Adapt or Die: A Working Filmmaker on AI in 2026

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My firm belief is if you're not using AI, you will be losing work to people who do.

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It's a slow moving train that you need to hop on now.

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Learn about the tools, learn about what updates are coming out.

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You need to start implementing into your workflow because you literally will lose work.

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Hey everybody, welcome to Documentary First.

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I'm your host, Christian Taylor.

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That, my friends, is Armin Korsos.

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He's a working filmmaker telling you what he sees coming.

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Armin is a filmmaker who truly belongs to the world.

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He was born in the Cayman Islands to Hungarian parents, and now he's a fixture of the Chicago film scene.

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His outsider looking in perspective shapes everything he makes and everything he does.

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Today we're gonna talk to him about how he uses commercial work to fund the creative projects he wants to make.

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We're also gonna talk to him about why he thinks every working filmmaker ought to be using AI right now and about the Chicago film community he co-founded that's grown from 50

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people to 1,700 in one year.

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Armin is a wealth of wisdom for filmmakers at any stage.

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So come on, let's get into it and see what he has to say.

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So Armin, it's so great to have you here.

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Thank you for making time for us.

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Thank you so much for having me and for the amazing intro.

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You're way too kind.

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And also congratulations on now doubling your output with the podcast.

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Very impressive.

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Yeah, thank you.

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think what you do with this podcast is so amazing because I think filmmaking in general can be quite a lonely journey.

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So I think even if it's like an online feeling of community, I think it's amazing to be able to have, you know, platform like yours to tune into, listen to new advice and re, you

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know, hear from different people from all over the country.

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about what they're working on and advice they might have.

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So it's truly amazing.

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I think we have that same passion.

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I've been trying to do it in this online world.

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You've been doing it in the real world.

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I hope we can combine our forces because I think there's some beauty in that because I think we need both.

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The online world can reach far and wide, but I think we're desperate for that absolute in-person connection.

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And we're going to get to that later on in the podcast because I'm really excited about what you're doing.

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But I really want to get to know you.

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more personally than want our audience to because I feel like the work you're doing is born out of who you are as a man.

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And that started from where you were born and who your parents were and what your upbringing is.

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It's very unique.

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So take me all the way back to when you were born and where, who your parents were.

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Just tell me the story of you.

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Yeah, so I had a very unique upbringing and I like to say that uh no matter which direction I'm flying, always going home.

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was mostly grew up in the United States, but I was randomly born in the Cayman Islands.

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I was not a vacation baby.

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My parents actually lived there for a decade and my parents both were from the same hometown of Calocha in Hungary.

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Grew up there and then they got married there and

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My mom works with children with cerebral palsy and she got a job in the Cayman Islands, which at the time coming from Hungary, they literally didn't even know where it was on the

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map.

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mean, especially in Europe, people don't really know the Cayman Islands, especially in Hungary.

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And they moved there.

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ended up staying for 10 years.

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My brother and I were born there.

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We moved back to Hungary.

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And then in 2005, we moved to the U S into the Chicago suburbs.

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And then I went to

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middle school here, high school here, and college in Chicago.

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I moved here, I didn't speak any English.

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I was seven years old and then very quickly learned English and then actually was one of my strongest subjects in school, in high school and then later in college.

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And I think my love for storytelling really was inspired by my father.

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He is an oil painter, he's an artist.

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And I always grew up around in painting and of course taking reference photographs for his paintings that he wanted to paint.

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And so always around cameras in some capacity and we did a lot of very low budget, very long trips.

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Like in high school, actually it was in middle school, we did an 80 day long 12,000 mile road trip through the US.

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If you draw basically a triangle from Chicago all the way up to Vancouver down to the Mexican border and back was basically the route that we took over 80 days.

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It was the very first day of summer break.

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until the very last day of summer break and then we went right back to school.

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Camped, we camped, tent camped for 80 days.

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Didn't stay in a hotel once, had beautiful weather, went to all the national parks and I really enjoyed documenting those trips and taking photographs and then later I would start

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doing videos.

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And then in high school, I started making these recap videos for these trips and I really loved capturing them and...

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And even on our other trips, I would write like blogs, you know, you could do like a WordPress blog for free and like the hosting was free.

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And I would just like to type away and really write about our trips and document the stories.

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And I realized like originally I want to be a Marine biologist.

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I was never good at biology or science and stuff like that, but I loved animals.

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I loved the ocean.

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And I was trying to think what I wanted to do.

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And I think by like junior year of high school, I figured out like, I want to be a filmmaker.

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I want to go to film school and Columbia College is a great option for me and I want to stay local to Chicago.

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So that's basically up to speed on where I went to school and how we wound up in the U.S.

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That is the fast version.

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what an exciting childhood.

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Your parents just seem so brilliant and just curious people, which I think curious people make phenomenal storytellers.

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So I just, I would love to meet your parents.

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But you know, I want to go back.

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You said your parents didn't have any idea where the Cayman Islands were.

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So can you put them on the map for us?

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Because your film talks a lot about the Cayman Islands.

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Where are they?

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So they're about a hundred miles south of Cuba and it's actually British overseas territory.

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So it's similar relationship to like Puerto Rico's relationship to the U.S.

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the difference is, the Cayman Islands has its own government, but it's under like crown rule.

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Like the governing is still a little bit closely, closer associated to the, uh to England than Puerto Rico is to the U.S.

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But kind of similar relationship.

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They do drive on the other side.

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a very small island, it's a group of three islands.

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People typically vacation in Grand Cayman, which is now about 100,000 people.

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And then my film that I shot takes place on Cayman Brac, which is about 2000 people.

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And then there's Little Cayman, which is one of like the top three diving spots on the planet.

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And there's about, I think less than 200 people live there full time.

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very small island, no facilities, no nothing.

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If you wanna be off the map and not be close to anybody, then that's where you're gonna

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Now, do you remember well growing up there?

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Because it sounds like you were only seven when you left.

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I actually moved away from the Cayman Islands when I was two and then we moved back to Hungary for a few years.

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So I don't remember anything at all.

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luckily my parents still stay in touch with a lot of family friends who had kids about our age.

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And then now we're, you know, rekindling our friendships and staying in touch with everybody.

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So lot of family friends in the Cayman Islands still.

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Then how did growing up in Hungary shape you?

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it was a beautiful upbringing.

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My parents built a house there and I think it was a really tough decision to leave Hungary, already over 20 years ago, it was already a tough economic situation and my

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parents really wanted the best upbringing for us.

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I think one of the key things was they wanted us to speak English without an accent and they're able to give that to my brother and I.

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I think it's one of the most important things that we were ever given.

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The way I like to describe Hungary is it's a beautiful country, but

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the ceiling is significantly lower than the US.

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Like if you think in terms of uh entertainment advertising, like the US is really the center, one of the centers of the world that people really look up to, especially in film.

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And the ceiling in Hungary is significantly lower.

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It's a country of 10 million people.

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So even if you're the very, very best at something, mean, there's a low ceiling that you're going to hit pretty quickly and not many people speak Hungarian globally.

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completely unique language.

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It's not a romance language.

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It's completely unique.

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It's not related to Italian, French, anything.

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It's a unique language.

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So my parents are adamant about us learning English and wanted to give us the best opportunity by moving to the U.S.

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Tell me about the values you grew up with, because I sense that you care about people, and you care about the planet, and you care about animals, and you care about uh quality of

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life and real connection with people.

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That's deep-seated, genuine authenticity.

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talk to me about the values your parents raised you with.

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Where did that come from?

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I think my parents just raised us to be very caring people.

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I think the whole like you treat others how you want to be treated.

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I think being a good person, doing good, good work and treating people well, I think is just in general, great life advice.

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And I was really lucky that my parents from the very beginning were extremely supportive of me pursuing art.

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I don't take it for granted because I know a lot of people with their parents, especially when they're younger,

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it is an uphill battle to really convince them like, hey, instead of taking a study secure career, I'm going to pursue the arts, which is the very opposite sometimes.

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And I didn't take it for granted, my dad gave me one advice when picking my concentration in college.

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He said, don't go to school to be a photographer.

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And it's going to be really hard and you need to work your ass off, but you can do it.

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I think that's that realistic advice is really important because

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If you're giving people these grandiose, this image of what film can be and it's going to be easy, I would say this completely wrong.

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think film is extremely hard, but the saying that if you like what you do, you're never going to work a day in your life.

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Yeah, 100%.

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And it seems to me, please correct me if I'm wrong, but your parents themselves were not after money as their goal.

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Your mother seemed to genuinely care about helping people.

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Your father did care about the arts and beautiful things and sharing those beautiful things with the world.

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So their value system did seem to be rooted in something different than making money.

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But at the same time,

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They also valued experiences clearly if they're giving you an 80-day trip across the world and showing you how to embrace that kind of life, but um with a very simple way of living.

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Is that right?

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100%.

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And I think my parents really did their very best to show us as much of the world as possible.

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Of course, growing up, we would go back to Hungary every summer to see we saw grandparents living there and um uncles and cousins.

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um And then we wanted to see as much of the U S as possible.

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I definitely don't take it for granted.

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mean, I think by time I was 18, I've got to say I've been, I had been to about 30 countries already and traveled all over Europe and traveled all over.

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the United States and I think Europe is beautiful and the United States is beautiful and I don't take it for granted.

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I think a lot of people don't get that experience and I think travel has really shaped my perspective on the world.

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I think it's made me much more open minded I think being a good traveler also makes you a better documentary filmmaker you don't let

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your fear of travel limit what is possible because a lot of people are very overwhelmed with traveling, right?

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Like renting a car in a foreign country, driving on the other side of the road, the steering wheel is on the other side, things like that.

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I mean, it's intimidating and luckily that muscle was really built up for us from a very young age.

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And my brother and I are very experienced travelers, of course.

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So, you know, navigating a foreign airport and checking luggage and all that is not really something that I get too much anxiety over these days.

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That's a beautiful gift that your parents gave you.

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I agree with you 100 % being able to travel like that is an ultimate gift.

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And the thing that it gives back to you is that it does help you to understand different cultures, different people, and it gives you just a less ethnocentric way of looking at

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the world.

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And I think as filmmakers, we do have a responsibility then.

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to share that with the rest of the world who don't have the ability to travel like that.

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now let's look at film school because you decided to choose Columbia College and there is this big debate, is film school worth it?

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You have a camp that says it was helpful, it's helpful for connections, it is helpful for the things you learn.

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There's another camp that says it's a lot of money, particularly right now.

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Do I want to incur those costs, particularly now when I'm not sure there's a return?

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now with the tidal wave and the earthquake and the tsunami that's happening in the entertainment industry, uh is film school worth it?

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Short answer is for me it was worth it, but

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it comes down to money.

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How much money are your parents willing to give you for school?

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Are you sitting on a quarter million dollar college fund that you would like to invest into school?

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If you have that, that's an amazing gift.

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I definitely did not have that.

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I would say it was worth it because I worked my butt off getting scholarships.

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I got a massive $8,000 portfolio scholarship when I was like 17, you know, going into applying to Columbia College and...

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At the time I'm like, wow, this project is worth $8,000.

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Like I thought that was crazy, you know?

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And got college credits from high school as well.

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So I was able to graduate half a year early and take more courses that I was genuinely interested in rather than like the gen ed courses that, you know, that make you take.

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um And I had a couple of really influential professors at Columbia that I definitely like would be a different person today if I had not taken those courses, particularly.

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courses that I think should be mandatory for everybody like marketing and branding yourself.

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And in these courses I learned how to make a website, business cards, networking basics, which are all fundamentals I think for anybody in any industry, not just documentary

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filmmaking.

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And I did take a lot of documentary courses at Columbia at the time that really had a big impact on me.

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And I think even just working the muscle of getting feedback on your projects, how to deal with, you you just finished your beautiful project and someone saying,

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hey redo this scene, remove this, add this.

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How do you deal with that?

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How do you receive feedback without having your ego bruised with a project that you've been working out for two or three years and now people are saying it's not the best

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projects they've ever seen.

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All of those I think really shaped who I am today and I don't have any regrets with going to school, I guess is my bottom line, but it's a completely unique question to every

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single person and I think.

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Ultimately, the best thing you could do if you're student listening to this podcast is speak to as many people as possible.

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Do, you know, informal informational interviews, ask for people's advice, and then you have to boil down the advice to what pertains to you and then make the decision yourself.

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100 % wise advice right there because it is so unique to every individual based on their financial situation, their outcomes, their learning style, what they want to do

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afterwards.

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Just so many different things play into that decision.

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And I think about group projects.

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Group projects in college is a pain in the butt, but it is also a wonderful petri dish.

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for figuring out, can you work with a team?

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Another wonderful example of that is you get to, in film school, do several different roles and decide, do I really wanna do this?

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You may go in there thinking, I wanna be a director, but you may realize that I'm better at editing or vice versa.

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There are a lot of pluses and minuses, not to mention the networking, particularly if you're in a city like Chicago.

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or New York or LA, but Chicago I think is particularly wonderful for this situation because it gives you the option to start here in a wonderful, safe environment where

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there's so many opportunities and then branch off to the coasts depending on what you're interested in.

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So I think that's just such a wonderful answer, very wise.

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you then went from film school and decided, by founding your film company

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You needed to do two things.

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You wanted to be able to pursue passion projects that you were really interested in, such as documentary filmmaking, but you realized you had to make a living too.

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Is that how uh your company was born?

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Talk to me a little bit about that.

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Yeah.

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And I think even taking a step back into how I even decided to start a company was my background and coming from a team sports background, I was a swimmer and water polo player

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in high school.

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And I think that that I love building a team.

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It's the same as sports and I can very quickly also when I work with new people, I can pick up on if you played team sports growing up or not, just because I like fundamentally

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how you work with people you like, you don't like your communication styles.

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um

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even working with, like when I'm directing, I'm working with cinematographers.

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Do you like to work with someone who you hold their hand the entire way, or do you wanna be completely hands off and just give vague, you know, direction and then let someone take

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the reins, right?

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Like you really, and there's no right or wrong answer.

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Like everybody works differently and everyone's working relationship is different.

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But I think you have to understand who you are, right?

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I get overwhelmed if I have to hand hold every single person.

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It's like the funny saying, like working with you is like working alone, harder.

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Like if, you know, if, I have to handhold you through a production, then I'd rather just shoot it myself.

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I also like to shoot.

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like to film and camera operate.

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So when I look for collaborators, I like to draw the sandbox, tell them how this is going to work and then let them do what they're best at.

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Because I have a good understanding of pretty much every aspect of production, but I want to hire people who are better than me and work with people who are better than me.

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I don't think you want to see how I would do someone's makeup on a film shoot.

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But I can hire the right personality, And I think even just deciding how to assemble a team for a certain project is really important.

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And in school, I loved the aspect of chasing my own work, being my own boss and being in charge of putting teams together.

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I knew that going the union direction that film school was pointing me in like union television and episodic television series and

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All of that, like they didn't really talk about the commercial world.

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And of course they spoke about documentaries because I was in the documentary, you know, side of the film industry and the film department at Columbia.

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Um, but they didn't talk about commercial and then I would work on commercial sets and PA and learn more and more about it.

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And I'm like, the day rates are really high.

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The shoots are one to three days long.

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Um, they're creatively challenging in their own ways.

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And then I can make good money and then put it into a project that I genuinely want to shoot.

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And I.

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thought there's really not many downsides to this besides, you know, chasing the dream of I want to shoot a feature film.

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But let alone secret, a lot of the people who also shoot features also shoot commercial work, right?

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And they in the gaps of their income throughout the year when they're not doing episodic union, you know, television work or feature films.

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So that's how it came that was born.

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I've been running my company now for five years, and we specialize specifically in commercial work.

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documentary films and then the intersection of the two branded content and branded long form storytelling.

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And how has that been going for you?

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I too have been running my own company.

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I think I'm going on now, sheesh, 15 years.

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And it does take a while.

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A.

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it takes money to make money.

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That's a truism.

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B.

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it takes at least five years to become profitable.

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You do have to market yourself continually.

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it isn't easy.

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particularly to be in your left brain running a company and then in your right brain trying to be a creative person doing creative endeavors.

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How are you finding this going for you?

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I think you have to figure out what you're good at, put your energy into that.

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And if you don't like to do something, then hire out or find different people who are better at that skill.

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So I love talking to people.

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I love networking.

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think when I get on a call, I can pretty much like, I can sell a project.

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I can book a project.

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The outreach is very time consuming.

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And that was something I think when I first started out, I underestimated how much consistent outreach you have to do to make sure that you're

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acquisition is, it keeps coming in, right?

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Like you need to keep client.

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You have to have a rainmaker.

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is no question about that.

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Yes, yeah, like you even when you don't feel like it, you have to do it.

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But it's been an amazing journey.

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I would never trade it for anything.

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And I think being able to control like what projects I take and working with so many different talented people, it's been an amazing journey.

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It's really funny that I graduated college during COVID.

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And then I started my company basically on the back end of COVID.

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um And then now we're dealing with the AI wave.

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So it's like one after the other.

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But I think you just have to ride it out and really be flexible and adaptable and I don't think the complaining will get you anywhere.

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think you, you know, keeping on top of everything and really understanding the new tools that are at your disposal and taking advantage of them and using it to your advantage as

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much as possible.

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Great advice.

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Talk to me about the project that you are most excited about.

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What are you most proud of in your commercial work?

Speaker 00:21:03
We shot a motorcycle commercial for a motorcycle rental company out in Colorado and they gave us very little money but full creative control.

Speaker 00:21:12
So I said, hey, it's basically a paid passion project that we can shoot over three days and you're able to shoot on Independence Pass, which is between Twin Lakes and Aspen.

Speaker 00:21:20
One of the most beautiful roads in the whole country.

Speaker 00:21:23
It's like closed most of the year because of the snow and how high the altitude is.

Speaker 00:21:27
But that was just such a beautiful project because filming and

Speaker 00:21:29
Places where the scenery is beautiful every direction you point a camera, I don't take it for granted.

Speaker 00:21:34
That was just such a fun project.

Speaker 00:21:35
The client absolutely loved the project and it still is one of the main capstone portfolio pieces that we have on our site.

Speaker 00:21:42
Talk to me about what the hardest one was.

Speaker 00:21:44
What was the most challenging one you shot?

Speaker 00:21:46
We were working with a tech company that was launching, um it's still on our site, I believe it's a company called Protege.

Speaker 00:21:52
It's basically uh industry professionals in the music industry could evaluate digital auditions.

Speaker 00:22:00
It's basically like America's Got Talent or The Voice, but it's like for a digital platform.

Speaker 00:22:04
And they came to us and we had to turn the project around from like concept to finishing it, I think within five days because they were launching and they needed a video for their

Speaker 00:22:13
homepage.

Speaker 00:22:15
And I mean, we were able to pull it off.

Speaker 00:22:17
Like I think in those moments, you need to find, again, the right crew, right personalities, get everybody up on the same page, make sure you're not like weighed down

Speaker 00:22:25
by too much stuff and really get a good storyboard and stick to your plan and really shoot it.

Speaker 00:22:33
because we had such a good plan going into it, the edit came together really easily and then we were able to launch it on time.

Speaker 00:22:38
So I'm really proud when the team works together on meeting deadlines like that.

Speaker 00:22:41
Some projects take six weeks to finish or three weeks or whatever, I mean, five days is pretty, pretty insane.

Speaker 00:22:48
And that was before AI too.

Speaker 00:22:49
That was like before the whole AI wave.

Speaker 00:22:51
everything was completely manual.

Speaker 00:22:53
speaking of AI, how that's changed for you and how you've integrated it into your work.

Speaker 00:22:59
So I, it's a great question.

Speaker 00:23:00
I know people are probably super tired of talking about AI and AI this AI that.

Speaker 00:23:05
My first belier in AI is if you're not using AI, you will be losing work to people who do.

Speaker 00:23:13
I think it's just a fact of life.

Speaker 00:23:16
I think it's a slow moving train that you need to hop on now, learn about the tools, learn about what updates are coming out.

Speaker 00:23:22
You need to start implementing into your workflow because you literally will lose work.

Speaker 00:23:27
I've seen it firsthand.

Speaker 00:23:28
If you can increase your output, your outreach, um network better, email better, and stay on top of your communication, all of that are the fundamentals and the foundation of a

Speaker 00:23:37
business, then you're simply going to increase the amount of luck that comes your way, right?

Speaker 00:23:43
Like the harder you work, the more you put yourself out there, the more likely you are to succeed.

Speaker 00:23:47
uh The way I'm using AI is really

Speaker 00:23:52
minimizing the amount of time I spend doing the repetitive annoying tasks, tasks such as uh all the documentation that goes with a shoot, independent contractor agreements,

Speaker 00:24:05
location releases, non-disclosures, general non-disclosure, talent releases, call sheets, invoicing, all of that is just PDFs and paperwork.

Speaker 00:24:14
All of this, we're working on automating all of this on the backend because if you can take your pre-production time from let's say,

Speaker 00:24:21
20 hours of manually emailing all these documents back and forth, you forget to attach something, this producer didn't get that document, so on and so forth.

Speaker 00:24:29
If all of this is in a central place and it's nice and organized, if you could take your pre-production, all the document stuff, from 20 hours down to 30 minutes, I mean, I'm

Speaker 00:24:39
spending then more time storyboarding, doing all the creative work that actually needs my 100 % human, genuine attention to detail and my human connection.

Speaker 00:24:48
If you can streamline everything and minimize the amount of things that you need to, you know, the bottleneck is your memory, right?

Speaker 00:24:53
Your ability to remember what you need to, who you need to email, who's still missing stuff.

Speaker 00:24:57
If you have a central place where you can track invoices, track who signed which contract, making sure the call sheets are very clear, everyone is actually getting them and making

Speaker 00:25:08
sure that your communication is completely streamlined and solid and automated.

Speaker 00:25:12
think the better because

Speaker 00:25:13
you need to be involved with the creative stuff.

Speaker 00:25:16
And if your time is being taken away from the stuff where you actually need your full 100 % attention, then I think the projects suffer.

Speaker 00:25:22
if we're able to minimize the amount of time in general that a project takes to complete and you can increase the clear communication between pre-production, the production team,

Speaker 00:25:31
and then on to post-production, whether it's a commercial or a documentary film project,

Speaker 00:25:36
then you can take on more work.

Speaker 00:25:37
You can make more money and be more profitable.

Speaker 00:25:39
So that's how I'm using AI.

Speaker 00:25:41
I also think like, if you can create, everyone's talking about image generation and video generation with AI.

Speaker 00:25:47
think if you use that as a tool to communicate your concepts better and communicate it to your production team, like, Hey, we're going for this shot.

Speaker 00:25:54
Um, here's like a pre-vis essentially of the shoot that we're doing.

Speaker 00:25:58
I think it's great.

Speaker 00:25:59
I use, image generation for pitch decks all the time.

Speaker 00:26:02
we did this for the Cayman Brac film, which we'll talk about soon.

Speaker 00:26:05
I generated a bunch of images of the island that looked completely believable and had to put them in a pitch deck that I need to put together quicker.

Speaker 00:26:12
If I'm able to send 40 pitches to 40 different companies rather than like eight, then you're increasing the likeliness of getting funded and getting out there and really

Speaker 00:26:21
staying in touch with the right people.

Speaker 00:26:23
So I see no disadvantages to it.

Speaker 00:26:25
Yeah.

Speaker 00:26:25
How are you using AI?

Speaker 00:26:27
I have believed from the beginning that if you don't learn how to ride the wave, the undertow will take you under.

Speaker 00:26:33
You have to adapt or die.

Speaker 00:26:35
so I've been trying to figure that out, which one is the most useful.

Speaker 00:26:38
um I've lately determined that for me, Claude, the latest highest version has been the most useful.

Speaker 00:26:45
So I've chosen to pay the a dollars a month right now.

Speaker 00:26:48
The way that I have been using it is a lot of research I wanted to understand

Speaker 00:26:53
How can I make things better for my company?

Speaker 00:26:55
How can I improve the podcast and my reach?

Speaker 00:26:58
What do I need to change?

Speaker 00:27:00
It's helping me do things that would take me hours and hours and hours to go through all that stuff manually.

Speaker 00:27:07
The one thing that I continuously have to do is check everything all the time.

Speaker 00:27:13
It doesn't matter what AI it is and I'm constantly having to rewrite a ton of stuff.

Speaker 00:27:19
The important thing to do in the very beginning is to set it up how you want it to talk to you.

Speaker 00:27:25
The instructions when you set up your AI in the beginning are crucial.

Speaker 00:27:30
And then using the project folders for each project you manage and the specific instructions for that project.

Speaker 00:27:37
Understanding.

Speaker 00:27:38
how to use the tools you have and knowing how to ask the questions or the commands that you give it are also really important.

Speaker 00:27:45
So you can't just use AI, but you have to use it intelligently and to understand what the problems with it are and be constantly reading up on what's changing.

Speaker 00:27:55
It's a lot to keep up with.

Speaker 00:27:57
Yeah, I mean, right now I'm spending like, I'm setting aside 15 to 20 minutes every single night to watch a new tutorial on new features coming out.

Speaker 00:28:04
I also use Claude.

Speaker 00:28:06
but I think like keeping up with all the updates is super important.

Speaker 00:28:08
And I think you hit on a really key thing.

Speaker 00:28:11
Christian is your input still matters, right?

Speaker 00:28:14
Because you can't just tell.

Speaker 00:28:16
AI like, write me a 100 page feature film script about a boy, a girl, a dog in Florida.

Speaker 00:28:21
Okay.

Speaker 00:28:22
Like it's not going to come up with good original ideas.

Speaker 00:28:24
It's similar to physical training, right?

Speaker 00:28:26
If you get a trainer, if you're not willing to put the work in, you're not going to see any results.

Speaker 00:28:30
You need to change your diet.

Speaker 00:28:31
You need to work hard.

Speaker 00:28:32
It's the same thing here.

Speaker 00:28:33
Actually the CEO of Nvidia said this recently, which I loved his quote.

Speaker 00:28:37
said the, the playing field is level.

Speaker 00:28:41
the differentiator between who's successful and who's not in the future is who has the best original ideas.

Speaker 00:28:48
Because now there's no gatekeeping of knowledge.

Speaker 00:28:51
don't, unfortunately for the coders, don't know how, I don't need to know how to code.

Speaker 00:28:56
I don't need to know how to custom make a website.

Speaker 00:28:59
I don't need to know how to make an app.

Speaker 00:29:00
If I have an idea and I have a problem that I need a solution for, I can literally make it tomorrow and the playing field is level.

Speaker 00:29:07
And that's the same thing here where

Speaker 00:29:09
I do the same thing.

Speaker 00:29:10
I was speaking at DePaul University to some students.

Speaker 00:29:13
I had a presentation and as I was reworking it, all of them were my ideas.

Speaker 00:29:17
I said, let's restructure so the flow makes sense.

Speaker 00:29:20
So we started with pre-existing beliefs, maybe the students have then like tools and takeaways the truths of what I found.

Speaker 00:29:27
And then like a nice summary and had a really good flow, instead of jumping around back and forth through the presentation where it's like, Hey, it might be a little overwhelming

Speaker 00:29:34
to bounce all around.

Speaker 00:29:35
but it's recycling and kind of redoing what my original ideas were.

Speaker 00:29:39
It's the same thing with another practical example of this is we submitted Brac to 19 different festivals.

Speaker 00:29:46
When a festival says, hey, can you give me a 150 character long summary of your film?

Speaker 00:29:51
Okay, well, if I had a 200 character summary, then how am going to rewrite this but not lose the essence of what the film is?

Speaker 00:29:58
So I wrote out all the log lines, the summary, everything manually, and I said, hey, rewrite this.

Speaker 00:30:05
for this length or this character count or whatever and then you're not just agonizing over hey am I still capturing the essence of the summary of my film when I'm submitting

Speaker 00:30:12
the festivals it completely does and it rewrites it in my language and it's it's you know you can apply to more festivals quicker.

Speaker 00:30:20
pay a publicist to do that sort of stuff when I was doing The Girl Who Wore Freedom.

Speaker 00:30:24
And I was applying to 200 film festivals and all this other stuff.

Speaker 00:30:27
And it cost me so much money and time because everything had different parameters and word length.

Speaker 00:30:32
Another practical application is I filmed Heroes of Caranton in 2022 and 2023 and haven't been able to raise the finishing funds.

Speaker 00:30:40
Recently, I had to give an annual update to my fiscal sponsor and I needed to give them a summary of where we were.

Speaker 00:30:49
And in the middle of that, thought, you know, it's been a really long time since I've gone over all the information.

Speaker 00:30:54
And I thought, wait a minute, I have AI now.

Speaker 00:30:58
So I took all of the summaries, like all of the transcripts of all the interviews that we did, and I put them in Claude, and I asked them to summarize them for me.

Speaker 00:31:06
Then I realized after they did that.

Speaker 00:31:09
successfully and summarize them.

Speaker 00:31:11
was like, yeah, I remember all of this.

Speaker 00:31:13
Then I found all of this stuff that I had scanned in the 101st Airborne Division Museum.

Speaker 00:31:18
So much stuff that it would have taken me months, months to read it all.

Speaker 00:31:24
And I uploaded it into Claude and I asked it to summarize each thing.

Speaker 00:31:29
And then I said, show me the connections between all of these.

Speaker 00:31:33
This was a perfect case example.

Speaker 00:31:36
for how it saved me hours.

Speaker 00:31:38
I put in my outline for what I had already done and all I'd already written.

Speaker 00:31:42
All the work was mine.

Speaker 00:31:44
All the work was mine, but I needed somehow to synthesize all of that and summarize all the stuff and have a back and forth with somebody.

Speaker 00:31:54
And that's how I used it.

Speaker 00:31:56
So that's the sort of stuff it's good for, but you have to know how to use the tool.

Speaker 00:32:00
100%.

Speaker 00:32:01
I think especially for summaries, like I'm ideating all the time.

Speaker 00:32:04
I'll talk to it for 10 minutes.

Speaker 00:32:05
Hey, can you summarize what I said and bullet points like stuff like that?

Speaker 00:32:08
It's so, so helpful for same with like, I'm very active on LinkedIn, writing LinkedIn posts, boiling it down from certain things that posted or written about.

Speaker 00:32:16
Let's, break this into separate posts and stuff.

Speaker 00:32:18
if you can increase your output and, really have good input is the first thing that this the number one thing that's so important then I think the output will also be

Speaker 00:32:26
significantly better.

Speaker 00:32:27
And one word of caution I tell people all the time, you must be the creative input.

Speaker 00:32:32
Otherwise, Claude has the creative IP.

Speaker 00:32:36
So you cannot have Claude or any other AI do the creative work for you.

Speaker 00:32:42
You must be the creator if you want the IP.

Speaker 00:32:45
So last word of advice on IP and AI.

Speaker 00:32:49
Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Virgil Films.

Speaker 00:32:52
With over 25 years of distribution experience, Virgil has released such hits as Super Size Me and the Oscar nominated Ristrofo, along with a trove of indie treasures like Forks Over

Speaker 00:33:04
Knives, To Die For, Seven Yards, and Speed Is Expensive.

Speaker 00:33:08
Now you can find all of those films along with the entire Virgil catalog on any transactional platform out there like Amazon, Apple TV, YouTube, Tubi, and the rest.

Speaker 00:33:20
Are you a filmmaker and you're having trouble with distribution?

Speaker 00:33:23
Talk to Virgil.

Speaker 00:33:25
They work with every major platform directly and they offer a variety of deals that fit with every filmmaker's needs from standard distribution to service deals.

Speaker 00:33:34
They do it all.

Speaker 00:33:35
And they don't just distribute films.

Speaker 00:33:37
They elevate them.

Speaker 00:33:39
Truthfully, they're just really good people to work with.

Speaker 00:33:44
So if you want to learn more, head on over to VirgilFilms.com.

Speaker 00:33:48
and tell them Christian Taylor sent ya.

Speaker 00:33:51
And now, on with the show.

Speaker 00:33:54
Now, let's move on to Brac.

Speaker 00:33:56
Brac is a beautiful short film I would love you to give the setup for it, tell us all about the film, and then we'll dive in.

Speaker 00:34:03
Brac is a 15 minute short conservation documentary a beautiful story about a small island showing a global issue on a small scale.

Speaker 00:34:14
And I was really specific about making the film to make sure that it is.

Speaker 00:34:18
relevant to everybody that watches it.

Speaker 00:34:20
It has

Speaker 00:34:20
to answer the number one question with documentaries is why should I care?

Speaker 00:34:24
Why does this matter to me?

Speaker 00:34:25
The film explores the intersection of land rights and land management, how humans have impacted the decline of the native brown booby bird on the island and how rock climbers

Speaker 00:34:37
and the locals all intersect and what the future of the island really.

Speaker 00:34:41
is all about and what when should humans actually decide to step in and solve problems that we are responsible for causing in the first place.

Speaker 00:34:51
I think we packed as much story into this 15 minute film as we possibly could have and super proud of how it came out.

Speaker 00:34:56
could not have done it without my editor Ethan Edmonds.

Speaker 00:34:59
This is our second collaboration.

Speaker 00:35:01
um Last year with our five minute surfing film we went to Mountain Film Festival.

Speaker 00:35:05
with that and we came back for another project to work on together.

Speaker 00:35:09
So came out beautifully, but way exceeded my expectations.

Speaker 00:35:12
The music is lovely, the footage is absolutely beautiful.

Speaker 00:35:16
Makes me want to go there and visit.

Speaker 00:35:18
What I enjoyed about this film was oftentimes in films that make us aware of problems where nature is concerned, you walk away feeling like a very yucky human and that this is

Speaker 00:35:30
all on my shoulders.

Speaker 00:35:31
There's nothing I can do anyway.

Speaker 00:35:33
Now I just feel guilty and you know, there's just a lot of hopelessness.

Speaker 00:35:37
I didn't feel that way when I was watching your film.

Speaker 00:35:40
I felt uh inspired.

Speaker 00:35:43
I cared about the situation here.

Speaker 00:35:46
What I did love is that there were people involved and they loved what was happening there.

Speaker 00:35:51
You brought the problem to the forefront and you let people discuss it.

Speaker 00:35:55
At the end, you basically were saying, the people that live here have to decide what they want.

Speaker 00:36:03
And that's true for all of us.

Speaker 00:36:04
We have to decide what do want our world to be like?

Speaker 00:36:07
And you kind of just say, it's up to us.

Speaker 00:36:09
Before we go any further, I'd like to show you a moment from Arnst-Belman and introduce you to these really special rare birds.

Speaker 00:36:15
[Brown Booby Birds Clucking}

Speaker 00:36:25
They've got chicks.

Speaker 00:36:29
Yeah.

Speaker 00:36:30
awwww look at it's little head

Speaker 00:36:37
In the Cayman Islands, brown booby birds are unique to the Bracs

Speaker 00:36:45
The Boobies do nest as a colony and they will come back to the same areas.

Speaker 00:36:51
They'll usually lay a couple eggs, but usually only one of them will survive.

Speaker 00:37:01
They have easy access to deep waters offshore where they can catch flying fish.

Speaker 00:37:05
It's one the reasons they would choose Cayman Brac and historically have nested here.

Speaker 00:37:11
Armin, talk to me about the challenges these birds are facing.

Speaker 00:37:14
It's a really unique story.

Speaker 00:37:15
One of the big problems on the island outside of land rights and land use is the introduction of feral cats on island, which were introduced by humans.

Speaker 00:37:23
These feral cats are eating three to eight small animals and critters like birds and lizards and, you know, bird eggs a day.

Speaker 00:37:32
So if you have thousands of cats on an island, I mean, they're just decimating the local, you know, reptilian populations and bird populations.

Speaker 00:37:40
And it really was an interesting story to cover because everyone has of course a different perspective and opinion and I think as a documentary filmmaker, especially as a director,

Speaker 00:37:48
you are tempted to force your opinion onto a story but I think showcasing both sides, especially on a divisive issue like what this film is about.

Speaker 00:37:57
It's really important to give a fail platform to everybody involved and then really shape the story afterwards.

Speaker 00:38:03
But I was really keen on getting the people who love the cats or want to protect the cats, that perspective, the locals, the rock climbers, and the government also, their government

Speaker 00:38:12
employees, specifically working with the Department of the Environment and the work they're doing.

Speaker 00:38:17
And it all, I think, intersects in a really beautiful way.

Speaker 00:38:20
Yeah, you gave everybody a fair voice.

Speaker 00:38:22
I really did find the gentleman who actually lives on the island fascinating.

Speaker 00:38:26
Why don't you talk a little bit about him?

Speaker 00:38:28
How did you meet him?

Speaker 00:38:29
So a little backstory about the film.

Speaker 00:38:30
So even though it was only 15 minutes, it took me three different trips to shoot this film.

Speaker 00:38:35
Each of the trips were like two to five days long.

Speaker 00:38:38
And by the third trip, I knew I had to get a local perspective.

Speaker 00:38:44
Like I think a quick little side note is, especially when a film is taking months or years to shoot, you have to be reviewing footage.

Speaker 00:38:51
You have to be listening to the interviews and really like transcribing everything and seeing what you have and what you don't

Speaker 00:38:57
because if you finish your last trip, especially if it's in an inaccessible place where it's going to be practically impossible to go back and keep filming, whether it's for

Speaker 00:39:04
financial reasons or access reasons, it's going to be very hard to edit together your film if you're missing uh an important part of the story.

Speaker 00:39:13
And The last one, I did it the old fashioned way.

Speaker 00:39:16
Like knew I had to get an older person who's a native on the island.

Speaker 00:39:21
And the plane that we take over from Grand Cayman to Cayman Brac is like 20 people.

Speaker 00:39:25
Okay.

Speaker 00:39:26
It's like a really small prop plane.

Speaker 00:39:27
the flight is like 20 minutes and I was making a small talk on people with people on the plane.

Speaker 00:39:32
And I said, you know, I'm working on this project.

Speaker 00:39:34
was born on Grand Cayman.

Speaker 00:39:35
That's really important to emphasize here is like there are people at their guard down when you tell them that you're early born, you know, in the Cayman islands.

Speaker 00:39:42
And so I use that card and I said, I'm working on this project.

Speaker 00:39:45
I really am looking for different perspectives.

Speaker 00:39:47
And they said, go talk to Tennyson Scott.

Speaker 00:39:50
And multiple people said this to me and I'm like, Tennyson, Scott, like, I don't even know how to spell Tennyson.

Speaker 00:39:55
I've never even met anybody named Tennyson.

Speaker 00:39:58
And mind you, the island, like, they didn't give me an address.

Speaker 00:40:01
They didn't have street addresses or anything for like, while my parents were still living there in the 90s, by the way, like it's literally they would draw maps on the envelope and

Speaker 00:40:09
say, deliver the mail like past the big tree on the right, past the gas station.

Speaker 00:40:13
It's like Mississippi where I grew up.

Speaker 00:40:15
Yeah, mean, same thing here.

Speaker 00:40:17
And I'm on the plane and they're like, Tennyson Scott is gonna be a great person to interview.

Speaker 00:40:21
I don't have a phone number.

Speaker 00:40:22
I don't have an email.

Speaker 00:40:23
I don't have an address.

Speaker 00:40:24
I don't have anything about this man.

Speaker 00:40:26
And I'm like, okay, that was worth a shot.

Speaker 00:40:28
I'll just, you know, whatever, try my best.

Speaker 00:40:31
And I'm driving through Spot Bay on one of my last days on the island.

Speaker 00:40:34
And there's two older gentlemen sitting in front of a house.

Speaker 00:40:37
And that man turned out to be Tennyson Scott.

Speaker 00:40:40
And I just happened to have my camera gear in the trunk.

Speaker 00:40:42
I had everything ready to go, know, tripod, lavalier microphone and he luckily was a yapper.

Speaker 00:40:49
He loved to talk.

Speaker 00:40:51
Best case scenario for any documentary film interview, you know, you're not like, you know, having to squeeze every ounce of information out of somebody, you know, begging for

Speaker 00:40:58
some crumbs.

Speaker 00:40:59
This guy was like, I mean, I interviewed him for over 90 minutes.

Speaker 00:41:03
I mean, I had to end it at the end because the light was changing so much, the sun was setting.

Speaker 00:41:08
And we went over everything.

Speaker 00:41:09
mean, it was great to just make him talk.

Speaker 00:41:11
think with those in those situations, like having a grasp of the story you're telling, the questions you need to have ready to go in your head or written down, whatever your format

Speaker 00:41:20
is and and just being ready to seize an opportunity.

Speaker 00:41:23
mean, the fact that I was able to just find this guy sitting in front of his house that everyone was talking about is crazy.

Speaker 00:41:28
But I think it was one of the most important perspectives that we featured in the film, because this is a guy who is approaching the age of 90

Speaker 00:41:36
that has seen the island go through massive changes since he grew up.

Speaker 00:41:40
And I think it really added this unique perspective to the film that otherwise would have been completely lost if I didn't get that interview.

Speaker 00:41:48
I agree with you.

Speaker 00:41:49
What I loved about what he said was we can't fish.

Speaker 00:41:52
We can't do this.

Speaker 00:41:53
What are you talking about?

Speaker 00:41:55
I've done this my whole life.

Speaker 00:41:56
It's a problem that I fish.

Speaker 00:41:58
It's a problem that I catch this.

Speaker 00:42:00
It's a problem that I ate an egg.

Speaker 00:42:03
I mean, God gave us this to do these things.

Speaker 00:42:06
he's got a point.

Speaker 00:42:08
These things wouldn't be a problem if it was just.

Speaker 00:42:11
the way it used to be.

Speaker 00:42:12
If it was just, these people on the island, the way it was intended to be, just taking what we needed for ourselves.

Speaker 00:42:20
But life has changed those things since then.

Speaker 00:42:23
Times have changed.

Speaker 00:42:24
Even when he was growing up and in the film, I think, under 30 nesting pairs of these brown booby birds, when he was growing up it was tens of thousands of birds.

Speaker 00:42:34
So at the time, you know, you pick up a couple of eggs and these are a little bit bigger than a chicken egg.

Speaker 00:42:38
These birds are, uh, you know, full grown.

Speaker 00:42:40
They're about a six foot wingspan.

Speaker 00:42:42
but they're like between two and eight pounds, weight wise.

Speaker 00:42:45
These are pretty big birds and I mean picking up a few eggs at the time wasn't a big deal.

Speaker 00:42:49
Now, when you only have like 15 to 25 fledglings per season and you end up picking up a few eggs, that's a big problem, especially when their survival rate is so low, even if

Speaker 00:42:59
they do end up hatching.

Speaker 00:43:00
Very interesting perspective and the film features somebody with a true Brac accent.

Speaker 00:43:06
The Bracker accent is super unique.

Speaker 00:43:09
He was very hard to understand at first, but I think it's something that AI can't replace.

Speaker 00:43:15
You can't fake that.

Speaker 00:43:16
You can't find anybody online with that accent.

Speaker 00:43:18
So it's super important to do that.

Speaker 00:43:19
And fun fact for you, by the way, and the listeners is the intro and the outro narration was, that's a really cool story too.

Speaker 00:43:28
That guy was also born on Cayman Brac.

Speaker 00:43:31
He is the former premier of the Cayman Islands.

Speaker 00:43:34
Premier is like the equivalent of like governor basically in the U S.

Speaker 00:43:38
And I was flying back home at the very end of my third trip.

Speaker 00:43:44
Okay.

Speaker 00:43:44
So I didn't go back after this trip and through some friends, I'm messaging people, I said, I really need someone to interview.

Speaker 00:43:50
And there's a guy who's friend of a friend.

Speaker 00:43:53
dad used to work in his bookstore back in the nineties.

Speaker 00:43:55
Okay.

Speaker 00:43:57
And he said, I can't do the narration.

Speaker 00:44:01
have a Georgetown accent.

Speaker 00:44:02
I'm not a Bracker.

Speaker 00:44:04
Okay.

Speaker 00:44:05
And so there's differences even within Grant Cayman of the different dialects and accents.

Speaker 00:44:10
And so I said, okay, that's fine.

Speaker 00:44:12
Uh, he has a lovely golden voice.

Speaker 00:44:13
So was a shame.

Speaker 00:44:14
But I said, Do you know anybody I could do a narration with.

Speaker 00:44:16
And I had the script written and everything.

Speaker 00:44:17
I was ready to go.

Speaker 00:44:19
He said, interviewed this guy, James Ryan.

Speaker 00:44:21
I reach out to him.

Speaker 00:44:22
He meets me in the airport parking lot in between my connection.

Speaker 00:44:27
I put my luggage in his trunk.

Speaker 00:44:29
I hop in his car.

Speaker 00:44:31
Okay.

Speaker 00:44:31
It's a small airport.

Speaker 00:44:32
So picture the parking lots right outside, hop in his car.

Speaker 00:44:35
grabbed my audio equipment.

Speaker 00:44:36
I have the script ready to go on my computer.

Speaker 00:44:39
did three read throughs and I got the narration in the airport parking lot or the film.

Speaker 00:44:44
It was so important.

Speaker 00:44:45
it's just preparation.

Speaker 00:44:47
know, like luck is my preparation meets opportunity.

Speaker 00:44:50
said, Hey, if you can you please meet me at like, let's say 1 30 PM in the parking lot.

Speaker 00:44:54
I'll be there.

Speaker 00:44:54
He said, yes, no problem.

Speaker 00:44:56
But if I didn't have the script ready to go, my audio equipment was buried in some bag.

Speaker 00:45:00
it never would have happened.

Speaker 00:45:01
I actually recorded like quite a few different variations of the narration because I didn't know what version I wanted to use.

Speaker 00:45:07
But again, because the accents are so specific to the Cayman Islands and different regions of the Cayman Islands, I had to get people reading it with a Caymanian accent, with a

Speaker 00:45:17
Bracken accent.

Speaker 00:45:18
It can't be a British accent.

Speaker 00:45:19
It can be an American accent and it has to be specific.

Speaker 00:45:22
So there's little details like that sprinkled in the film that really make it, you know, true, authentic to detail.

Speaker 00:45:27
I think really polished up the film to what it became.

Speaker 00:45:29
Was it a poem at the beginning and the end, or did you just write that?

Speaker 00:45:33
Yeah, so it's written like a poem.

Speaker 00:45:35
wanted it to be sort of like a reflection on the, I mean, the person I did the narration with, James Ryan, is also in in seventies or eighties now.

Speaker 00:45:45
And it really is like uh an ode to like the changes in the Cayman Islands, but that we really do owe it to the island and where we grew up and our heritage and culture to really

Speaker 00:45:55
save and preserve what the island was and what it is today.

Speaker 00:45:59
You definitely have a beautiful touch for filmmaking and I enjoyed it.

Speaker 00:46:02
Tell me what's happening with it.

Speaker 00:46:04
You submitted it to film festivals.

Speaker 00:46:05
How's it going?

Speaker 00:46:07
Yeah, so we submitted to, I believe, 19 festivals altogether.

Speaker 00:46:11
We just finished the film at the beginning of January, and we're just waiting to hear back from our festivals to see where we get in and where we don't.

Speaker 00:46:17
So, great getting.

Speaker 00:46:19
Yeah, having a good festival run with it this year, hopefully.

Speaker 00:46:22
Good, well, best of luck to you with that.

Speaker 00:46:24
Now I want to shift gears.

Speaker 00:46:25
This exciting thing I've been talking about is called Filmmaker Friday that you started here in Chicago.

Speaker 00:46:30
It's all a buzz about what's happening.

Speaker 00:46:32
Tell me what this is.

Speaker 00:46:33
So Filmmaker Friday is this event series that I co-founded with my friend Parker Foster.

Speaker 00:46:39
He started doing Filmmaker Friday events in New York City in tandem with our event series in Chicago.

Speaker 00:46:45
I wanted to create an event that I would want to attend myself and an event that I wish I had when I was starting out.

Speaker 00:46:51
I think finding a high quality event where there's great networking and different people always to network with and there's good attendance is really hard.

Speaker 00:47:00
It's pretty rare.

Speaker 00:47:01
And our first event had like 50 people and our fourth event was over 200.

Speaker 00:47:07
at this point last year, within a year, we had 14 different events.

Speaker 00:47:12
We hosted over 1,700 unique attendees all for free.

Speaker 00:47:16
And I would say we're probably unofficially the largest attendance consistent film community event in the city of Chicago.

Speaker 00:47:26
That's awesome.

Speaker 00:47:27
Congratulations for that.

Speaker 00:47:29
Talk to me about what the vision is, what's its purpose, and how often do you meet and where do you meet?

Speaker 00:47:35
Yeah, so we meet once to once to twice per month, depending on my schedule and the venue availabilities.

Speaker 00:47:42
Uh, we host a variety of different events.

Speaker 00:47:44
Uh, we either do only mixers that are just networking, open floor networking, or we do structured events where we start with networking.

Speaker 00:47:51
We have an one hour panel discussion, and then we wrap it up with some more networking after the event.

Speaker 00:47:55
Um, those have been really successful because you can network and come and learn something and then have something to talk about with people who also come to the events.

Speaker 00:48:02
And really the purpose of this event is to better connect the film community.

Speaker 00:48:05
think like I started at the beginning, think filmmaking is a very lonely process at times.

Speaker 00:48:10
I think it seems very glamorous from the outside, but there's a lot of paperwork and busy work on the back end that can make it very lonely.

Speaker 00:48:17
And I think going out to network with your peers and connect with new people is really important, especially when you're in the thick of it, you're super busy.

Speaker 00:48:24
I think you have to keep planting those seeds and meeting new people because you never know when those are going to...

Speaker 00:48:29
blossom and flourish into new opportunities in the future.

Speaker 00:48:33
So creating this consistent place for filmmakers to connect, think has been incredibly valuable for not just myself, like I love attending the events too, but people that have

Speaker 00:48:44
attended ever since we started.

Speaker 00:48:46
As for venues, it's always at a different venue.

Speaker 00:48:48
We go to breweries, we go to film studios.

Speaker 00:48:50
We've hosted, we hosted four events at the Chicago Cultural Center last year, which is amazing.

Speaker 00:48:55
That was all in collaboration with the Chicago Film Commission.

Speaker 00:48:58
And really just depends.

Speaker 00:49:00
We hosted a variety of different venues.

Speaker 00:49:02
It's never the same venue twice in a row.

Speaker 00:49:05
have not been yet, but I really do look forward to getting there.

Speaker 00:49:08
Now, who have you invited?

Speaker 00:49:10
Who has spoken?

Speaker 00:49:11
Tell me about that.

Speaker 00:49:12
So we've hosted a variety of different topics for our panel discussions.

Speaker 00:49:16
We've covered documentary filmmakers, DPs and producers and directors.

Speaker 00:49:21
We've had uh editors who have edited Netflix murder mystery series, you know, for Netflix and HBO.

Speaker 00:49:29
We've had advertising uh creative professionals like creative directors and executive creative directors from big agencies in Chicago.

Speaker 00:49:37
As you guys know, Chicago is a big advertising city.

Speaker 00:49:40
And we've had actors come.

Speaker 00:49:41
We've had actors from Chicago Med, Chicago PD.

Speaker 00:49:44
Leroys Hawkins was gracious enough to swing by last year for an amazing panel.

Speaker 00:49:49
That was one of our funniest we did.

Speaker 00:49:50
And we've also done film showcases where people submit work and we do screenings and share each other's work in a more casual setting than like a big official festival.

Speaker 00:49:59
So big variety.

Speaker 00:50:00
You can always learn something new.

Speaker 00:50:02
I think even if the topics don't directly pertain to you, let's say you're an editor, but you're coming to a panel with, you know, producers and directors, think learning about

Speaker 00:50:10
different aspects of production, no matter where you are in the industry and what, where you are in your career, I think is super important.

Speaker 00:50:16
I specifically built these events to be for students and industry professionals alike.

Speaker 00:50:22
So please join us at the next one.

Speaker 00:50:24
Yeah.

Speaker 00:50:25
absolutely, we'll be there.

Speaker 00:50:26
All right, we have a segment that is everyone's favorite called DocuView Deja View, where we talk about documentaries that people like to recommend.

Speaker 00:50:35
Are you prepared to share with us a documentary?

Speaker 00:50:37
Let me see.

Speaker 00:50:38
There's one that's unreleased that my friend is doing their festival run with.

Speaker 00:50:43
It's called Plant Life.

Speaker 00:50:45
Josh Isenberg is the director of it.

Speaker 00:50:47
He directed a film that I will recommend that is publicly out called Gamehawker.

Speaker 00:50:52
It was sponsored by Patagonia, which is a beautiful 25 minute film publicly available on YouTube.

Speaker 00:50:58
um Yeah, I'll recommend Gamehawker.

Speaker 00:51:00
Beautiful.

Speaker 00:51:01
Also a conservation film.

Speaker 00:51:02
It's about uh also about birds, ironically.

Speaker 00:51:05
Beautiful film.

Speaker 00:51:06
You guys should check it out on YouTube.

Speaker 00:51:08
Well, I have one to recommend this week.

Speaker 00:51:11
It's very interesting.

Speaker 00:51:12
And the reason I'm recommending it is because it's solved an interesting problem that was unique.

Speaker 00:51:20
had never thought, would not have thought about how to solve a problem this way.

Speaker 00:51:23
So it's on Netflix and it's called The Billionaire, The Butler and The Boyfriend.

Speaker 00:51:27
Have you heard about this?

Speaker 00:51:29
Okay, it's from 2023.

Speaker 00:51:32
It is, the logline is, how did a feud between the world's richest woman and her daughter

Speaker 00:51:37
develop into a major scandal, this documentary series takes an in-depth look at the whole story.

Speaker 00:51:44
So the directors are Maxime Bonnet and Baptiste Etchengary.

Speaker 00:51:49
And this is about uh Madame Betancourt, Lillianne Betancourt and her daughter.

Speaker 00:51:55
And this is the story, she was the richest woman in the world and she was the wife, well, I guess she was the owner, her father was the owner of L'Oreal.

Speaker 00:52:04
You know, she just had, I mean, so much money, she didn't know what to do with it.

Speaker 00:52:09
And um she began being taken advantage of.

Speaker 00:52:14
And so this is the story of what happens.

Speaker 00:52:17
And the woman that is the bookkeeper begins to inform the daughter that her mother is being taken advantage of by the Boyfriend who really isn't a Boyfriend because he's gay,

Speaker 00:52:29
but he is her friend.

Speaker 00:52:31
And so the daughter begins to find these things out and she wants to protect her mother.

Speaker 00:52:38
And then all the staff, which is like, it really is like Downton Abbey.

Speaker 00:52:41
This woman has this, you know, all these staff and everybody's talking against everybody else.

Speaker 00:52:46
And the butler begins to be afraid of his job.

Speaker 00:52:48
And so he starts secretly recording the conversations between Lily and Betancourt and the...

Speaker 00:52:55
person who is managing her finances and all sorts of mayhem and hell breaks loose.

Speaker 00:53:01
And the problem that the film, it's not a film, it's actually a three part series, but the problem that they solve is that of course they have no video.

Speaker 00:53:10
They have no video of anything.

Speaker 00:53:11
All they have is audio.

Speaker 00:53:13
So what are they gonna do?

Speaker 00:53:15
So they have audio and they have uh real photos that they can get ahold of, of all of these people.

Speaker 00:53:22
And so what are you gonna do?

Speaker 00:53:24
do on video.

Speaker 00:53:26
So they solve it because it would be terrible if you're doing reenactments with people that don't look like them.

Speaker 00:53:34
know, people really hate reenactments for the most part anyway.

Speaker 00:53:37
So what they did was they did this top-down blurred security cam video footage that looked down on each room where like the videotaping was happening.

Speaker 00:53:51
And so you could see down into the conversations and what was happening in the house.

Speaker 00:53:57
And they were dressed like they would be dressed and they looked generally like the people would look.

Speaker 00:54:02
it brought you into the story visually.

Speaker 00:54:05
And I thought it was pretty fascinating.

Speaker 00:54:07
Now it did kind of get a little repetitive because there weren't a lot of rooms that the tapes were taped in.

Speaker 00:54:12
And so they didn't have a lot of options for what to film, but it kept me interested enough to watch for three shows, but it was a fascinating story.

Speaker 00:54:21
The Billionaire The Butler and The Boyfriend Interesting filmmaking ideas.

Speaker 00:54:26
This has been absolutely fabulous, as always, talking with you.

Speaker 00:54:30
I really appreciate your insight, your background, your new way of thinking about filmmaking and connecting filmmakers and your ways of using AI.

Speaker 00:54:39
um you just bring a lot to our industry.

Speaker 00:54:42
And I'm super excited to see where your career goes and how you help kind of bring our industry along with you.

Speaker 00:54:48
Thank you.

Speaker 00:54:49
It was a pleasure.

Speaker 00:54:49
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 00:54:51
Yeah, we'd love to have you back for your next one.

Speaker 00:54:54
Maybe next year.

Speaker 00:54:55
All right, everybody, please take a moment to follow us, leave us a review.

Speaker 00:54:59
It's really a great way to support us.

Speaker 00:55:01
Thank you so much for listening to Documentary First, where we believe everybody has a story to tell, and you can be the one to tell it.

Speaker 00:55:07
Bye, everybody.