As we approach the end of December, it is time to look back on the year so we may look ahead to 2025. Reflection on the past can be invaluable in creating a path towards the future. Some of the stories that I write involve me taking a deep look at the world. In fact, several of those stories are even more prescient now than when I wrote them. One of them stands out because of recent world events. It is a post-apocalyptic thriller meant to reflect the present and the past into an imagined future. A cause-and-effect story that may need to be shopped around in the new year.
It's one of a dozen such stories where I used the present and the past to imagine what the world might be like in the future. Along with writing anthologies, this has become an undeniable trademark of my writing over the past twenty-five years. Writing anthologies is something I have talked about at length here over the past decade. That came about out of necessity and respect for the format.
Writing about the future is a way of dealing with what I have learned and experienced. I can't properly do that by just talking or posting about it on social media. You can get tangled up in people's opinions and beliefs and lose track of what your purpose was for bringing it up in the first place. Discussions are good and part of the process, but once you have a story that you can't stop thinking about it has to be told by you.
Storytelling is my favorite way to express myself. I like to imagine the story, determine if it is worth spending time on and then crack on with it. That said, I have sat on stories for a decade. So, cracking on with it sometimes happens right away, but it may also mean when the time is right. The rules are always evolving with creativity. Stories often arise from observations of life or deeper research. I have sat at a cafe for a few hours and plotted out multiple stories or discovered a creative path that will take years to complete. I then proceed to follow this new path to completion years later. I like to believe that my personal barometer for determining which projects to pursue has improved through the years. Whether that is true or not may be open for debate.
The plans I make for myself are often in an attempt to make time for creativity. When you come to realize that you are one in 8 billion people on a massive rock whirling around an invisible race track in the dark expanse of a seemingly infinite universe, you can get lost in the numbers. Storytelling is my vessel to explore it all. Whether that be through writing, acting, directing, or designing. When you walk the path of creativity you tend to become the path after a while.
Big ideas become plans. Ideas and plans change based on the situation. Big plans become projects that get attention. Projects become accomplishments. And by the end of the year, you reflect on it all and see that progress was made. Then you make adjustments and plan for the year ahead. You have 365 days to move the ball -- a metaphor for your creative work. We are not Sisyphus, we are not being punished for our imagination. The process of creation is meant to be one of toil, yes, but also one of joyful self-expression. As painful as it can be to be rejected, creating something that would not exist without your imagination feels glorious. This year was no different. I started the year by releasing an illustrated version of the book Michaelmas. This marked my first attempt at integrating AI images into my work. After I released the book I thought I might focus on illustrating another book or work on a graphic novel.
Then in February, we got the tease from OpenAI for SORA. If I am being honest, I wish they had not teased it so early on, because my whole view on what I should be doing in regards to AI shifted. As a result of my excitement, I began thinking more about AI video possibilities instead of what I could do with AI images.
By this time, I had already begun work on a pitch package for a TV series, something I had been tinkering with off and on for a year. Pitching the story had been in the works for a few months and I got a bit sidetracked while focused on illustrating the book. However, once I saw those first SORA videos my mind started racing. Up until then, the AI videos I had seen were easily dismissed as not up to par. But some of those SORA vids made me dream more than I should have. I was blown away like so many others. Ideas about how such a tool might be used with my TV series flooded my imagination. So, I changed the pitch package to reflect how I thought AI Video might be used in the post-production of the series. This is an example of me using the same imagination I often use to tell fictional stories about the future in the real world. The rise of AI has had me trying to predict its story arc. In my self-deluded mind, that would have seen the production of the TV series wrap in the summer or the winter of 2025 with an eye towards a 2026 release.
At the time, I was focused on gathering interest to get the show made on film with actors. There were things we could do with AI tools once filming was done that would make the series both interactive and immersive in ways I had not imagined were possible before seeing those early SORA videos. The video above is a recent SORA video of an Open World game. I imagined two such games or levels to one game for the TV series that are edgy and reflective of the material, with a more intimate and immersive experience set in one charming Disney-esque location. Could they all be part of one larger game? Yes. However, I want people to have the option to do them separately.
I created a robust Pitch Package, which included an in-depth Show Bible and a more concise Pitch Deck. To those who don't know anything about these, the Bible for this story is fifty-one pages in length and goes into detail about the entire series, from the pilot episode, the first season, to the entire series. It is filled with visuals and references that paint a clear picture and feel for the series. I prefer these to a treatment, in which you are essentially telling the entire story but without dialogue. They can be very effective. However, I love a creative and robust Show Bible. My current favorite is Stranger Things, originally titled Montauk.
If you thought writing screenplays was just about the script; well, you would be mistaken. Some people (mostly writers/directors) may be able to get away with that, but when you try and sell that project you need to provide a lot more information than the script. In reality, the Show Bible and Pitch Deck for a TV series are just as important as the Script. That is because you are selling a feeling, and in the case of this series a unique vibe. It is not a traditional show with one clear beginning, middle, and end. In this case, there are multiple overlapping stories in the first season that take place in the same town over a 20-year period.
We are emotional beings and the key to our hearts is through our feelings. But the way to the mind can be more complex. You have to touch a chord within people beyond knee-jerk emotional responses, it is more about frequency in that regard, where you know what some people like and then create something that will be in the same vein as what has worked before. Feelings are easy. That's why some say that drama is easier to do than comedy. I mean you don't see many daytime comedies.
I have queried hundreds of people through the years, sent out pitch packages for dozens of movies and TV shows. The process is time-consuming and nothing is quite as humbling as trying to sell a spec screenplay. AI will change and is changing this process in a BIG way.
Soon, those of us who have walked this path, and those who are drawn to it now and in the future, will not hit the same walls as those who came before -- those walls I know too well. Because we are being liberated to become the 1st generation of multimodal storytellers.
Within a year or so all screenwriters will have options to either sell our stories the old-fashioned way or learn the skills to make the films and TV shows ourselves. However, there is an emerging new type of collaboration with a team of AI artists working on a single project. It is similar to indie films except there will be more rapid turnover. So, a traditional team may make 1-5 films during a year. Roger Corman managed to produce and/or direct an astounding 9 films a year all the way back in 1957. An AI team will be able to create a dozen or more a year, easily matching that of Corman and likely well surpassing his impressive output. You gotta think this will be a popular option. I know it is for me because I have dozens of stories ready to be told with AI tools, and new ones that are begging for attention. While I will certainly create many AI productions on my own, I love to collaborate with others on a shared project. You are your own limitations in this new paradigm. If you want to create it you will be able to do so.
Speaking of limitations, Google just gave a few AI artists access to Veo 2.0. They teased Veo 1.0 back in May. It looked good then in the few videos they released. However, this new version is phenomenal. It is a new SOTA model and is leaps and bounds better than any other model out there, and that is with all of the other models having improved dramatically over the past year. That is saying a whole hell of a lot.
The dream for artists is to have one tool to help you with all of your creations. As of right now, even though Veo 2.0 is amazing, there is a need to use multiple tools. By the end of 2025, you've got to think that ideal tool will exist in public or in some AI video lab.
After Sora was released I was disappointed. I mean it was great to finally have access to it after they made us wait nearly a year. Aside from the speed with which it creates the videos, the quality is the same as what we saw back in February. That means they either hit a wall or they are holding back their improvements and just focused on the UI for the rollout.
With Sam Altman's belief in iterative deployment and Open AI's willingness to hold back Sora until the election played out, I think there is likely a much better model that they are sitting on. If not, they may have just lost the AI video war to Veo after a week. Maybe Veo 1.0 was also better than Sora. It's hard to tell by the limited examples Google released back in May. Either way, Veo 2.0 is a far more useable tool, and it has me dreaming again. I can't wait to get my hands on it.
The public release of Veo 2.0, whenever that may be, may mark the moment I begin to turn my focus to the production of a short film, and the first step towards a collaboration with others. I have been tinkering around with all the tools (except Veo 2.0, which is not publicly available) without being too focused on making anything.
Even Veo 2.0 isn't perfect; you wouldn't be able to make a believable lifelike AI movie worth watching with it just yet. However, with Sora, Veo, and all of the other quickly-improving models the time to hone the craft of AI filmmaking is here. That way once the impossible becomes possible, we can be up to speed and ready to crank out some exciting new content.
I figure once all the tools are good enough, which feels like we are there or nearly there for AI animation and getting closer with lifelike AI, I may be able to create several AI films on my own within a year. I'd like to start doing that in 2025 with AI animation. That way, by the end of 2025, I would be ready to collaborate with others. Why wait? I want to be able to do all of this myself before I even attempt to try and bring others on board. Who knows, maybe I will even work on other people's projects. Being able to do it all myself with the help of AI is a current dream I have, which is based on what I have seen from AI, what I have already done creatively over the past 20 years, and my eagerness to put on to screen much of what I have written. My second objective is to be able to work with others to help expedite the production of unpublished and unproduced stories in my library. This way I can also learn new techniques and improve upon what I can do on my own. The productions themselves will likely be better as a result of collaboration. Always improving is key, as is tearing down barriers instead of building them.
I've mentioned this before, but my writing partner on the pilot episode for the TV series I pitched earlier this year said to me, after reading the pitch package I had created for the series, "If you pull it off you'll have a media empire at your fingertips." I could sense his doubts, yet I assured myself that what I had laid out was ambitious, yes, but plausible. Was I reaching into the ether for the impossible? I had kept up with all of the AI updates and knew that what I had discussed in the pitch package may be possible within a year or so. I based the AI aspect of the pitch upon what seemed to me and others would be true by the summer of 2025.
I was seeing AI podcasts, AI games, and immersive experiences where viewers could choose their own adventure or virtually walk in the town I had set the story. I jammed a whole hell of a lot into the pitch package. The story is ideal for all of it. But unless I could help one of the great directors and producers I respect see my vision as their own, it would all never happen as I had originally envisioned. And that is what it is like to be a speculative screenwriter. Wish in one hand, and... well, you get the idea.
By mid-June, I realized that I had just spent a quarter of the year trying to get someone else to make my story and had not gotten much traction. I started to reflect on that time and it became clear that Hollywood was not open for business. The strikes from last year, the impending crew strike, and the uncertainty of how AI would affect things had ground the business to a halt.
That was the moment I thought back to what my writing partner had said, and I thought, why not use AI to do exactly what he had said and create a company? A media empire is beyond what I could handle on my own. So, my own AGI test will be me starting a media empire with the help of a variety of AI tools. Not with a focus solely on a TV series or film project, which is all a part of the grand plan, but also on what else I can do with AI to create a business beyond just making films and TV series.
We have entered the realm where these AI companies will start passing benchmarks every other week. We are still at the front end of acceleration. I consider the pre-AGI period the front end because what comes after will be incredibly different. Will it be like Sam Altman's iterative deployment where things increase at a gradual pace or will we all share that GPT-4 type moment where we all agree that AGI has been achieved?
Google and OpenAI dropped a ton of updates this month. Google dropped information about Willow (Quantum Chip), Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental, Google 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, and a number of other impressive updates including Veo 2.0. OpenAI, on the other hand, released o1, o1 Pro, Projects, o3 (Benchmarks), vision in Advanced Voice, and several other updates including Sora. These two companies changed the entire AI landscape with their updates. And open-source models are improving rapidly as they reverse engineer what closed-source companies are doing behind closed doors.
My ultimate goal may be to tell stories but I also have ideas on ways to help others thanks to AI. In fact, one of the first things I thought of back in the Spring of 2023 after GPT-4 dropped was a way in which I could use AI to help others. And so, by mid-August, after spending a month focused on AI video, I began doing research on what kind of company I would want to create with the help of AI.
Other than a desire to be able to create films, TV series, graphic novels, and books with illustrations, I had the App idea that I had been kicking around for a year and a half. As I started doing early research on creating an App, I realized that I didn't have just a single App idea but several ideas for multiple Apps.
A "media empire" sounds intimidating. However, now that I have begun work on one I can say that even with the help of AI it is a hell of a lot of work. All of these AI updates are brilliant and are making what I am doing possible, but I am interested in also finding out if Agents can help me do even more than I had planned. My timelines may shorten and my plans for 2025 may change because of new tools being made available.
During August I realized that while AI Video had made some fantastic advancements, no matter which tools I used it still looked like AI video no matter what I did. The same was true for what I was seeing others do as well. I had been working on creating a life-like trailer for the TV series but was disappointed that I could not make it look real. I have long thought animation with AI would deliver the best early results and that has proven to be true. Since August, Hailuo Minimax released an update that is great for 2-D animations. I think it is safe to say that we will get an outstanding AI-animated movie by next summer.
While Veo 2.0 may change the landscape for AI video, it is not yet public. Whatever effect it will have will happen in 2025, and that will also push these dozen or so other companies to step up their game. The talk is about physics and how Veo 2.0 nails it and the others fall short. The fact that Google has made the first gigantic leap with the physics in Veo 2.0 is very exciting for someone like myself. That means that by the end of 2025 I will likely have created something on my own using these tools that is at least close to how I had imagined it when I wrote the story.
After seeing tools like Replit and Cursor help non-coders create Apps, I realized that the App ideas I had back in the Spring of 2023 might be something I could create and deploy. From there things have blossomed a bit. I have already created a prototype and done early testing on the first App.
If AI Video was capable of creating TV series and Movies that people might be willing to pay for then I might be down that hole like a number of others. Many of them are creating some amazing content, some of which is being used for music videos and ads. Cool stuff but not what I am interested in doing. I am still not all aboard the AI Video train just yet. Even if Veo 2.0 were to be released in January, it would not change my early plans for the year. However, by April I may be open to working more on AI video. We'll see. I am open to change based on AI updates, but I won't alter my plans until it makes sense to do so.
I had been thinking that the trailer for my TV series would be animated. Veo 2.0 may change that plan. In fact, I have three other animated projects in mind. These updates keep happening so fast. Animation seemed like the best path for 2025 until Veo 2.0 previews started to drop. It could be that by summer life-like AI Video is indistinguishable from real life.
In the meantime, I will continue to focus on the creation of the business. It is meant to eventually help support my creative efforts. A SaaS company with a few AI-wrapped Apps is one part of the business. My creative side is of course another part of it. In between, is not necessarily me being a content creator. While there are plenty of amazing content creators out there, that is not what I want to be focused on. That said, I will be creating some content to go along with the Apps. Some learning materials as well as marketing content. I have no intention of showing my mug all over the place; I am too old to be faking a smile for you. You may be hearing a good bit of my voice though.
It has been a good year. Plenty has been achieved. Much has been planned for the new year. Buckle up, 2025 is sure to be another eventful year. I wish you all the best in 2025 and hope you will join me on an adventure that has been a lifetime in the making.
