How Wonder Studio Turns Filmmakers Into Tech Founders

0:00I think we're living through the exact same thing right now. there's still a space for all these things but we're moving from like cinema to tv which barry picked up on and now we're moving from like tv to mobile phone to streamer to micro drama to like short form content and i think that new format really lends itself to ai but it's like how can you partner with great hollywood producers storytellers etc like how can you help them like build out an ip build out an audience a found fan base meet people where they are

0:30all right xavier tell us about wonder studios so wonder studios ai native studio two sides of the business one is an agency so you know working with music videos documentaries feature films commercials essentially there's a there's a huge demand for like premium ai video content and how do we service that great you know great visuals great content for people who need it And then the other part of the business is around IP. So, you know, we think there's a huge opportunity today because of AI to really like allow filmmakers to become founders or artists to become entrepreneurs. And so how do we partner with great storytellers, great pieces of IP and actually bring that to life, leveraging AI and turn like, you know, what could be like a local story into a global success?

1:15You mentioned that it's a community led platform. In your eyes, what is the strategy behind that? How do you see that unfold over the next year or so? that's a that's a great question so you know i think i can't take credit for the community-led aspect that's that's all justin uh my co-founder chief creative officer uh he he started something called real dreams i think like three four years ago now and it was like he was a traditional filmmaker traditional creative who was very early to the tools and i think when that's when when that started back then there was a lot of resistance and so community was a way of kind of breaking through that and so you know real dreams kind of was born out of that finding like like-minded creatives obviously as like time went on you know my background was building marketplaces and building platforms and so when i met justin the kind of stars aligned there and we realized that actually there's such a big business to be built that can be founded on top of community and i think like that grassroots approach is so key to what we do i think in terms of like how does that like impact the strategy i think there's a really clear answer which is um one of the gating factors to success in this space is going to be access to talent and so you know we've been very lucky to work on some amazing projects today and i think part of that is because we got access to the best people and so um if we can build the rails upon which like the ai creative industry you know runs that means that we've got access to like the best talent, the best filmmakers, the best storytellers, which as wonder allows us to go and work on the best projects.

2:49So, you know, there's a kind of like Nvidia style thing, which is like, we need to just grow the pie generally for this thing to succeed. So we want everyone to benefit from the community, but then there's a selfish element, which is that if we can build that community, we become a beacon and a gravitational force for talent, which allows us to scale. Sure, sure. Makes sense. And now this is a different approach than some of the other sort of branded AI studios, right? Like you're not looking to develop, you're looking to partner more so and kind of be a platform with other creators versus like producing stuff under like a Wonder Studios brand or how does this work and how is this different from like what other AI studios are doing?

3:25It's, you know, it's funny. Like it's, I think, cause we're so early in our journey, like people are still figuring out exactly how we work. Look, I think if I broke it down really simply, I love the other analogies. You probably got like a bunch this next hour. I love it too. I'm a big analogy person. so I one of the ones I use is like the iceberg so if you picture like what's above the water that's kind of what people see how do we make money and then what's below the water so in terms of what's above the water there's there's the agency side of the business there's the IP side of the business and you know on on on the agency side like yes there's a there's a really kind of powerful marketplace play where because we've got access to a community and talent we can partner with different creatives we can bring them work we can work with them to like service clients whatever it is on the ip side actually we're really pushing for that to be like in-house now we'll also leverage top artists in our network but like you'll see the wonder originals which was the anthology series we released like that's wonders ip now we we definitely partner with filmmakers to create those films we'll also be doing our own films but that's like that is a that is a core part of like how we are thinking about the future of the business is we as wonder want to be like a studio that's that's supercharged by access to great artists in our community but fundamentally is like being built internally and i just to finish the analogy so if you look below the order like what's actually powering that is you know that's that's a big part of like this this fundraise and like our next chapter is going to be how do we look at the workflows and the proprietary technology that is going to unlock our creatives to be able to create content uh you know faster better yeah and and for example if we are going to be leveraging the community how can we plug them into projects in a way that's like seamless yeah i mean to kind of piggyback off what you said you know if we look at a traditional studio like pixar above the iceberg is you know inside out and all the movies and the ip and the disneyland rides and under the water is their pipeline render man and all that stuff yeah so i could definitely see that i didn't pay you to say that i use that i use that the whole time oh really okay well uh so on that note um are you going to be building models or are you just going to leverage a lot of good technology that's already out there so so great great question um okay so like the way i tend to explain that is if you think about the fact that we're like in the ai gold rush right now you've got open ai you've got deep mind extracting the gold you've got nvidia that are selling the picks and the shovels and you've got wonder that's crafting and creating the jewelry and so we're taking the gold of ai melding it with like the diamond the silver of great storytelling great photography you know um and and then creating the content or like the content that ultimately people are consuming so you know we're not playing down this this side of the value chain extracting the gold we're not building the underlying models you know we're we're kind of up the value chain in terms of like creating and crafting the content that people are ultimately consuming now there is a technology play there so if we just extend the like analogy of jewelry right like imagine a watch you know there's a lot of work that goes into like a handcrafted watch like a swiss watch or whatever it is absolutely it's a work of art it is a work of art and like that's really where we're kind of focusing we think that that's like there's a huge opportunity in that space now just because it's a lot of craft doesn't mean it can't also be like systematized and so there's actually a lot of process that goes into crafting a handmade watch yes and so the proprietary technology the stuff we're looking at there is really around how do you become an expert watchmaker versus like how do you build underlying models but obviously you know one of the things i think has really helped us so much has been the relationships we've had with the top tech companies we did this lewis capaldi thing with music video with with google deep mind we've did our anthology series with FreePick and Fowl and Kling and so 11 Labs, obviously.

7:25So we've had like really strong relationships with the underlying model builders. You're playing with them all. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. And then I think there's a symbiotic relationship there. Yeah. You know, we want to be tech agnostic in terms of using the best tool when it's needed. But equally from the tech, like underlying model perspective, one is a great way of showcasing what's possible with their technology and like helping pioneer this like new space so there's there's we're like very very closely connected to the underlying models but we're not trying to compete and build them yeah makes sense yeah i mean i've wondered too like to be an ai studio do you you know because the tools are out there and tools keep getting better and easier to use so like do you need to have a some like proprietary secret sauce or workflow or models or comfy workflow to differentiate yourself and like kind of give you that edge like does that do you feel like that's necessary to be an AI studio there's a couple of ways you differentiate and build long-term value one is proprietary workflow for sure um now as the models get better like you would have seen Sora you know for example recently that edge becomes potentially like slightly eroded but then how we think about it is that you know again Justin came from like a traditional background he was on he was an actor in the film 28 days later when he was a kid and he met Danny Boyle and he learned filmmaking from Danny Boyle.

8:47And I think that's one of the things that like makes him a great AI artist is he comes from like that traditional background. And so when I think about the workflows that we want to build, it's less so about like catering to the top AI artists of today. We've got a lot of them in the team and they all have their own very unique ways of working. But it's more about how do you bridge access to this technology for people who have like, who are great filmmakers, who have great taste, have great vision, that have never been able to like execute on this stuff. So, I think there's a big piece there that obviously, like, when you actually work on, like, if you go beyond just, like, making a funny video for social media and you're actually trying to craft a film or work with a traditional film studio, there is a lot of, like, workflow stuff that's actually, like, kind of, that's not just one model upgrade away.

9:34So, I think there's kind of long-term value there. And I think the other way we think about long-term value and defensibility is all around IP. and I think that's where as a studio we're really interested and and I think just to like double click on that really quickly it's the idea is that historically let's just say you you wrote a great kids book we're working with this um kids book at the moment out of Sweden that's that's sold I think it's about five million books now and and so if they wanted to make an animated film historically they would have had to either um sell all their rights to like a Disney or they would need millions of dollars in years to go and like fund their own animation right and so ai is kind of like lowering the the barriers to doing that but there's still a lot of work in crafting what is ultimately a great kids cartoon and so if we can partner with those ip owners or storytellers and help them bring it to life without them having to give away all of their ip or their rights like it's gonna it's gonna kind of empower them and i think as a studio it's an opportunity to really kind of from like grassroots or from first principles kind of like kickstart a catalog yeah um by by kind of partnering with people i think i think that's where there's like a huge opportunity definitely see that uh it's almost like you know five years ago this that swedish book just would have never gotten made into a movie exactly but now the there is a entryway how do you differentiate from the streaming giants the disneys of the world that could easily take that Swedish book and then turn that into a movie and a franchise?

11:06I feel like there's so many ways to answer that. One is that we're really interested in partnering with the likes of Disney because I think that the reality is AI is just an incredibly powerful tool for creating great content. That's kind of the simplicity of it. And I do think that we've got a unique advantage right now in terms of being one of the preeminent studios and how to leverage AI to create this stuff. But there's so much that Disney brings, obviously like distribution but but also like expertise and great storytelling you know there's there's there's many different ways at disney like it's why they're so successful yeah but i think that there's a there's a great opportunity to partner with them to like give them access to these tools and to unlock you know so much more in terms of like what is possible but also what type of stories get made so there's there's a collaboration play but then i think in terms of the area where like we've got some real opportunity is where we're more nimble we're more agile there's how many great films never get made how many great kids books never get turned into a film now a big reason for that is that like the the hollywood model is his driven it's very expensive it's as a power law you need to make sure that like you're investing in projects that can like return the funds so to speak there's such a barrier to entry exactly and so and so now with this i think where we can be quite agile is like we can run experiments we can run tests on different ip we can maybe like pick up some great stories that would have never been chosen but could be extremely successful so i think that's where like it's on the edges and it's about finding that next generation of storytellers it's why the community is also like critically important you know didn't mention it but like a massive part of the community and the anthology series that we released was like how do we unearth the next generation of filmmaking talent and i think we're pretty uniquely positioned to do that versus like a major this is something i've been trying to think of too and going back to like the filmmaking talent and what you mentioned with, you know, they've had access to some good talent with just AI filmmaking workflows in general.

13:03Where are the, like, actual filmmakers, like, what roles do you still feel like the humans come into play versus what roles kind of get more automated into, like, an agentic workflow? Like, I'm trying to think of some methods of working. I know, like, Nick has talked about this, too, who did your first episode in the Anthology series. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nick Clever, yeah. Because he also has a documentary background. He's like, I like to just generate a bunch of stuff, so i have like this footage that i find and i'm thinking like more of the generating stuff can be agentic and then it's like what's the role for the human is it like the director the writer the editor yeah where is that what does that work look like we're thinking about that a lot so you know that that really falls squarely within like what does that watch making at scale look like and obviously like agentic workflows are a critical part of us succeeding there and and And so one of the ways I think about that is, I don't know if you've ever seen the Raptor engine slide.

13:59It's like the SpaceX Raptor engine. It's basically the first Raptor engine was this like really clunky, crazy mess of like all these wires. Yeah. And so the first one's like this crazy clunky mess and there's Raptor 2, it's like a little bit more streamlined. Then you've got Raptor 3, which is like pristine and it's kind of crazy how they've done it. If I was to, you know, I think that Raptor 1 is a great representation of like traditional animation or filmmaking today and then you've got raptor 2 which is like ai as it stands today you know it's an it's like an improvement in terms of efficiency and speed and there's less parts of the process to worry about but there's still a lot of redundancy and there's still a lot of like regenerating images you know there's a lot of like you know prompt lottery right then there's raptor 3 which is like where hopefully we want to go with wonder which is really keying into like what are the things that take the creatives the most amount of time what are the things that are repetitive that like aren't the best use of their like creative talent um that we can find to like maybe agentically solve or like at least make better through like collaborative ways of working so that's that's how i think about that in terms of like what will be left like what what will be left if we get there i think it's gonna be stuff that really matters so that's why i'm really interested in can can we help traditional directors break into this space to unlock these tools because what will matter is the quality of the story the quality that like it's cliche but like taste you know it's like it's it's like what looks great what drives emotion you know i don't know if you guys saw the lewis capaldi music video but i biased i showed my mom and she you know she cried when she saw it but there was other people that you know we showed and they started crying and it's like that's really fascinating it's like we have to see it yeah yeah it's like you can drive if you can drive emotion yeah then you can tell a story and so very few people can do that yeah it's about finding like that's what's gonna be the role kind of writing on your watchmaker analogy are you is the goal here to make Rolexes at Timex prices?

15:51That's a good question. That's a great question. I think when it comes to our own IP and like short form episodic content, which is like a thing we're very interested in, that's like a more macro trend. You would have seen micro dramas and I think there's a whole trend around like how people are engaging with content. When it comes to like our own IP, take this kid's book, for example, we're definitely interested in the idea that over time can the cost of production fall? you know that's that's less about um like a race to the bottom and like trying to make things cheaper which i think is a bad framing for replacing humans and yeah yeah but there's there's there's there's definitely something in like if you're making short form episodic content and it's the same it's the same story arcs etc like are there synergies that over time allow you to still make really high quality content really great stuff but you know it's not as it's not as manually intensive as the first Rolex you made yeah but I think I think generally like this the projects we take on the stuff we try and do we're like very focused you know in the beginning we have this we have this just and I laugh a lot about like we have the dog in us and it's because like you know we started in London obviously and like it's it's um a harder place to like raise the same amount of capital as the US and so you've got to be like pretty scrappy and so we took on a lot of projects we just like learned by doing anything we could.

17:11But now that we've kind of come through that phase and we've kind of proven, you know, to a certain extent proven ourselves, we're very selective on like the projects we take. And it's not the stuff that is like about a quick, but like saving money. And like, it's about like a shortcut. It's like, why are you using AI? Yeah. Why is this like an unlock? And why is this called creatively? And if you work on those projects, I think that's how you're going to like pioneer the space. And most of the time it probably leans towards, we couldn't do this before and now we can do it. Right. For budget reasons.

17:42Yeah. Or even creative reasons. So there's a great example. It's annoying. It's not public yet, but we're working on this incredible documentary. And a big reason, the why was like they wanted to have archival recreational footage of what it was like in the 90s in this particular setting. and you know we were able to come up with like that kind of like handheld shaking camera like authentic vibe and these are these are videos that like are telling stories that didn't actually exist you couldn't actually get them and so it was a it was a way of like adding to the story that wouldn't have ever been possible um you know within within like the budgets and the time and all that kind of stuff but also like being able to even de-age certain people and bring them and put them in the scene so you know i think stuff like that is always like a great example of why like the why speaking of fundraising which you mentioned with uh in england uh you did just raise a 12 million dollar seed fund seed round uh what can you tell me about the fund uh the round and what you plan on doing yeah um yeah i shouldn't i shouldn't talk down on on england we actually raised from a from a fantastic like tier one vc in europe called atomico and we were also lucky to have um local globe and blackbird who backed us initially you know follow on which was which was awesome um you know i think it is it is definitely one of those things where because so much of the this the space has grown and developed so quickly i'd say that the us and particularly like you know being here in la like it's it's very far ahead right now in terms of the adoption and how people are thinking about it and so being uk based was was hard in terms of being in the space where all the conversations are happening like that are kind of moving this forward.

19:30That being said, you know, we've been really lucky to work with some incredible partners over there and great to have like Atomico see the vision, see the traction, see where the space is going. And then obviously, we've just we've just launched an office in New York, and we've just hiring a team out here. So, you know, I think from a from a fundraising perspective, why are we raising the money? What are we going to do with it? You know, the first first thing is we were just really like blessed to have like an incredible group of investors back us and you know you don't walk away from those kind of relationships and the doors that that can unlock so in addition to atomico we've got um adobe investing which is fantastic and i think it speaks to the technology aspect of what we're building and the future of these workflows we're able to you know that actually the ceo of free pick who was on this uh podcast walking walking um and and their chairman and one of the CEOs of Omnicom, which is one of the world's biggest advertising company.

20:27There's the Sidemen who are like a top YouTube content creators, one of the best in the world at that. So I think for us, it was like a great opportunity to start to build solid relationships and mutually aligned incentives with really critical stakeholders who will be a massive part of this journey across the world of like advertising, film, YouTube, technology. So that was one. And then two is, you know, I think we're pretty ambitious in terms of what we want to do. I think there's a huge opportunity here. There's very clear product market fit. And in terms of the next kind of 12 months, we're going to be making a big push into the US, hiring a lot of the team out here, and also investing more into that technology so we can scale up the IP side of our business.

21:19so those are kind of the key reasons I guess I can't think of a better city for you to be in and leverage all the talent agencies all the talent themselves and of course the AI community here we hope you make it here and settle down hopefully, I love the weather the one thing I'd say is Justin grew up in he's called Justin Hackney he lives in Hackney I don't know if the simulation is playing a game there But we have our office in East London and there is such creative talent back there. And it's an emerging space. I think, you know, you guys are lucky out here in terms of this conversation has been happening for a number of years.

22:01It feels like that conversation has been happening for a number of years back home, but has just started to accelerate. and we have this really unique advantage where we can be one of the kind of leading voices in that market and build and like educate talent there. So, you know, one of the things that we're doing actually, which is I think really exciting is we're going to launch like a Wonder Fellowship and partnering with some of the great like film schools back in London. And the idea is like, can we find kids who are like 18 to 20, you know, going to film school, learning about VFX, et cetera, and like get them an internship in Wanda, learning AI tools.

22:40And if Wanda can like build that nexus of talent in our local market, there's a lot of great creatives there. I think that's something that could be a huge superpower of ours because there's another thing about AI. It's like, it's allowing us to tap into talent all around the world. But you do have to build a critical mass. And I think hopefully we'll be a big part of that back home whilst having the connectivity here to like really tap into the scale that the u.s offers i feel like the building up the la talent is a good transition we have somebody knocking on the door jd in yeah all right so let's transition jd welcome hey guys nice to be here i feel like we have kind of i've talked to you throughout your journey yeah give us the brief background on uh you and uh playbook yeah last we spoke was what AWE.

23:32The first impression we had was AWE, and then we got to sync together at the Culver Cup. So yeah, Joey's seen a lot of the early iterations of Playbook. But yeah, I think we've been exploring a lot of these tools for a while, and it was the opportunity came out for us to kind of find a new home for some of the technology we were building. And yeah, excited to announce that we were aqua-hired by the team at Wonder. So Skylar and I are now building the internal tools that are powering a lot of the workflows behind Wonder Studios' productions. So yeah. Congrats, man. Thank you. Yeah, awesome. Congrats.

24:01What a team. I feel like this gets into the secret sauce stuff, too, of how do you differentiate wonder in the workflows. Yeah. I can take a first pass or a stab at it, because I think a lot of the times we'll hear the analogy of Figma. Everyone wants to build the next Figma for storytelling. That's been something we've been exploring for the last four years. For context, Skylar and I, we grew up and went through university at the time when Figma was having campus ambassadors and tried to really get it out to market, and we saw that explosion. So the analogy, it's a useful one. But when you actually think about what does that mean to dissect, what is Figma for storytelling?

24:36It's not just running the creative workflows. You're building a single source of truth. You're building a lot of these pipelines and these tools that allow us to make repeatable productions. So that's a lot of the know-how that we're going to bring together with Wunder to kind of power these productions. Let me ask, you mentioned sort of putting knobs and tools on top of diffusion models. What are some examples of that? what are some of the shortcomings of, let's say, ComfyUI, which is a very popular tool? Yeah, absolutely. And I guess just taking a step back to redefine the mission that was from the start, what we set out to do with Playbook was building those knobs and those interfaces that extend human creativity, not extinguish it.

25:13I think it's very, very easy to try to replace it. But we were looking to find ways to kind of control them and actually meet the creators where they're at and what they want to do. So the perfect example is text prompting is a very limited interface to kind of express your idea for a shot. What we wanted to do is bridge the gap between parametric 3D kind of game engine technologies and, you know, methods, as well as, you know, how we do it traditionally with, you know, a camera. I'm framing the shot. That was like a very simple insight that we were like, I want to frame the shot with this camera in a 3D space.

25:44So that was some of the technology we built. And Joey, you were one of the pilot users of that. Yeah, we have a video on the channel tutorial. I guess it's not relevant anymore, but it was still a great interface for you can build out a 3D space. That's very gray boxed kit bashed together, have your camera that you're used to. And then it's like, cool, I like the shot. Make it look good. Nice. And I think that Kurt tells a lot into like our long term strategy and the partnership we want to have is we have ambitions for Wonder to not just be a studio for film. We want to make games. We want to make interactive media.

26:12We think that's where things are going. um so the team we're building around um the on the product arm of wonder is is very much um thinking about like transmedia and those different kind of um experiences we can build with our franchise ip we didn't even get into that too because i was i mean we've talked about a bunch of the podcast with like different ai video ai studio models it's different than what you're doing or what we've been talking about where it's like okay you're making an ad or you're like bringing in filmmakers to make something bespoke uh versus like a showrunner uh like the one where like you could make a million shows yeah everyone can make their own personalized show at scale everyone can uh you know be the star kind of what sora did but like i don't know bigger scale uh do you see we've been dubious about that do you see like that taking traction or more so or curated professional professional filmmaker storytellers making something i don't want to predict i look i think there's there's every chance that that could be really successful i I think, you know, I'm very high conviction in what we're building and like our strategy, which isn't that, but it doesn't mean that that can't also be successful.

27:18I think our strategy, which is really focused on like the quality of the storytelling, the quality of the IP. Look, I think that's something really interesting. And like people resonate around a story that like has kind of bigger significance than just them. Doesn't mean, not mutually exclusive, doesn't mean you can't have like individualized, interactive content that everyone can make their own show. I'm sure that could be massively successful in time. I think something I say a lot is like Justin is like a visionary. He's like very ahead of his time, whereas I'm like really great at timing. So, you know, I was lucky.

27:50I got to work at Uber in 2011. I got to be part of the first 30 people at Deliveroo. I was one of the early team at Turo launching Europe. And I worked for three unicorns at Vice 2. so like i i kind of had pretty decent read on like luck or luck you know like what what the timing is when something's gonna work and obviously had a very strong call when i saw what was happening in this space when i met justin that was the same light bulb moment and i think that um the challenge with this space is because it unlocks so much potential you can go so quickly there's potential there's a risk of getting out ahead of your skis in terms of like what is the market ready to support so i think one of the reasons we're so excited to have you know jd and skylar join wonder is that you know very impressed with the technology they built and the way they think about the problem i think the key thing is like how do you plug that into great timing and so today we're not so worried about can we build like lots of different immersive experience and everyone can make their own tv show we're not even so worried about like can we take the proprietary workflows we're building and sell that as SaaS.

28:53We're way more interested in like, what is a problem today that like has a market? And there's a couple, right? One is like, you can now make a music video or a documentary or an indie film in a way at a budget, at a speed that was never possible before. You can also partner with like really great IP and bring it to market quickly in a way that was never possible before. And then through technology, make it scalable. and then through that same technology make it extensible. So to JD's point, you start with a series, you then could spin it up into a game, you can do call activations around merch, you can do great 360 AI marketing campaigns that break the fourth wall.

29:36These are all the things I think are really interesting and really relevant today. And the workflow piece and the technology piece is critical, but it's not yet at the point in time where it's going to be the most valuable. It will be the most valuable, I think, in about a year to two years' time. And, you know, just maybe the thing I like to say a lot is, like, we're kind of in the business of, like, serving fish, right? Like a – I don't know if you guys have ever been to Spain, but they do this thing like sea bass and salt. And it's this, like, really great fish dish. It comes out, the salt covers it, and the waiter kind of, like, breaks it off, and then they serve it up on the plate.

30:13Like, it's this really beautiful, like, premium experience. And so, you know, we're kind of in the business of doing that. Now, the reality is, is that to do that, we had to build a fishing rod. We had to build a pipeline. We had to build the workflow to create that. But as much as people today say, like from a studio perspective or from like a bigger company perspective, as much as they say they're very interested in learning about fishing, what they actually want is to fish served to them. Once that's happened enough times, I think they will be like, oh, how does the fishing rod work? I'm really digging your analogies, man.

30:43We got the way for it. Yeah, I always speak in analogy. Love it. So, I mean, look, it seems like the wavelength at which you think about feature films and TV, it definitely resonates with this town. Like, I think Joey's lived here long enough to know that we live and breathe art and storytelling at the highest form. With that context, is it important for Wonder Studios to win accolades in the traditional studio side, whether it's Emmys or Oscars or what have you? or are you going to carve your own path or is it somewhere in between? I think we're going to win one of those awards within the next couple of years.

31:20And yeah, I'm very excited for you to see, as soon as I can tell you, I'm going to drop you one of the first documentaries we're working on. I think it's very important that we work with like the best storytellers and we create ultimately like incredible content because it's a flywheel. You know, it's a flywheel. There's a lot of flywheels in this business. And one is why the agency side is very relevant to us. And it's critical that we're like selective on the projects we take is that it helps build the brand. It helps like show that we have taste, which attracts great talent in terms of like creatives, but also AI creatives.

31:53It's a positive feedback loop. Exactly. So, you know, I think there's a huge need to like win those awards, not for the award's sake, but for the validation of like working with great storytellers. but also at the same time, like there is a new path to be forged. I think the path, the new path to be forged is in a new type of content. So, you know, I was reading Barry Diller's autobiography recently and he had this really fascinating, I mean, it's an incredible story, right? And like he had this really fascinating insight around like made for TV movies and he kind of picked up that like Hollywood was changing and like the format was changing.

32:29I think we're living through the exact same thing right now. There's still a space for all these things, but we're moving from like cinema to tv which barry picked up on and now we're moving from like tv to mobile phone to streamer to micro drama to like short form content and i think that new format really lends itself to ai but it's like how can you partner with great hollywood producers storytellers etc like how can you help them like build out an ip build out an audience a found fan base meet people where they are and so i think wonder in terms of where we're going to like forge that path i think we're going to be pushing into like where is where is media going and that could eventually become obviously like immersive interactive experiences but i would hope that we when we do make that push if we do make that push it's at the right time amazing can we use the tagline the ai of a 20 a 24 or that's i didn't i i didn't say that i didn't say that but i love that tagline you'll have some thoughts about that yeah yeah i think now you're gonna have a pull quote somewhere well i'm very glad that you said it and i did um something on that so like we had a lot of admiration for those guys i think we said this a lot like they nailed brand they nailed brand but like what's the next evolution of brand it's community and like fan experience i think it's a part of that i mean i've seen that graph too that was going around on um where am i blanking on his name he's big on x but it was like a graph of like the rise of in-person events or just in-person in like community and across ages we were just we were just talking about that before we came here yeah um so yeah i think that's i think that the evolution of brand is community this again i can't take credit like this has been like authentic to justin in his bones since day one and that community is like it's it's incredibly powerful and you know what it's like it's like especially powerful today because of where the world's going and the fact that like everything is moving so much more online ai is is is challenging so many things it's like a it's a big step change right in society and so people are going to be more and more drawn to like human connection community absolutely it was a greg eisenberg big on x yeah it was a chart of uh declining social media use like social media peaked and then it's been declining i love to see a trend across all uh yeah yeah i mean i think you're 100 right you know it's it's funny too because as much as we're like in the AI space and computers and screens all day, it's like, yeah, I feel like it has peaked in the person stuff.

34:59Yeah, it also is getting more granular, right? Like an individual person can now have the most amplified voice that history has ever allowed. So how do you give them the tools to then tell that story to its full effectiveness? To that point, I think a lot of other strategies or what these tools allow are small teams and like individuals to obviously, you know, hit harder and like have a stronger punch. but like you know wonder we're still thinking about creativity as like a team sport and like we're gathering creative directors creative technologists different stakeholders that might have you know comfy ui skills might be able to train lauras might be able to just you know they're really good at editing and those are the teams that we want to assemble for these different projects um and that was like a big draw for us because you know we came from the pure creative technology side we're we're comfy ui you know workflow people so um it was a marriage um that was very perfect that's awesome i mean you could say that that you know a film tier one film like uh alien romulus is like the ultimate team building exercise of like 500 people over you know two three years so you just still want to play at that level but also at the very granular level yeah yeah it's collaborative i know you guys were talking about like the taylor swift ai stuff the other day yeah um you know i have it on like relatively good authority there's a lot of people involved in making that and there's a lot of like different artists that went into actually cooking that in like a short time period so it's it's like but again like that was a that was a funny that's a great example of like it really punching mainstream but even something like that it's it's not one artist it's like a number of different people still a team yeah and i think i would notice the two when we were looking at it's like it's not like a one click button to to make that stuff we know the amount of refinement because like the locations look very consistent and like everything felt very consistent like that that takes a lot of work regardless this wish i could go into more by this no yeah i i probably so i said oh it looks like vo3 and i'm probably completely wrong now so it's just a hunch it's just a hunch yeah i'm curious how this with the tools you're building and what that workflow looks like because also uh you know as you mentioned you're working with a bunch of different filmmakers and they all have their probably tools of choice or workflows of choice and even in regular filmmaking like every project different camera different crew different editing system how what's the like are is it kind of what do these tools look like?

37:12Is it going to be like internal Wonder Studio tools? Is it going to be like support for all the projects that come through? Like, hey, what do you need? What are you trying to do? Let's try to figure out a solution for that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's kind of where my role fits. I'm really doing like an audit and like thinking about all these problems from first principles. So from our agency business, you know, we're thinking about the brief and the inflow of new projects and what different kind of, you know, starting information comes with that brief. Maybe it is sample imagery. Maybe it's a script.

37:37Maybe it's a music. It's a song that's already been written and they want to create visuals for it. so finding all those kind of areas where we're starting with these flows and thinking about what are the different touch points in that like flow chart that gets you to that final product um the fish um for better for better worse um so salty fish yeah i think um you know i need to think a better analogy salty fish i haven't had it i mean it is very good it's actually it sounds disgusting i had it somewhere else and it was like it was a mountain of salt yeah people hearing it gonna be like why is he pitching like a salty fish but i promise it's delicious it is very good But yeah, we have to have had it to understand it.

38:12But exactly. I think Zav was really talking about the 100 tab problem in the same exact thing that you're talking about, right? Like there's FreePick, there's Cray, there's all these different options that have either been aggregators or there's these foundational models that have built suites. And then on the open source, there's a number of tools on that side as well. So we're thinking about how do we create the efficiency because you don't necessarily need to have all these tools to kind of create these fun. Can we put them all in one place and access them all from one place? so that's kind of hinting at some of the tooling that we're thinking about i also i also think um yeah it's a great like the 100 tab problem is something we spoke about from day one justin and i you know he's he's so deep in the tools making this stuff like he's he's often like down the rabbit hole creating um you know on on a lot of the projects still and when you watch the creatives work it's like it's it's kind of creative destruction it's like a whirlwind you know like there's there's there's hundreds of tabs there's like google hangouts there's like slack there's this there's that and so you know i think from a first principles approach there's there's a lot of like interesting fertile ground there around like where when you really distill down what are the kind of like core problems that we can we can start to like tackle to drive you know essentially i think we we think about it this is a this is a deliverer thing but like anator i think i guess like they were they were big on unit economics so really like very complex businesses but you could distill them down to like the unit economics and it was a great way of understanding like what the levers are that move these businesses and so in the wonder and the wonder context you know we think about what's the revenue per minute that we can generate uh and then ultimately like what's the cost per minute to create that and if you then think about what generates what what drives cost per minute one is obviously the technology cost the api calls and the second is really just time and that's the time that it takes for creatives to collaborate on a project to like move things back and forth so you know i think that's that's where we're really starting to key and i guess maybe the only thing i'd add to that is that i think to the pixar example you gave earlier why i love that example is you know if we set out to build this as a b2b sas product today we'd be selling fishing rods in a town where people are just hungry for the salt fish and right and that gives us time to to really key in on like what's actually solving our problem versus like chasing product market fit.

40:31And so, yeah, I think like that's probably the thing I'm the most excited about with post-post-raise is to really start to get stuck in on our own projects, on our own use cases where we actually need these tools. We need to simplify the stuff for it to work. And I think if we can hone it in that fire, there will obviously become a time, hopefully, where that could also become another revenue driver of the business. But that's not the focus. I mean, you could argue that you could build a product just to eliminate a lot of the revisions in film right like that's what virtual production is intending to do is like you know yeah this thing gets approved by 10 different leadership roles yeah yeah this conversation with other people in the ai space of just something that's like i mean um the alberto um i forgot his last name but he built the shop the open source shop buddy the tool to like track your shots but that's sort of limited but some yeah stuff where it's just like yeah the version of this image the image to video the style transfer like an ai agent will take it to the right person get the pro take it to the next or even in your editing for like i would really if you're just in your editing program and you're like we need to update the shot it just all updates there and you don't have to keep we're gonna bring these guys in on the next roadmap yeah exactly you guys can consult it okay yeah well i think we got a piece of the fishing rod yeah okay but i think from i mean just to organize our thoughts though on the product it's we're thinking about in traditional means pre-production production post-production and there's these cross phases.

41:53There's a lot of efficiency to begin in the cross phases, the handoffs, the archiving. And really the goal on top of solving the 100 top problem and all these other areas is really just to kind of get you closer to the creative vision that you want at your heart, right? So letting Justin get that image that he has in his head out to reality as fast as he can. And that's it in some, I'd say. No, that's just... That's difficult. I made it much simpler than it actually is, yeah. Easier said than not, for sure. i'm just wondering what both of you think about everything that's sort of happened with tillie norwood and synthetic actors and where you would set your strategy on on this very sensitive space in hollywood right now at two addy well just we're gonna cut it out no it's such a great question i actually love it okay it's it's such a precarious place and it's so hard being a founder in this space trying to like tread that line and so i have a lot of empathy in terms of like you know no one wants to see people get blown up like that in that way also like you know i have a lot of empathy on on the other side with like there's very like valid concerns there and so it's i say all of this with like the humility of like this is a very hard space to navigate now from our perspective i think we've we've hopefully got a very clear way of like how we want to work with the traditional industry and actually have like a really symbiotic relationship and you know it's fortunately it's it's not in like creating actors or anything like that it's it's like for me like you know they kind of sound by way of saying it is like 90 % of scripts never get read right um or like another way of thinking about is like how many great films never get made yeah and so we work with like a bunch of great writers directors and it's like my favorite part of the job it's like yeah you get to and we're getting into this space it's like actually like you know i think i was just born in the wrong era but i love this idea of like developing a project putting the right people in the room across like writers directors you know executive producers ai talent and taking something like a great concept for an independent film that would have never been made never been possible you know working on like a teaser for a film based on a script that allows that person to then go raise finance so they can go make the film.