William Kesling
1.4K posts
William Kesling
@will_kes
Creative in the Mid-West
Chicago, IL Katılım Ocak 2014
618 Takip Edilen542 Takipçiler
The idea that creative is doomed from the use of AI might be backwards. The creative is now in charge. It’s what defines good or bad in a simple sense. Taking us back to the idea of imagination. One’s imagination, consecutively, year over year, has been overtaken by the excessive amount of consumption rather than creation.
Creation is now on a 10x. It used to be quality was king. Then came the internet, and quantity took over. Then came the idea that it needed to be both, quality and quantity, or a reality TV version of creative - aka quantity without any craft, just raw, unedited - harder to produce than one might think - it comes down to personality rather than creativity.
With the idea of both coming together, it’s started to become throttled. Exhausted. Each piece of creative looks identical, or a close evolution of what came before it. It’s templatized, because efficiency has become the key, not creative. Be more efficient, produce more, get more views.
“I saw this thing, it did well. I think I like it. Do I like it because I like it, or because others like it? Let’s do that.” It’s a vicious cycle. A trend comes and goes in a matter of minutes rather than months or years. The trend isn’t even man-made, it’s algo-made.
So those suggesting AI has taken over - well, technology has already been determining your inspiration for many years.
And with AI, one’s imagination now has no limits. You had a dream, write it down and see what AI spits out. You have a vision that words alone can’t illustrate, throw it into an LLM. This inspiration is now the spark. And what counts is that raw, unfiltered imagination mixed with step two, curation.
It’s not about copying what others have created. That can be a tool, yes, but it’s a slippery slope. We now have a coworker to our imagination.
The issue now is, how do we harvest that unfiltered imagination we all used to have? That untainted vision of what wasn’t, but what could become. We’d turn static into motion, silence into a symphony, dullness into vividness. How do we reboot this idea of imagination without just getting inspired by other work?
In the subject of creativity, it’s about putting yourself in situations. Unlikely, unusual situations. A situation where you might ask yourself, “Is this real life?” Which I’ve realized is the sweet spot. Asking yourself, whether rhetorical or not, “Is this real life?” is a sign that you are, in fact, in an unusual situation. So outside of your rehearsed schedule, pushing aside all repetitive rituals, you can now open your eyes and take in the life around you. Get inspired. Find your imagination.
This is the opposite of flow state. Flow, preached to us as if it’s the godly creative state, is subjective. Flow can be good, without a doubt. I’ve had some crazy results from a state of flow. The day’s hours went by like minutes, and the outcome was better than I could have imagined. But I’ve also had flow where you’re the definition of locked in. You’re not in control. Your job is to complete a task, and that task is in absence of color and brings you down.
Bad flow is just bad, and should be monitored, not accepted as fact. And good flow exists at random. Maybe it’s from imagination, maybe it’s from that AM coffee, or that early workout, or that fun, no-stress scenario. It’s hard to pinpoint what’s good and bad flow. But the point is not to strive for flow anymore. Yes, flow may be part of the process, but the entry point to good creative is shifting. It’s slowing down, and relying on new tools. Or collaborating with new tools.
So maybe this isn’t the end of creativity, it’s a reset. The tools have caught up. Now the only real difference is the person using them. Their taste, their perspective, their imagination. AI can generate, iterate, scale. But it can’t decide what’s worth making. That part is still ours. And maybe that’s the point. Strip everything back, remove the noise, and what’s left is the thing that always mattered. Imagination.
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Project Hail Mary is one of those films that you go to see thinking, how can they do this different than any other space movie. Or better yet, you hope they try and top the great space movie Interstellar, or at least strive to reach that level. But at most you enter the theater doubtful, you go for the popcorn and recliner seats, and to be slightly entertained for 2 hours or so. In my case I go knowing all this, plus knowing my wife will most likely fall asleep 15 minutes into the film, she’s a trooper. Well maybe it’ll be a good end of the world film, with some nice montages, who knows. I went to read the book beforehand, bought it in the airport, and proceeded to donate it to the airplane - aka left it in the back of the seat. Got me thinking they should make those back of the seat compartments transparent, the amount of gold they probably find in between those two flimsy flaps of leather - you could make a more compelling movie about that adventure than some recent space movies that have been put out in the last 10 years. But yes, the movie - it’s space, so it’s going to be a spectacle, some nice music, epic and grand - at a minimum - but we’ve all seen that already, we are a spoiled group of movie goers, aren’t we? I don’t make films, but watch me watch and critique like I do, it’s our right, and better to have an opinion than let others give us one, an “option prescription” please. That’s got a ring to it. So we go to the theater, order a popcorn and rib burger for my wife, strange I know, but it’s a Brazilian theater, so who knows what you’ll get. I’m not a hater, I love them, they just are quirky and slightly different than the theaters in the states where you don’t know if you’re going to leave the theater with a back ache or a lost shoe… unless you live in a large city where the premieres happen - man then you’re living like it’s the future, IMAX has a bigger title than the movie does on most out of home billboards, it’s the economy there. But anyways (as my grandmother would say to move off and onto another subject) the movie started… and the approach of storytelling from the beginning was entirely different. Intriguing. You started to care for the character even though you had no idea what was going on. It was confusion and delight, sorrow and excitement, it was a bundled package of an opening, and I was here for it. The movie proceeded to take this structure, jumping back and forth, cutting seamlessly between timelines without losing your attention, editing was on point. Comedic relief between two characters happened at the perfect moments, and the acting between the minimal cast was heroic. They truly saved the day when it came to the possible redundancy we might have faced from seeing yet again another space movie. There were no political references, no always out of place sex scenes just because sex sells, there was nothing for nothing’s sake, it was very intentional. At 2:45 minutes you’d watch and hope for another 15 minutes. It was a perfect movie, bold statement, and yes I just saw it, so my high of excitement for its existence is at a peak, but my opinion stands, it was perfect. In a world where cinema is a mechanism to entertain, entice with emotion and thrill, and questions, this movie did it all. They captured a sense of hope, and wonder, while being original (as original as the text would allow). We left happy, interested, and slightly fired up. We discussed it, dissected it, and laughed about the moments that resonated closely. It was relatable in a sense, and maybe that’s why it was comforting to watch. But it didn’t take its audience for idiots either, no over explaining, but also no Christopher Nolan “WTF is that about - let me watch 10 times and read a blog post about it to understand it”. And the best part, the part that truly sets it aside from another movie of its kind is the fact that my wife didn’t sleep. Two thumbs up, or down (IYKYK) from me :)
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Going from 6 seasons, to one movie to cap it all off … isn’t it. Peaky Blinder will always be the best show - should have been another season.
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Some process from the FX Love Story pitch. Some concepts pitched but not forgotten.
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Wild to be able to create something like this out of thin air. Wether it's for a proof or final piece, it's pretty dang powerful.
Hate it or Love it, Ai is here to stay, and it's becoming a large part of my workflow these days.
Exciting times!
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Made with multiple models in Higgsfield s Cinema Studio
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One of my favorite cold openings. The close crops, black and white, and music. It's a great launch film by Apple.
youtube.com/watch?v=e3zowK…
YouTube
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Writing and creating my first table-top book from a project I completed several years ago. Here's short snippet written that resonated well with the project back then, as well as today:
'We wanted people to disconnect from the constant feedback loop of the algorithm, the endless stream of information engineered to feel comforting, familiar, and expected. Surprise and delight has largely disappeared from consumer culture, replaced by personalized prescriptions designed to trigger predictable responses. Everything is calculated. Everything optimized.'
Excited to print and put this thing out!
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Some new work for the Artificial Intelligent Platform conference AIPcon- here’s a visual look at how Ai played a role in content.
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