Is All Future Video Just Code?

01 · ▶ on the show at 7:45

Lord of the Rings Paper Craft

By Rory Flynn

Rory made this Lord of the Rings retelling in paper craft with his daughter: hobbits, wraiths, the Prancing Pony, all of it. The behind-the-scenes is the real story. The whole film started from a single Midjourney image, Astra built the complete asset library in one go and rigged every character, then Claude animated everything in plain JavaScript and HTML, with Magnific's MCP handling sound and narration. No video model and no Remotion. Chris Branch sees a whole new storytelling service in it for brands.

“Someone said recently video models should be kind of concerned, because all future video probably will be code.”Chris First · ▶ 12:59

MidjourneyAstraClaudeMagnific

Original post →

02 · ▶ on the show at 22:50

PlayStation "Are You In or Out?"

By Stink Studios

A big Stink Studios campaign for PlayStation with a long credit list, and the game we played was spotting the AI. Statues turning their heads, a tipping building, a one-eyed fish swimming up to the glass: any of it could be Seedance 2.5 in the hands of a strong Gen AI director, or traditional VFX. That uncertainty is the hybrid era in a nutshell.

“That's like the first PlayStation ad that's actually made me want to play a video game.”Chris First · ▶ 24:28

Original post →

03 · ▶ on the show at 27:25

F1 Camera Transition Using Gaussian Splat

A six-second Formula 1 clip that moves seamlessly from real camera footage through what looks like a Gaussian splat, possibly with generative frames filling the gap. It started a bigger debate: in live sport, which frames are allowed to be synthetic? Chris First's line is that it's fine for entertainment, but not for replays or rulings.

“If I'm doing an instant replay and I'm looking for hard data on a play, I don't think we should be using the blended motion parts of the clip.”Chris First · ▶ 28:45

Gaussian splatting

Original post →

04 · ▶ on the show at 30:55

Listen

By Ingi Erlingsson

A collage short from Ingi Erlingsson, whose workflow (as he explained on the Fast Hours podcast) lets some steps be vibe coded and keeps others meticulously hand-made. It led into the question every creator on the show is asking: where do I stay hands-on, and where does AI take over?

Original post →

05 · ▶ on the show at 32:50

Gods Don't Give Gifts (Official Trailer)

By Gossip Goblin

The official trailer for Gossip Goblin's film, which is heading for a theatrical run, including a London opening. Gossip Goblin is a former AI LIVE guest. Halfway through introducing it, Chris First got an email from Epic Games, live on air.

Original post →

06 · ▶ on the show at 38:45

New Rad City (Fallout: New York fan game)

By Chris First

Our guest co-host's own project: a Fallout-style New York you can play in the browser, made with Claude Opus 5.5 and Three.js. It is about 290,000 lines of JavaScript in one HTML file, around 20MB in total, with 1,824 textures painted at runtime, 117 locations, 112 named characters, 262 dialogue trees, a walkable Brooklyn Bridge and not a single audio file, because every sound is made in code. 25,000 people played it in about 40 hours over one weekend. It's a fan project for fun, not a real Fallout game.

“It's the seal's broken. You can make a vibe coded game right now.”Chris First · ▶ 46:02

Claude Opus 5.5Three.js

Original post →

07 · ▶ on the show at 49:10

The Man With All The Gifts (Nilio Oak Spirit)

By Christian Brandes

Submitted to the show, and it went in directions nobody saw coming. Rocco has the genes, the body and the face of an angel. You, on the other hand... Christian drew on his own memory of tasting the beer in Liptovský Mikuláš, voiced it with ElevenLabs v4, and took the colour palette from an old photo series of villages. The chat answered with straight 1s the second the poll opened, and big respect to the brewery for saying yes when other brands passed.

“I thought the misdirection was genius.”Chris First · ▶ 51:01

ElevenLabs

Original post →

08 · ▶ on the show at 52:50

TENZIN, Episode 1: The Invasion

By Dinda Prasetyo, Heydin, Pixatrix Animation

An animated episode made with Adobe Firefly by Dinda Prasetyo with Heydin and Pixatrix Animation, and a reminder that Firefly is now a wide toolkit rather than a single image model. It split the room more than anything else this week, and opened a conversation about how hidden the tooling behind a piece is becoming as everything flows through aggregators and MCPs.

Adobe Firefly

Original post →

09 · ▶ on the show at 1:03:50

ABEL

By Junho Her, Utopai Studios

An animated parable about a girl, a boy who always asks for bread, and a cloud-dog, made with Utopai Studios. Chris First loved the art style and said it took him straight back to summer church camp films. Chris Branch gave it a strong 2: a tighter cut would have made it a straight 1. Thanks to Marco for suggesting it.

“I think the same parable story could have been told within two and a half to three minutes, and it would have been a straight one for me.”Chris Branch · ▶ 1:12:10

Original post →

10 · ▶ on the show at 1:14:10

Cempasúchil

By Melanie Nox

A gorgeous stylised horror short. Chris First fell for the small details, like the curled wisps in the clouds of the opening shot, and got Coraline vibes from the whole world. One of his favourite character designers dropped into the chat to give it a 1, and the audience followed. A whole world from one creator, carried home by its sound design and editing.

“I love the small details in the world, like in the intro shot, the clouds, the little wisps.”Chris First · ▶ 1:18:06

Original post →

11 · ▶ on the show at 1:22:55

Kali (Animated Horror)

By Don't Walk Home Alone After Dark

Four and a half minutes of animated horror with a phone-light jump scare that got everyone, including Chris Branch, who doesn't even like horror. LinkedIn voters flooded in with 1s. Headphones on for this one: the sound does a lot of the scaring. The master of the genre himself, Uncanny Harry, was in the chat: great indie art vibe, dark ending, a solid two.

“It reminded me of old Japanese horror shorts.”Chris First · ▶ 1:28:11

Original post →

12 · breaking news · ▶ on the show at 1:31:40

Gemini 4 Argon builds a pagoda in Blender

By Google DeepMind

Google released Gemini 4 Argon while we were live. The launch video, from George on Google DeepMind's Gemini prototyping team, shows a photorealistic Japanese temple complex built in Blender from a single prompt via Antigravity and Blender's headless CLI: a skill for large 3D builds, generated blueprints, four Nano Banana reference images, and a multi-agent adversarial loop overseen by an orchestrator, finished overnight with rendered animation and generated bell sounds. Chris First flagged that early testers say day-to-day use doesn't quite match the benchmarks, but the leap from Gemini 2.5's pagoda is huge.

“In a year and a half, we went from Legos to what looks photorealistic.”Chris First · ▶ 1:38:28

Gemini 4 ArgonBlenderNano Banana

13 · ▶ on the show at 1:41:24

MIMIC (A Short Horror Film)

By The Noctuary

A six-and-a-half-minute horror short: a late-night game of hide and seek, a basement, and a voice that isn't who it says it is. The final poll of the night came in strong. Chris Branch's note: animation is more forgiving in horror, and once you go photoreal every detail has to land, because audiences are brilliant at spotting what's slightly wrong. A strong 2 for him, with a 1 within reach.

“If you're going to go for photo realism, you have to really just nail every single aspect, otherwise we're just so good at noticing when things are slightly wrong.”Chris Branch · ▶ 1:49:05

Original post →