Transcript: Gossip Goblin on Pomegranate, Two Hours After It Premiered

Pomegranate premiered two hours ago

0:14 We're back, Andrew and Ourel. We're on the second ever creator session and we're so honored to have Zack London aka Gossip Goblin with us. It has been an amazing premiere we've been watching and uh yes, it's just I'm hearing a bit of a repeat. Can you guys hear the repeat of myself coming back? No, we can hear you fine. Oh, really? Okay. Maybe it's just I've got it open in another tab. Yeah, it is. I've just got it open another tab. Sorry. Just getting some technicals uh out of the way. Welcome to any newcomers from Zach's channel. We're also br broadcasting to Gossip Goblin's channel. Thank you so much for having us. And uh yeah, so we've got a mixture of different people going on in the chat that's being brought into StreamYard

1:01 where we're broadcasting from. I can see our channels. I can see LinkedIn channels. I can see other YouTubes going on. This is awesome. Oh my god. Pomegranate uh premiered two hours ago, guys, and we're going to be watching three parts of it in this Q&A session. And uh Andrew, what are your uh first impressions of it? My god, it's so honored to have him here, right? Blown away. Blown away. It was If you haven't seen it in the chat, get ready. If you have seen it, get your questions ready because we've got the the legend here right now going to answer as many questions as he possibly can. So, get your questions in. And yeah, at the moment, I just want to I just want to watch it again. I've already watched it twice. I've already watched it twice. Yes, I watched it twice as well, back to back.

1:51 And you you were telling us that you were doing a private screening of it in the green room as well, which we're so thankful that you'll join the show after that. Honestly, we really really appreciate it. Yeah, for sure. Oh man, look at the chat. It's absolutely blowing up. You're going to have to Oh, I see the chat. You see the comments on the chat? Yeah. So, it's coming in from I see some X comments coming in. I see YouTube. Uh, if you see the little link, that's coming from your YouTube page. And if and then if you don't see the link, it's coming from our YouTube page. As I said, there's lots of mi mixing audiences coming here. This is awesome to see, guys. Look at that. A blend of cultures. I'm loving it. So, you guys are too cheap to um to enable my Instagram audience here, but they're feral.

2:39 They can be I don't [laughter] want them with the fine people of of Twitter, [laughter] YouTube. So, it's better that we keep them separate. That's very hilarious. We found out earlier, Andrew, that Streamyard allows guests to have two destinations to basically stream to on the package we're currently on. And I think we can we can unlock further ones. Yeah. So, should we should have unlocked further. But as always, everyone in the chat, let us know where you're from. We've got people [music] already. We've got article UK. We've got Uruguay. We got Argentina. We've got Los Angeles. All of the world I'm from. Michigan, I see Ohio, Portugal. Oh, popcorn at the ready. Everyone's tuning in. All over the world. Love seeing it. We also ask on our regular show, what is your general interest in AI?

3:30 Are you into films, music videos, advertising? You know, what exactly is it that's your interest in AI? Clearly, we're here to talk about the one and only film that we've just seen, which is, I have to say, the most stunning thing I've ever experienced in AI to date. And I've been in AI from the very early days, you know, and seen some amazing projects come out in those times. But that premiere was truly jaw-dropping and uh on so many levels as well. Was it jaw-dropping? From the colors to the acting to the voice actors to everything like the set design. Uh get your questions in guys. Paul will be Paul's the producer in the back end by the way. You won't see Paul or hear from Paul but he's here. And uh he will be able to highlight questions that you guys have in the audience so that we can ask later on.

Why is he called Gossip Goblin?

4:21 Um the first question that we actually highlighted is why Gossip Goblin? Why Gossip Golem? What? Where did it come from exactly? I don't know. What a what a dumb question. Um [laughter] um I I think the honest answer is not that exciting, but I created So, I I've been an illustrator my whole life and I had um I've been um using the same Instagram handle for like 11 [music] 12 years almost. And um I think I I think there was a promotion on sticker meal. It's like a website where you you buy stickers. It was a great deal. It was just phenomenal discount. And I and my handle was Zach London and I was like that sucks.

5:11 I need to like figure out a professional handle. And then I don't know. I just like impulsively tried a couple out and I was like Gossip Goblin has a good ring to it. you know, I'm a goblin fan. And uh and then I and then once it was printed on stickers, I I I ordered like like 2,000 stickers. It was the price was too good to refuse. And um and once you have 2,000 stickers with a handle on it, you can't change your username. So, [laughter] exactly. That was a brilliant story, even though it was a dumb question potentially that story. So, now now you know the studio I started, it's called Gossip Goblin. It's my handle on everything. It's too late. Like it, you know, there's nothing there's nothing to be done about it.

5:57 Yeah. But I've always said even with the most random names, you can always make anything cool. You can always make anything cool. And that seems to be what you've done so far. Yes. And the word stuck and the world is stuck and it's uh it's transferred across so many different places as well. As you said, your IG audience is a bit feral and different perhaps from your YouTube and your ex audience. But what a world you've built in IG reels in the vertical shorts form and it translates so amazingly to the long form that we watch today as well. Like I don't even know what my question is around that truthfully. It's just a statement about like it's so impressive to see how you've done distribution across so many channels and I don't think many people have managed to crack all those mediums like you have. It's it's truly impressive.

How did he get into AI filmmaking?

6:46 Yeah. Thank you. Let's take it back to the beginning though. How did you get into the whole AI film making? Um, yeah. I mean, I guess like what I was saying earlier, I I was um I was already using social media to kind of push my my art in short stories and and um you know, like I went to university for art originally and for sculpture, which is like it's a very hard hobby to sustain um when [clears throat] you're not like in in university. I was doing like metal casting and and big sculptures. Oh wow. Um, so I kind of fell back on illustration and it it was never like a day job, but it was like what I did outside of work.

7:32 And so, um, you know, I I was spending a huge amount of free time drawing stuff and started self-publishing books of like short stories and illustrations and, um, and just did that for, you know, pretty much all of my 20s and now like halfway into my 30s. And um I think I first kind of started playing with AI like four and a half years ago um when it was really janky and I mean it was kind of fun because it was like so weird but there was so little control over it that it really just felt like this is pure novelty and then you know there was the era of like Shrek memes and Will Smith eating spaghetti and it was unclear of like is this going to go anywhere or is this just going to be this like weird internet oddity?

8:19 Um, right. And then I remember playing with some very early dolly models where you could um actually vaguely get what you wanted and it was like, "Oh, okay. So maybe this will have a use case one day." Um, and then with with I forget which version of MidJourney, but there was a big jump from like just creating [ __ ] psychedelic nonsense to like things that vaguely seemed photorealistic. [clears throat] And I thought that was really exciting. And so I think I made a clear choice where like okay I already am like an illustrator like I I was doing um art for Magic the Gathering cards like I don't want to Wow. I don't want to like eat into that part of me mostly out of like a certain bitterness like I've spent you know decades like learning a craft.

Why he won't use AI for illustration

9:05 I don't want to yeah automate that overnight. Um so I said like I'm not going to get into illustration or animation or like trying to approximate like a a human skill. But in terms of trying to find ways to render real life, I thought that's really fun. So I started I actually like my first real big AI project um was this photo essay series about a madeup country called Urum Kuan that sits in the Altai Mountains and between Mongolia and China. And it was like kind of written in the tone of like a 1970s 1980s like National Geographic where is like a little bit politically incorrect but well intentioned. [laughter] Um, and it was this kind of photo essays about my time in Urum Kuan and like the different ceremonies and the weird technology and the kind of like

Urum Kuan, the fake country that started it

9:51 former Soviet mix of tech with like weird Haraju influence of just like if you could make a world from scratch but make it believable, what would it be? And you know that was at a time where like people were going nuts over like you know Mario Breaking Bad, Harry Potter Balenciaga, Will Smith like beating the [ __ ] [ __ ] out of Mickey Mouse. Um, and so there wasn't there wasn't like a there wasn't um a lot of nuance brought to AI. Not that there is today, but at the time it was so [ __ ] over the top. And that's I mean understandable. It was like a new technology and people gravitate to like what gets clicks. Um but that's all to say that that was like it got a lot of traction for what it was and I thought whoa this is such a cool medium for for telling stories or like

10:38 for building worlds. Um, so obviously, you know, you can make clickbait of like jump scares or tits bouncing or Darth Vader, you know, killing someone. Um, and get a lot of clicks and a lot of followers. Um, but that wasn't really the goal. So, I guess I was lucky in the sense that like I saw a promise in this technology early on and so when video came out, it was kind of an obvious thing was like I'm already telling stories with it. Um like there's already a narrative world that I'm trying to shape. Um and now there's these tools that kind of enable you to do that. And then I'd say ever since then um it's just kind of been like a evolution where the tech improves the fidelity and the detail and the nuance of the stories

11:26 um becomes greater because you can do more. Like originally, you know, you could barely have a character walk in a direction that you wanted or like [clears throat] um you know, a scene where a character needs to kiss a frog, it would be impo. You you could run a runway animation 500 times and you would never ever get proper. [clears throat] We watched so many of them on this show. Truthfully, if the three years we've been doing this show every week and having this whole, you know, like here's what's possible now, here's what's possible now, here's what's possible now. It's been incredible to watch the evolution. Totally. And so it it's so it's like you know as uh as a text evolved it's it's not like I mean I I probably am becoming like a better writer and storyteller in the process because I do it you know I'm like terminally online kind of forcing myself to create stuff

Does the tech shape the script?

12:14 just at the mercy of of the algorithm. But but it's more that the the tech has kind of caught up with storytelling where it's like the scripts that I write are still somewhat shaped by what the tech can do. like I try and I mean I'm I'm ultimately directing and helping to animate and visualize the world. So I I write knowing like what will look cool and also help kind of capture the story the way I imagine it. Um but you know where we are today versus three years ago it's completely unbounded. It's like there's basically no limits. Like you can pretty much create anything. Yeah. Well, actually, and Andrew said on his second watch, uh, and I said, "This script is incredible." Yeah. So, it's really showing now the levels of your script writing above others that are in the space doing that stuff because it really is incredible.

13:05 There's lots of questions that we have later on around the scripts, by the way, about the voice actors that you used and whether or not you'd sort of had in mind to hire those specific voice actors or whether or not you'd design the characters first and then sort specific voice actors. Uh, you know, which order basically you went around it in pomegranate. Um, is there is there something that you do every film did differently or is it just like you have a way of working that way? Um, in sorry, in what sense? So, like what do you design your characters with midjourney for example and then have a specific voice in mind and then seek voice actors that would fit that voice or are you seeking incredible voice actors and then designing a character around their voices? You know, which way around do you like to work?

Character first, or voice first?

13:54 Yeah. So um you know for um for the first kind of I call it long form but it was like 12 minutes but um caveat being that like wood nuts which we released uh last September I think um was so much more challenging in a way because of where the technology was but that was all voiceover narration. there was no lipstick today. Not to diminish pomegranate because I think it's it's phenomenal. But like um it was just so much more complicated pre- nano banana with very like it feels like we made we we put a man on the moon using like stone age technology and I'd like to believe pomegranate is really kind of the bleeding edge of what you can do with AI or I don't want to sound like egoomaniac but I know it is

Why WOODNUTS was harder than Pomegranate

14:49 but um but wood nuts was something else. But that's to say when when we started being able to really convincingly lip-sync and drive performances, then it became way more important to get the performance and the polish right. And so that's when I realized like I can't just have someone submit a audio clip to me. Um we have to like go and direct it. And so for patchright um the voice of the patchright um is a DJ in San Francisco that I I somehow know from the internet. Amazing. Gosh Father. Shout out to Goshfather. That's amazing. He's blowing up. He just DJed a bunch of World Cup events. Oh, nice. Oh, wow. Yeah, he's a Renaissance man. He used to be an opera singer.

Building characters around real voices

15:34 That's incredible. So, for him, it was like he it was like it has to be him. He has such a good voice and he has just like a really fun persona. And so, it's like the character script is almost like how would he say it? And he also like he goes off script all the time and adds a bit of flourish. Oh, that's really cool for for and then in Patrite there was like a small secondary character at the corpo at the beginning of the film in Patrite and I liked the uh the voice actor for that is just a guy I found here in Sweden. Uh probably the only professional British voice actor in Sweden who's happens to be really good. Um, and then I was like, well, let's center the next film around this character and that voice and let's let's build out the whole script around this.

16:19 Like I had an idea of what the story should be, but let's build it on this voice and this character pairing. And sometimes you end up with characters where it's like that just it's neither here nor there. Like no one's going to miss them if they just disappear forever. [clears throat] Well, it was incredible director's choices for them. We, you know, we were curious about the British accents as British people ourselves. We were like, where are you finding these amazing British voice actors? And so that backstory is so cool to hear, honestly. Yeah, it was spot on though. That's the thing. Yeah. Like incredibly spot. Had a real good like British like twang. Both of them so faithful. Uh, and you know, just like exactly how we know and and imagined it truthfully. And this is the like bleeding edge as you say of we're no longer like guessing about any of this stuff like and now people know that they were real human actors.

17:13 It's like wow what an incredible job and how much they can be involved in AI films like this to really add things to it. And uh I noticed you worked with four animators and a colorist and like a lot of other people to add to this as well. So um you know really that's why it looks so next level as well. I imagine like an incredible team that you've got to do all of this. Yeah, definitely. No, that and I don't want to downplay that part. I mean, you know, I've been making videos for years on my own and all the I mostly pretty much do all the the lore like the the short form content um um Instagram and whatever YouTube, Twitter, but the uh the long form content, I mean, that's really like a full team effort. Um, right. So, I have

Who is on the team?

18:01 Yeah. Um, you know, right that makes a lot of sense. Actually, that was a couple of questions that were around that actually, you know, Winston and others. We we'll we'll highlight them um later about the YouTube and so that's interesting to know that you do all of that stuff. That's interesting. before we get into playing the first clip, as you said, pretty much we're at a point where technology is catching up to our imagination, you know, like and ultimately if you look at what you've done with Pomegranate and some of the other uh films and even when you were saying before you got into AI, it's like you've got the story in your head already and I and then it's like all right, well, how can I now, as you said, write for the technology at the time. Is there again obviously we're going to get into pomegr in a minute but do you have like other stories that you had from years ago or maybe from an illustration

The Gossip of Goblins and fifteen years of stories

18:49 that you done 10 years ago that you're thinking hm this potentially could be something I I 100% do um nice uh I mean the a lot of the let me figure out where this is I'm gonna I'll run off while it's playing and I'll grab Actually Wait just please pause Sure. [laughter] While we wait for him to come back, I love it. Get your questions in. We're seeing a lot of questions already. Get your question. This is um this book of short stories and illustrations that I It's called The Gossip of Goblins. It's not for sale anymore. So, you know, good luck. But this was like um I don't know if I How well does this show up on screen? I don't know. Wow. Bring it down a bit.

19:36 Wow. Yeah. There we go. Wow. Wow. Yeah, it's very detailed. I'm holding it up not because I'm a boomer. I'm just trying to show that it's like incredible detail and then there's short stories that accompany it. So, um, wow. There's a lot of Now, obviously, like we've created a a universe that's fairly distinct. Um, and so a lot of these stories are a bit more like in the realm of um, uh, kind of exploring like alternate history and the natural world and human prehistory. a lot of goblin stuff as well. Um, so cool. And so, so it's a little bit hard to adapt. Like there's one story that we were thinking about and I have a a co-writer as well that I work on stuff with in addition to to writing solo. So, we'll we'll get into that a bit later, but shout out to Jacob Bachelor.

20:26 But there's one story about um you know a lot of it's trying to connect real events that have happened you know like the um Mongolian sacking of Baghdad for example or you know I don't know a common event like Ben Franklin you know harnessing electricity for the first time and then jumping ahead like 5,000 years and then just like extrapolating. Um and some are whimsical some are just whatever. Um, but a lot of that I'd say is like it's not like it can be adapted one to one to what to what we do, but it's kind of like well I've been writing stories for like I mean I graduated university like 15 years ago. So uh um you know there's a and been writing ever since.

21:13 So there's a there's like a a large body of work to kind of draw from and find ways to adapt rather than having to like, you know, constantly come up with new ideas from scratch. Yeah. Well, Paul wants us to know that we're going to be watching it in three parts. So, we're going to do the first part, which is 10 minutes, and he's tried to make it, you know, just an appropriate cut, as good as he could, basically in the 10 minutes. And we're so excited to watch this. For all of those that haven't seen it yet, let's go. Paul [music]

POMEGRANATE, PART ONE

22:53 Hello, welcome. A your blocks become a glorified asylum. I had to step over no fewer than three. I mean, I hesitate to call them people. One of whom was trying to gnor off his own ear. And that alleyway of yours, well, two gentlemen the size of cargo rigs were engaging in. But I'm not one to impugn anyone's uh recreational preferences. It wasn't particularly discreet. You know, for a man whose livelihood depends on a certain caliber of Cleonel,

23:40 you run a remarkably unsanitary operation. Hello to you, too. Uh, yes. Hello. So, how's things? How am I? Well, 6 hours. 6 hours with Nero's finest synaptists yapping about wetwware installs. Not an original thought between the lot of them. Absolutely nauseating. I'm going to collapse from boredom. I'm telling you now, the tedium is going to finish me off long before the bitro does. Well, can't have that. Oh, certainly not. It'd be a damn scandal if I expired here. [laughter] Your shop would be swarming with nearercourse forensics by sunrise.

24:30 I can't imagine they'd look too charitably upon your uh inventory. You'd be surprised, right? Yes. What have you got for me? The chrome kids are raving about this new spool from Sounds wonderful. Thread me in. What? You don't want to hear my pitch. I'm not some smmy little mesh dodger who needs a brochure. Just give me the damn spool, please. Right. Of course. [music] Say what you will about this place. It's the only appointment I keep where I don't have to pretend.

25:41 You know what old Merrick called it? They say it was all in him out the water. Half his legs missing. What? Encourageable. The Leviathan. ENCOURAGEABLE HE CALLED IT. H articulate bastard. I laugh it up, but that beast's been gorging on every squirming worm the seas had to offer since the dawn of time. Father's sack and it still hasn't had its fill. Do you know what drives a thing like that? What? Captain, I wish I knew,

26:29 but today we SLAY THAT BEAST. STOP IT. STOP IT. [screaming] [music] PLEASE.

27:26 [music] Ruded and grim rubar. A harm grenade rod dendron. Oh, come on. I was in the vicinity of what? Well, they share a phonetic. There's a floral quality to want a shrub, sir. You want an aio safe word? No, no, no. I'm I'm perfectly capable of remembering pomegranate.

28:15 So, you bailed early there. I I didn't bail. It's just how many fish can a man incarnate as before the novelty of a Leviathan? Leviathans, Krakens, serpents. It's hardly a question of size. It's how [snorts] many heroes can you thrash about in your jaws before they all taste the same? You know, I'll never stop to count. Just run me another something a bit more a bit more. Oh, you're the professional here. Just run something better. All right. See you on the other side.

29:49 Heat. Heat. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. [screaming] Absolutely incredible. Oh my god, I'm so sucked in again. This is the third time of watching it and I'm just like enjoying new parts of it all over again. From the oh the character design to the sound design. I got goosebumps this time hearing the sound design.

Reactions

30:36 Oh man, and the script writing so good. Some people pointed out the Welsh accents earlier and someone even offered a Scottish accent as well as voiceover actor I noticed. Uh brilliant man. Oh my god. Get your questions in now about those first 10 minutes as we're re-watching them on the screen beside us. Like just next level visuals, next level voice acting, sound design, character design, all of it. It's incredible. Question I had very very quickly is when you were building this, did you build it like you know how films they don't build it linear? They'll do like the ending might be the second thing that they do and then the third thing they might do is the middle and then they'll do a new beginning. Is that or do you build do you build it like that or do you build it linear?

Does he build films in order?

31:23 Um it it varies honestly. I mean in general I think it's worth like calling out that um there's no there's no workflow set in stone. Um I think because things are evolving so fast and I you know it's funny it's like each new each new um wave of um tools you know like earlier obviously at the start of this year we see dance arrived and just [ __ ] blew everything else out of the water but prior to that there was like uh cling cling three came out and then you know last January there was it's like you know every six months there's like a wave of tools that kind of radically changed is how how we approach things. Um, and even now, I think with Cedance 2.5,

32:13 you know, everything's going to change and then, you know, God knows, I'm sure Cling is going to appear out of the the ether with some bonkers new tool. Um, so it always changes. Um, but with that said, it's it's not linear. I mean, I think we try and kind of carve out um carve out different instances and work on them separately. Um, and sometimes that's just to kind of quickly validate like can this be animated? Can can the aesthetic of, you know, this scene be preserved? Because obviously like midjourney h has so much like nuance in it. Like you can really push it so far. And then when you know when you throw in Photoshop along with Nano Banana, you can really really push it super far. And then it's okay. But can that aesthetic actually like be brought to life or does it does it become crippled by it?

33:04 Like is it does it only work as a like a painting almost where it would just fall apart? Um same for characters speaking or characters moving. So we usually try and like design things um separately um by like scene or characters and then kind of validate like can this work to the extent that we want it to and then yeah we kind of build it out separately and then push put it together. Nice. Amazing. We've got so many awesome questions coming in from the audiences and thanks again everybody. You're in a bit of a delay on LinkedIn so don't worry uh we are seeing your questions coming in as well. Um one of the uh one of the questions is around lip sync and stuff but I know like you said the tools evolve and stuff. So I'm going to ask a more general question which is

Which cultures inspired the world?

33:51 uh what were the cultures that most inspired you to create this world by Batboy's chaos? The cultures. Um I I don't know. I don't think it's based on any like existing culture. Um I I think I mean I think in general like there's lots of uh I don't know it's a weird question. I think there's lots of cultures that are inspiring, but I think in the context of this, I mean, it's sci-fi. And so, right, you know, I think we're all like, it's impossible to be original. Like, every and even if I come up with the most batshit idea that's rooted in nothing, like I don't play video games. I don't have the time to play video games. And I have a one-year-old at home, so I definitely don't have the time now.

34:36 But I congrats. I haven't played video games in like 10 years. And I can I can write the most batshit random [ __ ] story and someone's like, "Oh, well that's that's clearly or or you know the Redditor comment like that's oh that is so derivative of like you know and some obscure Korean indie game with 11 players." So I don't know probably it's like since the time of Socrates people have been saying like there's no new ideas and maybe it's true. There's only there's only kind of nuanced interpretations of the archetypal ideas and we as humans are too dumb to come up with anything new. So, I think that's all to say like there's probably lots of like cultural tropes that I pick up on without realizing it, but I try to be original here. I mean, obviously, like in the context of pomegranate, you know, when we were coming up with the scenes in general,

35:24 the first scene that we just saw on the ship is very much meant to be like um obviously like there's some kind of it's a Moby Dickesque, but they're on a um kind of Chinese uh like junker ship or South China Sea Junker ship with the sails, but you get kind of a steampunk kind of vibe to it, too. like it there's like weird there's like weird mechanical stuff on board. It's meant to be there is no time and place. Again, this is an alternate universe. It's not meant to be referential to like a literal time and place that we live in today. The second one is clearly like sass I mean when when I was trying to give the briefs I was like sassinated empire. So like basically you know 600 BC Persia maybe like a bit of Ottoman influence like giving the feeling of like

36:12 um whatever you know over-the-top exoticized like what would a herum you know some kind of empire and the cradle of civilization look like but obviously it's an alternate world and so it's not we're literally pulling from like what would you know some some um you Persian sultanate be wearing legally, but like let's take inspiration from that. But obviously like the the attire is kind of mixed from like just different kind of tapestries that we thought were cool and obviously costume design was incredible by the way. Yeah. And the character design and costume design were amazing in this. There's no prompt. I mean it's I know it's a meme but people are like your prompts man so long.

Why there's no such thing as a single prompt

36:58 And I think it's maybe a misunderstanding. It's like, no. I mean, yeah, the prompts are pretty [ __ ] long. So, you're right. But, but it's not you can't like these things can't be described in words to some extent. And I think a lot of it is like the the exploration of finding lots of different things. Like, I really like this color palette and these textures, but I want it on these characters, but but let's actually like now explore like what are the unifying themes that kind of combine all them. And so, there's a lot of manipulation going on. And I think that's that's important both from an ownership perspective of like it's there are a lot of copycats out there um a [ __ ] brazen amount um y not as extreme as coughing the kids copycats who like literally make um one one to one and then yeah but but you know which is a sign that you're doing something right if people are investing thousands of hours to copy what you do right

37:52 very true but you know it's I think the character design and the the environment design and like all of those things. It's worth spending the time to really try and kind of collage your own worlds together. It's not a single prompt or or cultural reference of like show me a a beautiful Babylonian princess like sure. I'm not asking Jarvis to to make that. It's so much more of a collage like you said because the text evolved to let us be a collage. Can you imagine C dance 2.5 with 50 reference images and 30 seconds of output and multi-shot and it's really going to change a lot and as you say I think your worlds will adapt really well into that new level of tech and it will stand even further above with all of that um driving

38:37 it and your level of directorship and all of that is f it's fantastic. The color grading and the midjourney aesthetic I think is the best I've ever seen. If all of MidJourney is truly incredible. It's like you're summing up Midjourney so beautifully in that piece. I want to keep going with it. We've got the next uh 9minute part to watch. Get your questions ready guys. You know we see them coming in. I see Rock dropping by. I see Danny dropping by. I see so many legends dropping in the building. Really appreciate it guys. Door brothers as well. Yeah, all the people. Spirit novel, all of the other people dropping by. PJ's up in the house as well. We can see all of you guys. Really appreciate it. Let's watch part two. Paul,

POMEGRANATE, PART TWO

39:33 you ready? [music] Wait for the [ __ ] signal. Beloved acolytes of the eternal flame,

40:33 REXID AND UNWORTHY. THE CHILDREN OF THE god king's grace. Our Lord has tested every pleasure this world dare offer, YET HUNGER STILL, and so we have summoned the most exquisite delights from the farthest riches of the kingdom. Let us pray his divine loins may yet find cause to stir. Unleash them.

41:28 Heat. [music] Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. [music]

42:40 Hello. Hallelujah. [music]

43:57 Pomegranate that bad, eh? I I'm not sure how to put it. Oh yeah, the viz is a bit shrill. I'll give you that. If you sit tight, I can recalibrate the voice. Menstrual conducive look. His voice was perfectly It's not the voice. Okay, the spool was fine. Tuned to my predilctions, even remarkably uh exotic. The parts were there, the music, the the wine, but the sum of it. Nothing. Just static. I'm Let Let's have another go.

44:49 There's something else. Anything you the mood for? You're the expert here. Enchant me. All right, let's try another angle. Heat. Heat. [music]

45:35 [music] Hold me. [snorts] Want to talk about it? I thrust a bayonet into a man's aorta once during the cradle wars. I could feel his heartbeat through the handle. Remarkable sensation really, the intimacy of it. Then I played the other side.

46:27 I felt the blood come through my own ribs. Felt my lungs fill with something cold and foreign. And then just black. I fear it hardly made a dent. First thing I did upon waking was drop into a cat sim. I've loved women in these spools. Spent whole lives with them. Cherished them. [music] Sired children.

47:13 Built homes, cottages, farmsteads, all the quaint similar curves of the good life. You know how these sims are. And and there must [music] have been real love in there, surely. But how many hands have I [music] clutched on their deathbeds? How many eyes have I gazed into, swearing my devotion?

48:02 My wife, one wife, she had the kindest green eyes. Or were they blue? I can't recall her name. Any of them really. I watched Cinder burn to the ground. So the last grove fell over complete desolation. My god, it's just so epic, Andrew, isn't it? Watching it a third time.

Reactions

48:49 Like I said, I'm picking up on all of those things that first time around I just appreciated it for a story and then the second time the script writing just stood out a mile. and the third time the audio is coming through so much more and uh I've now got questions around that. Get your questions in about that section that we've just watched. Mine really are around the audio. Like it just works so well. Did you have a hand in any of the audio designs, Zach, or were you like uh helped with that or did the music composition and stuff? Um yeah, I mean I uh very involved. So, um that's awesome. We cycled through uh quite a few different musicians um to score this film.

Sound, the score and the Foley artist

49:35 Um so that was it took an incredibly long time um to to kind of get it right where we were happy with it. Um yeah. Uh yeah. And then obviously the SFX we have a fully artist um that we use to kind of kind of heighten that because I think you know it goes without saying like sound I mean I can say like before I was making this stuff like I think I just took sound design for granted but it's such an incredibly important part of the process and see dance obviously is very good at SFX but you know it's not the real thing um and and I think that's you know absolutely absolutely worth worth it um to to kind of elevate it.

50:21 And then obviously the the musical score itself um is is really critical and and obviously you know I think people ask a lot like the voice actor thing obviously like there's no budging on that. I just think yeah like for instance seed audio is pretty good. Um 11 Labs [ __ ] sucks. I'm gonna go out and say it. 11 Labs, your guys product is terrible. But um uh but I think AI voice actors, it still has a long way to go. And I think there's I I think that I don't see myself ever pivoting to using AI for for voice actors, for long form stuff like this. It's good for for quick, you know, short form lords [ __ ] people are going to consume on the toilet while you know, scrolling Instagram. [clears throat] But um I [laughter] think in general

Why he won't use AI voice actors

51:09 um I think voice actors bring so much to the table and so many surprises. I you know I I'm not an angophile. Um uh you might be surprised to hear I can name you know couple couple provinces couple cities in England and that's that's the extent of it. So, but pulling in a voice actor and being like, "Okay, for these sailors, I want like a gruff kind of like illiterate, you know, a guy missing some teeth on a boat. Like, what is that?" And and I could probably prompt Seed to give me something like that and it would pull from effectively the lowest common denominator. You'd get this kind of rounded out kind of blunted accent that would be hyper generic. And guess what? The whole world's pulling from those accents. Exactly. So, you know, you can go and watch any film, but ultimately it's like all of these accents sound so familiar,

52:00 like we're all kind of the same casting agency. So, I think as a differentiator, they bring a lot. And then also is like I can't prompt for this because I don't think the AI even knows what this is like these particular accents or like um the the voice actor who who plays the the kind of patch mechanic here. Um you know, he was channeling um the dad of one of his friends. He grew up in Lincoln. Okay. Yeah. And channeling one of his friends dad who like used to buy them alcohol when they were super underage and that was like a voice inspiration. And that's kind of that's what you get when you use, you know, a voice actor. And I think for musicians it's the same thing where like yeah, I mean um every so often you can get decent stuff. But but that's that's just music. That's like uh a score is not a score is so different than just plugging a random song over footage, you know?

52:51 Like a score actually elevates or embellishes or you know helps to kind of steer the film and I and that's it's really tailored to what you have on screen and I think AI has a very very long way to go until it can really understand what it's seeing and what the emotions you're trying to communicate are or what like the subtext is or like what is the recurring motif? What are the the um the the the orchestral swells that recur throughout or even you know these like little recurring sounds that subtly allude to what's to come like AI is not going to pick up on that. It's gonna I mean now basically gives you [ __ ] um melody festival Euro tra like um uh Euro Vision um like happy hardcore beats basically right uh so I think it's yeah I think it's kind of for now AI is nowhere close to what humans can do when

53:43 it comes to sound and I have a hard time imaging agree more it'll get there and I think audio is just I mean I'm not I have a bad ear um in general like I'm not I I don't have like a sense of I mean I I have I I know what I like but um I think that it's even harder for an AI to pick up on that nuance. So it's going to be a while automated. Well, honestly I think the people that you hired the Foley artists, the musicians and the blender of it all, you know, the mixdown was incredible and yeah, you're right. like the sound effects that you get maybe they'll be out of C dance 2.5 better but even using a Foley artist as you say they're then they're your unique you know to you you're not going to get the average of the best sound effect the average of the best acting voice or average of the best this or any average you're

When will AI take over Hollywood?

54:31 going to have a unique thing as well there's loads of questions that Paul's been starring um questionly jump in now just because we're talking about um its impact on Hollywood and somebody asked when do you think AI will pretty much take over Hollywood. Um, I mean, I don't think I don't know. I'm not really concerned about that. I mean, I like I I guess it's a touchy subject. I like I have to be cognizant of the fact that this is an indust ind industry that existed before. But if we took AI out of the equation, I think there was a study not that long ago which was like in the amount of content we consume, how much of it is basically scripted or original content, you know, something from a streamer or a studio

55:17 versus, you know, a get ready with me video or an unboxing video or some [ __ ] lunatic eating KFC popcorn um in his car. Like I just watched like a 15-inute unboxing of that and that and [laughter] I'm like it was phenomenal. It was riveting from start to finish. He weighed three different boxes [laughter] to to to make sure that like portion control was good and then he had like a system to like evaluate it. [laughter] So like okay like what is just like the human experience challenge to Hollywood like it's just the fact that like if anyone can create content what is the value in original content? And I would like to believe that there is value that like that a team of people spending months or weeks or years on something has more merit to it for minute. Those minutes are more valuable

56:03 than some some girl dancing in front of the mirror. Not to be like chauvinistic, but just or or some dude showing us um his [ __ ] parkour in his backyard or [clears throat] some some guy live streaming gameplay and just commenting as he you know [ __ ] speed runs Mario or something. So I I think AI is just one other thing which is like hey look in [clears throat] addition to the absolute tsunami of contents coming online AI is now going to start to eat into that cavity of like high uh high-end content. It's also going to flood the market with low-end content as we know. That's why it's called AI. And that's why I think for me and many other creators, it's an uphill battle because the narrative around AI is very much shaped by the torrent like the the [ __ ]

56:50 tsunami of just dog [ __ ] um that comes online every second. Um and so yeah, I mean eating in the Hollywood is not like my goal. I I think I I really don't like how combative a lot of Twitter and Instagram is about like I think the the whole Hicksfield's narrative um of like this $200 million sci-fi film was made for $4 in a weekend by a guy [ __ ] basement in Kazakhstan. Yeah. A you're lying. That's not how it was. B it's also really bad. And like C there's no reason to frame in that language because Hollywood is not some monolithic entity. Those are [ __ ] people. A lot of them are really brilliant. It's like it's a reflection of our culture and where we vote with our dollars. If you're tired of seeing sequels, then stop [ __ ] spending money only watching dog [ __ ] Um, and go and support like good films that don't have the same [ __ ] four actors in them.

The $200 million film for $4 problem

57:44 Um, so I think Hollywood is not Hollywood is a is a social construct and it's like a mass delusion that we actually are propping up by only based by pirating films and and then only paying to see this [ __ ] dog [ __ ] perpetuating nonsense. So, my goal is not to kill Hollywood at all. And I don't think that AI will by any means. I think Hollywood is filled with lots of talented and smart and clever people and they'll adapt to it as well. And yeah, there'll always be, you know, the people who are angry about the change and as just as people were angry about CGI or, you know, um, you know, the fact that we stopped we started embedding music in films and stopped using a live symphony orchestra. Um you know and and any other kind of technical change there's going to be push back.

58:33 I think AI is in that weird position where like a lot of people are unable to differentiate Skynet or like you know whatever the next iteration of claude or some you know super intelligence might be from like generative AI. So they see it as all the same. Like I'm me making short films is somehow the equivalent of like uh mass unemployment in the next five years. And things like oh yeah an indie an indie artist creator making his own films with a staff on payroll is the same thing as like you know basically Palunteer. And so I think for those naysayers like there's no argument. They they lack any kind of nuance to approach the subject and they're in for a really [ __ ] miserable next decade as AI becomes. Exactly. If you broad brush it all of that then you're exactly right.

59:22 You're just going to be miserable if you think of it that like that way. You need to see the nuance inside what people are doing. And that's why I've been highlighting so many of the people you've been using as well for this particular project because there's so many people involved and it's really but it's still indie. It's still small and it's aiming so big. It's incredible how good it is. There's a question here from Alan Scott who which I'm going to open as a question to actually the audience as we watch part three which is who is everyone's favorite character? Alan Scott is Vaughn. But as we're watching part three, think about this question and start leaving your comments and any other comments you've got about part three. Let's watch it. full I've incarnated as warriors

POMEGRANATE, PART THREE

1:00:12 peasants, romantics, damn near [music] every odd creature you could hope to conjure. I've lived them all across every eon. Hundreds of thousands of years of it. But the massacres, the extinctions, the sublime, none of it registers. My nerves are gone.

1:01:00 Overwritten. It's not that I'm The snaptists insist the bandwidth is there. Virtually limitless, they they tell me with the right augments, the human mind can absorb centuries of [music] experience without degradation. But I think I'm very much qualified to say by now that there's a finite amount of [music] wonder a soul can carry.

1:01:47 A finite capacity for for awe, wonder, and I have most certainly spent it. [music] I've lived through more than any soul was meant to carry and it has left me empty bloated and empty which is which

1:02:34 is a rather cruel arithmetic isn't I've got something. Not on the menu. I don't sell this one. You always have something. No, not like this. And I don't know if it'll work, but I think it's worth a shot on the house. What is it? Ain't a brochure for this one. All right.

1:03:31 Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music]

1:04:17 [music] Heat. [music] [music] Heat. [music] [music] Heat. [music] [music] Heat. [music] Heat. Heat.

1:05:07 [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]

1:05:58 [music] [music] [music]

1:07:18 What was that? A fly. A whole life. 24 hours give or take a fly? Have you got any here in the shop? Got any what? With flies. Actual flies. It's a grimy workshop, mate. There's all sorts buzzing about. Good. Go and fetch me a transfer, Rick. Are you sure? Substrate migrations are a lot more permanent than I know.

1:08:03 Pomegranate won't work this time. The rig, please. [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] Heat. Heat.

1:08:56 [music] Heat. Heat. [music]

1:09:49 [music] [music] Brilliant. Absolutely incredible. My god. And I'm so glad Paul let all of the credits run out there because it really answers a lot of the questions you guys had about the voice [clears throat] acting and a lot of the other stuff that was um going on. One of the voice actors played two parts and that was one of the questions that I had prior to the thing. I noticed that in the credits. Was that just because they were able to do both of the voices that you thought was good, Zach, or how did that work out?

The credits, and how the voice cast came together

1:10:37 Um so I think in total there were four there were four voice actors. Um a couple Yeah. Um yeah I mean it was largely around that's who we that's who we had available and we needed to do it. Um right I think um you know I'm based in Sweden. I wanted to do it live and in person and so I had to be resourceful, you know, ended up booking um a voice studio or recording studio for three or four days um to get it all right. Uh in the past, you know, I I've done done it remotely um for patchite. We did some some remotely, but it's really hard to do that and if you want, you know, iterations, you can't really do it live.

1:11:24 So, it's it's easier to just work with a smaller team in person. But um with that said, I would you know as hopefully [clears throat] but there's some big announcements that came out when the film dropped um on Variety and Forbes and um congrats IndieWire and Deadline um which is that we have a uh film coming out in theaters. Oh wow. Amazing. But but we can stick to answering questions for now and audience can can can go and read those articles later. But anyways, you know, I think as as this like this is still a very indie operation, I'm still hustling and jumping into an Uber with ring lights to drive across town to go

Gossip Goblin's film is coming to theatres

1:12:09 record and direct an actor and capture their face and coordinate with the post-production and audio mixing team that I have based in Romania and then, you know, get back to my animators to quickly do some QAs on the void. Like I'm we're doing so many things at once and I'm I think everyone on the team has to wear so many hats to pull something like this off that I think yeah people radically underestimate the complexity of doing something like this. So there's something nice in keeping it lean but as we scale up we'll want more voice actors and who knows need to fly people in or go to the the raggedy parts of the UK to to [laughter] record your finest accents. What I liked about um for me what really stood out was the script. I thought the script was good. Even even little things like the British sayings like us on the house mate, this one I'll give it to you on the house.

Who wrote the script, and what did the actors improvise?

1:13:01 You know, it's understanding that that culture. So when it comes to the script itself, is that something that you wrote or was it something that you worked with others to do? Uh I wrote the script. Oh, that's awesome. You wrote the script. Brilliant. You said that the voice actor does some improv lines as well. Is is the British saying something that he improves to you or is it something that you've already written to him? Um I think it's improvisation both in terms of uh delivery and uh and then words as well of just what comes out you know like um so interesting to do it in there's a funny thing there's a for I mean it's small things where it's like who cares but like uh he he he rolls you know how sometimes like when people are like

1:13:51 not to be funny but they'll say something in kind of a French accent like very subtly and you know it's Oh, does that imply the existence of French people in our world in this universe? Things of that nature. And then, you know, little little stuff here and there where it's it's word swapped out or the delivery of certain lines or um yeah, we've got another great question coming in here. Um the pinball machine world struck me as a particularly challenging world to create. Is that uh Oh, just putting it on there. What steps did you take to get that looking right and the camera movements etc? Um I I think honestly um I think the pinball

Was the pinball world hard to make?

1:14:37 world was not super challenging to make. I think I of all the scenes in the whole film I I think the pinball one was took the least amount of time. I mean it's the shortest. Oh wow. But I think when you remove human characters from the equation and you remove a lot of like room scale continuity from the equation, you have a lot more flexibility. So you can be much more experimental, but just to downplay it. I think it's everything we do is, you know, we try and push it. Um I think as the tools improve, you know, you got to kind of push what your your benchmark is for like are we really using it to its limit. Um and not just settling for like oh that's cool, let's ship it. Um, but I think that was one of the easier ones to do. I think interesting. Um, for instance, the the god king sequence um was

Why dialogue is still the hardest thing

1:15:26 shockingly complicated to do and I think there was a lot of really really complicated to do the actual dialogue. Like ironically, what should be really easy now is incredibly difficult still. Um, it's funny that, you know, not there is still no reliable lip-s syncing solution or rather no mocap solution. You know, cling has but it's it's [ __ ] It's a useless feature to make your you know your cat dance like a like you know egirl, but it's not like at the level that you you know you record a performance and can translate that performance into a character. It's it's quite difficult when you have, you know, an audio that you need to be precise and you need the character to deliver it with the exact

1:16:11 right expression and then to stretch that out to basically a 30-minute film is is really really challenging and to get the nuance of those deliveries, let alone the coverage and the continuity and all the the background elements to be cohesive and consistent throughout because it's Cance has made life easier, but it's still it's still a struggle. There was another question here from Melvin about blocking. Do you block out the scenes with live acting and props? Do you use anything like Blender or anything else in order to help the the scenes go exactly how you want to? Um, no, we don't use we don't have any kind of 3D pipeline. Um, we I mean obviously like I I've seen crazy workflows that that do involve that.

Does he use Blender or block scenes?

1:16:59 Um, I I think that some of that is overengineered. Um, maybe it would make life easier. I mean, already there's so many, you know, new workflows that can kind of accomplish the same thing. But in this case, no, it's um it's basically the old school way where you, you know, you capture a scene and then you basically try and capture all the different angles and kind of manipulate stuff with Nano Banana and um you know, basically are able to kind of use that to get all of the the blocking and coverage that's that's needed for the scene. Fascinating. You had in the credits you had Fable and someone said, "How do you how did the hookup with Fable happen? Um yeah, so that's again um we've announced that we are releasing a film in theaters called Gods Don't Give

How did the Fable deal happen?

1:17:51 um on October 30th. So that's like a little shy of 100 days away and we'll see how that goes. Um I think it's like a cool foray into what is next um more than anything else. I mean, I think like it's it's not a matter of if, but when, you know, AI starts to kind of proliferate into the mainstream, and who knows, maybe people will burn down a theater. Maybe there'll be um a nice clash, um nice [clears throat] battle outside of like a like a small theater in Berkeley, California. Someone might martyr themselves. I don't know what's going to happen, but um but we're doing that with Fable. Um and yeah, so you know, they they uh helped produce this and and and fund the development of this

1:18:40 and were um yeah, partnering them on the kind of roll out of this kind of theatrical release, which um [clears throat] you know, happy to get we don't have much time left here, but happy to jump more to in later, but um you know, the the film is basically an anthology of of several of these kind of stories merged together with kind of this overlapping theme. And I think that's going to put kind of a nice the way these films I hope they work as standalones. Like I hope that like someone who's has no [ __ ] clue who I am or what I do can watch and get the gist of it. Yeah. But I think this will be a little bit more self-contained in the sense of like here is the world, here's the trajectory of the world and here are these smaller stories nestled inside of it. That's interesting hearing you say that and not a question that we've got from the audience but one that me and Paul have thought about.

Is the opening a flash forward?

1:19:29 In the opening scene of Pomoggrammit, are we seeing an actual flash forward? As in, are we seeing the aftermath of the ending before we know it's the ending? We are seeing um we are kind of seeing um well book ends, right? We see him with this kind of weird teardropping some something leaking out of his face. It's not blood, but some other, you know, some some internal mechanism of his is is leaking and more poant than blood. We've all seen blood, you know, doesn't mean anything. Um, but no, it's more more just like here's a a quick speedrun of just like a fast cut montage of like, you know, a million lifetimes and experiences of Yeah. Right. women and demons and ghouls and, you know, then we we get to see his nice little strip tease for the the god emperor.

1:20:16 [laughter] [gasps] That was incredible with the music and the stubbed fingers. A lot of people were like commenting comments that bit. Yeah, definitely had the most comments in that bit. I got a lot of push back on that one. Um, well, we were people were like, "Are you sure?" I mean, internally and and with others of like how far is too far and like how uh, you know, are we really are we is this is this tonally okay or are we going overboard? Right. Yeah. I think when you married it all together with all the music and all the colors and all of the, you know, sandwiched in between incredible things going either side, it worked so well. So, yeah, glad that you fought for that and, uh, you know, I think it really sucked

1:21:06 people in. As you said, it got the most comments during that part of the film. So, definitely good to know. TV of Tomorrow says, "How many iterations do you typically need to burn through to get the segment you want?" H um I don't know. It varies. I mean a lot. Um we have a really really fantastic post-production team that includes you know um our our editor and and sound mixer and um you know they're able to to make things work that I couldn't see. Um I think I didn't really properly understand or respect how critical editing is and everyone on the team is capable of editing. Um, every when when we work on scenes, everyone kind of acts as their own kind of mini director in so far as they're kind of

How many iterations does a shot take?

1:21:55 mini director, editor, everything of kind of like here's the task here. We create storyboards ahead of time to kind of delineate what happens with timestamps and descriptions and like this character, you know, they they wse and then, you know, he lifts his eyelid and he he looks over at the the vizier who's delivering the speech and the vizier gulps and looks back at him. But there's a big delta between like this is what we want. Here's the assets we've created and then here's how we animate it. And like AI is it's you know it's like jazz in a lot of ways. Like it in terms of being like very improvisational and like you can guide it but it's not really going to give you what you want 100% of the time. And sometimes you have to [ __ ] grab it by the throat and tell it like listen to me and [laughter] burn through burn you know boil an ocean [clears throat] ungodly amount.

1:22:42 Sometimes you're like, "Okay, this is not going to work because whatever." For whatever reason, like we could we could waste weeks trying to do this. Or we could we could kind of go with it and be like, "Yeah, this is kind of a happy accident." Like we didn't mean for this weird thing to happen, but actually like this this lets us be a bit flexible. So I I mean I like to to try and direct it and shape the film I want obviously I have to have certain ideas in mind of like this is how we execute but you have to have a certain kind of like flexibility to just kind of go with the flow and as long as it sound like in the jazz metaphor as long as it's kind of like the overall melody's working you can allow for like these kind of weird notes that are out of place um as long as you can kind of pull it together. And I think that's where having like an amazing editor to be like, "Oh, you know what? This is kind of [ __ ] weird, but we can

1:23:33 we can work with this." Like we have we have the shots. So, a lot of time it's like we don't even know when we got it right. It's like, let's get enough shots that we know are good enough quality and then um we can afterwards kind of make sense of what combination really works and, you know, maintains continuity and whatever um to to connect this all together. I think it's really fascinating what you just said because it's something we've been stressing on our show for so long honestly is that everyone's got every skill set now. You're all a little director, a little editor. You've all got a piece of the puzzle and understanding of AI so you can contribute and understand to the flow of everything. You know, really that's the that's the thing is just being and it was demonized being a jack of all trades. And I was arguing for a long time, you need to have a base understanding of a lot of stuff, including sound design, including a lot of it, you know, it's just so useful.

1:24:24 So when you're working with people like you are now and being able to hand over things and explain things and get workflows done and so it explains a lot and why you don't have to be too technical with it as well, truthfully. And I hope that answered your question, Danny, because uh Danny's question was, "What percentage of your vision is faithfully translated into your generations?" So, you go with the flow along with it. It makes a lot of sense. It really does. I mean, there's there's areas. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's areas obviously where it's like it has to be this way because this is like a conversation between two people. like fine, I can ease up on like where the camera is, but the versus the pinball one, which is like the kind of, you know, uh the the idea was um the first simulation with the the Leviathan is kind of a proxy for like violence, like escapism through violence.

Violence, eroticism and pure dopamine

1:25:13 And the second one is like through eroticism and sexuality, and the third one is like pure [ __ ] dopamine, you know, injected straight into your brain, like hyper reality. You know, the idea was kind of like um the feeling you get when you're just like walking in Shinjjuku at night for the first time and you've had some beers and like the world is just in your face and like the extreme stimulation. So, it's like there's a there's a script, there's screenplay, the storyboards, there's kind of a mood and reference audio for like we're going to score it after the film's done, but this is a music to keep in your head when you're making this. Like does this feel faithful to like you know um when we were doing the the ship scene it was kind of like let's think about a few different songs that could make it work like and then you know we find reference tunes from like

1:26:00 with some some medieval Hery Gertie music and then we're like that's a little bit too Pirates of the Caribbean let's go maybe more Barry Lyndon or let's go a little bit more like the master and finding different vibes and so I think that helps shape it too and align the team because some people are like very visual some are very like analytical. Some are much more technical and are more about like executing precisely. And you kind of need a a nice hybrid crew to to get it over the finish line and get, you know, a mix of like the the kind of candid stuff with the very technical precise stuff. Makes complete sense. Where where do you get your inspiration from? Um I don't know honestly. Um, it's I feel like I have like a lifetime of inspiration to pull from.

Where does the inspiration come from now?

1:26:48 My life's quite boring now. I'm either working or taking care of my my uh my one-year-olds. Yeah, we're the same exact person. We've both got very young kids. Paul, too. We were all in the young dad's club. Yeah, it's We've all changed drastically since having kids as well. Yeah. So, I I wish I had more time to like read stuff and watch stuff and like be a member of society and like absorb new stuff. Um, but like in the in the [ __ ] four minute slivers of free time I have, I just doom scroll, you know? I watch I watch the guy um ordering the new KFC popcorn chicken at the drive-thru and [laughter] taking taking it home and weighing it to make sure they didn't cheat him. So that's where I get my inspiration from.

1:27:34 Like just all the [ __ ] that that you know random um lonely men around the world are doing in their free time. And I hope that comes across. [laughter] Someone asked, "How is taking care of a newborn baby boring?" It's not boring. It's it's a phenomenal experience. It's enlightening. Um, but it's but it is not but it is and it is inspiring in the sense of like, holy [ __ ] you've created a human and you know they're the most important thing in the world to you, but it's not um it's not intellectually stimulating, you know. Um, but it's it's gratifying in other ways, but it's um Yeah, well said. Well said. Yeah, exactly. I realized in last week's creator episode with Uncanny Harry that his kids are just old enough that he's

1:28:26 got the free time back again. And there's many people that are just young enough to have not had kids yet. So, we really are in the like most absorbed time with young kids era. And uh good for you, man, for doing this and putting this together during this time. Truthfully, we all know personally how hard that is to pull all this together. So you've done an incredible job on the launch of this pomegranate. It's just as I said the most impressive thing I've watched to date in AI. It's uh remarkable honestly and you're launching it through your own YouTube to such a big audience as well which you've grown and your IG community and stuff. There were loads of questions by the way which we'll have you on another episode um to get back to all of these questions because I appreciate your time and stuff and you've been on a media tour today and

Wrapping up

1:29:14 yeah. So guys, thank you so much for tuning in. We're already through an hour and a half. We've gone through it incredibly fast this week, Andrew. It was um It has amazing an amazing experience, honestly, to be watching it live through the premiere and then re-watching it again straight after and then watching it in segments this time. I just appreciated each layer that you've worked with people and the depth in which this has gone to. It's just so next level. It's uh really inspiring for people and don't be daunted because it took so many people involved in this, but that is also something to aim for, you know, as well. It's something to strive for for sure. Great work to Paul as well for pulling the clips together last minute and uh he's been in the background this whole episode.

1:30:00 [music] Yes, we've been through the AI live show. I didn't even announce that. Like I should have said that at the top of the show. Myself and Andrea from the AI live show. We're broadcasting through simultaneous places. You probably, if you join late, didn't get the early on announcements. All of this will repeat when we stop the live show and be rewatchable on YouTube as its own video. But yeah, I should have said that again several times during the show, I realized. Uh, so apologize for that. Zach, thank you so much honestly for entertaining us. It was incredible to be part of this and um, congrats on everything else. You've got a late night I hear tonight, right? You're doing more things tonight. Uh, wow. Just good luck. It's going to be something you can sleep on in a few days and have a whole dream about.

1:30:50 Was that a real thing that just happened or There's no time to sleep. He's got he's got a new film coming out just around the corner. So, yeah. Incredible. And congrats again on becoming a dad and doing all of this at the same time. It is truly inspiring. Um, we're all in the same club. I see all the legends by the way. Aaron that I talked to, Afro Futcher, PJs, all of them in the chat. And we really appreciate you guys for tuning in as well. We're going to be live on Monday again with Cavan the Kid [music] and uh on the regular show Meta Puppet as well that so many people by the way in we're commenting in all the various WhatsApp groups. This is so next level. Unbelievable stuff. I'll have to round up all of the feedback uh from all of our various communities.

1:31:36 Andrew also has a WhatsApp group for our regular live show and there's been chats in there about it as well. It's all over the internet today. So, you've done an incredible job on that, man. Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you very much, Zach. And thank you everyone in the chat as well for for listening, being with us for the last 90 minutes, and of course all your feedback that you've been giving for Promite. Great film. Go watch it again. It's live now on Zach's YouTube channel. I'm I'm also quite uh happy that the biggest AI characters in the world right now have British accents. Andrew, what do you think about that, mate? Like, come on. Put the UK on the map, mate. Let's go. Look at all these comments, by the way. And a lot of them will come delayed from LinkedIn. There's about a one or two minute delay to the live stream on LinkedIn.

1:32:27 So, there'll be a lot of like, you know, thank yous coming in and and that afterwards. Ah, we'll let you go. Thank you again for doing this on such a busy day for you, man. Really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thanks everyone. Take care. Great job as well. Paul in the backgrounds.