People of AI Creative storytelling with AI: The making of Ancestra
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Sep 10, 2025 In this captivating discussion, Eliza McNitt, an Emmy-nominated writer and director of ANCESTRA, shares her journey blending generative AI and filmmaking. She’s joined by Ben Wiley, creative director at Google Creative Labs, and Corey Mathewson, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind. Together, they uncover how AI tools like Veo shaped their storytelling process, the challenges of generating visuals, and the balance between traditional methods and AI. They highlight AI’s role in enhancing creativity without replacing the human touch in filmmaking.
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Personal Birth Story Sparked The Film
- Eliza McNitt turned a personal birth story into Ancestra after a lightning-room conversation at Google.
- She used her own medical history as the emotional core to visualize an emergency delivery through cosmic imagery.
Creatives Push Model Boundaries
- VO (video generation) translates creative inputs into pixels but relies on human imagination to push it further.
- Researchers provide capability, but creatives expand the model's frontier by applying bold ideas.
Use Real Analogies To Make The Unreal Feel Real
- To create abstract or unfamiliar imagery, describe real-world analogues so physics and scale feel believable.
- Using microscopic or practical-effects references made cosmic visuals emotionally resonant.