Ep. 22: 130k YouTuber Spills Tea on Current State of Gen AI Tools

0:00:00Meet Tim Simmons

Play from 0:00:00 8:88:88 0:00:00 what's up everybody Midjourney Fast Hours podcast Drew Brucker Rory Flynn Tim Simmons o question mark yeah you know Legends only we've got a guest here today Tim has joined us thanks Tim for joining us man we're we're big fans obviously you know you have you know I think YouTube's your primary channel right it is is that correct I mean you've just been uh you've got a great audience there 130,000 subscribers which just sounds like an amazing feat and I just know your content from you know you covering sort of like the breath of some of these geni creative tools and so forth and I think you do a really good job of covering them it's very relatable

Play from 0:00:46 8:88:88 0:00:46 so we're we're very happy to have you here um just to kind of kick things off you know why don't you introduce yourself to our audience tell them a little bit about you if they're not familiar and uh maybe just give us like a taste of how you kind of got into you know the J gen space what was your sort of appetizer in there uh yeah for sure uh so my name is Tim uh I have a channel on YouTube called uh theoretically media where I cover AI tools generally though uh I will always cover things from like the creative perspective I tend to lean towards uh imagery video and audio so my running joke is that if it goes in your eyes ears or eyes are ears I guess there's no like smell AI yet but when there is we get AI Scrat sniff all over

Play from 0:01:32 8:88:88 0:01:32 it um oh yeah so uh so yeah I've been at the uh I've been at it for I guess the November of 22 I guess is uh is kind of when everything really kind of started to take off on the channel so um yeah that's always been my take on it is uh always you know from the perspective of creative people using these tools uh and figuring out creative ways to use them yeah man i' I I remember probably I mean it's good that that's you know that November 22 time frame that's probably the the sweetest spot getting like the Golden Age yeah but I remember coming across some of your videos because I was I remember looking on YouTube and not finding so it was like a nice refreshing

Play from 0:02:18 8:88:88 0:02:18 space like early you now it's just like everyone's got it right faceless channels whatever but back then it was like it felt like a place to hang out every once in a while even if you know potentially wasn't talking about something that I was like working on at the time or using I was just like here's a place to like hang out so number one thank you for that that was cool um it was good to good to find but two I also want to thank you for one one thing that like I used for I don't know every single Carousel or piece of content I made for about a year which was uh I think it was Insight face the Insight face plugin for Discord back in the day that thing was like way I saw that on your channel I was like got to do this right now so that one was so fun yeah that thing was gold that was back in the day too when it was uh it was a Discord

Play from 0:03:04 8:88:88 0:03:04 bot right you could that was the journey Discord only and then you could plug it in yeah that was such a GameChanger um when that was first released it was yeah um yeah huge like uh and you know since then we've had a million other face Whoppers weirdly enough I still actually use Insight face Whopper through Pinocchio um so that's actually one of my go through of go-tos for uh for face swapping so yeah interesting how did by the way how how did we get here where where's the what's the background like where you know how do we end up talking about AI all together here yeah like K I logged in so I um yeah that's a good that's where do I start on that so I worked in Hollywood for I would say like 16 years

0:03:45From Hollywood to AI

Play from 0:03:52 8:88:88 0:03:52 uh I did all kinds of jobs uh throughout that time I worked uh in studios I worked on Productions um you know yeah literally like anything that you can uh I once uh you know uh drove for Michael Bay uh not literally drove him I just drove I just ran errands for him I mean all kinds of all kinds of gigs um my I guess my primary bread and butter there um became doing uh behind the scenes content for DVDs uh if you guys remember that era of like making up St stuff so yeah I mean that's that was always my favorite thing um so yeah I got to make a bunch of documentaries like hang out on sets talk to the fames and interview the actors and the writers and directors and you know uh yeah it was uh it was pretty cool so you know I got a lot of

Play from 0:04:38 8:88:88 0:04:38 like onset experience but sort of from a fly on-the-wall perspective which was a great way to learn how all of it works right It's a Grind man that whole that business is a grind uh and at some point you know like the wife and I had kids I was still working 16 hours or whatever a day and you know we kind of called it at some point so um ended up moving back East picking up a teaching gig for a little while I was just teaching kids how to you know shoot movies edit and Premiere Photoshop that kind of stuff um and then as um a total side note so uh the teaching thing like I did that for a few years I have a ton of respect for teachers in because I'm not really a teacher I'm just a guy that like they were like hey you seem to know how to do this stuff like we got a job and I'm like I I can't find any other jobs right

Play from 0:05:24 8:88:88 0:05:24 now um so sure I guess I'll do that and it was really fun and rewarding but when you go through that cycle of like taking a kid from you know uh from the beginning to the end and then and then you just have to turn around and do it all over again like you're just like oh I just gave that kid all this knowledge now I got to go back to a bunch of imbeciles like whole thing over again I say imbeciles lovingly little context switch there where you go from okay we've almost mastered it now let's start at that baby step one again again yeah and that's I you know look I mean all respect in the world to that to that field um because that's that's hard uh and that's when I realized like I can't really do this um that happened to dovetail right around the time that uh we you know again around November 2022

Play from 0:06:10 8:88:88 0:06:10 when I want to say that Midjourney had just hit version 4 um and the other big thing that kind of happened for me was that um you know guitars on the walls and all of that stuff but the the first iteration of uh I think it was called riff Fusion it was like stable diffusion audio that had out it was like super like weird and wonky and you know nowhere near the level of like you know uho or or anything that we have now but there was just enough there where I was just like oh this is kind of interesting um and then just kind of looking ahead to what was going to be 20123 I'm like oh okay no this is going everything is going to change everything's going to change the thumbnail title that I always get in trouble were you thinking about this stuff more from like a personal

Play from 0:06:55 8:88:88 0:06:55 interest curiosity standpoint or like did you already kind of were you already kind of of the mindset of like I I feel like this is maybe what I should be involved in from more of a financial or career standpoint oh oh no uh initially it was just straight up like this is fun like this is so much fun like um like do you guys see do you guys know that we can do this yeah you know like uh that was that was really what the channel was about was just like um you know I would talk to people you know outside that weren't following the space and just and you know just like constantly showing them stuff on my phone just like do you know we can do this now like you know and uh and I think that that early era too was like it was it was filled with such like Wonder and possibility and it still is to this day in my opinion yeah a little bit of like crankiness and

Play from 0:07:41 8:88:88 0:07:41 saltiness that's starting to seep into to the edges I think because it's a little bit you know I mean obviously there's been a lot of negativity surrounding um AI that is kind of coming in but I mean that that those early that early era when it was you know Will Smith eating spaghetti and yes uh and where avocado chairs generated in Del I mean like that that stuff was just like it was so it was so wondrous I mean and it still is look I mean I know that again like I just posted some videos on Sora and everyone I I look you can get salty about the price all you want or anything but it's still like like that that's this is Magic like this is kind of magical so truly yeah it's it's interesting I was making the the you know the the reference the

Play from 0:08:27 8:88:88 0:08:27 other day to it's kind of like AI is is like the evolution of like a camera too you know like it was you had the you had your your solid cameras right they get better as they go along the quality gets better XYZ then you get like the camcorder like the '90s and it you go back and look at the the footage from like you know your your family your family gatherings in the '90s and you're like you remember them fondly but the the camera is just so not great you know forward to today we can have like a you know a GoPro that's the size of like a a bean and it takes better quality but like it's it seems to be like it's a very similar progression and like the the funny thing is like it just feels like yeah that's what that's where everyone started like that camcorder gave like a bunch of different

Play from 0:09:14 8:88:88 0:09:14 you know let's just say independent filmmakers an opportunity to like really get a start and like start creating I feel like it's the same thing with this stuff do you I mean does that does that sentiments still like resonate with people to you like are you seeing that I think so early on well early on maybe around like Gen 2 around when run Ray introduced Gen 2 uh and we kind of came out of that gen well no Gen 2 was text to video and image to video I want to say um and I remember saying at that time like it's like look this is like it it's like we're in the early or the late 1800s and like The Lumiere Brothers just handed everyone a camera you know what I mean it's like this thing wasn't here a minute ago now it is but now everyone can have this thing and and you know go

Play from 0:10:01 8:88:88 0:10:01 find out go find out what it does um so completely and totally and I think that there are definitely going to be eras of like I mean again the the space is moving so quickly that like um was it last was it last year Super Bowl when we had like the whole like run of AI commercials there was the uh minion J on yeah well there was that yeah that remember that one there was that as well yeah but there was also in that as well there was also uh the minions dogging on uh on AI generated there was the beer commercial that was pretty early on in the Gen AI days too it was like really like morphe and crazy and they were like obviously dogging on that but like that was still as as a Super Bowl ad was that $7 million or whatever per minute or whatever it cost it's like okay like you

Play from 0:10:47 8:88:88 0:10:47 might be dogging on it but you used it and that opened up the door for AI commercials essentially and cut to today where we have like a coke commercial that is that is uh is once again you know controversial but you know it's it's out there so definitely push the boundaries with that one I think uh that one that one sent the shot shock wave like yes you can use it commercially it's here regardless and then you saw the emotional testing and people were like we like it we don't care you know it makes us feel something so you got I think a lot of agencies had a had a little bit of a shock to the system the last couple weeks where they're like oh yeah yeah yeah and I'll say even with the uh even once once we hit those super spots where like again they were dogging on AI generated video it's like it

Play from 0:11:33 8:88:88 0:11:33 doesn't matter cuz it was used and it's only going to get better and that was just like a weird litness test of like oh we got away with the m the agencies I'm sure were like we got away with it like no one came after us because we started it off as kind of like insulting it you know what I mean it's a joke haha you can't get mad at it uh and then you know cut to Coke today and a bunch of people apparently got mad at it but it doesn't matter it does not matter I mean because Coke made that commercial doesn't mean I'm going to stop drinking Coke if I was a Coke drinker you know what I mean uh exactly I mean what was the there was like a Good Morning America segment on it where they were I think they were like kind of coming at it from a negative approach like if you look on YouTube it has something like you know seven million views or whatever that's free advertising for Coke I was thinking the same thing yeah exactly yeah they don't understand the you know the the media apparently doesn't

Play from 0:12:19 8:88:88 0:12:19 understand earned media Impressions there where it's like you know again that good or bad it doesn't matter when viral as hell and it and whatever they spent on it they're you're getting return on it in whatever metric they're they're measuring it by because that's it's crazy but did you like being in the Hollywood space Did anyone like have you talked to anyone about it is anyone like that's absolute crap that's awesome whatever like what's the what's the general limus test there I mean I think it's 50/50 still I think it's um I talked to a lot of especially earlier in uh I was talking to a lot of like um the guys that were first coming after not after me but the first the guys that were first like inquiring to me were um more of the like post production houses like the big like like technicaly kind of like I don't want to say them specifically but the companies that work

Play from 0:13:06 8:88:88 0:13:06 for them uh where it's like hey uh how do we automate green screen remov or you know or wire removal or you know Henry Cav's mustache when uh when that happened in uh Superman um uh so there was a lot of like people asking questions about that I would show them the tools that were available at the time and of course like nothing is the frustration there I think a a lot of times is that that whole production pipeline is a finely tuned giant machine um that cannot move flexibly and cannot change and adapt very quickly um it's very rigid in terms of what codec you're using what uh you know um what uh not even aspect ratios but just like everything about your file format to

Play from 0:13:52 8:88:88 0:13:52 what you shot it on everything has to be very you know segmented and and uh and and chew the letter and it so a lot where you're you know a lot of times if you're just like oh here's like here I did this thing in Runway like they're like well it's not AK yeah we can't show this in a theater it's like well I mean I mean you can there's ways to I mean those guys are wizards they can work that footage up if they uh if they want but it doesn't yeah again that's not going to be a cost savings thing for them that's just going to end up costing them more money so um so a lot of those early talks were were sort of like you know um they were interested they were curious but there we weren't really at an eye to eye Point yet um on the creative side I think that there was a lot more interest I mean

Play from 0:14:38 8:88:88 0:14:38 there's definitely there's so many people that have scripts in development hell um that you know were just like you know like years like I got option for you know $2 10 years ago and they they still own it and it's never getting made it's like well that sucks like it's like well I got new script can I make this in AI yet yeah kind of no not yet but um that's when when definitely that era of like sci-fi trailers like we're we being flooded with those like people just turning slowly at camera sci-fi dystopia behind them um there was a lot of that during that era um and you know I think that the people that stuck with it are are are interested they're uh they're still curious about it and the naysayers are still going to be the naysayers so um

Play from 0:15:24 8:88:88 0:15:24 yeah but I think we're getting closer to to kind of coming to a point soon so definitely I I think it's it's been it's sort of interesting to see the uh the sort of adoption curve number one like I remember initially like we're going to Pivot probably to Midjourney here in a second but just like we posting about Midjourney I'm sure you probably got the same thing it was initially like graphic designers and they were like f off you know like that was basically like the sentiment and i' never seen a quicker flip to where I don't have a single graphic designer anymore like that's that's like that cuz they realized it right they realized that it wasn't just like I can type into Midjourney and like get my full design like a normie can go do this and my job is over it's like it's another way to instead of going to a stock site I can go pull textures gradients Graphics mash them all together it's the I'm a farmer

Play from 0:16:09 8:88:88 0:16:09 of my own ingredient you know I'm a chef but I'm also the farmer of my own ingredients so it's like you when they see the light it's like okay this is not you know the end of the world and it's not for anyone you know not not any single person can go on here and create like you know stuff for Coca-Cola or power rate or whatever um but did you have did you have any graphic background like that or was that uh so I I mean in terms of um graphic design I you know I think that probably the closest is that I I was kind of like lightly on the outskirts of the comic book industry for a while um I made a couple of independent comic books worked with artists knew know some of that angle of production um I'm not really great at drawing but um and actually as it turns out artists really hate that when you kind of give them like here's thumbnails

Play from 0:16:54 8:88:88 0:16:54 of what I want they just like screw off just let me with tattoo artists man they are oh I'm sure I'm sure like yeah and I get that like that is your domain you go do that thing um so uh yeah a bit of that um and that's you know again you know um I think that going through the one of the many jobs that I had um through the Hollywood career too was doing some stuff with uh print like uh movie posters and uh Blade 3 by the way awesome and uh uh not specifically just me obviously there's huge team um but uh and um it's not a good poster I was that's death by committee right there uh all of those movie posters just to talk out of school because I don't care I don't work there

Play from 0:17:40 8:88:88 0:17:40 anymore um but you know um generally the way that that works is they'll hire an ad house um to come up with a bunch of Concepts um you will see some of the coolest movie posters of all time in those in that first round like where they're just doing like insane cool artwork and you're just like these this this poster is going to be awesome and then it starts going through you know the studio squeeze and everybody has to have their their their uh you know their say and by the time you get to the end of it um you just have like a character against a white background you know like or a character against texture it's like what you know like yeah they just beat it up um to no end so so yeah some of that stuff as well so I've done some I guess graphic I guess or at least you know 2 2D print stuff before it sounds also familiar yeah you

Play from 0:18:28 8:88:88 0:18:28 know that that that turn them take the Michelin star meal turn into McDonald's like yeah that's but that is one especially that's one thing that I always say about Midjourney as well is that like when you're in that situation uh because I'm sure you guys have run into the same thing before it's like the client the the famous client words of like I'll know it when I see it uh and you're just like oh be a late night great it's gonna be a late night so the one plus I well not one plus there's many plus sides in my journey but definitely a bonus to that is just like okay now well here is a curated book that I put together what do you like in this like Circle what you like and at least we can start to hone in on something so just as a straight like client management system I mean Midjourney is the worst ones are I trust you to figure it out you'll you'll oh

Play from 0:19:16 8:88:88 0:19:16 yeah and then when I come up with something you're going to have a whole idea in your head of exactly what you want which I wish you would have told me before I spent eight hours on it right so 100% yep what was the what was like the inflection point for for for Midjourney when you got in there it was like did was there like a was there like a moment where it's like I'm just 8 hours in or you know like this this sort of image just totally caught my eye I would say probably when we when we hit V4 um I think that was pretty much I think V3 was really fascinating to me I was I was generating up a lot of um uh you know interesting textural artwork I would say like uh and you know it's like oh my God I can you know do this uh waterc colory thing use it as a album cover to put on Spotify or whatever it was like but when

0:19:45Understanding Midjourney's Edge

Play from 0:20:01 8:88:88 0:20:01 we hit V4 which I still love to this day it's still like it's super dark and gritty and just weird like yeah I love I love V4 V4 is like the ultimate David Lynch movie it's so good so yeah playing around with uh uh once that made the jump and then moving into I think it was probably like some David Lynch stuff or Del Toro kind of like cinematic styled images it was like oh oh this is awesome uh and then yeah from there it became like eight hours of like can I make can I can I storyboard out a movie with this and then of course it was only a hop skip and a jump before video started to come into play as well and then you essentially had between the two a movie making machine God knows what David's got coming up soon so I hear video soon yeah

Play from 0:20:47 8:88:88 0:20:47 with Midjourney I guess I guess compared to then versus now have you increased your usage with Midjourney has it gone away what's your I guess sentiment about Midjourney right now M and then also like how excited are you for 2025 with Midjourney right are you looking forward to anything specifically is there something that you're hesitant about like just give us your sort of sense and scope of of uh where Midjourney's at yeah so uh Midjourney is still a daily driver for me I'm in there at least I'm in there every day like doing something so um I would say it's probably not just by nature of the channel and what I do I think that it you know um I spend maybe less time in there than previously but I mean again

Play from 0:21:34 8:88:88 0:21:34 I'm still in there at least once a day um I think that I think that I think in bid Journey if that's a if that's if that's a if that's one way to put so like if I'm testing out say flux or um uh Leonardo or you know any image generator like my head is I think my expectation of whatever I'm prompting tends to be what would I see in Midjourney and then and then at it you know um and I I do try to I do try to knock that out of me because the one thing that I definitely do preach is that like they all do different things like it should you know I I genuinely do not believe that Midjourney is better than Leonardo or better than flux or you know they and I don't think that flux is better than Midjourney they do different things um and that's actually

Play from 0:22:20 8:88:88 0:22:20 kind of the fun of all of it as well and and it kind of gives you a broad amount of choices um that said I mean anytime that I do a mid-journey video it feels like coming home to me so you know I mean you know I I still love it um still use it every day so yeah it's you were one of the first channels I think that was breaking this stuff down really granular like each individual part of it not just like use this prompt for great you know for great results it was like here's what the weird parameter is here's you know exactly so that was I think it was because there is so much for us to talk about like in those spaces it makes it easier to kind of like focus in but like that's the one thing that I'm finding you know I try I try all the other tools I use them uh and it's still like there's just some X

Play from 0:23:07 8:88:88 0:23:07 Factor that it has and especially like the level of control because if I can't get it with something else typically if I go to Midjourney I'm like yeah I can get that you know like it's is it are are you finding you know from a control standpoint that it's still Superior to some of the other tools you're playing with or is it really like like I'm just focusing it on that one aspect because that's really I think where a lot of people especially here that are listening like they want control you know of everything but you know naturally characters things like that still tough but you know is that how is that what you're seeing or no um so there's kind of two sides to that I guess is that the one um like current modern Midjourney um okay well circling back real quick one of the things that I if I go way off topic remember to swing me back this way to the main to the main point but um one of the things that I

Play from 0:23:52 8:88:88 0:23:52 think uh especially an early Midjourney that occurred to me at some point um because yeah we do have a lot lot of like Dash dashes in there right there's like U there's like yeah you know sometimes your dash dashes could end up longer than your actual prompt 100% um but and then you get into waiting and all of that stuff um uh I think that there going back to like how you think in Midjourney I think that when you spend a lot of time in there um especially in the older Discord days it became like this you were like doing this like hybrid writing a story and like programming at the same time like you know what I mean it definitely was its own language um and uh yeah that was uh that that part that part I I think is still pretty I

Play from 0:24:39 8:88:88 0:24:39 think that in a large way that's that is still true even on the website um although you know we have a lot of those features now in widgets a lot of them are still only accessible via dash dash commands um okay so outside of that um oh the other thing that I loved about it too is the fact that you could do it on your phone sitting at in line at the grocery store and you were in Discord and like oh relax mode like by the time I'm out of this by the time I'm out of this line I'll have these new images but uh so uh in terms of control so um I think that the way that I always look at Midjourney is I'll take it back to comic books there's like um if you're not familiar like generally with comic books there is like your cover artist and then your interior artist and the cover artist is like like that's the guy

Play from 0:25:25 8:88:88 0:25:25 that's supposed to get your attention on the news stand like oh what's what's going on there so it's real flashy and it's real like uh intricately detailed and then generally you'll open up the comic not always but usually like you'll open up the comic and it's like now it's kind of more of the Workman style right like of like this now we're into the storytelling part of it um not to say that you can't get control like I know that David's talked about control and that pose control coming at some point or another um but you know we've all run to that issue of just like you know uh I want a character raising their hand and like you get that it's like now I want the character like reaching into the holster cuz he's a Cowboy and he's about to draw a gun like 50/50 there you know what I mean you can spend some time working on that but you may or may not get it I know that uh he has talked about those controls coming um and then

Play from 0:26:13 8:88:88 0:26:13 the 3D aspect I think the orb I'm sure you guys I'm sure the viewers the or the or orb secret project yeah uh once we if we start to get there those actually funny enough like I think between the two things of like the orb and and uh and and video I'm actually more excited about 3D controls um yeah control that than I am and POS control in Midjourney that I am about video so that's just me yeah it's it's you know we we've personally been a little bit com you know a little bit of a complainer the last couple uh weeks here CU we keep you know it's been v7s on the way for 6 months it feels like at this point and it's just like yeah it'll be done soon it'll be done soon it'll be done soon it'll be done soon and we're just like

Play from 0:26:58 8:88:88 0:26:58 dude just give us something you know like the the editor feature was great I mean like you know useful not going to say I use it like every day all the time but really have yeah I mean oh sometimes I think that I think that for me that's probably I don't know man that's got to be like a top two or three for me are you talking about personally or commercially like if like if you're doing this for a client are you using it more for a client or you doing it more on your own stuff honestly kind of both man really okay yeah because I just I I love the ab right like we talk about a lot uh the symmetrical bias right the system has so like just the ability to move out you know reposition you know your composition um and I would

Play from 0:27:45 8:88:88 0:27:45 say yeah I'm probably using it almost yeah almost like on everything I'm working on dude like seriously yeah all right I I had a good hack the other day with um uh uh the character ref so um I did a video uh it was kind of a funny video using uh runways Act One um initial images were generated in Midjourney it was a short film about a Hitman uh doing an interview for like a corporate job um so you nice yeah it was like you know two characters back and forth so both those characters generated Midjourney but um our Hitman had flashbacks to like you know the gag is is like you know what what what Real World experience you have and it's like well I was in special I was in black for you know the Black Ops and you know

Play from 0:28:31 8:88:88 0:28:31 flash flashback to him doing something ridiculous uh and you know the gag was that you know the character was Court Marshals um in that segment so you could see ref the character in but he would be wearing the suit and tie right um so uh again editor just blacked him out military dress and then you know you you had him you had the same you know character but now wearing appropriate clothes so CU that is always one frustration of just like it's it's funny because we complain so long about consistent clothes and then consistent clothes and you're like as it turns out I need this I need a wardrobe change for this guy that was always uh you know there it felt like character reference if you put in the effort you can get what you want but it's effort you know it's not just like you click a button

Play from 0:29:16 8:88:88 0:29:16 character you know transition which is feel like most of the tool right I mean that's that's I think uh all of these tools Midjourney especially I think maybe maybe we tend to think about it more in Midjourney just because we're so deeply ingrained in it but I think that like there's always like a hack and a way to get around it all like yes yes one of my one of my favorite things to do cuz like you know how like you get a face but it's like it's not quite right even C raft like um just go back to your base image again and then run it through a face swapper you know what I mean so that you can get you have to do that outside of Midjourney so there is a ton of that yeah I I I still remember the whole character reference Rory put out this post where he got like two different characters in a scene and that had like

Play from 0:30:02 8:88:88 0:30:02 20 steps to it it l like this is the perfect explanation for a lot of the Midjourney stuff right it's like people ask if it's possible you know it's like well yeah but like here's the caveat right oh yeah yeah about two days worth of pain to get there that side of it too where it's just like you know all of that stuff and then plus I brought it into Photoshop and spent another 20 hours on it you know I mean that's the you know anything can be done like it's just you know it's it might take a while yeah can you can you do it in tool right like do you have to jump around how like I thought that was that's another great point about the editor too right like I thought with that new editor feature you saved yourself some steps right because you didn't necessarily have to zoom out and erase you know or um reposition

Play from 0:30:48 8:88:88 0:30:48 things or change aspect you could do it all in one go right so like for a while you had to like piece that together and I can't even tell you probably how many times I've lost track of like something I was working on and then I generated other things at the same time my ADHD got the best me I probably never saw it again you know like yeah left an editor yeah yeah seriously I mean the other good thing about that was matching the aesthetic I think that was probably the biggest hurdle between like Midjourney and then Photoshop like if you want to do a big piece of an image and like do it it was like Photoshop couldn't necessarily match the same aesthetic if you're doing something a little bit more you know like Midjourney is and then it was like bang now we can now we can match that like that's what I like the most um you know in terms of we just talking about in terms of pose control too like there is like there's retexture um that we have now too so I mean you

0:31:30Pinokio Tool Breakdown

Play from 0:31:33 8:88:88 0:31:33 could literally grab your phone take a reference photo of yourself in the pose that you're looking for and then retexture from there so it's a matter of like and that's something that I I think a lot of times on the AI side of things um I I that's another part I mean I'm very bullish on video to video as well not a lot of the some of the audience there's definitely a portion of the audience that is like not necessarily keen on that because it requires effort I'm like listen you may have to get up and you may have to actually physically do things I I I don't think that prompting is ultimately going to be the future of all of this I think that you know um it's still we're it's still going to require visual input at some point or another like we're going to we're going to hit that point of just like you know maybe

Play from 0:32:18 8:88:88 0:32:18 you are talking to an llm and it's like you know that cowboy pose like in that scene from uh quick and the dead and like um let me show you that scene it may be part and that may be part of of it um but yeah I mean for sure that prompting is never going to fully get you exactly what you're looking for but there's also a part of me that always says maybe that's okay as well going back to like working with comic book artists where I was like I drew the thing you I drew thumbnails of like what I wanted in my script and they were like screw you buddy that's my job like so there is a part of me that's like that's actually Midjourney's job too is to say screw you I'm handling this you know what I mean like I like I I want to do my inter interpretation of it so I know I'm like an anthr orphaning how do I say that humanizing I know I'm humanizing

Play from 0:33:05 8:88:88 0:33:05 the J there you go you know he you know what it's like a curse on this show if you start to get anything with you know four syllables or more you're screwed I mean you're you're done so it it's you know it's also I like that though like I like the challenge of trying to figure it out because more like 80% of the time you do if you like you when it's not perfect and doesn't just listen to you it's like find out ways to do other things and then that translates so you know it's kind of been like a blessing and a curse having this like starting with this stuff really raw and it's not it's not giving me what I want how do I get it well you know if you're a naturally curious person there's no end well you we oh God no I was just going to say Rory and I talk about this a lot too like they the idea that if these Pro if there are no problems presented to you you're not

Play from 0:33:51 8:88:88 0:33:51 forced to you know try to work up with these Creative Solutions so it's another way to flex creativity too in a different way now that some of this other creative uh I guess the creative functionalities have been taken away somewhat in some of the llm stuff so you know I I think it's just a different way to think but it's it's healthy right because you start to you know kind of like really understand the tool at a deep deep level uh I think for me like that was super important too like having multiple ways to potentially get to the same end outcome right like hey this way isn't going to work for this okay now I know know that but I already I already have two or three other ways in mind that I'm going to tried too you know so I thought that was like a key piece especially early on with the tech I think it's important to to not get creatively tunnel visioned into like I I

Play from 0:34:37 8:88:88 0:34:37 want this thing and then you're not paying attention to all of the other variations that um that it's providing you um where you know if you were to maybe take a look at that that might springboard an idea to do something else or head in a different direction so um yeah that is that that part of like uh I don't know Wonder numbness I think that we are universally going through at the tail end here of of this year um I think it's yeah we need to reset that at some point or another um just because again like yes ultimate control is important but not losing fact sight of the fact that like there are like literally an infinite amount of creative options as well you know like yeah even just with the parameters itself I I think I calculated at one time we were at like a trillion potential combinations or something like that with all the if you

Play from 0:35:24 8:88:88 0:35:24 tried to run all of them in different variations you know I did some nerd stuff like that where I was like you know's let's just see you know this proba be a great tweet but it wasn't a great tweet it got like one like and I was like wow it really just really spent five minutes doing that on ChatGPT and that's that's pretty bad it was funny though think yeah because you're right a we between like you know zero and a thousand and then plus you know styliz between what yeah yeah the presentations are yeah that's that's a lot codes now add those in the mix personalization with stylization you know like yeah broke my personalization um by uh by doing too many uh like uh I think I did like two th I read that wrong and thought that you you the initial one to get the PE code I think was you had to do 200 I read that as

Play from 0:36:11 8:88:88 0:36:11 2,000 for some reason so I just kept like going like and hammering and hammering and hammering it uh and then so for a little while there my my personalization code was like it was just cinematic green like no I could not get out of that so um I had to go through and like do personalization codes is true sometime soon I mean it was supposed to be yesterday is it today is it this weekend is it next week I don't know uh I have not gotten really the chance to dive too deeply into Patchwork uh just because this has been Sor week what how how have you guys found that so far great question go ahead Rory did you play around with it I I was on it today for a little bit it was like it to me it was it was so it was there was so many different options in there that I just started like generate

Play from 0:36:58 8:88:88 0:36:58 you know I just started with one character I just started playing with the character and I'm like okay let's build out this canvas and then was when it came to like linking and the portals and everything else and I'm like I don't have the mental capacity to figure this out I need like a day to like figure this all out was were you on the were you on the office hours the other day listening live for I got about Midway through the demo I had to I had to bounce out but like was like okay I get this or at least I thought I got it uh this morning I and then this morning I jumped in I'm just like uh maybe yeah again same thing I don't think it's like this doesn't not seem to be something that you're going to pick up in five minutes it seems to be like a day like I mean I I heard you know collaborative World building and I just imagin something totally different yeah yeah you know and then uh you know that yeah that demo seemed um boy there's a lot to

Play from 0:37:45 8:88:88 0:37:45 cover there you know what I mean and that guy was just I thought he was doing a good job but at the same time like he's trying to cover too much I mean he was just rushing through it I don't know how anybody could have picked up on that but I haven't played with it just yet I did try to get on that same day later in the day and the the link was crashed so oh yeah okay yeah so I don't know it just to me I didn't see anything that was like yeah you have to you have to log in Via your Google account which has to be tied to your uh Discord and I don't know so yeah I had a I had a little bit of an issue logging in it eventually did let me in um yeah I get it like it's like I think that the cuz it was sort of pitched as the storytelling Team U that's what we had heard it as uh beting in I I and I I think it's there it's just it's not

Play from 0:38:33 8:88:88 0:38:33 probably the what we had expected at first um so it may take a little diving in to figure out sort of where how they were calling the storytelling uh the you know World building all of that stuff and how it works you know yeah it's yeah I think it's it's just going to take a little bit for us to figure out exactly where our best use cases are for it and how it how it actually genuinely works so yeah just felt to me personally like I've I've been an I've been a probably said this a few times on on the podcast but I've just been really a fan of how Runway has released this all the New Gen 3 products where it's like every week they give you like a little bite where you know first right it's just like thanks guys but it's like it's easy to pick up and

Play from 0:39:18 8:88:88 0:39:18 figure out the uses for it when you have like one new thing to work on each week this seemed like a whole new environment and I was like oh God granted for uses stuff every day it's it's a little bit confusing someone who's just jumping in there who's maybe been on Midjourney for a month or two like I going figure that out I mean maybe they figured out better than us because it's new but it's uh that's just I think they he David asked that right it's like would you rather have like these bigger more Grand updates or would you rather have like these smaller ones I mean I'm of the opinion smaller ones because it's just nice to to learn stuff in that fashion are you do you feel the same way or is that kind of like yeah I mean well the two sides to that is that I think that I I like um I do miss like the that Weekly I mean again this is going back you know to this to that older style of like uh oh

Play from 0:40:05 8:88:88 0:40:05 we we just put you know uh we just came up with like dash dash whatever like uh I can't remember like weird or yeah mutations remember that or permutations like uh um best feature yeah like just like I do miss that era of just like oh that's kind of interesting and neat um you know I I think it's going to be a mixture like I he was talking the other day about how I think the they're they're moving more into a research lab like kind of area so um we may be just seeing a lot more smaller and bigger experiments like this and look if like if this doesn't take um then cool like they they gave it a shot it was something interesting it'll it'll probably still sit there if it does take and morphs into something else I think a lot of times with them it'll be like it it doesn't take um some power users will

Play from 0:40:53 8:88:88 0:40:53 still use it some aspects of it might merge into something else so you know we'll see so um yeah it's an interesting idea though like I like the there was a couple questions which I had which I was glad people asked which was could you flip the style of the entire board with One S ref code like that's what I was hoping and when they said no but I was like I hope you take that not because that would be great that that change everything like that's a totally different ball game right if you built this whole storyboard out and you could just one click Chang the other side of it too like that people are gen what I've noticed at least is that people tend to um the they get a little intimidated weirded out by what we're calling the AI murder board like the whole canus thing I mean because it looks like you know looks like a like you're a detective um chasing a serial

Play from 0:41:38 8:88:88 0:41:38 killer with these so yeah it did didn't it you know I get that like um a lot of that sort of idea comes out of like like comfy because but there's no nodes in this it's not like it's like it's like you got spaghetti wire everywhere but I know like kyber did their murder board um Flora which was another tool that I took a look at a while back as as theirs um you know that that seems to be a trend that people are kind of playing around with I don't know if the canvases are going to stick though mostly because a like they underestimate how disorganized we are as users although I when I I did notice in Patchwork you could right click and have like if you had a character tab like and you had like images all over the place you could right click on that and they would all

Play from 0:42:24 8:88:88 0:42:24 snap to that area I'm like ah very ah yeah so um but yeah I think that that infinite infinite canvas idea is a little bit intimidating to a lot of users that aren't familiar with that workflow I think there are far more people that aren't familiar with it than are so yeah I I still like figma you know I would love to have I would love to have like a mid-journey plugin for figma to generate right in there but i' probably just use that but you know it's is there is there anything that plugs into I mean I don't know if flux has one I feel like that's got to be coming somewhere along the line but yeah I mean I you know at some point I think that um yeah we are in API every the all in-one API platform it's like oh I have a I have a platform that that that plugs

0:42:45Sora First Impressions

Play from 0:43:09 8:88:88 0:43:09 into like you can generate on anything here via their apis so um and I I don't know if that is going to stick uh only because like um a lot of times I don't know if you guys are playing around with any of those but you'll get you can you can access like Generations across Ross any of the major platforms but a lot of those intricate details are nerfed out like so you can't do a lot of like you know um yeah the the controls that you're used to so um so I don't know uh I don't yeah yeah Korea I mean like that's the one that I find to be the most if you're going to try everything like that seems to be I I don't know you mentioned Pinocchio before how was what give give us a little insight into are you using that a lot or no yeah that

Play from 0:43:56 8:88:88 0:43:56 actually so Pinocchio's fun and cool okay here's I got to do the coffee out here so Pinocchio um essentially is if you go to Pinocchio doomu um it's a shell that you can install on your machine that will then access all of like the open source tools that are out there and very easily install them onto your computer and you can use them right on on your machine so anything from like or if you want to use like uh a face swapper or you want to use any of like kind of the latest and greatest that's coming out of uh face pooke was in there uh very quickly okay here's the thing that I have to caveat so um and this is the thing everyone always gets a little bit worried and sketched out about is that when you install Pinocchio you have to bypass your window security or if

Play from 0:44:44 8:88:88 0:44:44 you're on a Mac you have to run a scary terminal command um because the the um the the uh the program itself is not signed certified I talked to the guy about this and there's like there's like thousands of us that use Pinocchio there's I don't they're not doing anything particularly nefarious it's just the guy doesn't want to sign um security you he doesn't want to sign security certificates to Apple and and Microsoft so it is technically kind of a a hack um you know um thing so listen uh I understand if anybody's just like I'm not doing that like so I totally totally get that um but it is probably the easiest way to install things like um let's see do I have it up right now um let's see uh face I've got it up I've got it up go ahead you keep talking I'll

Play from 0:45:31 8:88:88 0:45:31 share it okay cool yeah so like um yeah it's the easiest way to kind of explore and play around with these tools uh if you're not great with um you know dealing with githubschool Echo mic yeah Clarity refiner is the new one that's kind of like magnific but maybe free um so um yeah um and these again these are all of the like open- Source um tools available and they're updating constantly um anything that comes out they're like okay we'll throw that up there so and then it from there it's just a matter of like can your machine run it so yeah that's the other thing which is uh which is definitely

Play from 0:46:18 8:88:88 0:46:18 you learn that quickly in the AI game whether your machine is good or not I did with my M1 yeah face Fusion I think is one that uh that does really well well that one right there so that's a really great face swapper um that generally you can run on your Dell potato especially if you're doing images like um your M1 could probably handle a video on that so um so yeah that's uh yeah pinocchia is great this is yeah very interesting because it's like you know is it is it node based within po Pinocchio like like comfy UI or totally different it's kind of a weird um it looks like your most basic um like uh like UI of all time it looks very like utilitarian uh but yeah no nodes or anything just like input image here A

Play from 0:47:05 8:88:88 0:47:05 bunch of Sliders that you sort of have to play around with to figure out what you want to do you know um like how much influence um reference all of that stuff you want to have so it's it it it a lot of the stuff because it is open source does it works but it doesn't necessarily look pretty so got it yeah got it I think uh I think we should probably hit on some of the bigger news of the week you said you've been sort of down deep in it I've I've personally been there myself I think Drews in a little bit how what are your what are the first impressions on Sora First Impressions were not great um I think like a lot of us like uh were um you know we for look for 10 months we saw a thing that was like this is amazing um and then we got it and it was like this is not so amazing and now I

Play from 0:47:50 8:88:88 0:47:50 got to pay 200 bucks um to generate a person in there and there was a lot of like and butt and butt and butts that were that were in there um so I ended up taking you know uh a bunch of days to really I I I paid the stupid 200 bucks and like all right let's see what we can do here um and well because it was it you know and admittedly to their credit it is like $200 um you burn through your credits and then you're on Unlimited on the relax mode uh which I have found has not been any slower than it was yeah I was going to say what is the typical time you're finding relax mode or is that the or is that the same mode that you get with the plus users uh maybe maybe um the yeah that

Play from 0:48:37 8:88:88 0:48:37 might be right because it might be priority queue when you're in the Pro mode but you know I was on the pro mode on launch day and a couple of days after uh and you know the site was probably getting hammered so I probably wasn't even really I mean in my first video I noted that it was like 20 minutes for that first generation it's nowhere near that now like even having burn through all of my credits um a typical gener excuse me uh typical generation is around two minutes or so yeah so it's really not it's it's pretty okay um I think it's still uh I just did a video uh on the videoo video aspect of it so I think there's a lot of interesting stuff when you have to rest control from Sora um what I've notice is that on the image to video side it does

Play from 0:49:24 8:88:88 0:49:24 not it kind of acts like Midjourney um image referencing in that like you provide Midjourney with an image reference and it's going to be like it's not going to give you like a one to one or it's going to be like oh I see what you're going for there I'm gonna go ahead and do my own thing yeah yeah and um that's how Sora works with their image referencing and I think that's what initially was super frustrating to people is that you know we we come in with our intricately designed you know Midjourney compositions and like it's like i' for hours I've mastered this is the exact image that I want to have like come to and then you pop it in it's just like n I'm going to go ahead and like we're going to do some deer in a forest how's that sound was quick cut yeah yeah um so um but what I did find is that if you

Play from 0:50:10 8:88:88 0:50:10 take it if you if you take your you know Midjourney image bring it through any one of the other video generators and then bring it into Midjourney you get some really pretty stellar results out of it so uh or I'm sorry Sora uh you get some really pretty stellar results out of it and as the days have gone by um we've been finding all kinds of like weird there's a lot of controls in there that are that are kind of buried um like the blend controls um blend yeah it's it's super powerful the the thing is and I don't know if this is by Design on their part um all of the controls within it are uh are curve based um and the curves aren't labeled so no you're like you're just kind of making curves going like I don't know what this is going to do um and I think that actually might be on design on their part cuz I think they want to

Play from 0:50:56 8:88:88 0:50:56 encourage experiment ation you know um to create look Sora I think that you know all most of the demo stuff was like really like artsy and weird and and you know and like look how like you know Guggenheim Museum all of this stuff looks um and then you know getting down to Brass tax of like making a narrative like you know it's like that's that's not what they're trying to aim for necessarily I think or at least like they're smart enough to know like look it's not probably going to be able to do that right now so um instead let's get you these unnamed blend tools and let you kind of play around with them to come up with weird effects um and indeed as we've gotten into it I think that there is control there there's a lot of control there it's just you got to sort of figure out how to do it you know yeah it was a big release a lot of stuff you

Play from 0:51:43 8:88:88 0:51:43 know like to to learn it's a whole new it feels like a whole new prompting structure whole new prompting style and you know but blend is to me the the differentiator blend and remix and recut like those are the differentiating factors um blend you can get so creative with that I was I I got addicted last night I just did it for like six hours straight yeah I couldn't stop but there was like a there was a cool one that uh I want say bla Brown I saw put of like um he had a uh image of or he had a video of like a medieval castle and then another video of like joggers in Central Park and was actually man managed to do a blend where it kind of looks like a drone shot that starts on the castle and comes down to like people jogging in front of the castle I'm like oh that's awesome like like okay okay so uh um so I was just playing around with it um I

Play from 0:52:30 8:88:88 0:52:30 posted a thing on X with it where I figured out kind of character consistency if you were to take a uh Midjourney or I'm sorry a like a a sore character um remix that yeah remix that video out for a different action you will get a totally different character but in the still in the same style and then you go through and you blend your original character with that second character and like now have a consistent character doing yeah I see one thing that I have noticed the more you beat up on Sor footage though the more processes you take it through it does that like first frame or that final frame thing where each iteration tends to look a little grainier and like a little softer and like not not quite as soft as it used to be but you definitely see it's

0:52:30Creative Control Debate

Play from 0:53:17 8:88:88 0:53:17 like it definitely almost like looks analog um in that like it's so many generations and it's starts to kind of grain up a little bit so that might be I'm having issues uploading some of the Sora stuff to Twitter where it's not like it's showing up like 480p on there I'm like well I just upscaled this to 4K and topaz why does it look like this you know so it's a yeah it's a weird one but the like there was there's there things what I would say on this too is like there's things on Sora you just can't do on the other platforms right like I had this one I had a video of a guy on a motorcycle in the jungle coming towards us like coming towards the camera and then I blended it with a guy going the opposite way and what it did was it gave me like this really crazy like sharp 90° turn like it

Play from 0:54:03 8:88:88 0:54:03 took a 90° turn but then like it morphed the two so there was a guy sitting on the bike facing forward and a guy sitting on the bike facing backwards I'm like interesting cool but if I hit remix can I just remix that out and then bang then it's like you have like this crazy turn sequence and it's like that's something you cannot do on you know maybe Minx can get something along those lines with the super fast motion but I was it's like this is where this is the differentiator like these two tools here cuz it's if you it's a creative playground with them to me personally and that I found too is in the recut feature which again nothing else has um if you recut something that you like you know get that timeline extend the timeline out move your original clip to somewhere in the middle and then text prompt on either side of it you'll get

Play from 0:54:50 8:88:88 0:54:50 consistent looks to your original clip so it's almost like using your original clip as a style reference which I thought was really fascinating so um like yeah that is that's that's pretty big in all honesty that alone so uh you know I know that a lot of people have been having problems and I think that on the text side of it I think you're right like it's a completely different text prompting style I think we've all gotten a little bit lazy and prompting in all honesty yeah universally like um so um I I did feel like when in my follow-up video on Sora I really didn't want to I was really trying to avoid doing like the hit piece cuz like there's so many people out there that are just doing like it sucks like videos like just like I don't want to go that direction like it doesn't seem that doesn't seem like click baity it's too hyperbolic you know

Play from 0:55:38 8:88:88 0:55:38 so um so yeah I mean I think that I really wanted to spend some time figuring out well no what's good about it I think impr prompting there probably is a way that you can get some I know Dave Clark has been working on he's gotten some great outputs um and he just recently was saying like like some of these some of these are like four paragraphs long um so if you guys remember like those early like um like Tokyo woman walking or like even the the the P Trello prompts they were like walls of text um yeah so I kind of think that that's right now what Sora is actually dying for it really wants that it doesn't want like puppy in the woods with a machine gun like you know like yeah yeah so like you just have to and I don't know if anybody's any of us have really cracked what exactly that is yet if only open AI had some sort of like

Play from 0:56:24 8:88:88 0:56:24 chat bot that could help with that yeah it's so weird yeah or if the coherence was just like a uh an image gen tool that they owned like what if we called the dolly or something you know interesting I like that I like that thought process I wonder like they're doing that they're doing that 12 Days of Christmas I mean are we gonna see an update from dolly in that 12 Days of Christmas that's kind of been on my mind I don't know but I was convinced that Sora was either going to be on the first day or the last day um and the fact that they just Came Out Swinging with it on like what day three like like I have no idea what's coming up next I mean like um yeah what was what was day one day one was uh 01 was it the 01 I think so

Play from 0:57:10 8:88:88 0:57:10 yeah yeah and so I really thought it was gonna be 01 bookmark and then bookmarked with um at the end it was going to be Sora uh or I thought it was going to be chat gbt with vision which they also did on day one and then Sora at the end so right like we're sort of weird no man's land for me like I have no idea what they're going to what they're going to announce what what is your like Power Rankings with these AI video tools right now I mean what you know do you have a do you have one that that's sort of like your go-to at the moment or do you kind of treat them as like use case dependent use case dependent but I do think that like there's uh and I never get to get into like T stuff so um uh minia Max is definitely the crowd favorite like anytime I mention them on the channel it's just like yes and those guys I got to say like I

Play from 0:57:57 8:88:88 0:57:57 got to give up to melon and the and the Mini Max team because they were probably the like I think they were they've been the only video generator that I've seen that has managed to do the transition from like everything's free to like well we got to pay for stuff guys and like I flawlessly like they they're still Heroes I don't know like generally like uh and like I'll go back to Old School P days but like when P was like it's free and then they were like well you gotta pay now and everyone was just like screw Pika yeah I mean Minx managed to look like a champion all the way through that whole thing so congrats to those guys um you know um they all have kind of different they all have different kind of looks and Vibes um I also like cling a lot I like uh Runway or I'm sorry yeah

Play from 0:58:43 8:88:88 0:58:43 Runway that is definitely really useful especially when you add in the act one component into it and it's so fast like I mean it's it's crazy how fast that thing is um and I like uh I I'm actually going to dive into um after we finish this up I'm going to dive into Luma um to really deep dive into their new um what Photon yeah Photon yeah dig into that so it's cool it's interesting it's different that's what I love that I love having like um options on you know on how things will because you know I I still go back to the fact that like AI video does not need to I know that the trend is always like how are you going to make Hollywood movies off of this I'm like it doesn't really happen that's that's right do its own thing like it should do its own thing so um you know I

Play from 0:59:30 8:88:88 0:59:30 don't know what that's going to look like I'm too old for that like so like there should be some young kid out there that's like that's like making some like crazy things that expect what are you most excited about for 2025 AI speaking gen AI uh I would say um the orb of course yes uh yeah um and I think the convergence of 3D into ourspace like I think that's going to going to be and I've been saying this for a while now I don't think that you need to go out and learn blender or uh Studio Max I mean my caveman head cannot handle like that to begin with um but I mean I think that you should probably pick up some basic ideas on how that UI works at least just like just you know in a very light yeah

Play from 1:00:16 8:88:88 1:00:16 like take do a 101 YouTube course on on blender um a 10-minute in to blender class just to kind of get your head wrapped around what that's going to be because I think that that's going to be a pretty big thing coming up in 2025 so um I always do go back to that whole thing of like when when is control when is control too much control right because we always talk about that like oh I want this I want to be able to move the camera here I want to be able to do this blah blah blah how much at what point are you now on a timeline doing key frame animation you know what I mean that's control those tools exist already like you know go learn 3D animation software then um so there is a point that we're going to hit where um you've got the Simplicity of the thing and the control of the thing and there's going

Play from 1:01:01 8:88:88 1:01:01 to be a sweet spot that we hit there but you know there's still going to be a crew that's just like but but what about but what about and like you push over of course yeah suddenly we're just I feel like that's already the case kind of like I know we talk about updates the Midjourney all the time but you know you'll go just I think habitually like we'll start to do things for a while and then we've completely forgotten about a feature you know that we haven't used in a long time and it's just like you know there's actually a lot here yeah you know when you really think about it when you think about all the different ways you could prompt for example right there just so many different things you could do and so yeah I think you're I think you're absolutely right there is a sweet spot um and I think that's also you know an interesting conversation kind of going back to what Rory said about peac mealing it together and that's why it's great to kind of get in early on some of

Play from 1:01:47 8:88:88 1:01:47 these tools because it doesn't feel like such a lift when there is uh you know the the small changes but even the big changes right I mean that rocks me even there's a big change like when V7 drops I'm going to I'm going to feel like Panic for a moment but at the same time I'm not feeling the Panic that somebody would that's just like oh okay Now's the Time you know that I gota I gotta start learning this stuff I I'm actually probably coming into 2025 I think I'm probably going to do a couple of like intro classes I need to do some revisions on actually even the mid-journey videos like that's been I still get a lot of like they get so outdated quick yeah like well there's like I have like this one that's like prompting in Midjourney but it's like version 51 and people are still like watching it and I'm like it's so it's still back like yeah it's just like you know but you're not taking it down I'm

1:02:00YouTube Growth Insights

Play from 1:02:33 8:88:88 1:02:33 not taking it down do that Uncle YouTube does not like it when you do that so it stays up for the historical record hey you know what go let's talk about YouTube for a second I this is fascinating too you know so obviously you talked about your you know your journey with YouTube a little bit I was reading some story it was from like Curious Refuge who did some sort of interview or article with them and you were talking about sort of like I guess you were involved doing a little bit of music stuff and you kind of Chang your content but like give us some idea of like maybe from a Creator standpoint what works on YouTube what you know like do you have tips because I I still think you know and even Rory and I we were talking and Rory especially Rory is just always on YouTube I give him because he's sort of like a genen z with

Play from 1:03:19 8:88:88 1:03:19 YouTube guy like he'll watch it on his like TV at home I'm like I don't even do that you know but you know I think like to Point like it's still one of those places where it feels like there's some green grass there like what are some of the lessons you've learned what are some like tips along the way like anything that you can share with the audience I would say like if you are doing in our case like if you or our case like um I think that those if you doing shorter form content right now so if you're doing like if you say doing an AI film trailer or you're trying to do like AI you take Midjourney images animate them and do something with it don't do them in uh on YouTube main I would I would I would do shorts on all of that stuff right now so um and then that's just the

Play from 1:04:04 8:88:88 1:04:04 grind part of it um and then did they they extend shorts too isn't that like three minutes now okay okay I don't actually personally play around with shorts so um that's just you know it's more work so exactly yeah so I I don't feel like doing that um and any to be and like just to bash on this for a second but any of those like take your long form content and throw it through this AI thing and it will make it instant short like those those don't work so um uh and on top of it I think that when you're going through the shorts feed you you know like you spot it in a second you're just like ah like I don't want you know I don't want that AI edit um but um so I would yeah I would look at it that way um other than that with YouTube's such a weird fickle Beast you can end up getting you know a

Play from 1:04:50 8:88:88 1:04:50 hit um and then you know double down on whatever hit like the next video is like four videos for just like what I just but I just had the hit everybody liked it um so I mean I don't I guess if I have any advice it really is just just kind of keep keep going at it like figure out a schedule that works for you be it once a week I think that was where I started was like just once a week um you know try to make the best content that you possibly can and just keep keep keep at it so um uh the early on and I'll say like that was one thing that again I think from having a guitar is playing in band and all of that stuff earlier like early on I made a real effort um to make sure that I responded to every comment that's gotten much harder now like um like I I actually

Play from 1:05:36 8:88:88 1:05:36 really can't do it as much but um yeah I would drive myself insane like writing like long detailed responses back to everybody cuz to me it was like um you know like from like playing in punk rock bands it was like I'm not on a stage we're all on the stage like we're this is we're all together uh and I'm going to hang out and drink beers with you guys afterwards we're going to cheer on the next band um you know and so that was kind of my mentality with with like with YouTube was like was like I'm going to answer every comment I'm going to make a personal connection with every single person uh that it's you know as the channel has grown that's become less possible but I think that that's part of it as well it's just like it's just making a real like there there's always a real person that's watching this hi person out there that's watching to here thank you yeah amazing um there's a real

Play from 1:06:22 8:88:88 1:06:22 person there though that's uh that is uh that's watching this so just acknowledge that respect that and uh make that connection and then that person will probably come back and watch again love that love that point I think that's very relatable for both of us uh we we actually did an episode was that two weeks ago now Rory where we were talking about you know basically just like growing organically on social what we learned in that process because we both really started leaning into the AI stuff but you know as you know like the you grow you grow you grow it becomes harder to do it's less scalable but at the beginning it is so crucial because what you're trying to do is establish like that that core base of people that will follow you through you know those first couple steps right and kind of build around that in terms of people telling

Play from 1:07:08 8:88:88 1:07:08 other people right like so it's that Network effect that you're trying to capture but at some point it does become a little bit unscalable right I I also think that like the the other if there's like one big thing it's like your audience are not idiots like you know what I mean like so many of those like so many of those people came in to the AI Gold Rush YouTube space like uh like with like trat GPT will make you $700 a week it's like no it will not that is not going to happen and I those guys are going to lose credibility in just a second um I well they actually those guys have already lost there's a new prop um they they die off very quickly um and the other part of it too is that like I think that part of the thing that I sort of branded the channel on is just like well two things really I play with

Play from 1:07:55 8:88:88 1:07:55 all the tools like almost every video that I do I'm handson like getting into the thing I'm never just going to say like oh here's it like sometimes I have to because it either hasn't been released or for time purposes but really rarely it's always like um oh here's a new thing I made a thing with it here's how I made it this is what it looks like um and then on top of it sometimes it's good I have no problems talking about where it falters either it's like you just you you have to be honest like with there are so many of those guys that are out there it's like this thing is the best this is this is this is greatest and like you know I don't like you have to show that the realism of this stuff it's like I you know I have no problems being like this took me a 100 rolls but finally got here like you know people need they need they need that though because it's I I think you know we there's a lot of people that are

Play from 1:08:41 8:88:88 1:08:41 guilty of putting up exceptional work but like that doesn't that doesn't document the actual you know something like like Dave for example like you don't you don't know how many for something for you know the things that he's done either commercially or just for social you don't know how many still images were created to get to that point how many runs how many edits how many you know it looks like oh yeah Dave pushed a button and there's you know this this cinematic two-minute Masterpiece but it's like there's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes than that um so I think it's good that you share that CU you have this one I'm gonna talk little out of school on this one so hopefully uh I don't get in too much trouble about this but Dave did say I haven't seen it but Dave did say his like going back to what we were talking about before his V1 of that co- commercial was completely different than what what what ended up there so like so

Play from 1:09:26 8:88:88 1:09:26 there was like essentially that job was at least done twice you know what I mean like so um so whatever however much he generated up in order to create his first thing look it's a major commercial TV spot of course he's going to go through revisions of course he's going to go through client revisions but you know um conceptually at least you know it was a completely different thing um than what what we ended up seeing so I think there was 10 to 15 I think it was 10 to 15,000 Stills just just for that which was you know 60c which again puts it in perspective it's somewhat similar to you know the typical production process it's just a different way to do it you know it's take the long it's still going to take the long route revisions fine-tuning editing like going back and forth you know probably self

1:09:45Future of AI Creation

Play from 1:10:11 8:88:88 1:10:11 flogging for a while um you know and then you know you get to that end point but I think it's you know it's good I I like that that's I think that's what drew me into your content on like the the first couple Midjourney videos I watch watch was just like he's being real about it he's not bsing you know like you're being real you're saying where it falters you're saying where it gets weird you know so it's you it's the adult you know the story is Old As Time with social media just be authentic right like be yourself tell the truth like completely yeah and I think that that's like that's it provides like a level of like I think I've kind of become the jokey AI guy like like you know I'm like the you know dad jokes um it's kind of like the other part of my brand um and that's so that's something that like look when everything is perfect dude I'm going to be out of a job because what am I going to make fun

Play from 1:10:57 8:88:88 1:10:57 of like you know what I have to be able to like make jokes about six fingers and all of that stuff so you know it's important it is and it's good to remember where we came from yeah you know what I mean true very true where it all started yeah but it's it's been it's been an interesting ride man like I like I said there's it's been it's been nice when it felt like there was no one putting this stuff out there to have someone like you to be okay there's a there's a community to be had here there's someone to talk to about this or listen to or at least have fun with cuz you know I'll never forget the day when it was like I was looking for something and I couldn't find it on Midjourney I'm like have I surpassed where YouTube is like have I gotone weirder yeah right it was like but it was early but I was trying some really crazy stuff it made no sense but it was just funny

Play from 1:11:44 8:88:88 1:11:44 that again found your channel for stuff like this where I was like this is this is awesome like there's someone thinking about it in a way that I'm like excited about it too so that was uh again I'll I'll I'll thank you again for for creating the content because it's good you know this's reason you know as let's give him let's give the channel a little plug here so this is at theoretically media on YouTube right uh looks like bad branding by the way it's like nine syllables but you know it's kind of like the first letter last letter of your first name you know but uh theoretically in media oh where is it I hey I don't know but uh but yeah man so so Tim here got 130,000 subscribers 225 videos up this guy's got some stuff here covering

Play from 1:12:30 8:88:88 1:12:30 everything from Sora Leonardo kyber Midjourney flux um I'm just scrolling the feed here I mean everything Luma dream machine so like if this is your space which it should be if you're if you're listening to this podcast definitely encourage you checking it out give them a sub say hi it is great content so Props to you appreciate it thanks thanks for joining us man that was an awesome conversation we're glad to have you here thanks for thanks for jumping on with us and nerding out for a bit again follow Tim on YouTube he's also on X just saw you there gave you a follow make sure you follow him there as well we're super grateful that we get to talk to people like you as we move forward into 2025 as we get more and more cool stuff to play with yeah it's going to be a wild next year we have not even I feel like we're

Play from 1:13:17 8:88:88 1:13:17 still heading up on the uh on the roller coaster we have me yeah me too me too as it's as is YouTube Duty here like And subscribe you know I think that's the that's the idea both channels yeah I mean happy holidays gentlemen if we don't if we don't speak abs and then uh I guess we'll I guess we'll continue the ride next week Drew we'll catch you guys in the next one thanks for joining us later gra me