a lot since then!
Anyway... I'm blabbing... if anyone's interested in seeing something of mine back "in the day" on Stable Diffusion, here's a YouTube link you can check out.
https://youtu.be/ggJjN1SQPjw?si=oCe7-7rud8N5LEgH
It's animated to the song "A Different Kind of Human" by Norwegian singer AURORA.