The premiere episode of the AIography Podcast is up. I sat down with Robert Gaudette. He's a 54-year-old nonprofit worker from Toronto. He never went to film school. And he just won the top prize at Runway's AI Grand Prix with his film "A Face Only a Mother Could Love." Here's what got me. The film has real heart. It moves people. That's the one thing everyone says AI can't do, and Robert did it anyway. We talked through how he actually built it, start to finish. His workflow. The "subtext block" he puts in his prompts. How he pushed past the imposter feeling that hits all of us. And why he still believes story comes first, even now. If you've been stuck at "where do I even begin," this is the one to watch. Robert started exactly where you are. Link to Interview Link to Robert's film "A Face Only A Mother Could Love." Watch it, then drop one thing that surprised you in the comments.

Something quietly tipped over this week, and today's newsletter is all about it. For a couple of years now, the AI-in-film conversation has mostly been an argument. Is it real? Is it cheating? Is it going to stick? This week the argument got a tiebreaker, and it came from about the most credible voice there is. George Lucas said AI is the future of the medium. His actual words: "Artificial intelligence means it's much easier for us to make movies," and "There's nothing you can do about it. That's progress; it's the future." That's the person who built the modern blockbuster telling you the door is open. And it's not just talk from the sidelines. The same week, the biggest streamer on earth put a number on it. In its quarterly letter to shareholders, Netflix said creative partners used generative AI across roughly 300 titles this year, mostly in post-production. Not a demo. Not a pilot program. Three hundred titles, on the record, to Wall Street. Put those two together and the shape of the week is hard to miss. The most famous names and the biggest money landed on the same side, out loud, at the same time. In today's full newsletter, I walk through what that actually means for working creators, plus the honest other half: a director who shipped a 135-minute AI feature almost by himself, Christopher Nolan calling the whole thing a trap from the other side of the same week, and a couple of new tools you can actually put to work. It's a five-minute read, and it's built to help you decide what to use and what to keep your hands on. Read the whole thing here: https://aiography.beehiiv.com/p/george-lucas-says-ai-is-the-future-of-movies Here's the thing I keep landing on. When a tool goes from "maybe" to "here to stay," the interesting question stops being whether you use it. It becomes what you refuse to hand over. The tools are settling. Your judgment is the part that still can't be automated, and this week made that clearer, not less.

What are you folks using atm for uprezzing SD film transfers and SD video to HD other than Topaz?

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

Stop Fighting Your AI Video Tool — Use Structured Controls Instead If you've ever spent 20 minutes rewriting a prompt to get a dolly-in shot, this one's for you. Kling 3.0 dropped this week with an AI Director mode — and it's a different philosophy than what you're used to. Instead of describing camera moves in text and hoping the model interprets it correctly, you specify the shot: • Camera movement: Dolly, pan, tilt, crane (pick from a menu, not a paragraph) • Shot type: CU, MCU, wide, OTS (cinematographer language, not prompt engineering) • Scene transitions: Cut, dissolve, match cut (built-in storyboarding) • Character consistency: Plan a multi-shot sequence, lock the character across clips This isn't better or worse than Sora/Runway/Veo — it's built for a different workflow. If you're pre-visualizing a scene or prototyping a sequence, structured controls are faster. If you're exploring or generating B-roll, natural language prompts are more flexible. The lesson: stop forcing one tool to do everything. Match the tool to the task. Discussion question: Are you a "structured controls" filmmaker or a "natural language" filmmaker — and does your current tool match that? Founding Members get the full tool comparison breakdown (Kling vs Sora vs Runway vs Veo) with workflow decision trees and when to use which approach — skool.com/aiography/classroom