May 29, 2024 • 48 mins
In this episode of Growth Talks, I interview Walter Woodman, one of the founders of shy kids, a Toronto-based studio composed of musicians and filmmakers.
Walter and his team have collaborated with industry giants such as Netflix, HBO, MTV, Disney, and many more.
Recently, shy kids have been making headlines as the creators of Air Head, one of the first short movies developed using Sora, the highly debated text-to-video model by OpenAI.
In this interview with Walter, we discuss the experience of working with Sora, the origins of their collaboration with OpenAI, and the inspiration behind the course.
We also delve into the relationship between artificial intelligence and creativity, exploring the role AI will play in the arts in the coming years.
Tune in to listen to the full episode!
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https://amzn.to/4bWxpUD
https://amzn.to/4c1cHDj
🛠 Suggested tool:
https://www.moleskine.com/
👍 Follow our guest here:
https://www.shy-kids.com/
https://www.instagram.com/shykids_/
https://www.youtube.com/@shykids
🧲 Watch my free lead generation course:
https://gaito.link/skillshare
🤖 Watch my free ChatGPT course:
https://skl.sh/3ZKHFcV
🙏 Subscribe to the channel:
https://gaito.link/subscribe
📚 Download the Reading List:
https://gaito.link/gtbooks
Walter and his team have collaborated with industry giants such as Netflix, HBO, MTV, Disney, and many more.
Recently, shy kids have been making headlines as the creators of Air Head, one of the first short movies developed using Sora, the highly debated text-to-video model by OpenAI.
In this interview with Walter, we discuss the experience of working with Sora, the origins of their collaboration with OpenAI, and the inspiration behind the course.
We also delve into the relationship between artificial intelligence and creativity, exploring the role AI will play in the arts in the coming years.
Tune in to listen to the full episode!
📚 Suggested book:
https://amzn.to/3R2xNZC
https://amzn.to/3wWcNNw
https://amzn.to/4bWxpUD
https://amzn.to/4c1cHDj
🛠 Suggested tool:
https://www.moleskine.com/
👍 Follow our guest here:
https://www.shy-kids.com/
https://www.instagram.com/shykids_/
https://www.youtube.com/@shykids
🧲 Watch my free lead generation course:
https://gaito.link/skillshare
🤖 Watch my free ChatGPT course:
https://skl.sh/3ZKHFcV
🙏 Subscribe to the channel:
https://gaito.link/subscribe
📚 Download the Reading List:
https://gaito.link/gtbooks
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Show everyone, and welcome back toGrowth Talks. My name is Raphaele Guid.
I'm your host and my guest todayis Walter Woodman from Shy Kids.
So Walter, how are you,Shaola? I'm good, how are you?
Very good and super excited about thisconversation. So thanks for your for
(00:23):
your time. We usually start hereon podcast with a with a simple one
with a classics. So what's yourstory? I mean Walter's story, but
you know your company as well,Shay Kids story totally. So I'm Walter.
I'm one of the members in ShyKids. UH. Our story begins
(00:45):
in university in Toronto, Canada.Most of us were sort of in film
school and we uh. The waythat we met was very peculiar. One
day there was a talent show goingon and the people who were performing their
(01:06):
talents were very not good. AndI looked to my side and I saw
somebody from my class named Patrick thatI vaguely kind of knew, and I
was like, Patrick, do youhave any talents? Because I think if
we performed anything, I think wewould win. And he's like, I
can play guitar, and so Isaid, oh, well, what song
(01:27):
can you play? And he said, baby got Back the Sir Mix a
Lot Classic, and so I coincidentallyknew all the words to that one,
and so we got up and playedthe song and we actually won the talent
show. And so that's when wesort of started our friendship, and that's
(01:52):
when we started to just jam together, and then we would start to add
our other friends and we would startto make music. And really that's what
our plan was to be, wasto be a band. We had made
albums and all this kind of stuff, and it was in our last year
(02:14):
at university that we made a shortfilm called Noah, and Noah was one
of the first films that was setentirely on a computer screen. And so
that year at won Tiff and itwon all of these awards and it was
premiered online and millions of people gotto watch it, and so we were
(02:36):
like, ah, well, wecan still do music, but maybe we
should see if this film thing islike if it can work out, And
so from there we began sort ofmaking films and working on other people's films
and all of this kind of stuff. Essentially did that for quite a few
(02:58):
years, and then most recently wehad a film called Airhead premiere, which
that was another interesting story. Youcan cut me off, and that should
I should keeping that. That's totallyfine. We are going to talk about
in a minute. I just wantedto understand what's today the you know,
(03:21):
the are you still doing both musicand video making and films? Uh?
And how do you find the spacefor for in the time for both?
Yeah, we do still make music, and in fact, I think some
of our most recent music is someof our best. We have a new
(03:46):
album coming out pretty soon. AndI think the way that we've managed to
do both is that music has alwaysbeen more of a purely creative outlet.
We never took music as like,this is how we're going to make a
living, this is how we're goingto make our money. It was always
(04:09):
something that was more creative and moreyou know, there was just less expectations
put on it. So we wouldmake our money with film, and music
kind of represented, at least tome, an outlet for creativity. And
(04:30):
I think that the way that wedo it both is different ideas require different
mediums, and a song is anamazing medium to tell a story or to
capture a feeling, and so yeah, some things just work better as songs,
(04:53):
and some things work better as films, and so I think that's how
we managed to balance both. AndI will also say that making films is
generally, in my opinion, justmore of an immediate It's more of an
a sorry. Making songs, it'sjust more immediate. It's like a song
(05:15):
either works or it doesn't. It'spretty quick. Whereas a film you work
on it and you craft it andshape it and shape it and shape it,
whereas you do the same with songs. But it's a little more I
think immediate, or it's a littlemore like to the point I love it,
(05:39):
and you anticipate about Airhead. Andand this is how I got to
know your studio, your your company. I'm a huge fun of you know
what's happening with AI. I'm always, you know, reading the latest news
and trying to follow the trains.I want to know how it started.
(06:05):
So the beginning of the project Airhead, so it was open the eye that
reached it to you. It wasyour idea how it started. Sure.
So so yeah, like we said, we made movies. We made films,
and a lot of the films thatwe would make was helping other people.
(06:27):
So we do a lot of editingand animation, and we would do
a lot of helping of our friendsor they would make a documentary and it
would need animations or things like that. And so one of those things that
we helped on was we have friendsat a company called Pressman Film that make
amazing films and one of the filmsthat they made was one called Dolly Land
(06:49):
and that was about the life ofSalvador Dhali and their film was premiering at
TIFF and they needed someone to makean installation at the main lobby of the
Saint Regis Hotel, which is actuallywhere Salvador Dolli lived. So they didn't
know anyone in Toronto except for us, and they said, hey, can
(07:10):
you make an installation, which isnot something we've ever done. That was
the only installation we've ever made andcontinues to be that. But essentially,
we made the lobby look like SalvadorDolly's studio and there was a piece of
canvas that you could go up tosomebody and sort of ask them to you
(07:39):
know, you would imagine up thissort of surrealist painting and then it would
be projected onto the canvas. Andthe way that we made the surrealist painting
in the installation was using Dolli,the open Ai software. So that's when
some of the open Ai team cameto visit our installation and they were so
(08:05):
impressed with our producer and the workthat we had done. They had never
heard of us before, and that'swhen our producer, Sydney, sent them
a bunch of our work and theysaw that our work was about technology or
using new technologies. So they invitedus into something called the Artist group.
(08:26):
And in the Artist Group we wouldjust talk to people and communicate with others
and all this kind of stuff.And it was we saw Sora the same
time everyone else those first images ofthe dog and the girl walking in Japan.
And around that time is when theytapped us on the shoulder and said,
hey, would you like to trySora. Would you like to use
(08:48):
it? And we said, ofcourse, we would love to. They
said, well, you're very activein our artist group and come use it.
Let us know what you think.And we made Airhead as a almost
like a research project. The imagesthat it made were so beautiful, but
(09:09):
we said, okay, well howdo you make this into a story,
Like, how do you turn thisinto a story. And one of the
things that we thought is a characterthat doesn't have a consistent face is going
to be hard to empathize with.So we said, what if we took
away the face, what if insteadthey just had a balloon for his ahead
(09:31):
And that's when we kind of cameup with the idea. And we just
kept iterating on that idea. Oh, what is he scared of? What
is he? What does he dofor fun? All this kind of stuff,
And we made the film rather quickly, and we showed it to the
Open AI research team and they werereally blown away. How you can you
(09:52):
know, turn these images into anactual story once you add music and voiceover
and all these different things. Soyeah, so that's how that's how it
came to be. This is fascinating. I have the Open Eye blog here
on my laptop and there is thissentence. I don't know which one of
(10:16):
you said this, I'm quoting.So we now have the ability to expand
on stories we once thought impossible.Ah, And this was really fascinating for
me. It kind of blew mymind because I have saw something of your
work on YouTube. You've always beenvery open to innovation and technology and use
(10:43):
of technology into making films and videos. What do you mean with that?
So the ability to expand our storieswe once thought impossible. Well, I
think most stories tellers probably have abook or a folder on their computer of
(11:03):
ideas that they that they love,but for one reason or another, they
can't make it happen. And sometimesthat reason is, oh, the studios
don't want it for whatever reason,and sometimes that reason is, oh,
(11:24):
we don't have enough money to makeit, and things like that, and
there's all these film is very prohibitive. It's a miracle that anything gets made.
And so actually the guy with aballoon for head was just like a
drawing that I had in a book, just like a sketch that was like
a fun sketch. And I don'tknow if that film would ever exist unless
(11:46):
I had that ability to make that, to do that, And for me,
I think that that's what's really exciting. I think that there's a lot
of talk about money and job andall of this kind of thing, and
like there's a very little talk aboutthat film is prohibitive, prohibitively expensive,
(12:09):
and now a lot of filmmakers won'thave to go through all these gatekeepers to
show what they are trying to makeand they can instead make something or make
a proof of concept, and thenthey can take that proof of concept and
go, you know, what doyou think and instead of trying to convince
people for money to then make aproof of concept, that you can just
(12:33):
skip that step and we can makean in depth proof of concept. We
could release that proof of concept onlineand it can show that there's an audience
for something. And so I thinkthat's one element of it. It's just
things that would have never existed cannow exist. That's like one part.
I think. The other part isI think as filmmakers you're always trying to
(12:58):
like over your limitations. We're avery small studio from Toronto, but we
pack a mighty punch with the innovativeways we use technology or anything like,
the innovative ways we look at things. And so I think that I think
(13:20):
that what will be really exciting isnot trying to like create reality with AI,
but to create a new sort ofI don't know, abstract reality or
like hyper reality or something like that. And I'm not exactly sure what that
(13:41):
means. I know for us itmeant a guy with a balloon for his
head. But yeah, That's justwhat's exciting to me is that I think
before a lot of the times,when you're a filmmaker, you have to
think within your limitations. You haveto go, oh, well, I
know someone with an old house,so maybe we'll make a movie about an
(14:03):
old spooky house or something. Andmy hope is now that people's ideas,
even people on the you know,smaller scale, their ideas don't have to
be limited by what they have accessto. I mean, that's still always
going to be the case. You'restill always going to have to work within
your limitations. And I don't thinklimitations are a bad thing, but I
(14:28):
just think that like always, LikeI was just talking with someone the other
day, how Sean Baker one canand Sean Baker started with a film that
he shot on an iPhone, youknow, And so I feel as though
these types of creatives are going to, as they always do, see ways
(14:48):
to use the technology and sort ofexciting and interesting ways. And that's what
really excites me, is like thelimit are just going to be how much
you want to put into something,as opposed to more stringent, boring limitations
like money and these types of things. It's like having a new tool in
(15:13):
your toolbox. Is that right?Totally? Yeah, it's certainly a tool
to have in your toolbox. It'sthe same as like people who are really
good at after effects can really helpyour independent production really good, or someone
who's really good at premiere, orsomeone who's really good at photoshop. I
think that like having people that understandthese things can bring something new to your
(15:39):
film, but not for everyone.I think some films don't need that at
all. Some people are just amazingwith a camera or amazing with lighting,
and that's not going to go away. But there's just now new ways for
people to express themselves, which I'mreally supportive of. An excited about and
(16:03):
yeah, it made our heads feellike balloons, how they were expanding with
ideas. You know, hmm.I want to connect for a moment with
something that you just said before.I'm still quoting from an Opening Eye blog
and there was this sentence here thatI loved it. So. As great
as sorry is to generate in thingsthat appear real, what excited us is
(16:29):
its ability to make things that aretotally surreal. A new era of abstract
expressionism. People from all over theworld with stories really to burst out of
the chest finally have the opportunity toshow the word what's inside. And this
new era of abstract expressionism, howdo you imagine it? Well, I
(16:57):
think part of the reason for sayingthat is, like I loved art history
when I was going to film school, and you know, you learn about
art through the ages, and reallyit was the invention of the film camera
and the proliferation of the film camerathat allowed for abstraction to really take over
(17:21):
the art world. Because what happenedwas once you could develop film, no
longer was it a painter's job tosort of recreate reality, you know,
that was their job. It waslike you painted a portrait of someone,
or you painted a portrait of aplay or a landscape, place or whatever.
Then the camera came and then itwas like, well we can do
(17:41):
that. Now, we can dothat instantly you click a button, shutter,
boom, you're there. So Ithink the same is true about film,
Like you can conjure up now images, even with Dolly or mid Journey
or whatever. You can conjure thesethings up. But then it's sort of
like, okay, well, what'sthe story there, or like you know,
(18:03):
when you look at Van Go,it's like, it's not just about
the sunflowers, it's not just abouta building and a starry night. It's
about the way that that building makesyou feel. There's something deeper about the
than just the object that's in frontof you. It's like the object has
a soul and it has a feeling. And I think that's going to be
(18:26):
really interesting because once you can justkind of make whatever you want, I
think, then the question really becomes, Okay, well, why did you
pick that thing? Why did youwant to paint that or that? Or
why did you want to film thator that. You have to have more
justification in why you're choosing to dosomething, because when you can do anything,
(18:49):
then it really matters what you doand why you pick it. Why
Salvador Dali picked the lobster telephone andnot the clam telephone, or why Andy
Warhol painted soup cans Campbell soup cansand not I don't know, a different
type of soupcan. I think it'slike very important to understand why you're choosing
(19:11):
things. And I think that myhope is that that's what this will make
people do more, is think moreabout their choices, because I think that
as artist that's our job is tomake informed choices. And yeah, I
(19:33):
just think that it allows for uslike to make new worlds. It's kind
of like we don't need to makethe world that we already see that's already
there. Yeah. If you areenjoying this episode, please check out my
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(19:56):
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(20:19):
one of the main discussions about thesenew tools, uh, the gen Ai
tools that we are using in thelast year and a half or you know,
seeing demos online. One of themain discussions is about the role of
creativity. You know, there isa whole discussion about these tools are going
(20:44):
to kill our creativities. Everything isgonna look the same. No one is
going to be you know, creativeanymore. We're gonna be stupid and whatever.
What's your take on that. Howdo you imagine the relationship between you
know, creativity and the general DAItools. Yeah, I mean, like
(21:07):
I don't know if people were lookingaround before jen Ai tools, But I
think you could argue that people havebeen saying the same thing, Like people
said the same thing about cell phones, and it's like, yeah, everyone
now has a camera in their pocket. But is everyone a photographer? I
don't know. I don't think thatthey are. And everyone has the ability
(21:32):
to make videos now, but iseveryone a director? Is everyone a filmmaker?
I don't know. It's the sameas everyone has a pen, doesn't
necessarily make you a writer. Andit's my belief that I think writers and
directors and all of these people pokethrough and they their work transcends the time
(21:57):
that they're in. That's what theytry to do. And I just think
that's such a cynical way of viewingart and viewing life. I think that
I think a few things. Ithink in a time where images can be
(22:18):
generated easily, that's going to puta higher premium on people who can do
things like painting, people who cando things like writing at a typewriter.
And I think also it's going tomake new forms of art. What's the
person who makes an image in midjourney, screenprints it onto a canvas and
(22:40):
then paints over it, or what'sthe person who whatever. There's like infinite
amount of ways to mix and matchand use things and use tools, and
I just think it's like really reductiveto be like art is dead. Like
people have been saying art is deadfor the last two thousand years, Like
(23:06):
in the Renaissance they say art isdead, and the like every single era
people say art is dead, andlike, I just think it's they're always
wrong, every single time they're wrong. And you know, people said that
cinema was going to destroy plays andacting and live theater, and now people
are saying that AI is going todestroy cinema. It's like, really is
(23:30):
that? Like I don't think thatart is ever meant to destroy. I
think art is meant to birth anew. And I also know that in most
major metropolitans you're in London, Ibet you if you went to the theater
district on a Tuesday night tonight,every single show would be sold out,
every single every single like Broadway showwould be there. The movie theaters would
(23:56):
would be running. Like I Ijust think it's like it's a it's a
Really, you just sound old tome. You just sound like old and
boring. And if you don't likethese tools, don't use them. And
if you don't like them, don'tsupport anyone who does. I think that
there's going to be tons of artistswho go I am actively not using AI,
(24:22):
and by the way, I supportthat person. I think that they
should. I think that Studio Ghiblishould reject computers, you know. I
think that people should reject computers ifit's not for them, because I don't
want to push anyone to do somethingthat's not honest to them. I want
(24:42):
people to make something that's honest andtrue. And I think for some people
that's going to include AI or newtechnologies or computers or whatever. And I
think for some people it's going toreject all of those technologies. And I
believe that there's room for both,lots of room for both, and I
(25:03):
love both. I love art that'smade in a totally new way, and
I also love films that are shoton film, and I love going to
go see film screenings where it's aseventy millimeter print of the film. I
love that there's room for both wedon't need to have this like it's AI
(25:26):
and everything dies or it's the classic, and we must hold on to this
like conservative idea of what art is. Like we're not still cutting movies on
film, Like in film school theytaught us to actually cut the film.
Like when you say cutting a film, it was legally literally cutting it,
(25:49):
literally splicing it together, taping it, and like what an important lesson that
is. And I think if youdon't understand those things, AI is like
going to be a waste of yourtime, because like you must understand the
like the rituals and the way thatthese things work. But yeah, I
(26:11):
just like I'm more optimistic and hopefuland I just know that, like I
still shoot on film. I'm theguy at Niagara Customs Lab, which is
where you get your film developed.It's the one place in Toronto that you
can get like film movies developed.And it's like I'm still going there and
(26:37):
I still love that, and Istill think that there's room for that.
But maybe I want to take thesuper eight film that I've developed and put
AI over it. What does thatlook like or what? Like I just
think that there's ways to different combinationsof flavors that we can try and we
can expand upon, and I'm justopen to that. I'm open to seeing
(27:00):
where that brings us. Yeah,I think that's probably the most important takeaway.
It's what you just said, thatthere is room for both. I
was reading a few days ago howwhen photography was invented, there were painters
saying, oh, photography is gonnakill painting. There is no soul in
(27:22):
photography. The process is completely different. We are the true artists nowadays.
We respect both of them. Sowe respect, you know, painters and
photography. And I suppose it wasthe same maybe with I don't know electronic
music. You know, if youwant to go to a concert and I
don't know, listen to some electronicmusic, you can do that. But
you can also have a Jats Knightand go super classical. And yeah,
(27:45):
I mean, like, I don'tlike EDM at all. I think it
sucks. I think it's quantized.I think it sucks. But I've also
been to EDM shows that I reallylove, or I also since a Daft
punk and they're amazing. And sofor me to say that electronic music sucks
(28:06):
on a whole is like wrong,because you're definitely gonna find some electronic music
that you like. And yeah,Like I think what's really funny is like
you look to twenty years ago andpeople are talking about CGI, how CGI
is ruining movies and how CGI islike gonna be the death of cinema,
(28:27):
And now the talk when we're talkingabout AI is Oh my god, all
the CGI jobs are gonna go away. It's like, well, what is
it? Like, what which oneis it? And like for me,
I personally like when I watch whenI see the big Spectacle movies that come
(28:52):
out, whatever Aquaman two or something, Aquaman eight. So much money in
technology goes in to making those movies, but in my personal opinion, they
lack a story. And that's thereal question is like what is your story?
Not what technology are you using,but what is your story? And
(29:12):
I don't care if you use atrumpet or a synthesizer or a guitar.
What's your story? What's your song? That that's the important thing for me
personally. Yeah, I wanted toask, you know, doing the process
of doing Airhead, what was thewow moment with Sora? I mean so
(29:41):
many seeing those first images that sortaproduced was pretty wow. Seeing a guy
with a balloon for his head,and the balloon sort of had reflections and
bobbled like it didn't just move whatever. It kind of like had like a
wobble to it. But I thinkthat, you know what's funny, the
(30:06):
wow moment is almost easy. Themoment that I think is more interesting is
the like I'm bored moment where youknow, I think we've all experienced this
because we've all used chat chipet nowwhere first ten minutes, write me a
poem about my cat whatever, andit writes you this poem. Okay,
(30:33):
write this poem, but you're DonaldTrump or whatever it is, writes the
poem, and then ten fifteen minutesin you start to go like, well,
it's kind of just doing a impression. It's almost like a Halloween costume
of these things. And of coursethat's going to get better. We're still
(30:56):
in an infancy. But I thinkthat that wow fact or fades and then
you've got to ask yourself, Okay, well, what is what am I
actually trying to do here? Becauseif everyone can just say write a poem
about whatever, that's not really poetry. The poetry comes from you and comes
from your heart and your soul.And you can take things and pick apart
(31:18):
things and move things around. Butyeah, I just believe that that gets
kind of tedious, Like when everyonecan do that, it's just kind of
boring. It's just kind of likenothing. So you have to find out
what's in your soul and you haveto get to that. Yeah, I
(31:40):
think that that for me is likeI don't know, that's just for me
that that moment is kind of moreinteresting than the wow moment, is like
the moment where you realize, oh, yeah, right, this is just
something that's going to be part ofour toolkit that we're going to use and
it's as useful as I want tomake it. Yeah, you have it,
(32:04):
you know what, it works,And then you ask yourself and now
what? Now? Now what?And now what? And that's that's the
question. And that's the question thatlike artists have been asking since the dawn
of time, and that's the questionthat no matter how good the technology gets,
they're still going to be asking thatquestion. And I believe that I
(32:37):
believe that that that that question islike the real hard thing that no AI
is going to ever solve. Didyou ask yourself that question once you had
a sora in front of you.Yeah, totally. Even more so.
I mean when Airhead comes out andall the people are telling you to kill
(33:00):
yourself and that you're the death ofart, maybe for a second you start
to believe it. You start togo, am I am I doing the
right thing? Does this feel good? Does this feel as good as going
out and shooting something or doing somethinglike that? And the answer to that
(33:21):
is very obviously yes, And thatyou can't let other people's opinions of doing
of what you're doing like affect yourart because I know how I feel and
I know how I approached that project, and that's what matters. And that's
the thing that matters. What otherpeople perceive your art, that's like they
(33:45):
can do that, that's their opinion. I think the harder thing is you
need to be justified in yourself whyyou're doing things. And of course that
question comes to you the same asusing chat ept You're like, is this
am I actually writing here? AndI think that very quickly you realize like,
(34:09):
yes, I have this extremely powerfultool that can do so much.
But realistically, it's only when we'rein conversation with the technology that anything actually
good comes out of it. Whenit's just you technology, give me answer,
technology, give you answer, copypaste. That's like that never works.
(34:36):
That doesn't feel satisfying, and theart isn't going to be satisfying.
So anyone who's thinking like that,that's when I think you have to dig
a little bit deeper and search alittle bit harder. Yeah, A few
weeks after it was a few weeksafter I had you released a second video
(35:02):
deflated. What was the whole ideabehind it deflated? We wanted to do
two things. We wanted to combinelive action and like traditional live action shooting
(35:23):
with soura generated images, and wealso kind of wanted to like make fun
of the reaction to the film,like it was so big and so overwhelming,
and we kept thinking about, ah, like let's do a sequel,
(35:45):
let's follow it up, and likeit would be really hard, I think,
to try to make something that's thesame tone as that, And so
we didn't try that. What wedid instead was said, let's go in
a completely opposite direction. Let's makea comedy and let's make fun of everyone
(36:07):
hyping this thing up so big.And I think that we were making fun
of our character on one level andon another level. I think we were
making fun of the hype in general. It's like, you know, this
thing that's expanding and expanding and growingso famous and big, and like it's
(36:29):
just it's just a lot of hotair, to be honest with you,
And yeah, I think that Ithink that that was the main thing that
we just, yeah, we wejust wanted to kind of make fun of
(36:49):
where we were as well as justtry new techniques. And again, the
criticisms of the first film were youdidn't shoot anything, this is whatever.
So we're like, okay, welllet's go shoot something like you know,
like that's our way to respond tothings, is like we could argue on
Twitter. I don't know where thatgets anyone. Instead, why don't we
(37:12):
just make some more art? Andit's funny. The response to Deflated,
I kind of feel like we shutup the haters, or maybe it just
wasn't as big like the first one. There's a lot more hype around something,
but the second one, the overallreactions were kind of like, oh
(37:36):
wow, they kind of shut meup in a way like that that because
we address the haters directly, it'slike we hear, we hear you,
we understand what you're saying, weunderstand that the thing has too many fingers
on its hands. Like we understandthose criticisms and we hear them. We
(37:57):
just think that or make an art. So h you know, and do
you do? You do you seeyourself as a studio, I mean as
a company production company using SOA againin the future for new projects. Hopefully,
(38:20):
hopefully we have been working on moreprojects, but it's not right for
every project. I think that someprojects are going to require SORA. In
some projects it's totally going to beinappropriate, and I think it's really up
to you as an artist to figureout that balance. Mm hmm. Just
(38:45):
as I said before, if you'reshooting a movie and you want to use
you know film, or you Idon't know, recording a song and you
want to use a guitar or youknow, synth or whatever, Walter.
We usually end these conversations here withtwo quick and simple questions. If you
(39:07):
want to share with my audience anycool books and tools, So let's start
with books. Do you have anyrecommendations something that you are reading right now
or something that was important for you, know, your vision, your work
or whatever. Any books? Yeah? I love books. So much,
(39:29):
so, I have so many.I love the fiction of Alexander Weinstein.
He wrote two books, Children ofthe New World and Universal Love. I
would highly recommend that short stories abouta near future. They're funny and they're
(39:52):
brilliant, and they're really digestible.You can really read them, and they're
just great. Uh. I've beenreading a lot of philosophy books. There
is one by Mark Kingwell. Ibelieve it's called uh Singular Creatures, and
(40:20):
it is all about the advent ofAI and sort of a very philosophical approach
to AI and the thinking behind AI. I have been reading a book by
Belle Hooks. It's called is itcalled All about Love? Hold on,
(40:42):
let me just double check that's righthere two seconds, I leave all the
links in the description. Yeah,please bell Hooks, give her more book
sales, even though I think she'spastor Yeah, that is a book about
(41:06):
love. But from a very distinctiveperspective, I would say Bell Hooks is
just an unbelievable writer on the femalegaze, on women, on the way
that we perceive things like film,and her book on love is just unbelievable.
(41:34):
It's a it's it's so it's ait's it's unbelievable, unbelievable way to
look at the world and think.But yeah, those would be the things
that I have read the most,and I would highly suggest all of them.
And that's another thing I would highlysuggest, as people understand philosophy.
(41:57):
If you don't understand philosophy, yourfilm will not understand philosophy. So I
think you should understand philosophy, orat least try. I can't say I
understand all of what bell Hooks issaying, but I try. Nice.
I leave all the links in thedescription below. What about tools? Do
you have any tools that you reallylove that you use every day that are
(42:20):
like very important for your job oryour creativity or managing your projects. Yeah.
You know, ironically you would probablythink that I would say an AI
tool or something like this, Butactually the thing that I find most helpful
(42:45):
is notebooks, like a mole skinnotebook. Super fun. So oh yeah,
I got mine too. I havea question for you. Do you
use lines or no lines? Letme show you. No lines, no
(43:08):
lines, no rules, baby fuckinglines, no rules, no rules.
Yeah, I hate the lines aswell. It's like it's so like my
parents get me like a book andif it has lines, I'm like,
I can't, I can't do this. This isn't the way it is.
But for me that's the most importanttool ever, because I think sometimes when
(43:34):
you like focus and write on acomputer, it's quite limiting and there's so
many distractions, whereas with a notebook, especially one without lines, you can
be really free and you can reallydraw your ideas and go. And what
I've been doing recently is taking Iwould then scan my notebook and then put
(43:57):
it into chat ept or something likethat and be like translate it, like
translate this, So that's really funthing to do. Is sort of like
brainstorm, not on a computer,very analog, and then if you need
to convert it into analog, there'slike lots of ways to do that now,
which is like really I think veryhelpful for me. I love this
(44:24):
mix of old school stuff and AI. I love it. Yeah, that's
to me. The true future islike if everything's all AI, I think
that's gonna be kind of like notgood. But when you can write your
notes in a notebook and feel theink on the pen and then convert that
(44:46):
into a spreadsheet or a Google docor or whatever, I think that's going
to be a really Yeah. Thatexcites me a lot. Yeah, Walter,
do you want to share with usany links where they can follow you,
see your stuff, your work.I will leave all the links in
(45:10):
the description. Yeah. We havea YouTube channel that's where we put a
lot of our films up. Wehave an Instagram that we use somewhat regularly.
We have a TikTok that basically wejust used to send weird videos to
our friends, but sometimes we poststuff on there. We have a Twitter,
(45:35):
and we have our own website,shy dash kids dot com, which
most of our work should be upthere. We try to update it as
regularly as possible, but I wouldsay Instagram is definitely probably our most active
social media and dm us if youhave any more questions like Raphael did,
(45:58):
and we'd be happy to to talkto you. We need nice love that.
Well, thank you very much foryour time. This was great.
I love this. Oh, thankyou man. It's it's so nice to
talk to you and great questions.I love people asking about books. No
one asks about that. So whatare you reading? Ah? Wow?
(46:21):
This is fortunately this is Italian isone of my favorite artists. What's it
called? Zero? Calcare. Hehas two amazing show on Netflix that are
translated in English as well, soif you want to say his work,
I know the Italian name, notthe English name, but if you search
(46:45):
for zero Calcare, the best oneis stra Parlungu Bordi and I'm reading this
one now. I'm also reading thethird part of the trilogy of three Body
Problem. I don't know if youwatch the the TV show Netflix. I
wish the first season, and thenI went directly to the books. So
(47:07):
now I'm reading the last one andsomeone just gave me this one yesterday,
so I'm going to start this onein a few days. Digital Body Language.
Do you like graphic novels? Yeah, if you like graphic novels,
there's a guy and maybe you've heardof him. His name is Nick Dronasso.
(47:28):
Have you heard of this guy?Will google it? He did.
He did a few different books.There's one called Beverly, which was okay.
There's one called Sabrina which was unbelievable. I think it was nominated for
a Pulitzer Prize. Wow. Andthen there's one called Acting Class, which
(47:49):
is his most recent, which Iheard that ari Astor bought the rights to
turn it into a film. Nice. If you like ari Astor and that
kind of filmmaking, maybe that bookis something you might like. Graphic novel,
really interesting, kind of I don'twant to say boring art style,
(48:10):
but kind of this like very plain, yeah, trying, but very beautiful.
But please send me those links aswell, because I will, I
will, I will will, Iwill for sure. Again, thank you
very much. This was great.Thanks for listening to this episode of the
podcast. I hope you enjoyed itand you learned something new. Make sure
to subscribe to us on YouTube andSpotify to stay updated on new episodes.
(48:36):
With your support, I can continueto bring great content a great guest to
this podcast, So hit the subscribebutton now and I'll see you in the
next episode.
Show everyone, and welcome back toGrowth Talks. My name is Raphaele Guid.
I'm your host and my guest todayis Walter Woodman from Shy Kids.
So Walter, how are you,Shaola? I'm good, how are you?
Very good and super excited about thisconversation. So thanks for your for
(00:23):
your time. We usually start hereon podcast with a with a simple one
with a classics. So what's yourstory? I mean Walter's story, but
you know your company as well,Shay Kids story totally. So I'm Walter.
I'm one of the members in ShyKids. UH. Our story begins
(00:45):
in university in Toronto, Canada.Most of us were sort of in film
school and we uh. The waythat we met was very peculiar. One
day there was a talent show goingon and the people who were performing their
(01:06):
talents were very not good. AndI looked to my side and I saw
somebody from my class named Patrick thatI vaguely kind of knew, and I
was like, Patrick, do youhave any talents? Because I think if
we performed anything, I think wewould win. And he's like, I
can play guitar, and so Isaid, oh, well, what song
(01:27):
can you play? And he said, baby got Back the Sir Mix a
Lot Classic, and so I coincidentallyknew all the words to that one,
and so we got up and playedthe song and we actually won the talent
show. And so that's when wesort of started our friendship, and that's
(01:52):
when we started to just jam together, and then we would start to add
our other friends and we would startto make music. And really that's what
our plan was to be, wasto be a band. We had made
albums and all this kind of stuff, and it was in our last year
(02:14):
at university that we made a shortfilm called Noah, and Noah was one
of the first films that was setentirely on a computer screen. And so
that year at won Tiff and itwon all of these awards and it was
premiered online and millions of people gotto watch it, and so we were
(02:36):
like, ah, well, wecan still do music, but maybe we
should see if this film thing islike if it can work out, And
so from there we began sort ofmaking films and working on other people's films
and all of this kind of stuff. Essentially did that for quite a few
(02:58):
years, and then most recently wehad a film called Airhead premiere, which
that was another interesting story. Youcan cut me off, and that should
I should keeping that. That's totallyfine. We are going to talk about
in a minute. I just wantedto understand what's today the you know,
(03:21):
the are you still doing both musicand video making and films? Uh?
And how do you find the spacefor for in the time for both?
Yeah, we do still make music, and in fact, I think some
of our most recent music is someof our best. We have a new
(03:46):
album coming out pretty soon. AndI think the way that we've managed to
do both is that music has alwaysbeen more of a purely creative outlet.
We never took music as like,this is how we're going to make a
living, this is how we're goingto make our money. It was always
(04:09):
something that was more creative and moreyou know, there was just less expectations
put on it. So we wouldmake our money with film, and music
kind of represented, at least tome, an outlet for creativity. And
(04:30):
I think that the way that wedo it both is different ideas require different
mediums, and a song is anamazing medium to tell a story or to
capture a feeling, and so yeah, some things just work better as songs,
(04:53):
and some things work better as films, and so I think that's how
we managed to balance both. AndI will also say that making films is
generally, in my opinion, justmore of an immediate It's more of an
a sorry. Making songs, it'sjust more immediate. It's like a song
(05:15):
either works or it doesn't. It'spretty quick. Whereas a film you work
on it and you craft it andshape it and shape it and shape it,
whereas you do the same with songs. But it's a little more I
think immediate, or it's a littlemore like to the point I love it,
(05:39):
and you anticipate about Airhead. Andand this is how I got to
know your studio, your your company. I'm a huge fun of you know
what's happening with AI. I'm always, you know, reading the latest news
and trying to follow the trains.I want to know how it started.
(06:05):
So the beginning of the project Airhead, so it was open the eye that
reached it to you. It wasyour idea how it started. Sure.
So so yeah, like we said, we made movies. We made films,
and a lot of the films thatwe would make was helping other people.
(06:27):
So we do a lot of editingand animation, and we would do
a lot of helping of our friendsor they would make a documentary and it
would need animations or things like that. And so one of those things that
we helped on was we have friendsat a company called Pressman Film that make
amazing films and one of the filmsthat they made was one called Dolly Land
(06:49):
and that was about the life ofSalvador Dhali and their film was premiering at
TIFF and they needed someone to makean installation at the main lobby of the
Saint Regis Hotel, which is actuallywhere Salvador Dolli lived. So they didn't
know anyone in Toronto except for us, and they said, hey, can
(07:10):
you make an installation, which isnot something we've ever done. That was
the only installation we've ever made andcontinues to be that. But essentially,
we made the lobby look like SalvadorDolly's studio and there was a piece of
canvas that you could go up tosomebody and sort of ask them to you
(07:39):
know, you would imagine up thissort of surrealist painting and then it would
be projected onto the canvas. Andthe way that we made the surrealist painting
in the installation was using Dolli,the open Ai software. So that's when
some of the open Ai team cameto visit our installation and they were so
(08:05):
impressed with our producer and the workthat we had done. They had never
heard of us before, and that'swhen our producer, Sydney, sent them
a bunch of our work and theysaw that our work was about technology or
using new technologies. So they invitedus into something called the Artist group.
(08:26):
And in the Artist Group we wouldjust talk to people and communicate with others
and all this kind of stuff.And it was we saw Sora the same
time everyone else those first images ofthe dog and the girl walking in Japan.
And around that time is when theytapped us on the shoulder and said,
hey, would you like to trySora. Would you like to use
(08:48):
it? And we said, ofcourse, we would love to. They
said, well, you're very activein our artist group and come use it.
Let us know what you think.And we made Airhead as a almost
like a research project. The imagesthat it made were so beautiful, but
(09:09):
we said, okay, well howdo you make this into a story,
Like, how do you turn thisinto a story. And one of the
things that we thought is a characterthat doesn't have a consistent face is going
to be hard to empathize with.So we said, what if we took
away the face, what if insteadthey just had a balloon for his ahead
(09:31):
And that's when we kind of cameup with the idea. And we just
kept iterating on that idea. Oh, what is he scared of? What
is he? What does he dofor fun? All this kind of stuff,
And we made the film rather quickly, and we showed it to the
Open AI research team and they werereally blown away. How you can you
(09:52):
know, turn these images into anactual story once you add music and voiceover
and all these different things. Soyeah, so that's how that's how it
came to be. This is fascinating. I have the Open Eye blog here
on my laptop and there is thissentence. I don't know which one of
(10:16):
you said this, I'm quoting.So we now have the ability to expand
on stories we once thought impossible.Ah, And this was really fascinating for
me. It kind of blew mymind because I have saw something of your
work on YouTube. You've always beenvery open to innovation and technology and use
(10:43):
of technology into making films and videos. What do you mean with that?
So the ability to expand our storieswe once thought impossible. Well, I
think most stories tellers probably have abook or a folder on their computer of
(11:03):
ideas that they that they love,but for one reason or another, they
can't make it happen. And sometimesthat reason is, oh, the studios
don't want it for whatever reason,and sometimes that reason is, oh,
(11:24):
we don't have enough money to makeit, and things like that, and
there's all these film is very prohibitive. It's a miracle that anything gets made.
And so actually the guy with aballoon for head was just like a
drawing that I had in a book, just like a sketch that was like
a fun sketch. And I don'tknow if that film would ever exist unless
(11:46):
I had that ability to make that, to do that, And for me,
I think that that's what's really exciting. I think that there's a lot
of talk about money and job andall of this kind of thing, and
like there's a very little talk aboutthat film is prohibitive, prohibitively expensive,
(12:09):
and now a lot of filmmakers won'thave to go through all these gatekeepers to
show what they are trying to makeand they can instead make something or make
a proof of concept, and thenthey can take that proof of concept and
go, you know, what doyou think and instead of trying to convince
people for money to then make aproof of concept, that you can just
(12:33):
skip that step and we can makean in depth proof of concept. We
could release that proof of concept onlineand it can show that there's an audience
for something. And so I thinkthat's one element of it. It's just
things that would have never existed cannow exist. That's like one part.
I think. The other part isI think as filmmakers you're always trying to
(12:58):
like over your limitations. We're avery small studio from Toronto, but we
pack a mighty punch with the innovativeways we use technology or anything like,
the innovative ways we look at things. And so I think that I think
(13:20):
that what will be really exciting isnot trying to like create reality with AI,
but to create a new sort ofI don't know, abstract reality or
like hyper reality or something like that. And I'm not exactly sure what that
(13:41):
means. I know for us itmeant a guy with a balloon for his
head. But yeah, That's justwhat's exciting to me is that I think
before a lot of the times,when you're a filmmaker, you have to
think within your limitations. You haveto go, oh, well, I
know someone with an old house,so maybe we'll make a movie about an
(14:03):
old spooky house or something. Andmy hope is now that people's ideas,
even people on the you know,smaller scale, their ideas don't have to
be limited by what they have accessto. I mean, that's still always
going to be the case. You'restill always going to have to work within
your limitations. And I don't thinklimitations are a bad thing, but I
(14:28):
just think that like always, LikeI was just talking with someone the other
day, how Sean Baker one canand Sean Baker started with a film that
he shot on an iPhone, youknow, And so I feel as though
these types of creatives are going to, as they always do, see ways
(14:48):
to use the technology and sort ofexciting and interesting ways. And that's what
really excites me, is like thelimit are just going to be how much
you want to put into something,as opposed to more stringent, boring limitations
like money and these types of things. It's like having a new tool in
(15:13):
your toolbox. Is that right?Totally? Yeah, it's certainly a tool
to have in your toolbox. It'sthe same as like people who are really
good at after effects can really helpyour independent production really good, or someone
who's really good at premiere, orsomeone who's really good at photoshop. I
think that like having people that understandthese things can bring something new to your
(15:39):
film, but not for everyone.I think some films don't need that at
all. Some people are just amazingwith a camera or amazing with lighting,
and that's not going to go away. But there's just now new ways for
people to express themselves, which I'mreally supportive of. An excited about and
(16:03):
yeah, it made our heads feellike balloons, how they were expanding with
ideas. You know, hmm.I want to connect for a moment with
something that you just said before.I'm still quoting from an Opening Eye blog
and there was this sentence here thatI loved it. So. As great
as sorry is to generate in thingsthat appear real, what excited us is
(16:29):
its ability to make things that aretotally surreal. A new era of abstract
expressionism. People from all over theworld with stories really to burst out of
the chest finally have the opportunity toshow the word what's inside. And this
new era of abstract expressionism, howdo you imagine it? Well, I
(16:57):
think part of the reason for sayingthat is, like I loved art history
when I was going to film school, and you know, you learn about
art through the ages, and reallyit was the invention of the film camera
and the proliferation of the film camerathat allowed for abstraction to really take over
(17:21):
the art world. Because what happenedwas once you could develop film, no
longer was it a painter's job tosort of recreate reality, you know,
that was their job. It waslike you painted a portrait of someone,
or you painted a portrait of aplay or a landscape, place or whatever.
Then the camera came and then itwas like, well we can do
(17:41):
that. Now, we can dothat instantly you click a button, shutter,
boom, you're there. So Ithink the same is true about film,
Like you can conjure up now images, even with Dolly or mid Journey
or whatever. You can conjure thesethings up. But then it's sort of
like, okay, well, what'sthe story there, or like you know,
(18:03):
when you look at Van Go,it's like, it's not just about
the sunflowers, it's not just abouta building and a starry night. It's
about the way that that building makesyou feel. There's something deeper about the
than just the object that's in frontof you. It's like the object has
a soul and it has a feeling. And I think that's going to be
(18:26):
really interesting because once you can justkind of make whatever you want, I
think, then the question really becomes, Okay, well, why did you
pick that thing? Why did youwant to paint that or that? Or
why did you want to film thator that. You have to have more
justification in why you're choosing to dosomething, because when you can do anything,
(18:49):
then it really matters what you doand why you pick it. Why
Salvador Dali picked the lobster telephone andnot the clam telephone, or why Andy
Warhol painted soup cans Campbell soup cansand not I don't know, a different
type of soupcan. I think it'slike very important to understand why you're choosing
(19:11):
things. And I think that myhope is that that's what this will make
people do more, is think moreabout their choices, because I think that
as artist that's our job is tomake informed choices. And yeah, I
(19:33):
just think that it allows for uslike to make new worlds. It's kind
of like we don't need to makethe world that we already see that's already
there. Yeah. If you areenjoying this episode, please check out my
lead generation course. You can watchit for free on guide dot link skill
(19:56):
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You can watch it for free onguide dot link, slash skill Share
g A I t Oh. You'llfind the link in the description. Probably
(20:19):
one of the main discussions about thesenew tools, uh, the gen Ai
tools that we are using in thelast year and a half or you know,
seeing demos online. One of themain discussions is about the role of
creativity. You know, there isa whole discussion about these tools are going
(20:44):
to kill our creativities. Everything isgonna look the same. No one is
going to be you know, creativeanymore. We're gonna be stupid and whatever.
What's your take on that. Howdo you imagine the relationship between you
know, creativity and the general DAItools. Yeah, I mean, like
(21:07):
I don't know if people were lookingaround before jen Ai tools, But I
think you could argue that people havebeen saying the same thing, Like people
said the same thing about cell phones, and it's like, yeah, everyone
now has a camera in their pocket. But is everyone a photographer? I
don't know. I don't think thatthey are. And everyone has the ability
(21:32):
to make videos now, but iseveryone a director? Is everyone a filmmaker?
I don't know. It's the sameas everyone has a pen, doesn't
necessarily make you a writer. Andit's my belief that I think writers and
directors and all of these people pokethrough and they their work transcends the time
(21:57):
that they're in. That's what theytry to do. And I just think
that's such a cynical way of viewingart and viewing life. I think that
I think a few things. Ithink in a time where images can be
(22:18):
generated easily, that's going to puta higher premium on people who can do
things like painting, people who cando things like writing at a typewriter.
And I think also it's going tomake new forms of art. What's the
person who makes an image in midjourney, screenprints it onto a canvas and
(22:40):
then paints over it, or what'sthe person who whatever. There's like infinite
amount of ways to mix and matchand use things and use tools, and
I just think it's like really reductiveto be like art is dead. Like
people have been saying art is deadfor the last two thousand years, Like
(23:06):
in the Renaissance they say art isdead, and the like every single era
people say art is dead, andlike, I just think it's they're always
wrong, every single time they're wrong. And you know, people said that
cinema was going to destroy plays andacting and live theater, and now people
are saying that AI is going todestroy cinema. It's like, really is
(23:30):
that? Like I don't think thatart is ever meant to destroy. I
think art is meant to birth anew. And I also know that in most
major metropolitans you're in London, Ibet you if you went to the theater
district on a Tuesday night tonight,every single show would be sold out,
every single every single like Broadway showwould be there. The movie theaters would
(23:56):
would be running. Like I Ijust think it's like it's a it's a
Really, you just sound old tome. You just sound like old and
boring. And if you don't likethese tools, don't use them. And
if you don't like them, don'tsupport anyone who does. I think that
there's going to be tons of artistswho go I am actively not using AI,
(24:22):
and by the way, I supportthat person. I think that they
should. I think that Studio Ghiblishould reject computers, you know. I
think that people should reject computers ifit's not for them, because I don't
want to push anyone to do somethingthat's not honest to them. I want
(24:42):
people to make something that's honest andtrue. And I think for some people
that's going to include AI or newtechnologies or computers or whatever. And I
think for some people it's going toreject all of those technologies. And I
believe that there's room for both,lots of room for both, and I
(25:03):
love both. I love art that'smade in a totally new way, and
I also love films that are shoton film, and I love going to
go see film screenings where it's aseventy millimeter print of the film. I
love that there's room for both wedon't need to have this like it's AI
(25:26):
and everything dies or it's the classic, and we must hold on to this
like conservative idea of what art is. Like we're not still cutting movies on
film, Like in film school theytaught us to actually cut the film.
Like when you say cutting a film, it was legally literally cutting it,
(25:49):
literally splicing it together, taping it, and like what an important lesson that
is. And I think if youdon't understand those things, AI is like
going to be a waste of yourtime, because like you must understand the
like the rituals and the way thatthese things work. But yeah, I
(26:11):
just like I'm more optimistic and hopefuland I just know that, like I
still shoot on film. I'm theguy at Niagara Customs Lab, which is
where you get your film developed.It's the one place in Toronto that you
can get like film movies developed.And it's like I'm still going there and
(26:37):
I still love that, and Istill think that there's room for that.
But maybe I want to take thesuper eight film that I've developed and put
AI over it. What does thatlook like or what? Like I just
think that there's ways to different combinationsof flavors that we can try and we
can expand upon, and I'm justopen to that. I'm open to seeing
(27:00):
where that brings us. Yeah,I think that's probably the most important takeaway.
It's what you just said, thatthere is room for both. I
was reading a few days ago howwhen photography was invented, there were painters
saying, oh, photography is gonnakill painting. There is no soul in
(27:22):
photography. The process is completely different. We are the true artists nowadays.
We respect both of them. Sowe respect, you know, painters and
photography. And I suppose it wasthe same maybe with I don't know electronic
music. You know, if youwant to go to a concert and I
don't know, listen to some electronicmusic, you can do that. But
you can also have a Jats Knightand go super classical. And yeah,
(27:45):
I mean, like, I don'tlike EDM at all. I think it
sucks. I think it's quantized.I think it sucks. But I've also
been to EDM shows that I reallylove, or I also since a Daft
punk and they're amazing. And sofor me to say that electronic music sucks
(28:06):
on a whole is like wrong,because you're definitely gonna find some electronic music
that you like. And yeah,Like I think what's really funny is like
you look to twenty years ago andpeople are talking about CGI, how CGI
is ruining movies and how CGI islike gonna be the death of cinema,
(28:27):
And now the talk when we're talkingabout AI is Oh my god, all
the CGI jobs are gonna go away. It's like, well, what is
it? Like, what which oneis it? And like for me,
I personally like when I watch whenI see the big Spectacle movies that come
(28:52):
out, whatever Aquaman two or something, Aquaman eight. So much money in
technology goes in to making those movies, but in my personal opinion, they
lack a story. And that's thereal question is like what is your story?
Not what technology are you using,but what is your story? And
(29:12):
I don't care if you use atrumpet or a synthesizer or a guitar.
What's your story? What's your song? That that's the important thing for me
personally. Yeah, I wanted toask, you know, doing the process
of doing Airhead, what was thewow moment with Sora? I mean so
(29:41):
many seeing those first images that sortaproduced was pretty wow. Seeing a guy
with a balloon for his head,and the balloon sort of had reflections and
bobbled like it didn't just move whatever. It kind of like had like a
wobble to it. But I thinkthat, you know what's funny, the
(30:06):
wow moment is almost easy. Themoment that I think is more interesting is
the like I'm bored moment where youknow, I think we've all experienced this
because we've all used chat chipet nowwhere first ten minutes, write me a
poem about my cat whatever, andit writes you this poem. Okay,
(30:33):
write this poem, but you're DonaldTrump or whatever it is, writes the
poem, and then ten fifteen minutesin you start to go like, well,
it's kind of just doing a impression. It's almost like a Halloween costume
of these things. And of coursethat's going to get better. We're still
(30:56):
in an infancy. But I thinkthat that wow fact or fades and then
you've got to ask yourself, Okay, well, what is what am I
actually trying to do here? Becauseif everyone can just say write a poem
about whatever, that's not really poetry. The poetry comes from you and comes
from your heart and your soul.And you can take things and pick apart
(31:18):
things and move things around. Butyeah, I just believe that that gets
kind of tedious, Like when everyonecan do that, it's just kind of
boring. It's just kind of likenothing. So you have to find out
what's in your soul and you haveto get to that. Yeah, I
(31:40):
think that that for me is likeI don't know, that's just for me
that that moment is kind of moreinteresting than the wow moment, is like
the moment where you realize, oh, yeah, right, this is just
something that's going to be part ofour toolkit that we're going to use and
it's as useful as I want tomake it. Yeah, you have it,
(32:04):
you know what, it works,And then you ask yourself and now
what? Now? Now what?And now what? And that's that's the
question. And that's the question thatlike artists have been asking since the dawn
of time, and that's the questionthat no matter how good the technology gets,
they're still going to be asking thatquestion. And I believe that I
(32:37):
believe that that that that question islike the real hard thing that no AI
is going to ever solve. Didyou ask yourself that question once you had
a sora in front of you.Yeah, totally. Even more so.
I mean when Airhead comes out andall the people are telling you to kill
(33:00):
yourself and that you're the death ofart, maybe for a second you start
to believe it. You start togo, am I am I doing the
right thing? Does this feel good? Does this feel as good as going
out and shooting something or doing somethinglike that? And the answer to that
(33:21):
is very obviously yes, And thatyou can't let other people's opinions of doing
of what you're doing like affect yourart because I know how I feel and
I know how I approached that project, and that's what matters. And that's
the thing that matters. What otherpeople perceive your art, that's like they
(33:45):
can do that, that's their opinion. I think the harder thing is you
need to be justified in yourself whyyou're doing things. And of course that
question comes to you the same asusing chat ept You're like, is this
am I actually writing here? AndI think that very quickly you realize like,
(34:09):
yes, I have this extremely powerfultool that can do so much.
But realistically, it's only when we'rein conversation with the technology that anything actually
good comes out of it. Whenit's just you technology, give me answer,
technology, give you answer, copypaste. That's like that never works.
(34:36):
That doesn't feel satisfying, and theart isn't going to be satisfying.
So anyone who's thinking like that,that's when I think you have to dig
a little bit deeper and search alittle bit harder. Yeah, A few
weeks after it was a few weeksafter I had you released a second video
(35:02):
deflated. What was the whole ideabehind it deflated? We wanted to do
two things. We wanted to combinelive action and like traditional live action shooting
(35:23):
with soura generated images, and wealso kind of wanted to like make fun
of the reaction to the film,like it was so big and so overwhelming,
and we kept thinking about, ah, like let's do a sequel,
(35:45):
let's follow it up, and likeit would be really hard, I think,
to try to make something that's thesame tone as that, And so
we didn't try that. What wedid instead was said, let's go in
a completely opposite direction. Let's makea comedy and let's make fun of everyone
(36:07):
hyping this thing up so big.And I think that we were making fun
of our character on one level andon another level. I think we were
making fun of the hype in general. It's like, you know, this
thing that's expanding and expanding and growingso famous and big, and like it's
(36:29):
just it's just a lot of hotair, to be honest with you,
And yeah, I think that Ithink that that was the main thing that
we just, yeah, we wejust wanted to kind of make fun of
(36:49):
where we were as well as justtry new techniques. And again, the
criticisms of the first film were youdidn't shoot anything, this is whatever.
So we're like, okay, welllet's go shoot something like you know,
like that's our way to respond tothings, is like we could argue on
Twitter. I don't know where thatgets anyone. Instead, why don't we
(37:12):
just make some more art? Andit's funny. The response to Deflated,
I kind of feel like we shutup the haters, or maybe it just
wasn't as big like the first one. There's a lot more hype around something,
but the second one, the overallreactions were kind of like, oh
(37:36):
wow, they kind of shut meup in a way like that that because
we address the haters directly, it'slike we hear, we hear you,
we understand what you're saying, weunderstand that the thing has too many fingers
on its hands. Like we understandthose criticisms and we hear them. We
(37:57):
just think that or make an art. So h you know, and do
you do? You do you seeyourself as a studio, I mean as
a company production company using SOA againin the future for new projects. Hopefully,
(38:20):
hopefully we have been working on moreprojects, but it's not right for
every project. I think that someprojects are going to require SORA. In
some projects it's totally going to beinappropriate, and I think it's really up
to you as an artist to figureout that balance. Mm hmm. Just
(38:45):
as I said before, if you'reshooting a movie and you want to use
you know film, or you Idon't know, recording a song and you
want to use a guitar or youknow, synth or whatever, Walter.
We usually end these conversations here withtwo quick and simple questions. If you
(39:07):
want to share with my audience anycool books and tools, So let's start
with books. Do you have anyrecommendations something that you are reading right now
or something that was important for you, know, your vision, your work
or whatever. Any books? Yeah? I love books. So much,
(39:29):
so, I have so many.I love the fiction of Alexander Weinstein.
He wrote two books, Children ofthe New World and Universal Love. I
would highly recommend that short stories abouta near future. They're funny and they're
(39:52):
brilliant, and they're really digestible.You can really read them, and they're
just great. Uh. I've beenreading a lot of philosophy books. There
is one by Mark Kingwell. Ibelieve it's called uh Singular Creatures, and
(40:20):
it is all about the advent ofAI and sort of a very philosophical approach
to AI and the thinking behind AI. I have been reading a book by
Belle Hooks. It's called is itcalled All about Love? Hold on,
(40:42):
let me just double check that's righthere two seconds, I leave all the
links in the description. Yeah,please bell Hooks, give her more book
sales, even though I think she'spastor Yeah, that is a book about
(41:06):
love. But from a very distinctiveperspective, I would say Bell Hooks is
just an unbelievable writer on the femalegaze, on women, on the way
that we perceive things like film,and her book on love is just unbelievable.
(41:34):
It's a it's it's so it's ait's it's unbelievable, unbelievable way to
look at the world and think.But yeah, those would be the things
that I have read the most,and I would highly suggest all of them.
And that's another thing I would highlysuggest, as people understand philosophy.
(41:57):
If you don't understand philosophy, yourfilm will not understand philosophy. So I
think you should understand philosophy, orat least try. I can't say I
understand all of what bell Hooks issaying, but I try. Nice.
I leave all the links in thedescription below. What about tools? Do
you have any tools that you reallylove that you use every day that are
(42:20):
like very important for your job oryour creativity or managing your projects. Yeah.
You know, ironically you would probablythink that I would say an AI
tool or something like this, Butactually the thing that I find most helpful
(42:45):
is notebooks, like a mole skinnotebook. Super fun. So oh yeah,
I got mine too. I havea question for you. Do you
use lines or no lines? Letme show you. No lines, no
(43:08):
lines, no rules, baby fuckinglines, no rules, no rules.
Yeah, I hate the lines aswell. It's like it's so like my
parents get me like a book andif it has lines, I'm like,
I can't, I can't do this. This isn't the way it is.
But for me that's the most importanttool ever, because I think sometimes when
(43:34):
you like focus and write on acomputer, it's quite limiting and there's so
many distractions, whereas with a notebook, especially one without lines, you can
be really free and you can reallydraw your ideas and go. And what
I've been doing recently is taking Iwould then scan my notebook and then put
(43:57):
it into chat ept or something likethat and be like translate it, like
translate this, So that's really funthing to do. Is sort of like
brainstorm, not on a computer,very analog, and then if you need
to convert it into analog, there'slike lots of ways to do that now,
which is like really I think veryhelpful for me. I love this
(44:24):
mix of old school stuff and AI. I love it. Yeah, that's
to me. The true future islike if everything's all AI, I think
that's gonna be kind of like notgood. But when you can write your
notes in a notebook and feel theink on the pen and then convert that
(44:46):
into a spreadsheet or a Google docor or whatever, I think that's going
to be a really Yeah. Thatexcites me a lot. Yeah, Walter,
do you want to share with usany links where they can follow you,
see your stuff, your work.I will leave all the links in
(45:10):
the description. Yeah. We havea YouTube channel that's where we put a
lot of our films up. Wehave an Instagram that we use somewhat regularly.
We have a TikTok that basically wejust used to send weird videos to
our friends, but sometimes we poststuff on there. We have a Twitter,
(45:35):
and we have our own website,shy dash kids dot com, which
most of our work should be upthere. We try to update it as
regularly as possible, but I wouldsay Instagram is definitely probably our most active
social media and dm us if youhave any more questions like Raphael did,
(45:58):
and we'd be happy to to talkto you. We need nice love that.
Well, thank you very much foryour time. This was great.
I love this. Oh, thankyou man. It's it's so nice to
talk to you and great questions.I love people asking about books. No
one asks about that. So whatare you reading? Ah? Wow?
(46:21):
This is fortunately this is Italian isone of my favorite artists. What's it
called? Zero? Calcare. Hehas two amazing show on Netflix that are
translated in English as well, soif you want to say his work,
I know the Italian name, notthe English name, but if you search
(46:45):
for zero Calcare, the best oneis stra Parlungu Bordi and I'm reading this
one now. I'm also reading thethird part of the trilogy of three Body
Problem. I don't know if youwatch the the TV show Netflix. I
wish the first season, and thenI went directly to the books. So
(47:07):
now I'm reading the last one andsomeone just gave me this one yesterday,
so I'm going to start this onein a few days. Digital Body Language.
Do you like graphic novels? Yeah, if you like graphic novels,
there's a guy and maybe you've heardof him. His name is Nick Dronasso.
(47:28):
Have you heard of this guy?Will google it? He did.
He did a few different books.There's one called Beverly, which was okay.
There's one called Sabrina which was unbelievable. I think it was nominated for
a Pulitzer Prize. Wow. Andthen there's one called Acting Class, which
(47:49):
is his most recent, which Iheard that ari Astor bought the rights to
turn it into a film. Nice. If you like ari Astor and that
kind of filmmaking, maybe that bookis something you might like. Graphic novel,
really interesting, kind of I don'twant to say boring art style,
(48:10):
but kind of this like very plain, yeah, trying, but very beautiful.
But please send me those links aswell, because I will, I
will, I will will, Iwill for sure. Again, thank you
very much. This was great.Thanks for listening to this episode of the
podcast. I hope you enjoyed itand you learned something new. Make sure
to subscribe to us on YouTube andSpotify to stay updated on new episodes.
(48:36):
With your support, I can continueto bring great content a great guest to
this podcast, So hit the subscribebutton now and I'll see you in the
next episode.
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