Aapo Lettinen

Schindler's list is an exception of course, it does not feel like Spielberg movie that much. But it still being made more "family-friendly" than I think is justified for a film with that dark subject matter. Son of Saul was more hard hitting movie I think and made with fraction of the budget. Really nightmarish scenes which Spielberg would never make because the distributors would fear losing ticket sales. Smaller budget generally allows taking more risks to a point of making movie so hard hitting it can even traumatize some viewers for life. I don't remember much anything from larger budget war or horror or holocaust films. All the nightmare stuff is smaller budget movies which are not trying to be family friendly

Making what you want has huge risk of pissing off paying customers and losing financing. Thus increasing the budget always means making the end product more mediocre and watered out, then adding some glitter like expensive actors and explosions to sell it safely with the content made politically correct and harmless. Making really good movies requires getting the money from elsewhere and just making what you want as long as it is legal. Not worrying if pissing off half the world with the project. Real art cannot worry about pleasing every and all people. It needs to create a reaction and be bold and have unique point of view. One just cannot too that by diluting the original idea with water 5000 times so that it is easy enough to swallow by every and all of the people in the world. Spielberg movies for example are incredibly well made blockbuster products. Not exactly high art but they are well tailored all family products which generate huge revenue every time. They are much closer to art than Marvel films for example but still nowhere near any art realm. Blended too much and sugar added to fill the void. Everyone likes sugar right?

GenAI tools could be useful to make short films which make fun of genAI people. With the techbros characters growing brain fungus and their brain jumping out and starts ripping of peoples thumbs because it wants likes👍 😁

It is like the China in the past times, they only did historical classics set to ancient times because it was not allowed to make movies about current political issues! I think the current western indue genre is so spoiled specifically because they want to please everyone but then they are just making a cheap looking shoestring version of a blockbuster and no one wants to see that because it literally does not have any reason to be consumed. If wanting stupid mindless action flick, why choose the badly made one with no name actors and bad ai explosions? Does not work even for cringe value. Indie films need to be brave and bold and rough. Like fck the pg ratings we do what we want! Make fun on controversial issues and use the death threaths as marketing material! Piss off some concervatives intentionally and make profit to sell the movie to all their opponents 😂 It is hard to be non-conformist. That is why most indie filmmakers fail. They try to please everyone and thus make so mediocre uninteresting product that no one wants it. Pissing off people is the key. I can give some good examples of very controversial movie ideas if you guys don't get too offended, I am sure I can get every single one of you angry with my little short film concepts 😂

I always try to promote hybrid productions where both film and video are used. Different visual style is not an issue, it is beneficial actually. The only situation where it might sometimes cause issues is if trying to intercut film and video within the same scene without good planning. Black and white film will always survive. It is so much easier to manufacture and there is other established manufacturers than Kodak. To me, the film and digital are both fine. The reason I prefer film on some situations is that the workflow benefits certain types of projects and storytelling styles really well, creating this "method filmmaking" environment which produces interesting results. The main issue with AI is that it is too lazy and zero effort, a cheating method to shortcut to end result without any creative process. It can never be a real creative tool for that reason

The divide is what still keeps real arts alive. We need more of it, not less 🙃 I am carpet bombing the divide, salting the ground, putting land mines on it and setting up couple of turrets which shoot anything which tries to sneak through😂 ---- Please post my freakin medal below before adding to The List 😘

- what kind of benefits one gets when added to The List - would you still subscribe to my lens polishing OnlyFans if I start one - can I add you to some of my Lists too - does one get a freakin medal or other trophy one can show to friends and family

Wow there is a list where all the cool guys are🤩

AI good for finding cancer and shooting down Russian drones. Pretty much everything else AI stuff is just garbage and feels like being pulled in sewers by people who are already there and want everyone else to suffer with them too. If defence technology or medical tech does not become a new career for me, I feel like the backup plan of starting an OnlyFans where I would polish camera lenses in glitter strings would be surprisingly good (compared to the dollar wh*re business model the AI stuff seems to drive all mainstream human culture to)

It is possible that AI will be the death of narrative cinema. Ultimately the fake content becomes so uninteresting and worthless that there is no reason to watch it at all. There is no emotional connection especially when real actors are replaced with AI characters which have AI voices. Film based cinema started with documentary and I think the end of cinema as we know it will be documentary films too. If they can keep them strictly AI free or at least label the AI visualizations and everything else is known to be real by default. It needs to be journalism based pure documentary. Go too biased and the trust is lost again. The illusion cinema/narrative cinema started with the magic lantern and it will end up with magic lantern. Narrative cinema reduced to single image illusions generated in situ for 2 second amusement. Just like fireworks, they look wonderful but a second later they are gone. I think the whole narrative cinema will end up reduced to ai generated live illustrations, probably holographic and pretty abstract like endless fractals with music. The documentary genre will always survive as long as it is self regulated to present somewhat truthful stories instead of politically and economically motivated lies (paid propaganda)

human lives never had any value. it has always been a game of power and resources and driving people against each other on purpose. But human culture did had a lot of value up until the genAI nightmare started. The issue with genAI content creation is that the value of human culture is dropping to zero too. The worst thing AI has done so far is that EVERY SINGLE PIECE of new art, any video or image or written text or recorded speech or evidence is suspected to be AI by default and you need to prove it being real for people to value it or even notice it at all. And it is so difficult to prove real that it is still uncertain if you really made it. The trust has gone. Absolutely obliterated. I can't let anyone else to make music for my short films for example because I can't trust them not cheating by making it partially or in full with AI and claiming they composed and played it by themselves and demanding full money for the "work" they did nothing of. Scamming is made so easy that anything is expected to be a scam by default unless proven otherwise. And still difficult to trust even if it is proven to be real a million times and you know the person. If someone recording music I need to personally see them playing live to trust they did it by themself. It is destroying the whole society piece by piece. I would had very much preferred the Terminator movie's dystopia with the red eyed killer robots, they would had been much less damaging and much easier to deal with because the survivors would still had some real human culture left. This fuckin genAI nightmare we have now is essentially ripping the humanity apart and it does not matter anymore then if some killer robots would win because the very core of the humanity was lost long before and everyone was essentially dead already

I don't think making open source really makes enough of a difference. To make a difference, one needs a fully developed product which can be bought as a full kit and some kind of distribution. Those need funding. And funding needs either a kickstarter or other pre-sales to make it at least partially commercial. I have used tens of thousands on developing this stuff over the years, maybe 50k or more. It is prohibitively expensive if you want to make good stuff for many different camera models. I just fear people kind of throw it all to waste starting to invent similar products for same use over and over and over again. I mean, for goodness sake, just at least consider buying some cheap batch of leftover 4-speed boards when I quit after next year. Then you at least have a backup plan if all the open source projects fail and universal style simple system needed. I can make 10 or 100 or 1000, as many as needed as long as knowing early enough and some costs paid beforehand if it is large batch. If wanting to make a camera specific crystal update kit as open source, the Arri16bl is a great candidate like mentioned earlier on the thread. I am not planning 16bl stuff so there is no competition and you could kickstarter it easily

Implementation is often the hardest part. If wanting to make it good it is often necessary to make totally custom designed circuit boards. And any kind of motor needs metal cnc machining one way or another. People love 3d printing but it rarely works well on camera accessories. If it is cheap entry level open source motor then printing might do but anything better needs metal and cnc. For example the 8:1 and 1:1 Bolex motors I started designing will be aluminium all the way with the axle brass or steel. Trying to make it out of plastic causes so much issues that it is not worth it. This is a sub-1k entry level motor, nothing fancy. Still not suitable for open source. Even my 4-speed universal motor is unsuitable for 3d-printing even being relatively simple shape. I don't think a complex metal design can be open source. So one is limited to 3d printing and very simple shapes which last even made out of bad quality plastic.

Cheating is cheating. Claiming to do something for real and then using the absolutely laziest and cheapest zero effort scamming method to claim that you did all the work manually with years of experience is what makes people angry. It is like taking crapload of steroids and using a motorcycle to "run" a marathon and then angrily demand all the medals because you were first on the finish line and used so much effort to plan the easiest way to cheat

I miss the times when AI enthusiasts were posting some cute little 5 sec videos playing with the technology, like "look guys how interesting this new technology is, wow amazing look at that". Nowadays it is almost exclusively like "I did so much typing when prompting this video that I deserve the same respect than the real filmmakers who spent 3 years in a jungle trying to film rare animals for a documentary this AI was trained on! Don't you dare to downplay my huge creative effort which almost took an hour and a half" 😝

Third thing is that tinkerers are not the same persons who are actually shooting with the cameras. People who really need a working camera for projects will absolutely lose their mind if needing to spend hundreds of hours to get some open source project working and still needing to design their own mechanics. This is by my opinion why the open source project would not be very efficient. There is not enough users because most people would still need ready-to-use solution which can be purchased in one piece from somewhere. Or even if trying to make a new motor from scratch, try to license at least something to make the project easier

I mean, I could probably assemble from 1000 to 2000 pieces of the main circuit boards of my 4-speed universal motor in the same time than average hobbyist coder gets their first crystal sync motor working well enough that it is even relatively close to similar quality. People want to gamble getting maybe one motor working or not instead of getting 1000 motors working guaranteed by outsourcing the stuff which is difficult to learn quickly like the 4layer or 6 layer pcb designing well enough that it can be mass produced and assembled in large batches. My engineer mind does not see any sense in all that. People should use the diy effort on custom mechanics and try to standardise the crystal sync solution by group ordering and making universal style boards in large enough scale to share the testing costs and make some sense on the one to two year of full-time work spent

I don't see any future in open source crystal motors. It is like inventing wheel over and over and over again on every single piece of camera and every singlevperson modifying it. People want too different things everyone pulling to different direction. I think it is waste of time really. Additionally there is the cost issue of custom electronics and mechanics. They are annoyingly expensive to make one by one. Economy of scale does not work if every single person wants different thing and parts need to be machined unique and no two can be the same. So someone would need to do enormous amount of work for open source project and it is thrown to garbage bin by the next person because they want to be stars and invent their own from scratch. Readily available modules would be possible to benefit from economy of scale but by my 6 years experience making crystal motors I am very sceptical people would use that possibility. The closest one can get is to make a large batch of custom circuit boards with software uploaded and people can order the cnc metal parts by themselves even though it costs more than purchasing them with the circuit board. For example I could sell my 4-speed universal motor main circuit boards separately and even supply cad files for aluminium motor body and adapters if someone ordering larger amount and guaranteeing they mark on the control panel the board was made by me. The issue is people don't want to share the glory, they want to be youtube stars and invent their own spending tons more money and time. One reason I am quitting after next year is the frustration of seeing people wasting resources to diy tests instead of using them more efficiently to actually restore cameras. Not gatekeepinhg or elitism, I just can't understand the waste of resources and time and all going to waste when people give up and abandon the projects. I would rather build 100 of my Universal Motors instead. Just defluxed 12 main boards today

So local cheating is better than cloud cheating? 😂 I will buy myself a NASA baseball cap and call myself a rocket engineer and astronaut 😁 nowadays "fake it till you make it" is not necessary, it is enough to "fake it till you get caught and then get extremely arrogant and gaslight everyone to praise how clever and wonderous the scam was and give you a freakin medal" 😂

"I'm a real mountaineer, I just use helicopter as a tool to get to the top without all the strenous climbing" 😂 "Using Photoshop to fake vacation photos at home is exactly the same than really being there" 😆

Art is all about strict ethics and deep human expression and the unique pov of an individual. Replacing any of the variables is not possible. The end result would be entirely different then. One of the biggest issues is that people are constantly mixing 'content' and 'art' like they would be the same thing. Content is expendable, replaceable. It does not matter who or what creates it. It can be replaced with other type of content in an instant and no one will notice. Most movies nowadays are content, not art. They are engineered media products designed to generate maximum profits with minimum effort. Using more effort is only allowed if it has potential of generating more profits. Content is expendable and replaceable, it does not matter what it actually is. Minimum amount of effort is exactly what is needed to make it "good". Maximum profits with minimal effort. I think there is a chance of the AI slop raising a counter-movement of pure hand made films using traditional techniques and the audience polarizing to those who watch "real movies" and those who watch any sloppy content thrown at then including ai generated zero effort crap.

Oh I figured out a perfect analogy! dying here 🤣🤣 "Watching porn is the same than having real sex" - AI users

Imagine the AI tools advancing so much that you don't need to do anything anymore to create content. Just push a button, or blink an eye, or think some keyword the computer catches direcly from your brain to trigger the content creation cycle. No need to go outside anymore, no need to leave the chair even really. Actually you don't need to even sit, you can perfectly well lay down on the bed and still generate the content by just thinking about it. No need to even move your finger anymore to click the button. Pretty soon you have been still so long that you can't even lift that finger anymore even if you try. You are confined to the bed now. They take the bed to the hospital, but why would you get out of it anymore, you can still create new content by just thinking about the click, no physical action needed. Confined to the bed for years and decades, they take you to the retirement home now. You are essentially paralyzed now because you have not moved at all since you got to that bed. Too comfy, too convenient. No muscles left anymore, the nervous system does not even know how to control them if they would still exist. Why would you even want to get out to the real world if the content still flows in and you get enough money from somewhere to pay for the life support. Breathing is not essential for the "virtual clicking experience" so you stopped even that and let the machines do the work

the biggest issue of GenAI content creation is that it replaces human creativity in full. Too easy to use, it is like a "too helpful friend" who has too many ideas flying all over the place and talks so much that the real human brain just gives way and shuts down. One does not even try to make anything for real, just ask genAI to generate the nearest half-passable approximation and it has to do. It only takes couple of days of use before a creative person's mind just goes to standby mode permanently because it is way too easy and convenient to just let AI to imagine new things. It is like a brain eating fungus really. I have couple of friends playing with AI generation tools and it is so sad to watch. From indie music to album covers to novels to screenplays and even basic ideas one could invent by oneself in 30 seconds they ask from AI to create. still-creative persons who praise genai content generation just let their lazy producer brains to think and shut down their creative mind using "practicality and economy -based arguments" why something cannot be done traditional way anymore when new lazy "tools" are available.

AI is the next step of the "democratization of content creation" meaning now they are democratizing incompetency and complacency too 😂 AI use is specifically "content creation" and "content generating", it has nothing to do with arts and everything to do with tiktok and youtube culture where one just wants to generate maximum amount of clicks with minimum amount of effort, preferably fully automatically without the 'influencer' needing to do nothing more than claim the cash and use it for immoral purposes 😝