Leveraging AI

152 | Achieve Videos’ Business Goals Faster Using AI Storytelling with Jonathan Vardi

• Isar Meitis, Jonathan Vardi • Season 1 • Episode 152

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Are you ready to unleash the full potential of AI in your creative workflow?

Join Jonathan Vardi, a visionary in AI-powered storytelling, for an exclusive step-by-step masterclass on leveraging the latest AI tools to create visually stunning, impactful video content. Whether you're a business leader exploring innovative solutions or a creative professional looking for a competitive edge, this session will guide you through the "how" of AI mastery.

Jonathan will take you on a journey through his own creative evolution—sharing insights into the rapid advancements of AI tools like Runway, Luma, and MidJourney. From initial experiments to polished, professional-grade results, you'll learn how to unlock the possibilities of these technologies while staying ahead of the curve.

Jonathan’s creative genius isn’t just theoretical—it’s practical and proven. His work has been featured in Shots Magazine and industry-leading AI showcases, and he’s passionate about making these tools accessible for everyone. You'll discover how Jonathan’s dynamic approach turns ordinary concepts into extraordinary visuals, and you’ll gain actionable knowledge you can start using immediately.

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If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Isar:

Hello, and welcome to another live episode of the leveraging AI podcast, the podcast that shares practical, ethical ways to leverage AI to improve efficiency, grow your business and advance your career. This is Issar Matis, your host, and we have a great guest. Topic and a great show for you today. We're going to talk about the creative process, but we're going to talk about it in a very specific angle. If you think about it, when we were creating content, any content, and it doesn't matter whether it's AI related or not for generations, the goal of content that we create is to. In most cases, move people to action, whether it's educational content, whether it's marketing content, whether it's any other kind of content, there's a goal that is attached to that content, unless you're just an artist and you're doing stuff because you want to do the thing. Most of the content that we create is there to drive people to action. Now it has been done roughly in the same kind of process for a very long time. Meaning that process from, Ideation to making it more concrete and specific to figuring out what your goals and how to connect the two together to putting the building blocks in order to create the content to creating the content itself was a process that everybody went to school for and learned from Randy for a very long time. and, Has been implementing across multiple aspects of, content creation, AI is changing almost every aspect of that process in very meaningful and profound ways. And it gives a lot more people, a lot more opportunity to do more stuff. Now I get asked a lot like, Oh, is AI going to kill AI? Creativity because it can now create all these things that wasn't doable before. And I always say it's the other way around. AI is driving to explosion in human expression and creativity because it enables. People to do stuff that they couldn't do before, like people who couldn't generate images before can generate images. People who couldn't write before it can write. People couldn't structure their thoughts in a way that other people can help them to execute what they're trying to execute, can now do that. And so knowing how to go through a creative process with AI is a superpower that is now available to anybody who wants that. And I know that there's a lot of you who want that because knowing how to do this, you Can allow you to reach a broader audience, connect with people in a more meaningful way, and also drive more business. All our things. I'm sure that people listen to this podcast are interested in. And so our guest today, Jonathan Vardy, also known as Joe Vardy has been in the video commercial generation for years. He has been producing and creating. Video based commercials for a very long time. So he knows everything that goes into doing this professionally, but recently, or in the last year and a half, he started doing a lot of that stuff with AI. And I stumbled upon one of his videos on LinkedIn and I was blown away. And I saw the video, Oh my God. This is absolutely amazing. And when I saw the video, I did not know he's been creating commercials for a very long time. I was just really impressed with the level of the AI video that he created. And I reached out and we started talking and it turns out he's also Israeli. Yeah. So

Jonathan:

I'll just jump here. Because I said it. Yeah, I've been making commercial for many years. That's true. But specifically AI, I went into it to explore other realms of creation. anyone who's hearing this can use it for their own, engagement or stuff. But, the reason I came into that is really to explore the creative side. And because commercials, you do and that's, I wouldn't say my day job, but that's like what I do for a living and, and an AI, at least for me as a director, it kind of gave me the opportunity to, just explore my creative side without the need of, uh, you know, big budgets, and so on. so yeah, just jumping in there. no,

Isar:

I agree. I think the conversation today is gonna be a lot about how you can, fuel your creative juices and use AI in order to actually put them to action. Whether you're doing this for a business reason, or you're doing this just for fun or for just creative purposes.

Jonathan:

I think action is many things, action could be to make someone, think about something or to, engage you in an idea or an emotion or to tell a story. that's also, these are all, yeah, buying a product. That's another thing, obviously. and I agree with you, I

Isar:

even said education, right? So like whatever we create stuff, even if it's just, unless you're going to keep it in your basement, but if you're a creator, usually you want to share what you're doing and it could be to provoke emotion in somebody that's still fine. It's still creating something with somebody else's you're impacting somebody else one way or another.

Jonathan:

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. but the reason I am saying that is because if you think about the commercial process and working with clients in a traditional way, and you try to implement Like that kind of process with AI, that's not going to work. That's going to be a total, suffer from all parties. you need, when you go into making those stuff, obviously you need to have a clear vision in your mind of what you want to do, but also know the limitation, know, what you cannot do, be open to see, and you cannot, obviously you can come and explore and I see many people who are doing great stuff and I know that they're, more, just experimenting and checking which tool is doing what and what prompts drive what. When I come to do something, I'll usually have a very specific, script, a very specific story in my mind. not that I don't, go away from that in the process I do. Sometimes, I see a great angle, which I didn't start off and I'll say, okay, that's amazing. I want to keep that. And maybe I'll explore more on that, but I need to have a very clear vision. And I think this is true to anyone who's going to this tool, a very clear vision to go in and even clearer vision than you might need when you go on traditional sheets, because, there is no limit. And you can literally lose yourself in prompting and waste so much time. And to be honest, the shots that I spend too much time on, I, this is where I stop and say, wait, do you really know what you want to, do you know what, what shot you want? And usually I'll say no, I don't want, because even if you don't have a clear picture of the exact thing, you need to know to spot when that's what you wanted. And in AI, that's more important than, than in others because of the open, because of the options you have.

Isar:

I love what you're saying and I want to touch on it because I do this a lot, right? So I love creating images with AI tools and I do this for everything that I do, right? I don't have any stock photography licenses anymore in any platform. I just create images for presentations, for workshops, for literally proposals, everything, and sometimes just for fun. And. I do find myself just like you, where sometimes I would spend 20 minutes on one thing. And then you go back to isn't one of those good enough already for what you need? And I'm like, yeah, it is. It's just not it didn't trigger the emotional side of me to say, Oh my God, this is exactly what I wanted. But in many cases, you're like, I actually 12th one out of the 57 that I created was actually. Nobody else will know right other than me that he wasn't exactly what I wanted.

Jonathan:

And, but that's what you're saying now is true. Not only to AI, cause like when I'm on set and sometime on, we have 200 people and every minute cost, I don't know, 10, 000, the most important thing to say, we have it, we got it. And you never have it. You never got it. Like you can always, I can keep on shooting every shot again and again. I just need, and I'll never get my shot. I just need to have it good enough. to move on. and again, that's when I'm walking, and doing those short films, you need to commit very fast because, definitely, and I like if you're making just images, that's one thing. And then your final product might be the image or like a series of images, and that's one thing. But if you make a video, then those images are then fed back to the, to different, engine, and that's gonna drive the video. So once you say, okay, that's. That's that's image I'm going for you gotta lock that you can't go back and change that because changing that and you'll see maybe later I'll show a bit more because right now I'm doing you do the image and then you go to the video prompt and now we saw which has this enhancement it goes on another layer, so going back is very hard.

Isar:

Yeah, because it breaks the rest of the process. so really, you know what, this is a great segue. I said, I will say one more thing, from a personal creative perspective, and then I really want to hear start with a high level of your process and then start diving into the details, but still some of the favorite, my top favorite AI images that I created, and I created. Thousands are still the ones that I actually invested a lot of time in because I knew exactly what I was looking for. And in some of them I invested, I'm not going to say, but too much time getting to exactly what I wanted for, but I got it. And now they are literally the pinnacle of my AI creation and they're My favorite slides in my presentations and so on, because I nailed exactly what I wanted. And that's another thing that I want people to think about because people saying, Oh my God, you invested an hour and a half in creating this one image. I'm like, okay, that one image couldn't have been possible before. And if it would have been possible, it would have cost me 20, 000 to create because it would have needed to shoot it with an actual camera, actual actors, with actual lighting. 55 times people cost you a lot of money and then edit that and then Photoshop it like it would have cost me so much more time and so much more money. So yes, I invested an hour in it and now it's an amazing output that I can use across multiple things that I'm doing. So I think that also needs to be taken into perspective and that is tenfold more. Correct. When you start dealing with video, like doing stuff with video, with AI, even it's Oh, I needed to render this 25 times before I got it right. I'm like, okay, compare that to you having to actually shoot this in an actual shoot. That's still free. Yeah.

Jonathan:

It

Isar:

is.

Jonathan:

It

Isar:

is. So with that, let's jump into your process. Let's start high level like when you're going to produce something, what is your process that you're taking both from a thought perspective, as well as from a tools and practical perspective?

Jonathan:

Sure, I'll already share just so we'll have some visual, so, it really depends and it really evolved. Okay. Cause I think the first AI, proper AI video, I've done some experiments, but the first if this one, which I'm not going to play it, but, you can see some gifts out of it, and this one was done about, three, three months ago, three or four months ago, obviously I was playing with gen AI tools for way before that. Also with gen videos and, and all that. But this is the first time I said, okay, I'm going to dive in and I'm going to do something, complete. And that was done in the gen 48 competition. They had a two day, 48 hours where you can, you need to create a show. And what I like about this is I started experimenting with it and I felt that the image to video doesn't really give me, enough life, the kind of life that I wanted to. It felt, At least back then, more a bad filter or like a good filter, rather than like really something that is alive. And the text to video, not the image to video, the text to video, Vid gave me that. And all of this video was that. yeah, and I think that it is very interesting, and still today, when I'll need something, like a simulation, or something that is really moving, I don't know, a snowstorm, or leaves flying in the air, or stuff like that, I'll always go, I'll never start with an image. I'll go with, text to video, and I'll try to find a text that, that suits that. Because the image to video is, it had this benefit. you can get consistency of character. You can get consistence of style, but you cannot get the same life that you see here. that's, that is really, I'm amazed by the way that those, obviously we all are amazed by the way it's literally a magic. Um. and the way I did this is I created the, I don't have the prompt here. It's two, two thousand light years. Yeah. Yeah. but, I can tell you the structure. so I start with the base form, basically talk about the world, the color palette, what type of, camera movement and what type of camera I'm using. and this kind of defined the world that I'm in. for example, here, I'm in the forest. The colors are like green. like there is some like green tilts, in it. the camera, you can't really see it on those GIFs, but, a lot of the a lot of the camera, a lot of the shots have this like kind of a light, like a flashlight. By the way,

Isar:

for those of you who are just listening to the podcast, what we're looking at right now is as if somebody is walking through the forest at night with a flashlight and it looks completely realistic and live and it's really incredible. And when I saw this, by the way, I wasn't sure if that's possible. AI or not. It's at that level because, and I think part of the magic of it is that it's a night shot with a flashlight. So by definition, it doesn't look like quote unquote real life because we're not used to seeing it regularly. And I find, I found that video. I saw it way before and it's absolutely magical.

Jonathan:

and what I wanted to explore here is really texture. Because I wanted to see how textures feel and how, lists and those magical glittery stuff or glittery animals. So it was really like an exploration, by, with prompt, but an exploration of, of materials. Um, and again, so yeah,

Isar:

quick question about this. So again, guys, what we're seeing is a pretty long video. Like how long is the whole thing? I

Jonathan:

think that's about two, two and a half minutes,

Isar:

two and a half minutes. And all in it is like a night shot in a forest with like different glittering creatures. So it's as if creatures have these diamonds that are covering them, but some of them are black. Some of them are white and they're shiny and they pop up when the light hits them. And it's really interesting. How many attempts did you do of short little segments to create this two and a half minute long thing? And then what was your process?

Jonathan:

I don't know how many, the process was, first, element of the process was, okay, I'm committing for this, meaning I'm going to start and I'm going to finish the film. I didn't had, again, we'll talk later about different kind of project, but then this one, it was just like, okay, I'm going to make, it doesn't matter. I didn't have here specific story. I said, I'm going to explore and I'm a documentary in this. I'm diving with my, documentary Perspective mind into the AI world and I'm seeing what's coming up and straight away. I wasn't collecting the images on my folder. Any video that, that I liked, I immediately put on the timeline and started connecting them together. Okay. and this is amazing for, by the way, any project I do with AI, I do that because, because of many reasons. Some I'll touch a bit later. but I write the story even if I have it and sometimes I work with the storyboard already. even if I have all that, I'll still rewrite the story on the timeline with the shot that I'm getting. so how many prompts? How many attempts? Let me pause

Isar:

you for a second. Let's talk tools. Like which video generation tools did you use and then where, when you say you dropped them on the timeline, I assume you used like a professional editing software, but I'm still interested to know, what's the process?

Jonathan:

Yeah. yeah. So this one is, was done completely with, with Runway. So all the prompts, all the video generating, was done with Runway on, on the Gems3, model. And then music with Yudioh, which is another, like it's an AI music, Music maker, and then voices again, I'm using 11 labs. some of the voices are recorded some, I use the 11 lab for the, again, another AI tool where you can create like sound design, you can create a character.

Isar:

Cool. okay. so the process is. In this particular case, you come up, you test different things, you grab the videos that are generated, you drop them on a timeline in an editing software, like an Adobe premiere or. Correct. this,

Jonathan:

yeah. in this specific point, again, this is a very experimental piece. the story is built while you walk, while you go, you find it. and the more you spend time on it, again, that's The more you craft the world and more stuff and that way, The, the material tell the story, I'll share later different kind of stories. there are more, yeah, more story driven, more character base and there are the process is totally different. I can, for example, if I go, the film has made straight after that. So after I finished, Genesis, I took a few weeks off. I did some, commercial projects. And then I literally locked myself. I don't think you can see, I don't have GIFs of that, so I'll just play it with, on mute. I quite like the project, well again, I'm very proud of it, and yeah, here you can just see in the background, this is actually a story I wrote, I think, two, two and a half years ago, and I actually went to some producers and some company that wraps me with it, trying to maybe, get a budget to, to do it. And everybody just threw me off the, I don't know how to say, threw me off the stairs or the steps. They just basically told me, John, nobody would give you, that, that's a 3 million project. And nobody in the world would give you that amount of money for a five minute film. Write something simpler, please. And we'll help you. and I didn't write anything simpler, but a year and a half later or two years later, I felt that the tools are already in the place where I can, again, maybe not make exactly what I want, but tell the story. So obviously I had a lot of, yeah, limitations and, and stuff that I had to do to tell in a different way with the limits of the tools, but I could tell the story. And here you have consistent characters, you have consistent environment. And that's obviously 90 percent of this project is image to video. And in here, and most of the other projects that I'll show later, the process is very similar to, to making a film in a way, because before, I wouldn't jump and make a shot. Before I make, I'll go and do any shot, I'll gather all the sources. And that's it. Meaning, I'll create my character design, I'll create my, the room design, I'll create, if there is a specific element in the shot, I'll create that, and then I'll gather them together, and I'll use, for example, the character, I use Mijani mostly, except if there is Too much blood in the shot, and then I'll use flux because, meteorite will block you. but, or you can try and write, you'll see soon there is a lot of blood here. You can just write, I don't know, dark red liquid or stuff like that to say, Yeah,

Isar:

to trick the model.

Jonathan:

Yeah, it's not blood coming out of your brain. That's just like red. very dark red juice. so, what are we saying? Yeah.

Isar:

okay. So let's go a step back. So in this particular case, you had a very clear story in your head that you wanted to tell, and you went and created each component on me journey. And you said separately, the characters separately, the background separately, specific elements that you wanted.

Jonathan:

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, but again, I'll just stop for a second because it is also a lot about the way you direct it and how you trick, how you trick the audience to feel as if they are in the same world. For example, here I build this world where you have a lot of, like fences and this harsh light. so it doesn't, and this concrete, so for example, this shot, I just have this foreground and background, but I feel we're in the same place. So I don't need the entire world. I just need the elements that connect me to the, to where I was. And again, that's exactly like when you are on set, you, you light first, you do the long shot, the establishing shot, and you're gonna light that and you're gonna set it up. Doesn't matter, maybe you'll start shooting the other because the planning of the day is, you have some other, thing that you need to do before, but you start setting up the because it's much easier to fake the clothes up later. You can do it, in a different place even.

Isar:

Yeah, so two things about that. First of all, for those of you who are not professional in this, and this is a little confusing, I think the important thing here is to have a vision of the output that you want to get, either because you saw an example or because you just have it in your head, and then create a consistent Universe, a consistent environment, a consistent style across the different shots that you're having. So in this particular video, and again, those of you are not listening, it's a very dark, both from the visuals, like it's literally dark, but also it means of the theme of it. It's like a dark theme, like environment, but all of the shots have like the same style. It's like a dark room. They're very dramatic. there's very specific lighting point in each and every one of the shots beyond the dark background. Like it's all very consistent and you can create that image journey. Do you want to dive into this a little bit? Like on the actual, how to create a consistent images on major, and it then can be a starting point for a video.

Jonathan:

Cool. I can do that. let's see if I have, would I have any journey here?

Isar:

Cause I think that's part of the hardest part of the trick is getting consistent images in mid journey that then can be the starting point for videos on runway or cling or, Now Sora and Vio, there's these tools keep on coming out and upgrading all the time, but you have to start with like solid, consistent images. Otherwise it just doesn't work.

Jonathan:

Yeah. Okay. So I'll show, I think this is out of blue style, the video you posted, or you reposted, when showing these, again, I. With a lot of spelling mistakes. And so you'll probably see that as well in the poem. but you can get the wall. Let's see. so this is like the side again, you have a lot of images to create anything. And then I'll take one image that I created and then feed it back in and create that. So it's it's a very iterative process. I'll never get the results I want on the first, round. But at the end, they will. So

Isar:

I want to say something about what you just said, because I think it's important to anybody who's creating anything with AI, whether you're creating a blog post or an email or anything, most people stop too early. Meaning they will try once, twice, five times, ah, it's not what I want. This is a waste of time. And they're going to go away. And what you find is that first of all, you develop a muscle, like something that will take you 50 tries. The first time we'll take you 20. The second time we'll take you 10 20th time. but regardless, once you. Learn how to do this. You can become better and better at reusing stuff, reusing prompts, reusing processes, reusing images to get to the outcome faster and more accurately and what we see here. And again, those of you who are just listening and not watching, we looked at me journey, there were hundreds of images, many of them are the same, but not exactly the same in order to. Create that universe that this is like a star Wars kind of theme. Yeah,

Jonathan:

I'll say, like I suppose what you're saying, say that like when you make a film, the image is just like one part of the process and any image, most of the images that I'll do. Before I'll even, put them on the, clean mid journey, sorry, clean runway, so whatever, I'll, take them to Photoshop. I'll clean all the stuff that, that needs to be clean. And 99%, there are a lot of stuff that needs to be clean. Cause, and you want to clean them on the image level. Cause otherwise you'll need to clean them on a video level, which were a lot more work. So they'll go to cleaning and then they'll go to upscaling. We like to pause, a gigga thing, or any other magnifi or any other upscaling that give you a little bit more detail. and then you go to the videos and so on. yeah, don't expect writing a prompt and getting a video. That's not gonna happen. It's, but if you're committed to making it, I think, again, these are crazy tools and, at least the industry that I come from, they, they are doing a lot of changes.

Isar:

so let's read, I'm going to read the prompt with your permission, just to give people an understanding of what goes into a good prompt to get something. And I don't know if you started with an image on this one or you started fresh. So in mid journey, those of you who don't know, you can make an image as part of a source to the input to the, Oh, it does. There is an image here. Yeah. So I think

Jonathan:

here, no, you can read the point, but this is actually an interesting reference to what I did. I had the long shot of the spaceship and I just did a screen cap of the spaceship that I created for the long shot and just fed it in. It's not that I wanted this specific thing, but I wanted it to take, some of the color, some of the elements, and then that also helps with consistency.

Isar:

Yeah. So again, just to describe to the people who are listening, there is a very zoomed in version of a part of a spaceship and kind of like the flow of I don't know, plasma on top of it. And it has that bluish glowy style to it in a dark gray spaceship. And then you use that as a source when you prompt the other one, and you can define it to use that image as a reference and then write the next prompt. So if we now go to the next prompt, the prompt is saying, a cinematic 10 millimeter lens, closeup shot, capturing a sleek metallic object. Wing of a futuristic spaceship taking up a significant part of the frame. The wings sharp edges. And intricate details are illuminated by the glowing blue light trails of faster than light travel. So there is, and this is half the problem. I'm reading you this. So you understand what goes into this. People say, Oh, give me a image of a spaceship flying fast. And they're not getting the level of details that you can see in this image. And what I tell people is it all depends on how much you put into it. These tools are very good in understanding what you tell them. If you tell it to them in a clear fashion, and you have to think about if you had to describe this to a different person and have them be able to sketch it, how much detail would you put into it to have the other person sketch it properly? Do the same thing here with the benefit that you can give it a reference image to start with. Yeah. So this is

Jonathan:

amazing. Obviously people are much easier and also, I'm really trying, not to add any like IP. References, not in the prompts and not in the images, first because I just feel it's more fair, I don't want to write a spaceship style Star Wars, I'd rather write, because then I'll get a Star Wars kind of spaceship, I'd rather get, write the colors and write the element and write, like all that, if I'll have, just like an art director with me, I might actually tell him, listen, I, this is a Star Wars, Can you design it? and he'll get what I'm saying. so yeah.

Isar:

okay. So step one is having a story in your head. Step two is creating those images in mid journey or flux or any other tool that creates high quality images. Step three, you said is. Removing any artifacts or issues?

Jonathan:

Yeah, just like basic cleanups. I don't know if here I can show anything, but, every image has a lot of artifacts. yeah. Stuff that

Isar:

not necessarily needs to be there, especially if it's AI created and then Yeah. Then you using that,

Jonathan:

you go that, yeah, you use that as a source. Now I'm using all the engines at the same time, so I'll use, I'll always throw one image to. everywhere. and I'm using the, I have a subscription in like each one of them individual, and I'm also using a Wivi, which is a great, tool that just give you, a node base, place where you can, create your own workflow. And here, for example, again, from the same project, you'll see, again, this is a prompt for the video. So you'll have a cinematic shot, speed of light, GoPro shot, flying hyper fast, blah, blah, blah, leaving trails of blue light behind it, energetic, 10 millimeter, blah, blah, blah, blah, a world film stock and so on. And then I'll feed it to Kling, which is one model and see what I'm getting. This is, I think just text to video. There's no image here. And you can see that it's the style is the same cause, here is after many poems and many attempts. So I get the same feeling, this is minimax text to video same, but, maybe I use some of it. I don't think so. and then here I have minimax, so I have, the flux images, which I've created. I think this is quite interesting because I get you get these images. I don't remember which one I've used because I've obviously the, like you see many, sorry, many attempts here and stuff. So we'll just zoom in. And again, this is just for one shot. so what's interesting here is. that, I start with this image, sorry for the people who are watching this on.

Isar:

What we're looking at is this canvas. And in the canvas, there's all these inputs and outputs. So the inputs could be like a prompt or an image. And then it connects with lines on the canvas to the different AI video generation tools that then gets fed both the image and the prompt, but you can feed it to multiple tools at the same time and see if you're getting different, better, more appealing outputs to what you need. and then you can. Pick and choose the mix and match. Once you do the editing in the end, the tool is called wevy. ai. So it's W E A V Y. ai that allows you to do that. and what we're seeing right now is an image of kind of a tunnel of light. And then the video that's generated from that.

Jonathan:

yeah, but I think what's interesting here, just a second, Is that, see what's happening to the video. These are the shots I wanted for like this, very fast, light trail kind of POV from the spaceship. And I've created those images. Okay. Now I'll, I imagine when I wrote the prompt and when I made the image that the camera would go forward and dive into this image, but actually, it. It didn't. This is a different image. It goes somewhere else. Something else happened. Okay. Yeah. I don't know why, but, and here there's a moment that I took and I, it did took the elements and like the color and the vibe and everything. But but it's, but it made something that is like half the image and half the text prompt, which again, I think it's like similar to what we, I read before.

Isar:

yeah,

Jonathan:

and this is the same. So yeah, you go.

Isar:

No. So I want to say, I saw this. So yours is even more, expected because the video doesn't know what this is, but I had, it happened to me when I had a image of a person that I created in mid journey or something, a person walking, and he was walking down like a street and I wanted to see him walking. And when I fed it to the video engine, it said the person walking the street, blah, blah, blah. And he had the person walking backwards. And I was so surprised. I'm like, how does that make any sense? But it doesn't know, like you told the person walking, it didn't tell if it's forward or backwards, you assume he's going to walk forward. but it's not necessarily the case. So what I've learned is that when you want to have, a clear movement in those video tools, you got to describe very clearly the direction of the movement. And even then it's not guaranteed, but it increases the chances that it's actually going to do what you thought it's going to do versus what you assumed it's going to do.

Jonathan:

You need to be very precise. And yeah, it's, again, this is the, at least at the point, the state that the, that the tools are right now, it's the art of big numbers. So it's not I come from like the effects background and I'm very used to working like a week on a shot and finalizing every little detail. And I love this control and stuff like that, but here I can, I'll spend less time, but I can easily spend a day on a shot. And I'm not spending on finalizing it. I'm spending on rolling the dice and changing little Yeah. Here and there and hoping, it will get good enough, to be. So it's a lot of just like iterating and iterating and iterating and, and knowing how to spot what is good. Cause sometimes you have, I make, some, most of the stuff that I've posted with AI are like short stuff. So like 30 seconds, apart from the film for the short films and the 30 seconds, you'll have, I know, 12 shots, each shot is a two seconds. And those two seconds, maybe this video is useless, but I know this moment is amazing. And I'll just need this moment connected to that moment, to make it work. So combining like the magic of edit. With, this wonderful tool that, God gave us. Um, but, I, I would, yeah, sorry.

Isar:

no, go ahead. Finish, finish your thought.

Jonathan:

I know, I never finish my thoughts. I went, I wanted to go to somewhere else.

Isar:

so here's what I want to summarize for people who are listening. is I want to mention a rule that I have like my five rules for success in the AI era that I teach in my courses. One of these rules is the rule of continuously improving compromise. What it basically means is that none of these AI tools is perfect right now. None, not a single one is Oh my God, I can, it's consistent. It will give me exactly what I want every single time effortlessly. But the reality is they do a lot of things well, and they do a lot of things better than the alternative, which is the most important stuff. So you mentioned in your particular example, you said, okay, sometimes you will spend a day on a shot. And you mentioned that most of that time is spent on rolling the dice. I'm going to run similar prompts. 50 times. And then one of them is going to be good, or at least partially good that I can use some of it. That is still significantly less time that it will cost you to do this kind of film in any other way. No,

Jonathan:

I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it. Nobody would give me the money to make those experiments that I'm doing. I'll go back to whatever was it like the, I make like gamers melting on the keyboards. Those are like not stuff that people would want to

Isar:

do.

Jonathan:

No, maybe someone, but like not, so there is no real alternative. This is just like the amazing tool for making those, those stuff happen. And another thing is I do feel again, we're maybe a bit less technical here. I'll go back to be technical in a second. I do feel that speed. The speed of creating something dictates or not dictates, but, help, define the medium. And what I mean is, if I make a film, If I work on a film, five years or three years or a year, then it will be something very specific that, we've all been waiting for and working for and we all know what's going to happen. But if I'm working on it a day, it's more like poetry. It's less, it's like a different medium. And when you do poetry, you're, for example, here, I don't know, sorry, I'm going for the more, I would say whole, but like gruesome, bloody gruesome stuff. So like this shot, that's actually something that happened. Okay. I wanted it to happen like next, somewhere else, but it went here. And once I saw this happening, I said, yeah, this is, I'm going to keep on doing that. So I did the same process of screen capturing this, trying to define that, and, I did wanted him to melt down because that's the game and the game he's playing, but the way it's happened, and time after his, her mom, whatever, again, there is a very consistent world here, the lava lamp and all the elements connect together. to build it, but it, the speed of work allows me to do that because I can always go back to a shot where that wasn't perfect and add the element to that. And wait, I'll stop here. For example, now this melting. So this shot, for example. Do you want to describe that to the audience?

Isar:

And again, those of you who are watching, it's a kid playing a video game that is very aggressive and easy. Sweating and then he's just melting on top of his computer. So if you're not watching this, then maybe it's good for you.

Jonathan:

You're not watching this. Yeah, sure. this one, I couldn't get this font, No engine would give me his melting head on the desktop, but I could get his head on the desktop. So again, I did the old school Photoshop where I took it and I did like with five and added some shadow and then really painted. Yeah, and painted the image and once the image was painted, then Cling understood, Okay, that's what you want, I get you. And same goes, by the way, with the eyes. And so I'm this is all like an image I created. And then, I moved it with, with the engine because they wouldn't, again, you need to understand what they can do, what they cannot do and help them and guide them to do, to do what you want.

Isar:

okay. so I want to do a quick summary and then I want to let people know where they can find you and follow you and so on, but a quick summary. First of all, I finished my thought about the law of continuously improving compromise, right? These tools you have to learn from your experience and through experimentation and through following other people, what they're good at, what they're not good at, and mix and match different things. Processes in order to get the output you want. And it doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter if you're creating videos, creating images, creating text, writing proposals with it, whatever it is, summarizing information. there's things that are very good at their things. There's not very good at, and there's workarounds for many of those things. And if you figure it out, it's going to be. more efficient and better. And in some cases, like Jonathan said, not doable otherwise, and hence it's worth investing in it. And if you wait for these tools to be perfect, a, you're missing the immediate benefits you can get today. And B. Once, if it's ever perfect, you're going to be so far behind everybody else.

Jonathan:

sorry, I don't, maybe, but what is perfect? there is No, that's what I'm

Isar:

saying. if there is a perfect, right? But let's say in this universe

Jonathan:

right now, we're talking about it is like video generation, probably one of the most advanced technology human have ever invented. Okay. It's crazy. Like the level of mathematics that goes into that, the level of science and that's literally. One of the top, achievements of humankind, you could say, at least from like computer, I'm not talking about humanity and stuff like that, but like from computer science and stuff like that's a, you can't sit and say, that's not good enough. Okay. It's crazy good. And you can do crazy things with it. Yeah. There are some things that you cannot do with it. And cause there are some things I can't do with my camera as well. I can't paint an oil painting with my camera. That's not what it's built for. And I wouldn't say my camera is not good because I cannot paint with it. That's you need to see the tool for what it is. and just, again, if you want to join the game, maybe you don't, maybe you'll find doing what you do. But, if you want to join and play with it, then you got to be in the mindset that, okay, this is a tool I'm going to use it and I'm not going to sit here and say what's wrong with it, but I'll try to, you, what.

Isar:

I agree with you a hundred percent. And so now a quick summary of everything we reviewed, and then I'll let you tell people where they can follow you, but creating videos with AI is not perfect, but it's definitely doable. And you can do amazing things that could be either just for fun, or it could be for exploration, or it could be for actual, personal or business usages. And there are multiple ways to do this, but we talked about. Text to video, which allows you to get more, movement and creativity into the video tools, because you're not starting with a clear image, but if you want consistency, if you want to be able to stitch many of these videos together, because all these tools are very limited with the length of videos they produce. You want to start with images that will be consistent in their world. and then create those images with a good tool, clean them up, upscale the images with, there are multiple different upscalers, some, Joe Vardy already mentioned like, topaz and, some others. There's some open source ones that I use that are very good, but upscale the images because the images themselves are not in great quality. Then turn them into videos. Then you don't have to use the full videos. You can use segmentals, the videos, and then edit them together. And then you get to the whole world of, you can create music with audio or with, what's the other one? Suno and you can create voiceovers with multiple tools and so on all of that within the AI universe without having a single human actor, employee or voiceover person and you can do magic with it. And hence it's worth doing it. And it's true for. Any creative process right now, like you have to figure out a process that works for you and then experiment and then you'll be able to do things that nobody else can do, which will put you in an advantage in whatever it is that you're trying to do. Jonathan, this was. Amazing. If people want to follow you, learn more from you, see your stuff, what are the best ways to do it?

Jonathan:

like classic Instagram. So that's your body on Instagram or the LinkedIn where I kind of share, more thoughts and, just also ideas of like, where I see things are going. So Jonathan body on LinkedIn. Or Jovardi on, MCM

Isar:

or Jovardi. com, the website that we're looking at

Jonathan:

right now.

Isar:

This was really great. Thank you so much. Thank you for everybody who was with us on both LinkedIn and on the zoom. I appreciate you taking the time and spending it with us. I know there's other things you can do on a Thursday afternoon. If you haven't joined us, we do this every single Thursday, unless I'm traveling or it's a big holiday. we go live with somebody who's going to share their craft with AI. But this time it was really different and really fascinating and I really appreciate you taking the time and spending with us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Isar Meitis

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