If you've felt whiplash this month, you're not imagining it. One week a festival puts a fully AI-made film in its lineup. The next, a craft guild publicly tears into a legendary director for promoting an AI tool. And now the Directors Guild has a tentative deal that writes AI rules into the contract. The signals point in every direction at once. Here's the thing I want you to hear, because nobody seems to be saying it plainly. The split isn't tech people versus artists. It runs straight through the working pros. People doing the exact same job are landing on opposite sides. The colorist feels it at a different moment than the location scout. Both reactions are completely rational. What I've noticed across a long career of these turns is that the divide tracks one thing: exposure. Whoever's paid work the tool can already touch feels it first and feels it hardest. That's not fear talking. That's people doing math about their own livelihood, and they're not wrong to. So if you're standing in the middle of this, confused about which side you're supposed to be on, here's my honest read. You don't have to pick a tribe. The belief-system version of this argument is a trap. The useful version is a much smaller, calmer question. Try this: Make two short lists. On the left are the parts of your work the tool can genuinely touch today. On the right are the parts it can't. Be honest, not hopeful, on both sides. Then get fluent in the things on the left before the decision gets made for you, and stop losing sleep over the things on the right. The people who do worst in a turn like this treat it as a fight to win. The people who do best treat it as a skill to learn. You don't have to love it or hate it. You have to know exactly where it lands in your work and act from there. Where do you land right now, and which part of your job made you land there? I read every reply. (Founding Members: this week I'm breaking down the single hardest technical problem in AI video right now, keeping a character looking the same from shot to shot, and the workflow tricks that actually help today.)

The new AIography newsletter is out, and it is worth five minutes of your day. Here is the short version. Martin Scorsese, maybe the last director you would expect, just told the New York Times he used AI to storyboard his next film. The headlines are already getting it wrong, so I wrote the accurate read: he used it for previz, the sketch stage, to get the pictures in his head in front of his team faster. He did not replace actors. He did not replace his crew. The movie still gets shot, in camera, with real people. Previz, not replacement. That distinction is the whole story. The issue also covers the new tool that just took the top spot for AI video and the one piece of dubbing software that is actually good enough to use this week. Best part: there is a move in there you can steal today. The same thing Scorsese did, scaled down to your desk. Read it HERE

I’d love to hear from everyone here. As this group continues to grow, I want to make sure we’re building something that is actually useful, practical, and worth your time. So here’s the question: What would you most like to get out of this community? I want your top 3. But Skool only lets you vote once. So please add a comment with your 2nd & 3rd choices. If something's missing, tell me. This community is yours as much as it's mine. I'd rather build what you'll actually use than guess. 😉 Thanks, Larry

Hey Everyone, I've been under the weather. Well, that's an understatement. Some kind of stomach virus has had me completely knocked out. However, I saw the doc today, and I'm hoping it will be gone in the next few days. If things go as planned, next week, I'm doing the first of a 12-video series for founding members. We start from the beginning. Foundation models, what they are, what they mean, and where they actually fit into your AI filmmaking workflow. I'm excited about it, and I think you're going to like it. Talk soon, LJ

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