A New Generation of Filmmakers with Jagger Waters

Orlando Wood (04:11)

Jagger Waters, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you because you are an AI creator who I've been aware of for quite some time. But also, you're now working at the intersection of where the creator economy getting more understanding of that in higher education. And so you seem to be like not just tapped into it from the experience of working with AI tools to make

Jagger Waters (04:20)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Orlando Wood (04:43)
you know, content and art. But also now on the front lines of the discussion points and all the talking points about, you know, the development of the creator economy and getting people to understand that more and take it more seriously. So I'm very excited to talk to you. Thanks for being here.

Jagger Waters (04:58)
Yeah, thank you. I know we've been trying to make this happen for a minute and we've both been so busy over the last year. So happy to be here and dive in to all of it.

Orlando Wood (05:07)
Great. Well, listen, I'll just dive in then. mean, you you're you know, so much of your work is so interesting to me. I mean, because you're doing longer format stuff, you're doing music videos, you're doing, you know, very interesting, like experiments and things like that. know, and I see somebody like you and so many of the artists like Reza and Paige Piscan and people like that. And, you know, so many of the people I speak to who are creatives or people who have

been creatives in large creative organizations or kind of like AIs creating slop and AIs destroying art. But I'd love to get your perspective there. Is AIs destroying art or is creating the most independent generation of creators we've ever seen?

Jagger Waters (05:47)
Well, well said. I do think that it's going to create a generation of independent creators. It already is. And I think that AI is one of the greatest tools of influence that filmmakers have ever had. And that doesn't mean that all of it's good and the comments about AI slop are really valid. But I think that AI is...

the tool that brings filmmakers into the creator economy. Because the whole, you know, the industry that I've been working in, the way that I was taught at...

and the theater, film and television program that I graduated from was that like we're all in these separate categories and you just focus on directing, you focus on writing, you focus on being a colorist and you can find work like in that niche. But it's all kind of blending together. And in addition to adopting AI, I've also had to upskill myself and learn how to edit and learn how to sound design and sound mix because the

providing or creating your own film. Let me say it in a different way. I would say we have to create it scale now, whatever you're making, whether you are a filmmaker or you're trying to do.

Right in film, in TV film, micro dramas, like we have to produce content at scale. So you have an original voice, you have a writing style, you have a directing style, you have a vision. And now you can use AI tools to bring that to life to showcase, hey, this is what I could do with a bigger budget.

Orlando Wood (07:20)
Yeah, I liken it to when I first started making documentaries and, obviously, you know, I'm sure a lot of people have had this experience, but you start making documentaries and you think that the footage is the thing. And then you get into your first edit and you go, my God, the sound is bad. There's no way to fix sound being bad. And so suddenly I had to become an expert in audio, you know, and it's very similar with AI. If AI is the entry point that...

Jagger Waters (07:36)
Yeah.

Right.

Orlando Wood (07:47)
creatives that new creatives have or creatives who have been doing it for a while suddenly when that gets better there's a serious gulf if your sound design isn't right or if your mix isn't right or if you're you know or if you're editing isn't right

Jagger Waters (07:56)
Yeah. It's actually one of the biggest,

those are like the biggest indicators of either inexperience or someone that doesn't have a background in filmmaking or video storytelling is, know, I mean the coverage or when the 180 degree line gets crossed or the editing is weird or the sound design is weird. You can tell that there isn't really a foundation of filmmaking education underneath it. And that's why that writers and directors I think are the

in the best position right now because adopting this and being able to showcase like this is this is my work and people want to create we don't just want to use our iPhones to film sketch videos or selfie videos we want people want to create big fantasy world sci-fi like like content that does require special effects and visuals that are not affordable and this these tools do make it possible to create things like

Yeah, a fantasy or a huge, you know, world building that you just couldn't do. Um, and we, cause we're going beyond that, right? You can film something on your iPhone and watch it or, know, like it's that, that works for comedians. works for actors. works for someone who's giving commentary or being an influencer in the life, in lifestyle or fashion or blogging. But there is a stylized elevated kind of storytelling that

I think people want access to. And I would rather see what someone from, who's not from, you know, living in LA, working in film, what are the stories they want to bring to life, not just what is a studio producing.

Orlando Wood (09:28)
Hmm

Yeah, I mean, and I think that the other thing is we're watching people take their first steps. And, you know, when, when I took my first steps, I'm sure my parents would say I fell down a fair amount. and they didn't just give up and they didn't just say, you know what? This walking thing ain't for you. I think that maybe you're not naturally good at it. So you should just stop learning how to walk, you know? And I think that that's what we're seeing now. I saw it when, you know, YouTube, you know, when I first started in the creative industries at a

Jagger Waters (09:37)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (09:59)
large ad agency, I saw YouTube come out and everybody was talking about it the same way they're talking about this. That's just crap. People are bad at filming. It's just where their home movies are going to go up or little things they shoot themselves and it's not going to be very good. And here we are. And now there's a new tool that's going to make it even better. And I think that like, have they have people mastered those tools yet? No. But I think that, you know, I think that we can't judge the future of this.

create our economy with AI based on just what we've seen in the one year that it's permeated a lot of our screens.

Jagger Waters (10:36)
Right, because you look at any internet presence or creators' earliest work, you look at Bo Burnham's earliest work and compare that to the things that he did later on. That is a really good point because we have to build in public now. And I think there's a lot of discomfort. I had it myself. mean...

the like you have to you can fail fast with AI, which I think is a good news. You can you discover very quickly like, this idea that I had, the story wasn't developed enough. I don't see the character. I the world doesn't make sense. Like you can experiment privately and realize that that idea you had maybe isn't working. But you also have to take the risk of publishing that and tolerating the discomfort of needing to improve.

And that has been huge. over the last three years, that's been a huge part of my story because I didn't come in with any technical skills. Like I didn't know anything about node based systems. I didn't have a background in VFX. I was just a writer and I knew, wow, these tools are going to help us tell stories at scale without the red tape, without the bureaucracy of the industry. But I didn't go in with a background in motion design or graphic design. I mean, I was a very basic MacBook user. So.

Orlando Wood (11:47)
Mm-hmm.

Jagger Waters (11:47)
having to feel, kind of felt out of place, but I was also very glad to see the AI community was just full of curious and pretty nice people. At the same time, I didn't have a lot of skills, a lot of the skills that they did. And there were jobs or opportunities that presented themselves where I wasn't fully prepared because I didn't have those editing skills, I didn't have those sound mixing skills. And so rather quickly,

Orlando Wood (11:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Jagger Waters (12:13)
I had to adopt those and kind of like gain that competitive edge to be a creator in 2026 because that looks so differently than it did in 2015 when I finished school.

Orlando Wood (12:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I tell everybody that the best thing to do is have a play. You know, if you have something you really want to do, that's the best motivation to figure out a new tool, you know, because everything is kind of available now. know, it's it's interesting. know, you were at Sundance and I guess my you know, it feels like filmmakers are becoming creators and creators are becoming filmmakers. What was your sense at Sundance in terms of the?

the relationship between the industry at large and the creator economy, because it seems to me that up until this point, the relationship has been, love your audience that you seem to be able to have created. We don't know how we would love to figure it out ourselves, but we love your audience. You're a necessary evil. That sort of seems to me to be the way that the modern studios or the industry at large has approached creators.

Is that true and is that changing?

Jagger Waters (13:22)
I do think that the entertainment industry still looks down on influencers, creators, or I guess you'd want to call them like YouTube natives, Instagram natives, whatever you want to call it. And I think part of that is just maybe the prestige of like, you know, film and television is in a different category. It's harder. It has a totally different history. So I think those people, they feel like they come from different places.

And when you really boil it down, it's just storytelling and connection. But I think that both sides of the aisle don't really see that. But I think you're right. We're moving towards this future where creators are becoming filmmakers, brands are becoming film studios, and content creation, filmmaking, high quality video, good storytelling is now your responsibility, whether you're...

a CEO, whether you own a small business, whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're a filmmaker. So I think we're seeing the skills of film bleed into every and every other industry. And maybe it feels like a bit of maybe it feels like a threat or maybe it feels like that's our job. I'm not sure. But that resistance. Yeah, I'm very aware of the resistance. And now and then there's a comment on LinkedIn and it usually

comes down to like an insult, you know? It's not really someone trying to start a conversation about like, are you using AI? It just gets kind of boiled down to insults, I guess. And, but there's that's.

Orlando Wood (14:49)
Right, right. Well, I mean, that's most of social

media, regardless of how you're putting it out there, right? Yeah.

Jagger Waters (14:55)
Exactly. And

I don't know, going back to what we were talking about with like putting yourself out there, like all of that risk that you're putting yourself at risk of being hated, being seen, you know, it really is that like mortifying ordeal of being known that I'm still trying to get over myself, but now you can build publicly, you have to build publicly. And I think that witnessing the collapse of power structures that we are on a broader scale, which is a whole

collective trauma that's contributing to the conversation about AI that I don't think we're, we're not really connecting the dots on. But we're not, we don't trust things that aren't really human. You know, we don't trust like a perfectly polished profile. Like, you know, the, the, joke about LinkedIn is that it's just like everybody kind of talking, gassing themselves up and, you know, presenting this really perfect professional persona. It's like, just not entirely true. So I think that

Orlando Wood (15:31)
Mm-hmm.

Jagger Waters (15:48)
What professionals in general and also filmmakers can borrow from the creator economy is being imperfect in public because that will actually, that is the journey that people want to join with. Or you're starting a new venture or you're making a film and you can be honest and say, I feel out of my element. These are the places where I'm inexperienced. Like, can you join me for this journey and like stay with me as I, as I grow.

And the more that I've learned about the creator economy working in digital management like I do now is realizing that that's what keeps an audience involved in your work, not just for 90 minutes in a movie, not just for 30 minutes in an episode of television, but for years.

Orlando Wood (16:33)
Yeah, there's somebody I've been emailing with a lot recently named Vicks Jagger and it's been confusing me a lot because I've been emailing with you and emailing with her and Jagger Waters Vicks Jagger. But it's sorry, that's unimportant, but she is very interesting. She's the head of AI at a large ad agency called Droga 5 and she her mother has recently started making these AI dance music video that are cat videos.

And her mother's, you know, much older and she's been putting them out and they're consistently now getting 2 million views every time she posts them. And she told me a story and I'll check with her that she's okay with me telling it. But she said she did one saying, you know what? Okay, mom, you know, I've been working in advertising a long time. I know what people want. I know how to make this cooler and better. And it flopped. Same audience, same channel, completely different uptake metrics.

Jagger Waters (17:05)
Yeah.

Wow.

Orlando Wood (17:26)
And it was just an indicator to me of you either know your audience and your audience knows you and they can tell if something's even just mildly false or mildly different and that the cheesiness that that you know that Vicks looked at her mother's videos through the lens of was perfect to her audience. And the moment she stepped into it. The audience was like something's different here and I don't like it.

Jagger Waters (17:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Orlando Wood (17:53)
And that was fascinating to me. And I think that the building in public, and everybody talks about it all the time, is the authenticity of showing up on social media, building in public, and letting people understand your foibles very early on, is something that everybody understands logically, but they're very afraid of. And I think it stops a lot of people entering into the creator economy.

Jagger Waters (17:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Definitely. And I think that that the dismantling of the perfect CEO is a result of the last 20 years of our behavior on the internet, which was taking people down for a half spirited comment that they made 10 years ago that may have been in poor taste, but also taken out of context and this kind of like backlash to cancel culture, which is like, well.

When you really look at power or you look at the people who have risen to the top of any industry or billionaires, is a lack of authenticity in having built something that looks so perfect. So I'm looking forward to a world where leaders, creators can get a relief from that pressure. And there was another point that I wanted to make, is,

I think that there's fear moving in different directions. And by that, mean, the creator economy is trepidatious about AI. know, like people who are creators don't want their likeness being used without their permission. They don't want AI influencers to replace what they've been doing for the last decade. And then on the other side, filmmakers are kind of afraid of the creator economy and AI or

If they're not afraid of it, there's just tension there. There is tension between these two industries. And I think if we had a round table, I think that if we got founders from both of those spaces in conversation, we'd find that our goals are similar, that they're all the same. And I think that it's a little bit of the, let's just keep fighting each other over the small stuff instead of, you know.

the kind of broader and larger issues that are affecting all of us. it's a bit, it feels a bit scapegoaty. It feels like there's a lot of, there's a lot of finger pointing right now between like whose fault is it is that entertainment is changing? You know, are we blaming tech? Are we blaming the creator economy? Are we blaming AI? There's a lot of blame being floated around. And I think that if we can take a deep breath, ask ourselves what we want to build, why we like telling stories.

Orlando Wood (19:57)
Yeah.

Mm.

Jagger Waters (20:21)
and how we can create a future where more stories are being told by more people with less gatekeeping. I think a lot of us are on same page. We just get lost in the details.

Orlando Wood (20:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's very fair. I'd like to talk about some of your work specifically, you know, I, you know, going through some of the highlights and, you can tell me if some of these are, are, you know, things you'd like to talk about more than or less, but you did this great late night, true crime thing. that's, know, that's a short that's, that's absolutely like super fun. very genre based. you know, then you've got things like your, your heartbreaker music video, which

I was there any even the band play stuff was that shot live action was any of it or is it all a.

Jagger Waters (21:07)
In the music video Heartbreaker, the musician playing his guitar that I cut to several times, that's real footage, but that's the only real footage. yeah, everything else is AI. So it's really like 90, 90, 10%, you know, 90 % AI, 10 % live action and, you know, trying to match, match what he wanted with the like.

Orlando Wood (21:14)
Okay, and everything else. Right, gotcha.

Yeah.

Jagger Waters (21:29)
gritty and sexy kind of like classic punk feeling with this footage. And it was a lot of fun and that that kind of unexpectedly became this calling card. And I've done some workflow breakdowns for it for a free pick and the folks at Imagine Art. So it's and I think it's performing well or it's it's resonating it. You know, I look at people's faces when they're watching it in an auditorium or at an event and

people are just smiling and having fun. It's not your sci-fi, cyberpunk explosion AI madness that we're used to seeing. It's something different. I even got asked about the male gaze about it because obviously I'm a woman, there is kind of a sexual energy to the video. But I've been told that it's different, that it feels like it wasn't with the male gaze. It feels a little...

Orlando Wood (22:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Jagger Waters (22:24)
different, it feels more like a woman made it, even though, and I don't know. So that was fun. And then the True Crime Short is was produced by Fairgrounds, the wonderful folks there, and they will have a, there will be distribution to be announced soon. So you will be to catch it somewhere, streaming television, all that. And that's exciting. It's exciting to make that jump from not just like YouTube or social media.

Orlando Wood (22:25)
Right, right.

Jagger Waters (22:50)
but to legitimate distribution. So I'm really excited for that this spring.

Orlando Wood (22:54)
Yeah, great. then, you know, also I saw, you know, obviously you collaborate a lot with Dream Lab and Verena Poum and John Finger over there. And that's an arm of Luma Labs, which has just completed an absolutely massive raise ⁓ there, you know, and they're doing some very interesting things. And I saw that you were working with Reza and those guys as well on this, you know, AI Wonderland, a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. And I guess in general, what I noticed

Jagger Waters (23:08)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (23:22)
both by looking at it and then also from your Instagram describing the people involved, was each one seems to have a different level of production intricacy from the standpoint of how many people, how many different departments, where you go, how do you approach differently different types and sizes of jobs where you go,

This is one where I need to bring in multiple departments effectively. And this is one that is an auteur's eye of something I'm going to do entirely myself.

Jagger Waters (23:50)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's well said. think in any larger production, like something that's going to be a feature or just larger scale, like it's kind of a given now that we're moving towards hybrid. So I think that the kind of like bigger, the consensus is we need to work with live actors, whether that's going to be for a voiceover or a virtual production capturing and mocap. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (24:13)
Unlike mocap, like I saw you did a thing that's

on your Instagram where you guys did a mocap of, I can't describe it well, but anyway, it was a really interesting mocap test that you did with DreamLab and I love that.

Jagger Waters (24:24)
Thanks. Yeah, mean, it's like motion capture kind of, yeah, yeah. Which

I think that that technology, the ability to do kind of motion capture is going to change filmmaking because you can take your iPhone and you can have like a stand-in object or use your own body as like the movements that you want for the character. And I kind of think it kind of feels like early filmmaking as a kid when you're just kind of using puppets and you're like gesturing as like, well, these are

This is the framing of the shot, but the pencil is actually supposed to be an airplane and you're moving it around, but you can do that now and then replace it with an actual airplane. So that's what like, I think the combination of, you know, motion transfer using live action footage, hybrid production, and then really high quality AI models for, you know, establishing shots, extreme closeups, VFX is that that's the, that's like the bigger picture production. And then as an individual.

It's kind of about how much of you, how much of that can you do on your own? Until you need to bring in a bigger team. But I found that anything between 30 seconds and five minutes, I can produce solo. But when you get even closer to 10 minutes, like you need a team, you need someone. Yeah, just you need another another person in the room.

Orlando Wood (25:37)
Yeah, and like late night true crime. mean, that's a five minute piece. I mean that as well all by yourself.

Jagger Waters (25:43)
Yes, that, everything, every detail. And I was so proud of it. Like I definitely, every project I walk away from, I have new skills. And that was a big one, because it was my first like solo Iron Man, like absolutely by myself. Luckily, I did grow up in a news station. My father was an editor and videographer. So he cut so many news packages and I would sit under the editing booth doing my homework. So I've over, I overheard so much.

Orlando Wood (26:08)
Right.

Jagger Waters (26:10)
news package,

Orlando Wood (26:10)
Yeah.

Jagger Waters (26:11)
true crime style content that that's kind I have those instincts. Like I understand what the, what the editing is doing, what the kind of like the continual hooks of, of telling the story of keeping someone engaged, like where to put the B-roll. So I kind of had those instincts from like early family life. And I'd really love to do more true crime and more, and more documentary work as well.

Orlando Wood (26:17)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's, funny. That's exactly the experience I had. I, I grew up a fat little kid with square eyes. I was raised in front of the TV and the first thing, the first job I ever had in, in creative industries at all was as an in-house editor. And so, and you're right. Like there's an instinct you have, you're like, feel like the cut should happen here. I feel like this should happen here. And you don't realize that by osmosis you have, you know, consumed enough to get a feel for something as you know, as

as tricky as editing can be.

Jagger Waters (27:07)
Yeah,

and it's so much practice. Like that's again about building in public, taking the risk to be like, let me submit my first short, whether you made that with or without AI, submitting that to festivals, seeing whether it is well received or not. You know, if you post it, like what response is it getting? And that's not about validation. It's not about likes. It's like, you know, are you, created something that feels...

Orlando Wood (27:17)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jagger Waters (27:30)
original enough to just be yours. Because that's the other thing I think a lot of there's a lot of AI noise out there where people are just kind of posting five second generations or you know a trailer that just doesn't there's a soullessness to some of this work. But there is also that 2 % of it really can make you feel something. And that's what I think people have to stay open minded to. And it's that

Orlando Wood (27:45)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jagger Waters (27:55)
comparison that we make all the time, which is like when everybody got an iPhone, it didn't make everybody a photographer. You know, there's hundreds of millions of images every day uploaded to the Internet and 90 % of them don't have any artistic or cinematic quality. If we can even make that judgment objectively, which who are we to really do that? So that that top 2 % of like high quality cinematic work.

Orlando Wood (28:01)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jagger Waters (28:20)
that does make you feel something that was crafted intentionally with someone who has an understanding of filmmaking, that work will continue to rise to the top. And I think we're just, it's a matter of attrition. It's a matter of like letting things kind of continue to evolve, but over the next three to five years, and maybe even sooner, we're going to see filmmakers using AI to not only like get their own work made, but merge more with the creator economy in that way.

Orlando Wood (28:49)
Yeah, so I mean, I'd love to get into the specifics of it. I mean, in terms of your core stack right now, like what tools are you touching every week? What's your way in? And how are you structuring that? I'd love to get get after this. I'd love to get that link from you about the workflow for your heartbreaker music video and put it in the show notes. ⁓

Jagger Waters (29:08)
Yeah, yeah, I think,

I mean, I'm a creator. I'm a, I'm a creative partner with free pick with CapCut with Dreamina. So, you know, free pick is just my favorite suite of tools because you can use so many different image and video generators there. You know, there's now like a node based spaces where you can attach LLMs to image generators and, you know, create in this dashboard that is so much more advanced than the early days of like.

Orlando Wood (29:14)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jagger Waters (29:35)
downloading from mid-journey and then like trying to Photoshop that and then like uploading that to Kling or whatever. So the speed at which you can create is just really increasing and FreePic makes that easier. CapCut is what I've initially learned how to edit on because it's very intuitive. They also have a suite of AI tools. Like people might not know this, but CapCut does have AI tools that you can use.

Orlando Wood (29:40)
Yeah.

Jagger Waters (29:57)
And I'm putting together some materials to help CapCut present at South by Southwest this year. So if you're going to be in Austin, check that out and come learn the, not just the, not just the editing side of CapCut, but the whole creative suite.

Orlando Wood (30:06)
Awesome.

Wow, great. And so, I mean, in your, you know, and obviously, you know, the disclaimer of, know, you're obviously a core creator with them, but in terms of like a, you know, a group of people who might be starting out or they've, you know, they've, they've prompted a few little clips here and there, but like they're kind of going, I've got a broader idea of something I have in my mind, whether it's a short, slightly longer or whatever, what would be your way in right now? You know, looking at the tool stack as it exists today, what would be your

ideal tool stack.

Jagger Waters (30:46)
Well.

I can talk about the tool stack, but also the skill building that I think is just as important for someone if you don't have a background in film. You you didn't study film, it's new. Maybe the most you've done is shoot some videos on your iPhone. Like if that's where you're coming from, I think that your skill set should be built on a foundation of filmmaking. So whether you're going to watch YouTube videos or documentaries about film or start understanding, you know, what

Orlando Wood (30:49)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Great.

Jagger Waters (31:16)
cinematography really is, how it's an important tool of storytelling. you know, why are you cutting from a close up to a super wide? Why are you using a Dutch angle? Historically, how has that been used and what does it mean? That is such an essential foundation in education, regardless of the tools that you're using. So I would start with that. And then once that has been built and probably even challenge yourself to shoot, even though I was just using that as an example.

Orlando Wood (31:34)
Yeah. ⁓

Jagger Waters (31:43)
Grab your iPhone, try to make a short film without any AI. Use, I don't care if you're using stuffed animals, if you're using plants in your house, if it's you acting with a friend in your kitchen. Like make a short film, you don't have to post it, but get yourself and like to understand, I have all of this footage.

Orlando Wood (31:46)
Mm.

Jagger Waters (32:03)
Let me upload that to my computer. Let me label it, put it in different folders, put that in your editing timeline. Understand what the workflow of editing can look like in an organized way before you start clouding your brain with like AI tools. And once you have that baseline foundation, then start image generating and, you know, grab, you know, create a consistent character. You learn how to use nano banana. You know, the stack that I kind of recommend is.

Orlando Wood (32:03)
Mm-hmm.

Jagger Waters (32:31)
Definitely Nano Banana, definitely an aggregator like FreePic where you can play with many different image generators, many different video generators to experiment and understand what their strengths and weaknesses are. And then again, download your video clips as you create them, label them as, you know, it's pre-limp sync, it's post-lip sync, it's upscaled. ⁓ But, you know, to just list off the tools that I use.

Orlando Wood (32:53)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jagger Waters (32:58)
for all this work is definitely Nano Banana, Cling 3.0, Dreamina for C Dance 2.0, which just came out, and C Dream 5, which is coming out soon, and Topaz Labs for upscaling, or I mean, honestly, FreePix Upscaler, theirs in the app is really, really good for video and image upscaling.

And the reason you scale for people who don't know, like every time when you take an AI image or a regular image and you put it into a video generator, it's going to flatten the quality. So if you, need a very high resolution image that will then get flattened a little bit and look more realistic, and then you have to upscale that. So it's really kind of, we haven't, um, ironed out that, that workflow yet, but that's kind of, that's the stack. And I don't know, there's, there's so much more. There's, know, like there's JSON prompting, which some people say is better.

Orlando Wood (33:19)
Great.

Jagger Waters (33:48)
I know, I've done both. think it's, I have a humanities brain. I think in kind of, you know, more poetic writing humanities way. So, now prompting is that, is being able to communicate with a computer, you know, without a background in computer science. Like we taught computers natural language. That's what using an LLM is. And that's huge because that means people with my background.

Orlando Wood (33:57)
Yeah.

Jagger Waters (34:15)
can actually start using these tools that felt impossible because no, like I don't code and I don't use ComfyUI and I never will.

Orlando Wood (34:18)
Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

Right. Yeah. I mean, I find that like, Jason prompting, you know, obviously worked incredibly well and then the models get better and then Jason prompting works really well for certain things. And then the models get better and it's sort of, you know, you can, and as well, I mean, the other hack is turn this prompt into a Jason prompt, please. And then you sort of, yeah. Yeah.

Jagger Waters (34:35)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, well, that's how I was doing it. Like dumping a paragraph and being like,

this is just like my brain dump paragraph of what I'm looking for. I turn it into a JSON prompt, use that. I don't know. It depends on, I think that if you're just getting started, you got to experiment, you know?

Orlando Wood (35:00)
Yeah. mean, you know, one of the big questions that I think is like, it's largely being sort of, you know, that was being solved with Lora's. I feel like that's going away a little bit, but character consistency across scenes. How are you, how are you tackling that? What, what, what state in the development of that are we at right now? Are you still training your Lora's on every single production design, location, ⁓ know, characters, et cetera?

Jagger Waters (35:19)
So.

No! I-

I just this morning was able to experiment with Dreamina and there's an agent feature for us in the creator program. I'm not sure if it's public yet, but basically it's close to what I've been wanting for a year, which is just a coverage machine. I want to upload two or three images of a location that look good to me and then just be like, give me 50.

different angles, you know, of everything, know, I mean, aerial shots, extreme close up, the whole thing, like, so I can create like an entire cinematic world and then use that accordingly. And it's, I would say it's pretty close. So I was playing it with it this morning and I was like, you know, like give me just a simple prop, like give me multiple angles of this, of this location. And it did pretty good. Yeah. And NanoBanana, mean, you know, for not...

Orlando Wood (36:10)
Wow, great.

Jagger Waters (36:15)
For not having learned Photoshop, Naio No Banana is a gift. ⁓ Although I think that we're gonna get, we're very close to like natural language prompting version of Photoshop. ⁓

Orlando Wood (36:19)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah, I know. I'm

sure. I guess, you know, one of my questions is I always think that there's a, you know, especially with with online AI content and and the discussion between online or creator content and studio and and sort of large creative production. I always find it's very easy to stand next to something and go, yes, I meant to do that versus the differentiation between standing next to something and say, I meant to do that.

however it came out and then actually taking what's in your mind's eye and being able to express that on screen. And I feel like you could really tell the difference. You know, I think of that sea dance video of Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt. I'm never quite sure how much control they had over the choreography of that fight. It was probably just make these two fight. And then they went, look at what we did. You guys are cooked because we've we've, you know, like, look at what we did. And it's like, well,

But you didn't specifically make that fight happen the way it happened. And that's still a golf. You know how and just naturally there is even in all production workflows, you write a script that is a lane as a piece of language data that gets turned into mood boards and storyboards. That is now a piece of visual data that is fundamentally different from the, you know, what you're going to shoot on the shoot day.

Jagger Waters (37:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (37:56)
We're always talking at the cross stages of different mediums talking to one another. You know, so guess my question is like, do you think we're ever going to get to a point where from a prompt, you're going to be able to express what's in your mind's eye or are we always going to be in this place that, you know, that, that, you know, professional creators are very used to, which is

constant specificity of lots of different things. I to me, it's the difference between Canva and Photoshop. Canva, very useful for lots of people, but it has a specificity problem. And if I really need to fix something, if I'm a professional, I've got to go into Photoshop where I have all the tools available to

Jagger Waters (38:26)
Mm-hmm.

A few years ago, I saw a video of a girl talking about like whether AI was going to replace graphic designers, right? Who take clients and create assets for them. And she basically said, you know, working with AI is directly dependent on your ability to express what you want. So she was saying that designers are safe because clients usually don't know what they want or they think they know what they want. You give it to them and they don't like it.

So I think that's what I mean. That's why I think that a background in writing, copywriting, editing, and being a good communicator, is the way, that's the mechanism that goes, that helps get whatever is in your mind's eye into the screen or onto the page or whatever it is, is your ability to communicate with natural language. So.

Orlando Wood (39:04)
That's a very good point.

Yeah.

Jagger Waters (39:28)
Yeah, I don't know what that prompt was for the viral Brad Pitt Tom Cruise fight, but I've already forgotten what happened in it. I think that that I don't know. I think we also have to learn a lot more about consciousness and we need advancements in in both science and understanding how our brains work, how we process information.

Orlando Wood (39:37)
Very good point.

Jagger Waters (39:54)
where thoughts and memories come from, which we still don't understand. And maybe at some point we can borrow from that structure and merge it with technology, not in a singularity sense, but just in like a, I don't know. Or maybe, I don't know, maybe taking everything I've ever created or every script I've ever written, like, yeah, could train an agent to.

kind of be me and continually take from my mind's eye by saying like, here's everything I've ever done. I just, I now feel inspired to create this kind of show or this kind of story. Give me an outline in my style. We can probably, we can already do that right now. So it's my reach to say that eventually we'll get.

Orlando Wood (40:37)
Yeah.

Jagger Waters (40:43)
just deeper, deeper, deeper into that. But I also don't want AI to ideate creatively. And when I work with an LLM, I end it with, do not come up with creative generative ideas. Ask me questions to fill in the gaps of what feels like it's missing here. So I always spin the relationship around with LLMs and I always say, I am the creative leader.

Orlando Wood (40:51)
No.

Jagger Waters (41:12)
You are not here to give me creative ideas. You are here to structure my creative thoughts. And asking it to ask you questions, especially if you're trying to develop an idea, is just a great hack. Because then you are being presented with a question like, I didn't think about that. I didn't think about whatever this, you know, whatever the narrative issue that I'm bumping up into.

Orlando Wood (41:32)
Yeah, it brings up a really good question about you as an artist and with all of the options for different styling or whatever else, are you trying to create a personal style or, you know, visual language? mean, looking at your work, it's all very disparate and different. Are you really focused on story? Are you focused on trying to

play with the next new tool is in seeing what creativity comes out of you. What's how are you interacting with these tools as an artist?

Jagger Waters (42:03)
I've always been interested in just doing my version of every single genre. My version of...

of any different kind of content really. Like there's my version of a micro drama, my version of horror, my version of sci-fi, and the different...

Orlando Wood (42:22)
But just

a quick one, when you say my version, in terms of the tuning fork in your heart, is, you going, it's my storytelling take on this genre and I wanna match the genre, or are you saying I visually wanna move it to some other place? When you say my version, what does that mean to you?

Jagger Waters (42:43)
what I mean is perspective and usually a sense of humor. And I mean, in Heartbreaker, the music video, you might not see humor in it, but there's a playfulness.

that I experienced when I was creating it. And I mean, this question is kind of reminding me of a really important shift that I've experienced internally over the last two years, which is I'm becoming significantly less accomplishment focused, and I'm just more focused on what my daily and hourly experience is of being a person. And I used to think that when artists said stuff like that, I kind of thought it was bullshit.

As I get older, the more I'm like, no, it really is about how I feel when I wake up and what I'm thinking about when I'm watching the sunrise or petting my dog and these private intimate moments with my experience of being alive that are so uniquely mine, no one could ever take it.

And I'm still in the early stages of my career as a filmmaker. I feel like I'm just getting started. So this is the earliest work and the, you know, the lowest, I guess, lowest quality work that I'm ever gonna produce because from here on out, I get to get more specific with that question and I get to kind of identify, yeah, how do I take just my general creative preferences?

that are connected to my experience of being a person, how do I give that something that is very unique and recognizable, where you see it and you go, that's Jagger. And that's the next stage for me. That's what the next two, three years is, is creating stuff that is so unquestionably me that you know it when you see it.

Orlando Wood (44:23)
Do you think some of that piece is because these tools allow you to fulfill yourself creatively? So many of the creatives I know are struggling in one way or another. I know great creatives at large agencies. Their ability to be happy is directly correlated to, did I get something on TV? Did I get a campaign out the door? Was my creativity expressed? And so many filmmakers I know, the ones that feel great are the ones that

Are constantly working and constantly gigging and jobbing and getting to do things and the ones that are and when they reach lulls or a job doesn't happen and they don't, they aren't creatively fulfilled. You know, it's harder for them to see the, the, know, the, the joy and the positivity of life. Do you find that that's true for you? That it's, it's part of it is these tools that your ability to constantly create. Helps with that.

Jagger Waters (45:18)
Yes.

I think that a lot of artists in any major city, but especially if you've had considerable amount of success that has brought you to a full-time job or an in-house role where you get to use your creative skills. I think that we, I noticed that I can see, I recognize the dissatisfaction in artists that have

been monetizing, have been relying on their creativity to be a continual engine of monetization. And I think the beautiful thing that I'm experiencing with AI for filmmaking is not having pressure on myself to be like, well, this is not a budget of $200,000. I didn't have to convince eight executives and wait two years to produce this thing. The pressure isn't on.

Because the pressure isn't on I get to create something that I just want to make and If other people enjoy it and want to watch it, that's great And if not, I am NOT going to live under the pressure of having to monetize my creativity constantly because the demand and The scale that we have to meet to do that is I think is unrealistic and

I know I have another thought, but my brain's like kind of foggy. Let me think. I want to throw in one last like creative thought, is like...

Orlando Wood (46:41)
Go for it. Take your time.

Jagger Waters (46:44)
The greatest gift that I ever gave my creativity was to remove the pressure of monetizing and succeeding. And that brings me back to something that a mentor told me when I was a teenager, which was the more specific you get with the story you're telling, the more universal it actually becomes. And it's weird because I used to think that statements like

Orlando Wood (47:06)
Mm-hmm.

Jagger Waters (47:09)
I'm just creating for me. I'm making what I want to make. You whether that was a big musical artist says that or a painter says that or a filmmaker says that. I always thought that as like, well, but you can't just create for you because then how would your work ever be successful? But that's exactly how it works. You make something that is so. It's so personal. And you're not attached to the outcome of how it's received. You're not attached to whether it's going to sell.

And that, I don't know if that's law of attraction. I don't know if that's like the mystery of the universe, but. ⁓

Orlando Wood (47:44)
Well, when you're

having a direct relationship with your consumers and it's not based on whether that studio made or lost money, you know, when you're having a direct relationship with your consumers, there's many more ways to win. They either really resonated with your story. They either really like the piece of media or they liked your story. They like that you tried. There's so many more ways to get them to to buy into you that that as as much as you're

Jagger Waters (47:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (48:11)
failing publicly, you're also winning on a lot, on a lot broader basis. Is that true? Or have I just talked out of turn?

Jagger Waters (48:16)
Yeah, like, I think

so. I mean, I think the last 10 years, you when I look at how I felt, you know, when you've when you graduate school and you're and you're thrown out into the reality of the industry and you're like, oh, shit, I'm hemorrhaging money. I have to figure out how to like, be a person and like, be alive, stay like, pay rent, pursue, know, get the get the title that I've been excited about. And when you do that, and you're living under

under just this pressure that can kill creativity. And I think there was a big turning point for me a few years ago where I was like, I'm not even enjoying the thing that I thought I loved. And that my relate, I realized my relationship with writing, my relationship with filmmaking, my relationship with anything creative was actually very fraught. And there was so much tension in my body when I would just sit down and try to

write a script or finish a feature or early on like making an AI film. Like there was just pain involved and I was like, where is this coming from? And it came from a decade of feeling like if this isn't perfect, I can't do this anymore or it's not gonna sell. And there's so much pressure to sell, to get your IP out the door to get

you know, a TV show with a huge A-list celebrity attached to it and like, not even for, not for the gratification, just for the financial survival. Like at a certain point, desire for success is not about the ego. It is about surviving in this world that is becoming exponentially more expensive. And I had to ask those questions a few years ago where it was like, well, what do I really love and how can I protect what I love? I have to protect my writing from

Orlando Wood (49:50)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jagger Waters (50:10)
the machine of commercial monetization while also pursuing that.

Orlando Wood (50:15)
Yeah. Needing the commercial. Yeah, exactly. Well, so let's talk about that.

Let's let's talk about that. What is the revenue mix? How you know when you've got your audience, you've built it a little bit. How is that business side of it running?

Jagger Waters (50:32)
Well, that's a good question. think that the issue that hasn't been addressed directly for, let's say, like a young filmmaker who's like finishing film school and they're like, okay, I want to work in film and TV, but I know I need to lean into social media and I need to create like some kind of like series or character that's going to exist on TikTok or Instagram. And the problem with

doing that is at first, it's going to be very time consuming and it's not going to make you money. And if you've built on social media at all, you understand how slow the process is from zero followers to a thousand to 10,000 to beyond. That takes a lot of time and it's a lot of, it's a big investment. And when people say, you know, just quit your job and like build on social, I think they're ignoring the growing pains from

Orlando Wood (51:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jagger Waters (51:21)
zero to a hundred thousand. And how can you create balance in your life where you're not relying on the construction of that channel to give you money right away because you can't?

and then you're not even gonna like doing it anymore. How can you structure your life where you have a foundation, you have income, you have a job that you can work with, that you enjoy enough, and you can rely on that, and you can use that as your foundation, and then build something creatively without pressure. And I think that when I look at the balance of my life, being freelance, being full time, is...

I need a balance of both where it's like to take on a creative project that I'm producing for, you know, for someone else or helping to tell their story with AI like I do with creating pitch trailers sometimes or short films like the True Crime Project. Like I can enjoy that process more because it is not under the microscope. It is not life or death. It is not about, you know, meeting rent or not. It's...

It really gets to be play and exploration and curiosity. So to answer the question, I would say if you're going to build, acknowledge that there's going to be a period of time where you can't, you have to pour so much work into it and you can't monetize it first. You can get there eventually, but you have to enjoy your life without that success. You have to have a baseline financially without that success.

in order to even playfully interact with it. And that's my opinion. That's the thing that no one talks about, I think. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (52:54)
But it's the. Yeah, but it's the fuck you money, right? It's it's no, I

don't want to take that job. That job doesn't interest me. and I have a little buffer whether that that revenue stream is fully supporting your life or whether it's just adding a layer of protection to your life and a little bit of freedom. think that that's the the alternative is you come out of college or you don't go to college, whatever it is. And, you know, the way it worked for me is.

I was handing out flyers for a comedy show outside the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. I mean, that's how I was making the little bit of money I could make to be able to survive. then I got a job. Luckily, I got a job at an incredible agency as their in-house editor. But I could have just as easily gone into an agency that was doing terrible work. And if that had been the case, my entire career trajectory might have been different. I just lucked into one of the best ad agencies in the world.

Jagger Waters (53:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, so much of it's luck. And I mean, like, I'm grateful that the trajectory that I have got. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (53:50)
You know, and yeah. But I was broke for two full years of of not

knowing how I was going to eat at the end of every month.

Jagger Waters (54:00)
Yeah. And I mean, I'm grateful for the path that I followed, but if I could do it again, I think the thing that I would do is I would look at the job market that I was emerging into and say, what trade skill do I need to make the most amount of money in controlled, small chunks? And by that, mean like getting really good at editing, know, 12, 15 years ago.

Orlando Wood (54:26)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jagger Waters (54:29)
being a tattoo artist, a really good one who builds like a community and a social and following. Like how can you make very large chunks of money in short amounts of time that you control? I think that that is a really essential balance for creative people. And I don't think we talk about it at all. We just talk about like, it's like, like take your nine to five or like create in the off hours. And it's like, especially when you're just learning about.

Orlando Wood (54:48)
Yeah.

Jagger Waters (54:57)
how your creativity works, like that's gonna, it's gonna suppress you. So this next generation of creative people, I think are going to be really interesting entrepreneurs. And I don't think that their work lives are gonna be structured like yours or mine at all.

Orlando Wood (55:11)
Well, let's talk about that. I mean, we're obviously sort of near time, so I just want to talk about that. I mean, what do you think if we are going to prognosticate about the future? What do you think the creator economy looks like for both artists and influencers, creators and artists? Is that different amongst those three? Are they all going to be one type of person? And what do you think it looks like in the future?

Jagger Waters (55:37)
I do think it's merging into one thing, storytelling the ability to communicate, making content, communicating through digital platforms. That is the foundation of commerce now. So whatever your job is gonna be, whatever...

Whatever you want to do, those are the new like, that's the core curriculum. And at College of Influence with GMB, with my team, like that's what we're doing. We're going into higher education programs and saying, look, like it's great that you're providing this education about this field, this art form, whatever, but you have to bolster that education with creator economy and an awareness of AI so that your students are actually prepared for life after graduation.

Orlando Wood (56:20)
Well, that's amazing. Jagger, thank you so much for chatting with me. I really appreciate it so much. Is there anything you've got coming up that you're really excited about or projects you're working with you want to kind of whet our whistle with?

Jagger Waters (56:23)
Thank you.

Sure, yeah, well, you can see me at South by Southwest with the creator track with CapCut if you'll be there. I will also be at VidCon this summer presenting a workflow. So, and there will certainly be things that pop up in between. So those are the big events that I've got going on and the release of the True Crime Short with Fairground, there's going to be a streaming distribution soon enough.

Orlando Wood (56:57)
Great, well the moment that comes out, do let us know. We'll add it to the show notes of this and we'll put some more clips of this episode out on our socials and stuff when that happens and try to get you at least, I don't know, one more viewer. We can't do much, but we can do our best.

Jagger Waters (57:07)
great. Amazing. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah. then, you know, feel free to reach out to me, you know, if anyone's curious about obviously like working with AI, the creator economy, my general perspective on this stuff. I'm happy to chat.

Orlando Wood (57:25)
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Jagger. I really appreciate it.

Jagger Waters (57:29)
Thanks Orlando!

Orlando Wood (57:30)
Bye bye.