The Artist, Not The AI - Cannes Winning The Real Real "Am I Real" and Gaia "Hidden Heartbreak"

Sebastian Strasser (00:00.184)
How are you guys? Thank you. I’m good. I just had trouble to set up my phones, my headphones, because they always want to go with my iPhone and not my computer. But it’s working now. Maybe I some power. Nice to meet you. You’re Orlando, right? Sacha, can speak German, actually, if we want to speak about you.

Orlando Wood (00:02.318)
Good.

Orlando Wood (00:08.171)
No worries. All right, great.

Nice to meet you too. That’s right.

Sascha Peuckert (00:18.838)
Yes, it’s two against three, so maybe we just do it in German.

Orlando Wood (00:21.326)
Yeah, go for it. We have a fantastic translator.

Sebastian Strasser (00:22.03)
Go for it. We have a fantastic translator. Hello? What’s happening now? we’re getting a bit of echo now.

Orlando Wood (00:29.092)
Hello?

we’re getting a bit of echo now.

Sebastian Strasser (00:37.784)
Hello?

Orlando Wood (00:40.164)
Hello? Yes, that works. no, we’re still getting the echo.

Sebastian Strasser (00:40.654)
Yes, that works. I’m on the computer now. Say something.

Orlando Wood (00:49.55)
Hello, testing one, two, three.

Sebastian Strasser (00:51.82)
working, now you’re on my headphones. I can’t take them off, that’s a big mistake.

Sascha Peuckert (00:52.716)
testing. Perfect.

Orlando Wood (00:53.934)
Great. Okay. All right, fantastic. Well, I’ve started recording. I’ve started recording, but we’re not started yet. So don’t worry. But yeah, thank you so much for doing this.

Sascha Peuckert (00:57.685)
You

Sebastian Strasser (00:58.894)
How is this going, Orlando? You’re the…

Sebastian Strasser (01:09.742)
Thanks for having me. And nice to see Sasha again. We’ve been seeing quite a lot Sasha lately, right? Because of RealReal in the last couple of months.

Sascha Peuckert (01:11.51)
Thanks for having us, yes.

Orlando Wood (01:11.596)
Of course.

Sascha Peuckert (01:17.726)
Yes, we’ve been very fortunate to be on a lot of calls. I hope, I hope…

Orlando Wood (01:22.39)
Well, I can imagine that you guys, yeah, you guys will be on a lot of panels, I think, in the next year. Like, I think there will be a lot of people asking you to speak. You don’t do it.

Sascha Peuckert (01:32.298)
Hahaha

Sebastian Strasser (01:32.685)
I don’t want, I’m out. Now I’ve done this too much in the last two years. I feel like a charismatic creature in sandals running around and selling, selling spiritus data, you know? And no, no, I’m out, really. I’m a little bit tired about it because I mean, the conversation we use is gonna be fun and I’m looking forward to this. But in general, those kind of panels in ITalks, I can tell you later if you want about it, but yeah. It’s a lot of…

Sascha Peuckert (01:41.612)
You

Orlando Wood (02:00.429)
Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (02:01.28)
anxiety and a lot of worries and I have very good reasons to see why that’s not a problem if you ask me.

Orlando Wood (02:08.792)
Yeah, well great. mean, so you know just a little bit of housekeeping. So we’ll get started. Will do two things. One is will do. I’ll do a proper intro. I’ll introduce you both. I just want to make sure that I’ve got your titles or how you wanted to be referred to. Sebastian saying you’re a director at reset instinct and the founder of lipstick and Sasha. I’m saying your executive producer at team one. Is that accurate or do you want to change anything?

Sebastian Strasser (02:36.056)
For me it’s not accurate, I’m not at Sting anymore. So you can say, I’ve in North Denon for 300 years. So I’m actually in UK, I’m with Dove, which is a friend of yours. Yeah, so I just moved to Magna in UK and in America I’m with Reset and the rest is Lipstick mainly. I’m also with Andre in France, but then it gets too detailed. It’s mostly, know, Lipstick and Reset is important because Reset is America.

Orlando Wood (02:38.579)
okay. How did Daniel take that?

Orlando Wood (02:44.97)
Yeah, me too.

Orlando Wood (02:49.77)
with Magna, yeah, fantastic.

Orlando Wood (03:00.792)
Right, right, right. Yeah, I know I’m right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what do we, how do we call Lipstick? Cause I know that a lot of people have been calling it an AI production company, but it seems like much more than that. It seems like a regular production company as well as being AI. How do you want that referred to?

Sebastian Strasser (03:05.824)
And Lipstick is my company and the rest, whatever you want.

Sebastian Strasser (03:22.786)
I mean, Lipstick is a production company. It’s a film production company. Like anybody else, we’re just very, very specialized in Lipstick. I also open up now Lipstick Tech, so we’re also investing in tech. And we are also VFX companies, so we are all in one studio. Basically, just for you as an explanation, we do everything from concept to pixel. It’s VFX, AI, production, everything. It’s a studio. Asking a good question, I don’t have the answer.

Orlando Wood (03:42.914)
Yeah, great, okay.

Orlando Wood (03:49.378)
Okay, that’s okay.

Orlando Wood (03:57.285)
Cool. And Sasha, you’re cool with Executive Producer Team One? Great. So we will do, I’ll do the intro, then we’ll just start talking. At the end, I’ll do a sort of showbiz goodbye, because what we’ll need to do is we’ll say goodbye, but we’ll all stay on. Like, don’t shut your laptops or anything, because what’s happening is everything’s recording locally. So if there is even like something cuts out for a second or two, it’ll all be kind of fixed because everything’s recording locally.

Sascha Peuckert (04:01.888)
Yeah, it’s perfect.

Sebastian Strasser (04:16.93)
Beautiful.

Orlando Wood (04:26.286)
But then when we kind of finish the recording, it’ll go from your laptops and upload to the cloud. So that’s just the one reason. Just don’t shut the laptop or close your website or anything like that. And then the only other thing is I’ve got my notes up here. So if you seem, you’re, you know, if you’re answering a question and I look like I’m online shopping, I’m not online shopping. I’m sort of deleting questions and moving them around and figuring what I’m going to ask you next. So.

Sebastian Strasser (04:37.4)
Good.

Sebastian Strasser (04:48.494)
Mm.

Orlando Wood (04:55.236)
If I look kind of, you know, like I’m lost or confused or anything, don’t pay any attention to me.

Sebastian Strasser (05:01.934)
I don’t think I see that because your eyes look on a computer. It should be like prompter reading, right? Like on TV.

Orlando Wood (05:06.698)
Exactly. That’s how I have it. It’s sort of right in my eye line. So, but if I start squinting or doing anything like that, don’t worry. You’re not confusing. Okay, great. Okay, great. Well, I’m ready to get started if you guys are.

Sebastian Strasser (05:16.236)
I’ll make some notes as well, so I’ll join you.

Sebastian Strasser (05:24.288)
Yeah, let’s get going.

Orlando Wood (05:25.196)
Okay, great. All right, great, guys. I’m so excited to have you on the podcast today. Sebastian Strasser, director at Reset and Magna and founder of Lipstick, and Sasha Pukert. Sorry, actually, that’s one thing I should say. Pukert, Pukert, how should I? Poykert.

Sascha Peuckert (05:25.37)
Let’s go.

Sascha Peuckert (05:41.224)
It’s probably good, but it’s okay. I’ve heard it so many different ways.

Sebastian Strasser (05:44.632)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (05:47.567)
Hi. Okay. I’ll start off again. Guys, I’m so excited to have you on today. Sebastian Strasser, director at Reset and Magna and founder of Lipstick, and Sasha Poikert, executive producer at Team One. Thank you guys so much for being on the podcast.

Sebastian Strasser (05:49.23)
Shoo shoo shoo.

Sascha Peuckert (05:51.276)
You

Sebastian Strasser (05:53.537)
Sascha Peuckert (06:05.174)
Thank you so much for having us. It’s wonderful to be here.

Sebastian Strasser (06:08.428)
Very happy to be here. Thank you.

Orlando Wood (06:08.504)
Well, well good, I’m glad, because I am thrilled to have you, because you-

You’ve done two pieces of work, specifically the real real. That’s why we’re originally having this conversation. But the real real to me is it does one of the things that everybody said may never be possible with AI, which is creating a film that would make me jealous. That when I saw it, went, fuck, I wish I had made that. And that is, you know, that’s the type of praise I think you want from anybody in the industry.

But Sebastian, you’ve also made a film for a brand named Gaia, which is an animal rights film. And it’s so emotive. And so I just wanted to talk to you guys because it seems that you’ve cracked the two biggest things to crack. One, creating a piece of work that makes somebody jealous. And two, creating an AI film, empowered film, that makes me feel something and, you know, I mean, on the verge of tears nearly. So yeah, I just wanted to kind of…

say, well done, and then secondly, how did you do it?

Sascha Peuckert (07:19.052)
Well, thank you. I had this one sentence, sort of like try to memorize it. But I feel like for the real real, I feel like there’s something very interesting happening right now in the world. We have this moment where we can do very real looking things at the tip of our fingers. At the same time, there’s this friction of like, we’ve never known really what is real.

Sebastian Strasser (07:19.118)
Should I start, Sasha? Or you want to start?

Sascha Peuckert (07:47.82)
And the real real is an authenticated luxury consigner or resaler. And so that’s basically where our creative team started. And they had this idea of a little tomorrow, more reality together with Sebastian. And we, it was a very sort of fluid workflow because the creative team already had a relationship with Sebastian. Sebastian and I had the chance to work in the past and that was a very interesting intro for working

Orlando Wood (07:47.875)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (07:52.878)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (08:10.218)
Mm. Mm.

Yeah.

Sascha Peuckert (08:17.614)
with AI because I feel like the boundaries of the steps that we have used to or have learned over the last, I don’t know, 100 years of filmmaking are changing dramatically. So that was very interesting for me to experience. Sebastian, how did you feel about that?

Sebastian Strasser (08:39.266)
I mean I would go a little bit back to what actually Arundel also asked, which is how do we do this? How can you get AI to perform on this level? And my first answer would be is because we use craft. know, Sascha also learned it the beautiful way or the hard way, you have to say yourself Sascha, how much work you have to put into orchestrating all the instruments you need to create a film with AI.

Orlando Wood (08:48.59)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (08:53.848)
Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (09:07.348)
And I think for me it’s actually funny because we invested a lipstick so early into AI and I got my hands so early dirty with it, you know.

Orlando Wood (09:12.739)
Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (09:16.014)
I mean, I remember doing my first AI commercial two years already again, or two years already, and it was a full AI campaign worldwide. And I remember my girlfriend driving me at night to the hospital because I was waking up and everything was turning around vertical because I literally was spending 18 hours a day in front of the computer with 10 AI artists around the world having to explain every little thing. So what I sometimes say to explain people is, and I’m not the only one, there’s many great directors.

Orlando Wood (09:20.676)
Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (09:46.135)
in the world who own the craft, not just visual makers, not just people who have done a commercial or two or three, or have been successful even as visual makers, proper directing, imagining like a conductor who has an orchestra of 85 people in front of him and he can play every single instrument. That’s the only way how AI performing on this level, taming it, I sometimes call it a sand worm, because it’s so powerful, but if you don’t take care, it eats up the film.

Orlando Wood (10:02.692)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (10:08.462)
Yeah. Right.

Sebastian Strasser (10:13.932)
and spits you out in the desert. So you need to know how to run the sand worm. I mean, we can go later into the details if you want, but I stay on the metaphorical level for now, to get it to, to bring it to a touchdown where you want. So that’s why for me, it’s actually sometimes really funny when I, when I look at all the conversation that’s happening about AI, because the foundation models, as I call them sand worms, they are basically remixed, piles of generic data, right? It’s just filtered average noise.

Orlando Wood (10:22.265)
Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (10:43.414)
rendered as pixels. It’s fast, it’s impressive, and completely indifferent to taste. all the industries watching this, red bull kits filled, drinking at night red bull kits, calling themselves AI artists or prompters, hitting enter like it’s a drum roll until suddenly it’s a film. And I go like, yeah, you didn’t make a film, you ordered one. It’s like microwaving a frozen pizza. It’s literally like microwaving a frozen pizza and calling yourself a chef.

Orlando Wood (11:02.499)
Yeah.

No, exactly.

Orlando Wood (11:12.3)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (11:13.55)
And so I’m not against it. It’s incredible technology, but let’s not confuse access with autorship. and I’m actually the last thing I want to say I was really surprised for two years that I was so alone as one of you know and all my friend directors and I won’t name them because they’re great, know directors on the circuit. Friends of mine, partners of mine, competitors of mine on the the on the Champions League level of doing commercials. Now they call me two years later and say like, Sebastian, how do we do this?

And I go like, it’s just a tool, right? Just own the tool and then you can use it in the orchestration of whatever you want to do, good or bad.

Orlando Wood (11:42.691)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (11:51.065)
Yeah, because I mean, it’s funny. I always say that is like there’s a big difference between standing the other side of a prompted output, pointing at it going, I meant to do that. It’s like, no, you didn’t. You didn’t mean to do that. You got something that got close to what you kind of like, and you’re calling it your own. You’re calling it your authorship. And it’s very different. And I gave a I ran a panel at the USC’s Entertainment Technology Center about a month and a half ago. And I opened with a question where I said, who here has tried to make

Sebastian Strasser (12:01.324)
No. No.

Orlando Wood (12:20.864)
some sort of film with AI and everybody raises their hand and I said, who has found it easy? And everybody put their hand down. And it’s just, know, when you’re talking to people who make this, you know, make film and entertainment and commercials, it’s not easy. The specificity you get in a production that you’re used to, you can’t just accept from prompting an AI out.

Sebastian Strasser (12:32.216)
Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (12:42.734)
But it’s all right what you’re saying, but making films, or let’s say, do we stay in commercials, yeah? For now. It’s also not easy. But as a director, you’re supported by amazing head of departments. On the level, know, Sasha, I do commercials. Sasha, before we’ve done the rear wheel, which was the last one, Lexus, who was our DP? Linus Sandgren.

Sascha Peuckert (13:01.408)
Yes. Yes.

Sebastian Strasser (13:02.85)
Yeah, just happened to have shot Dune, got an Oscar for Lala, and did James Bond. The one before we shot was Hoyte van Hoytema, got an Oscar for Oppenheimer. So I don’t want to name drop these guys, but these are the head of departments, production designers, stylists, casting directors, DPs. These are the people we go on the field and play ball. And now here I am as a director with some artists, and I don’t want to speak not respectfully, but mostly young people who don’t have that education.

Orlando Wood (13:10.188)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (13:21.272)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (13:24.612)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (13:29.632)
And I say this example sometimes when I talk to Linus and I say, hey Linus, I’m imagining a visceral hand-held camera and I want to say a mood and I say something like, maybe like Robbie Miller.

Orlando Wood (13:38.83)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (13:40.559)
Yeah, he not only knows who Robbie Mueller is, and a great DP, Rest In Peace, but he also asked me then back and says, Seb, do you mean Robbie Mueller in Breaking the Waves, or Robbie Mueller in The Idiots, because it’s two different handheld styles. And I said this once in a call, and I said that with an AI artist somewhere in the world or next to me, I might say I want the camera to quarry like Fellini, 8 1 1, and he might understand Fettuccine instead of it.

Orlando Wood (13:43.758)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (13:54.647)
Yeah, yeah.

Orlando Wood (14:05.578)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Sebastian Strasser (14:05.836)
Yeah, so there’s a level of education and know-how and expertise, yeah? We cannot expect to simply be a taste level that can be replaced by a machine or some young prompters who help you do a film. It’s a completely different workflow. And it’s actually more, as you said, it’s not easy, it’s even harder because it’s more demanding for the director to know what he wants.

Orlando Wood (14:19.62)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (14:29.42)
Yeah, to very brief, precisely what he wants and actually what I said in the beginning, be able to orchestrate in the absence of all the head of departments on its own camera, framing, composition, casting, deeper eye sockets, performance, acting, styling, lighting. You need to know all of that and if you don’t know that, you’re not a director, you’re just, as I said, a pizza maker.

Orlando Wood (14:29.474)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (14:36.74)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, well, I’d love to kind of talk about, because Sasha, you brought it up in terms of the creative development and Sebastian, you’re you’re talking so much in terms of the the actual production. I’d love to kind of start in that creative development place, because it seems like what’s what’s so fascinating about the real real is it’s a real meld of.

idea and craft, you know, both are all coming together. Idea is being, AI is being used in execution. It’s being used in the creative strategy as well. Talk me through, okay, so, so from the creative development standpoint, you probably, knew you wanted to use AI. Sebastian is, in, you know, in putting into that. The, the, idea is so intrinsic from the execution. How does that start into creative development? And then I’d like to kind of then

move out of that and then move into how it’s practically done, you know, once you’ve signed off the script.

Sascha Peuckert (15:48.192)
I think.

The idea when it was created was not intrinsic. We want to use AI as a tool. I think it was a reflection of what’s going on right now in the world and a creative idea and insight of the brand. The tool became basically the idea itself rather than a tool that we’re utilizing. Obviously having somebody like

Orlando Wood (15:56.28)
Right, okay.

Orlando Wood (16:15.62)
Mm-hmm.

Sascha Peuckert (16:19.106)
Sebastian at the height the craft that we needed to create that video that emotionally and perfectually and for the first 30 seconds till it starts glitching completely like Convinces you that this is real with a human persona that is fighting to be real and reflecting a real moment in time and that we’re seeing I think was very very core part of this so I think our the idea of you

Orlando Wood (16:28.462)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (16:42.35)
Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (16:45.486)
But I think that it came also from you, Sasha. It came also from you. I mean, not you personally, but the great team.

I want to mention Sabina and Carlo behind it, some of my favorite creatives in the world, and Chris, your ECD, which is amazing. in the first conversations we had, obviously from you already, you asked the question, can we do this partially in AI or in AI? And then basically me knowing, as I said, being dirty with my hands, knowing what is possible, which changes, as you know, Alandro, in the slip of time. Like for now, I’m redoing a commercial I was trying as research development to do a year ago, and I said to my client,

Sascha Peuckert (16:50.732)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (16:59.044)
Mm-hmm. Mm.

Orlando Wood (17:05.284)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (17:10.372)
Yeah. Yeah, of course. So fast.

Sebastian Strasser (17:20.528)
I can’t do and now I can and I’m redoing it now. But at that point when we talked, think half a year ago or something, at least like, okay, we can do this in full AI, let’s go for it. But I didn’t want to interrupt the session, go ahead.

Orlando Wood (17:23.3)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (17:30.21)
Yeah.

Sascha Peuckert (17:32.778)
No, no, no, you’re absolutely right.

Orlando Wood (17:32.868)
And where was the script at that stage? At what stage, Sasha, do you bring Sebastian in and go and start making that decision? Was the script fully locked off? You mentioned that Sebastian was a part of that creative development quite early on. Was it just from a practical standpoint, or was it also from creative ideation?

Sascha Peuckert (17:50.346)
Yeah, mean, Sebastian called out Sabina Hesse and Carlo Barretto, were the creators to come up with this idea. together with Chris, they sort of, we reached out very early on when we had an idea that we liked, there was interest from the clients to share with Sebastian. And then we developed the script in a very fluid way because we had that relationship existing. So that was very, very organically happening. Sebastian shared, and we had like a deck ongoing, one deck, I think we had like

thousand deck, mirror sites, Figma sites, whatever it was. We had hundreds of versions constantly. And that’s the one thing I think from a very interesting point of view from an EP on an agency side is that fluidity, how everything goes. There’s always a loop that happens constantly. And that management of endless possibilities becomes such a core part of how to navigate it and be able to deliver as well.

Orlando Wood (18:21.838)
Bye.

Sebastian Strasser (18:24.994)
concert development.

Orlando Wood (18:45.165)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (18:49.582)
Yeah.

Sascha Peuckert (18:50.19)
well. But I think I’m jumping already very much ahead in this.

Orlando Wood (18:55.094)
Mm-hmm. That’s okay. Yeah. Yeah, that’s okay. mean, yeah, wherever you think. Yeah, go ahead.

Sebastian Strasser (19:00.396)
Yeah, it’s the same. I don’t want to repeat what he said, but it was very early, I would say, the script. It’s probably even fun to read the script now, after this joyride of development. But I’m saying this in both ways. I’m not saying in a negative way that the script from the agency was not good, because from there on, we developed together as well. So it was very early on, roughly just the idea of a guy who pretends to be real and on the way.

Orlando Wood (19:07.012)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (19:13.401)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (19:20.803)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (19:26.734)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (19:28.232)
of pretending, on trying to show off, things break up. It was literally almost on that level with just one or two few ideas. But then from that point, structure and narrative arc, we all developed it together from there. We co-wrote it, I would say, right? It was not like agency writes a script, gets the director, director does his part. It was a teamwork where it doesn’t make sense anymore to finger point in good or bad who did what. We literally run on the field together and play ball.

Orlando Wood (19:32.29)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (19:38.648)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (19:43.608)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (19:48.494)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (19:52.293)
And that’s so great. I creatively, that’s so exciting. But as an ex-producer myself, I kind of go, well, yes, but at what point do I sign off the budget and go, this is the way we’re doing it. These are what the resources we have available for it. this is, mean, for us, Sasha, me, when I was at Biscuit or when I was at agencies like Wyden, I’m looking for a locked off script that I can budget.

It’s far more exciting when things are changing as you’re moving forward, but also as a producer, you need to know where are you going? It’s ready enough that I can say this is pretty much gonna be the budget. that’s like, where do you, how do you draw that line?

Sebastian Strasser (20:21.633)
And

Sebastian Strasser (20:30.508)
Yeah, but that’s a difference Orlando. That is why AI has bad things, but has also great things. It’s not so tied to the budget. You have a budget, but I was sitting in the edit, remember Sasha, three days or nights before delivery, and I can’t talk too much about it, but we have our own, I call it Cockpit at Lipstick, which is a new kind of workflow. Imagine Cockpit like in Formula One, there’s the engine.

Orlando Wood (20:35.396)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (20:43.149)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (20:51.053)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (20:54.722)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (20:55.31)
Right? It’s powerful and you built a cockpit in the chassis to have the car drive on the level of Formula One. So if you have a cockpit which allows me, if I can say this, yes, allows me basically to be in the edit with my editor and at a certain point go into my cockpit and say, need, be on the phone with the creatives or not, just on my own because I could talk to them in one hour and tell to my AI agents which are all integrated in the cockpit, I need an image of Vincent, is the name of our character.

Orlando Wood (21:01.262)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (21:15.661)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (21:18.99)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (21:24.706)
The whole system knows how Vincent looks already, knows exactly how he’s styled. And I say, I need an image of Vincent at the Burning Man. Yeah, or at the Burning Man.

Orlando Wood (21:27.491)
Yeah.

Yeah.

As a muppet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (21:37.627)
Because it knows the Burning Man, knows the thing, it knows everything I’ve done so far. And then literally in two minutes I get that image, even just as a still, not prompted well, not just as a give it to my editor, test it out in the edit, see if it works at the place I want, then I like it, then I get my eye lead, and then they figure it out, and then you go into the details of angles, there’s certain kind of 3D models we’re working on so I can fix the angles almost like on set, where I can run around with the viewfinder like it used to be. So it’s very much about trying to apply

Orlando Wood (21:52.91)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (21:59.141)
Mm-mm.

Yeah.

Great.

Sebastian Strasser (22:07.52)
workflows and the precision driving, I come back to Formula One, which we used to have in the old workflows and apply to the new one. But you still need Michael Schumacher or Ayrton Senna to be the pilot. You can’t be just a parking attendant.

Orlando Wood (22:08.868)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (22:15.48)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I find that. mean, that everything you just said is so thrilling. But the other part of me is is, you know, equally terrified as a as a producer. I mean, Sasha, when you go into that, that’s a very new style of workflow. Is that something you got? You just went. That’s way it’s got to be. And this is how we move forward. Or how do you how do you organize around a brand new workflow as an agency that’s used to a quite a regimented structure? What was that like?

Sascha Peuckert (22:52.916)
It was a learning. I think.

Orlando Wood (22:54.532)
I bet.

Sascha Peuckert (22:56.574)
I think, just to come back to your initial question, I think we had a blueprint from the creators. knew, you know, we knew the three sort of like segments of the film and where our character had to go through. We knew that the first part needed to be absolutely 100 % giving the understanding that this feels real because that was the point that it needed to make. And then from there, we knew that there was like these parts that could change. And I mentioned before, had

Orlando Wood (23:01.346)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sascha Peuckert (23:26.528)
so many different type of decks and collaboration platforms where we, at the beginning we discussed how is Vincent looking? What accent does Vincent have? What wardrobe is he wearing? Where? What does his apartment in New York look like? What does the festival look like? Like classic filmmaking.

Orlando Wood (23:35.192)
Right.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (23:43.266)
Like in classical filmmaking. Like in classical filmmaking. It’s the same thing.

Orlando Wood (23:43.353)
Yeah. Yeah. But is anything ever officially locked off? I mean, you know, you go like, okay, well, he has this accent now, but three days before air, you go, well, actually, I want him to be French or actually I want him to be English or actually, know, like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (23:51.532)
Yes, sure, absolutely.

Sebastian Strasser (23:59.611)
then you change it. But all those iterations, Orlando, are much easier in AI than for real, where you just shut the things and then it’s done. And here you can correct things.

Orlando Wood (24:08.228)
So your only real limitation is the air date. You know, you have, yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (24:11.618)
The air date and then there’s the budget. Obviously there’s a different kind of workflows. I can do a commercial faster with 10 AI artists, different prompters, different VFX, depending also what the story is. I have to say that it’s getting easier and easier and RealReal is one of my favorite commercials and I love working on this.

Orlando Wood (24:25.604)
Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (24:29.838)
and we had a bit more time, think it was over two or three months almost of development and until finish, but we have commercials at Lepstic, we’re doing 10 commercials, not at the same time, maybe three or four, but we did already 15 AI commercials just I think in the last six months, and some of them are in three or four weeks.

Orlando Wood (24:45.368)
Wow. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (24:47.52)
I mean, if you go on our website, there’s a telecom campaign which was done over Christmas in New Year’s Eve, which is actually very hard to work and shoot, right? Normally. And we’ve done it in four weeks. We’ve done another commercial for Middle East with the six top tennis players in the world, which did not have time to come together, right? So we did them in AI. We did them in four weeks. And the ReHUT VTA tournament was happening, and they were very happy. So AI can be very fast and very efficient if…

Orlando Wood (24:58.18)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (25:02.436)
Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (25:15.886)
The cockpit, the racing team knows what it’s doing, knows all the engines, if the director is a proper pilot, and if the budget is there, because that’s another problem I have at the moment, or I see at the moment, is everybody thinks because they watch the TikTok commercial that everything is for free. No, it’s not. It’s very efficient, it’s very time or money saving sometimes, but maybe can we be happy with 50 % of savings?

Orlando Wood (25:28.78)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (25:40.867)
You know, like I have three budgets today coming from my producers, by the way, just before the call, one in America, one in France, one in Middle East. I’m happy that the phone is ringing so much, but it’s the same kind of conversation I have to have all the time. Well, I go like, guys, if you shoot this, budget from Reset, for example, now, I’m not even saying what the brand is. If you shoot this, it’s gonna be 2.4 million, right? If you wanna do it on that level. We can do it in AI for 1.2. That’s great, isn’t it? can we do it for 300?

Orlando Wood (25:40.93)
Yeah, yeah.

Orlando Wood (25:45.028)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (26:00.802)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (26:05.166)
Yeah, yeah, huge.

Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (26:10.368)
Maybe, maybe I find an AI artist alone with just a little bit of VFX and just a smaller script. Everything can be, you can do an AI film for 5,000 euros. But not on a Formula One because then you end up going with a go-kart trying to drive Formula One.

Orlando Wood (26:19.492)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (26:24.576)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s very, you know, it’s very funny. That was always the conversation, wasn’t it? When YouTube came out, we used to sell things, and I was at Widen and Kennedy at the time, and we were selling things through to Nike, and very often they would go, yeah, yeah, yeah, but now we’ve decided it’s not gonna go on TV, it’s gonna be viral, so can we make it for $20,000? And we’re like, well, the script is the same from frame one to the last frame.

Sebastian Strasser (26:50.146)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (26:52.77)
You know, no, it can’t be done. And there’s always that reeducation that happens. And I think that what it seems that you’ve, you you’ve done is made the case for quality really well, because I think that, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s clear that the real real wasn’t going for cost savings with this thing. They were going for creative excellence and creative excellence is always going to cost money because the level of specificity you need. And I think that.

Sebastian Strasser (26:58.253)
Yes.

Sebastian Strasser (27:14.486)
Exactly.

Orlando Wood (27:20.548)
where brands really are getting benefit out of this is they can make the real real can now make five films this year or a film a quarter or, you know, multiple more things. That’s where they’re going to see the benefit and be able to be more reactive and responsive to their audiences and their their consumers. That’s the real benefit is the volume that the reduction in price, the reduction in price allows you to achieve as a brand, not

Sebastian Strasser (27:31.053)
Yes.

Orlando Wood (27:50.626)
the slopification of your wonderful marketing.

Sebastian Strasser (27:54.703)
But it’s very much about trust, right? It almost reminds me of a whole, an old story, might be just a legend of Tony Kay, if you still remember him, right? Yeah, there’s some legends about Tony, right? And there’s one of them coming on stage in London, speaking to some agencies, they were waiting for him, he was late, and he comes on stage, knocks the microphone, it says one word, trust, and then he leaves, yes?

Orlando Wood (27:56.601)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (28:04.039)
yeah, mean, legend.

Orlando Wood (28:18.02)
Hahaha

Sebastian Strasser (28:19.766)
And it might be right or wrong, might be just a story and let’s not have the truth standing in the way of a good story, right? I mean, it’s a great story because why is real, real happening this way on this level? Because Sasha, me, Sabina, Carlo, Chris, we worked six, seven times together. We’ve been down the trenches, in the desert, in the mountains, we work together and we have trust. Yeah, isn’t that something beautiful to have 2026?

Orlando Wood (28:22.69)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (28:26.273)
No, absolutely not.

Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (28:38.052)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (28:43.46)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (28:47.492)
Mm-mm. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (28:47.542)
And it’s not trust to me, trust to your… If you remember Frank Budgeon, Rest In Peace. He was probably doing those amazing commercials before he died. Remember the Levi’s and the Playstations. Having a very trustful, close relationship to the agencies in London. I was friends also with Regan Levich. We shared a few times the top 20 directors in the world. He always made fun of me because we were both on number 13 or both on number 7, twice.

Sascha Peuckert (28:47.958)
Yes.

Orlando Wood (28:51.854)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (28:57.102)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (29:01.443)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (29:04.906)
yeah.

Orlando Wood (29:12.993)
Yeah, yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (29:13.388)
but he was always ahead of me because he’s R, ring gun, and I’m Sebastian. But he was a great director. When he was doing good commercials, it was because of trust, because people knew that he has a craft and that they work together. And I think the problem with AI for the last two years, which I’ve seen, is that people don’t have the trust. They were full of fear, anxieties. Everybody’s afraid of losing their jobs, right? I mean, I’ve been on so many panels. That’s why before we started, I said I’m not gonna do many panels this year anymore, or Q &As or interviews or whatever, because…

Orlando Wood (29:17.668)
Hahaha!

Orlando Wood (29:22.903)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (29:40.494)
Mm-mm.

Sebastian Strasser (29:42.587)
Mostly the common factor is open water and panic. It’s literally what I feel in every room I go. I might be in Istanbul with hundreds of people, I might be in London just last week with an agency, I might be wherever I am on the festival, and the whole room is full of anxiety, fear and panic. And also I understand that, but I don’t get it from my point of view, because it is just a tool.

Orlando Wood (29:49.603)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mmm.

Orlando Wood (30:06.052)
Mm-mm.

Orlando Wood (30:09.729)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (30:10.87)
It is a very, very powerful tool, but it is a tool. I don’t understand the fear because what it still leaves you is taste, authorship, education, know-how. It’s not going to replace that. I want to say, remember the music industry, early 20s. Internet shows up, YouTube shows up. Everybody panics, remember? No, anyone can perform on YouTube. Laborers are dead.

Orlando Wood (30:23.212)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (30:39.736)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (30:40.748)
Remember? You know, everybody could upload a song. Most of it was terrible, some of it was interesting, and a few people broke through. Who broke through? Help me. James Blake, remember? FK Twigs, Grimes, Billie Eilish, all internet, and maybe even more popular like Justin Bieber or whatever. So, polished or not polished, successful or not successful, it did not kill the industry, it just flooded it.

Orlando Wood (30:45.22)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (31:02.808)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (31:03.936)
Now you have infinite music and some are still here the same five songs everywhere, right? So access is democratized, but taste wasn’t. A David Bowie today would still be David Bowie. Nobody could even fucking touch him, right? And now comes AI, know, and AI music is already flooded the world with even more recycling sounds from AI. But AI doesn’t kill creativity. It makes it harder to find. Before you needed money to make something mediocre,

Orlando Wood (31:09.156)
Yeah.

Mm. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (31:18.286)
Yeah, yeah.

Orlando Wood (31:25.564)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (31:30.153)
Mmm. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (31:33.782)
Now you just need a wifi. That’s the only upgrade. But in all the noise, the people who actually have a point of view, they don’t disappear. They just have to be better and fight through the smoke. I hope that makes sense.

Orlando Wood (31:34.434)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (31:43.32)
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, because the commentary. sorry. Go ahead, Sasha.

Sascha Peuckert (31:47.99)
totally

No, no, I was basically going to probably like repeat the same thing with other words. I feel like the future is full of an opportunity to reassess what our services are from an agency point of view or value from creative’s point of view or producer’s point of view. And I think sort of like the value and the trust that goes into this relationship will prevail in the future because what Sebastian said, we democratize the access to everything and the

Orlando Wood (32:13.482)
Mmm. Yeah.

Sascha Peuckert (32:19.95)
of doing everything, but everything, being able to do everything doesn’t mean it has any value to anybody. And in a world where we have everything and where everybody gets like those floodgates open and you see so much stuff, who is the gatekeeper? Who’s the curator? Who is the person that is trusted? I think brands that have already a trusted sort of like name or things and they curate that and they…

Orlando Wood (32:35.896)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (32:43.204)
Hmm.

Sascha Peuckert (32:47.318)
pay into it and build that further, think are brands and whether it’s people in brands or musicians or brands and selling product, but those are the ones that probably like prevail and are successful in the future as well.

Orlando Wood (32:49.784)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (33:03.268)
Well, think that everything you just said is so baked into the real, real idea as well. I that’s why it’s so brilliantly crafted, both from a strategy perspective, script perspective, and obviously execution, is that you’ve taken that very complex thought about authenticity and provenance and a world where you can have anything, then what is real? What is taste? All of that is crammed into this one.

idea and usually when that happens it comes out a mess but this is I mean it’s just so brilliantly done.

Sebastian Strasser (33:39.129)
Yeah, but look also, I don’t want to switch the conversation from re-reel to Gaia, because Gaia is not even out yet, but look at how meaningful that film is. So I want to quote Orlando, you said in the beginning, Gaia is easy until you try to make something great. And then you realize it was never about the tool, it’s on you. So do you have something to say? Do you know how to say it? Do you have taste, or are you just there? Yeah?

Orlando Wood (33:44.676)
it’s unbelievable.

Orlando Wood (33:58.201)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (34:05.347)
Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (34:05.742)
So sorry for being so ironic, I remember again photographing another example. Remember when, I mean, we weren’t alive when it showed up, but painters panicked. I read articles, books about it. so now everybody can make images. Yeah, everybody could. Everyone did. Millions of pictures, pile of visual noise stacked on the moon, know, like selfies and gym flexing and sunsets that looked like the other 4,000 sunsets. And then a few people showed up and made something that actually stayed.

Orlando Wood (34:14.974)
yeah.

Orlando Wood (34:19.492)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (34:34.658)
Yeah. Terrifying. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (34:34.734)
You know, like Irving Penny’s quote, I even wrote it down for me. Irving Penny said, it’s a language with its own grammar. So well, and the difference was some people not just spoke that grammar, they perfected it, pushed things forward, and mostly had something to say or express. That’s authorship, that’s taste, that’s the part you can’t fake. And now here we are again, AI makes everything easy. Yes, it does, everybody can generate something now, but meaning, taste, a point of view, that part didn’t get automated. It never was and I think never will.

Orlando Wood (34:41.09)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (34:45.88)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (34:59.458)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mmm.

Sebastian Strasser (35:04.704)
So what’s the fucking problem?

Orlando Wood (35:06.68)
Yeah, and as well, art adapted as well, know, like still lifes sort of lost quite a lot of value after after photography came out, but then art adapted with impressionism and, know, and still then. Yeah, exactly. And I think that like and then people like Sarah Moon are doing incredible still lives in photography and, you know, each one adapts with different artists picking it up. And I think that that’s.

Sebastian Strasser (35:15.852)
Yeah.

Expressionism afterwards, yes.

Sebastian Strasser (35:28.93)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (35:33.349)
What’s so great about this is one of the things that I’ve kept saying is people are like, well, I don’t think this will ever do X or Y. And I’m like, well, we haven’t seen the artists pick it up yet. We haven’t seen people who are masters of the previous craft and the new craft pick it up. And to be honest, I think this is a watershed piece of work. And I think that you’ve so clearly demonstrated both as an agency and as a director, the ability to go

Okay, no, this is not true. If you understand the medium and you understand the tool and you understand the business of filmmaking and the business of creating wonderful advertising work, you can create something that is next level, that is something else, that is in a category of its own and paves the way for other people to come behind it and be inspired by it. I think that’s the thing is a lot of it’s about

Sebastian Strasser (36:31.17)
Yeah, that’s what I hope Orlando. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (36:31.576)
There’s been a dearth of inspiration for the filmmakers, hasn’t there? Up until this point.

Sebastian Strasser (36:36.11)
really hope that we inspire people with what we did on RealReal, on Gaia, and some of the other work we’ve done because the danger I want to underline this three times if possible, the danger is in AI, it’s mediocrity with better tools. I mean, it’s literally, I’ve seen it everywhere, and let’s be honest for a second, this is when people say, what happens to human creativity? What happens to my job? And there’s political, cultural aspects which are very, it’s technologicity.

Orlando Wood (36:50.884)
Right? Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (37:06.026)
It happens in cycles, that it puts people out of work. I totally understand it. Sometimes we are afraid. Everybody can be afraid. But I don’t think that in advertising, especially discussion is about AI. It’s quite often about our ego, our vanity, our need to feel irreplaceable. And what happens when that illusion cracks and we’re left with the possibility that maybe we were not that special at all? Yeah, like the people…

Orlando Wood (37:06.564)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (37:12.772)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (37:17.738)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I’m

Orlando Wood (37:29.348)
Right. And so we put in the sweat equity of the work we’ve done so far and now we’re a creative director or we’re a director and we’re like, oh God, I’ve got to relearn everything again. I don’t want to, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (37:35.149)
Yes.

Sebastian Strasser (37:40.045)
Yeah, yeah, it’s great. I really felt exciting. I mean, I was not at the tip point of my career going downhill. I’m still, still, shot, you know, Hyundai with John Krasinski just two months ago for real. I’ve done Renault Revolution who picked up all the VFX awards. I’m still winning my can lines. And it was not like, I need to do AI now to save my job.

Orlando Wood (37:51.35)
Mm, mm, mm, mm.

Mmm. Mmm.

Sebastian Strasser (38:00.716)
I was literally very interested about this new amazing tool or brush on my table to use it to do my paintings. And to be honest, it’s very much often hybrid. It’s not like I do everything in eye. Sometimes, you know, we shoot and then you have still this magic wand in your hand which can give you some amazing images or certain things you cannot shoot.

Orlando Wood (38:02.595)
Mmm.

Mm, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (38:22.956)
Like, mean, we’ve been in history so often there. We talked about photography. We talked about people, you know, you can think even the elevator operators in the 20s, right? They’re not pressing the button anymore. The elevator does it its own, right? When sound came to cinema, it’s another example. Remember Charlie Chaplin? He hated sound, right? And turns out some of the actors who lost their careers couldn’t act.

Orlando Wood (38:23.043)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (38:31.416)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (38:44.694)
or just look good in black and white, right? So I think it’s like all the time it’s the same pain of technology coming on a table and then I think everybody who feels responsible, everybody who really is creative to now use it for the good because there’s gonna be enough people use it for the bad. Right? And it’s on us to, yeah, just one last thought. The Gaia thing is for me a good example. We did a film for animal rights.

Orlando Wood (38:44.889)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (38:51.268)
Hmm.

Mm-mm.

Orlando Wood (39:02.776)
Yeah. And so, no, so go ahead, go ahead. You know, please.

Sebastian Strasser (39:12.608)
It would have been impossible to shoot that film for Animal Rights the way we did it. It’s an amazing piece. I care about it, you know? And it’s done with AI to 90%. I think we shot 10 % of it. So here we are again. And please, machines can write. Machines can design. Machines can generate that looks like something we used to do.

Orlando Wood (39:20.652)
It’s heartbreaking. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (39:36.665)
but it’s still about us and I would ask everybody creative person who listens to this podcast what is what you can bring to the table because if it’s not just execution that part is gone but the part that’s very exciting is if you’re truly creative and you really have something to say AI is a gift for now and I hope that it’s not like internet and YouTube and all the other things which are used very much

Orlando Wood (39:40.92)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (39:44.281)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (39:48.27)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (39:58.542)
Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (39:59.855)
Very much for bad energy. I thought we can use this time the chance to use it for something We we mentioned quite often, you know humanity and we keep saying humanity like it’s something we earned and I don’t think we earned it We were born we are similar to a goat. Yeah, if I say this we are just born being human is for the start like a standard default setting, right? And and and factory installed but nothing special and humanity

Orlando Wood (40:01.892)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (40:07.044)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (40:13.412)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (40:25.772)
Well, that’s optional software if you ask me. So it’s really about what do we do with this? What do we really contribute? And AI is a powerful tool to contribute to the good, to the creative, to the beautiful side of things.

Orlando Wood (40:27.768)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (40:38.692)
That’s fantastic. Sasha, wanted to ask you, mean, in terms of, you know, in terms of processing this level of free form creativity that happens during the shoot, Sasha, you know, Sebastian gets into his cockpit, you know, how, how, how do you structure that engagement? You go, I presume maybe you go, this is the part that’s pre-production. This is where Sebastian actually gets into the cockpit. How are you?

feeding back on things, how much data is coming at you, how many different references, how many different outputs, what are you seeing? What’s the experience of running that production from the agency side?

Sascha Peuckert (41:20.906)
It’s…

It’s a very interesting one and it’s a one that has endless possibilities, I think, and requires a lot of conversation and a lot of understanding of each other more than I think before, because before we were limited with various things, whether it was time, budget options that are even available. Now everything in theory is available. So it becomes really much of a very structured. think these are our steps. These are moments where we have and we can have as many conversations as we can, as we want.

And again, I think it’s a relationship thing. It’s a trust thing. If we have a team that trusts each other, then we can definitely openly speak about what works, what doesn’t work, where we want to go, what’s not working. And I think we did a lot of honest talking on this project back and forth. Does this scene really still is as good as when we had it first on paper? I think we were like halfway through and we were like, does this scene still make sense?

Orlando Wood (42:19.278)
Mm.

Sascha Peuckert (42:21.294)
or does it still play into the arc that we had built by then? And being able to have this honest conversation with each other without hurting any feelings, just making sure that we’re doing the best for the work and for the film to have the greatest value is, I think, the one key item in our process we had.

Orlando Wood (42:22.02)
Mm.

Orlando Wood (42:30.702)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (42:36.238)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (42:42.883)
Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (42:42.976)
Isn’t it the same like on sets? Sasha, isn’t it the same like on set? Or in the PPM before?

Sascha Peuckert (42:47.72)
It is I think it’s just because

Orlando Wood (42:49.08)
Yeah, like how does it how does it actually tell me the experience of actually working with? you waking up every day to 45 different assets in your mailbox? Are you are you going in there to the cockpit and sitting in a in a video village just outside the cockpit? What is it? Tell me the experience of actually doing it.

Sebastian Strasser (43:04.206)
It’s very, very structured and real, real is not the master example of the normal circuit we drive. Because for example, as I said, Telecom, we did a six campaign, we’re doing three new ones now. It can be also very structured of three or four weeks to get to the final product. It doesn’t need to be six or eight or 20. Depending on what you’re doing, depending on how many people you get involved, depending on how much VFX, CGI you need, a picture is not a picture, right? You know it from shooting.

Orlando Wood (43:09.218)
Right. Right.

Orlando Wood (43:25.444)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (43:29.412)
Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (43:32.227)
You have Sasha and me talking in a room, it’s a picture. If you have 500 of us fighting in Gladiator, it’s a different kind of picture, right? So pictures in AI also have different kind of technical, not problems, but things that need to be fixed, different iterations. Sometimes you produce in AI something in green screen and compete into the picture, which you produce in AI as well. Sometimes you have to shoot something.

Orlando Wood (43:37.252)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (43:52.526)
Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (43:55.471)
Sometimes you do video to video sometimes you do still to video sometimes you do you know that does you if you know what you’re doing you own all the tools all the Fundamental AI engines all the aggregators all the in between things you need face swapping here like on the length of a two months production like here We usually begin some face swapping tools for Vincent in the end in the last week We didn’t need that anymore when we did the making off, which is very fun

Orlando Wood (43:55.684)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (44:10.36)
Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (44:21.9)
We were on a technical level just two months later where I just put myself into the set with Vincent. Remember Sasha in the making of where I put myself into the set and I go to him and whisper ironically over his shoulder and I say, I want more but less. So making fun, making fun of directors who, you know, talk to directors to brief them. So certain things are very easy. Certain things are very hard. If you look at the reel reel, there’s moments where he performs, where he sings and has to look into the camera. If you’ve seen.

Orlando Wood (44:27.16)
Right.

Orlando Wood (44:39.544)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (44:45.956)
Mmm.

Sebastian Strasser (44:50.594)
Those kind of subtle things are harder. But to answer more precisely your question, the big, change is that you don’t edit for a week. You end it for 20, 30 days. So you need a time to prep. You need a time to, in the real world, we had it more extensive. If the commercial is a very tight timing, the first week is hardcore. Because in that week, you don’t have two or three weeks to prep until you show up on set. You have the first week as a director, you need to know exactly your storyboard, your character.

Orlando Wood (44:50.98)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (44:59.862)
Yeah, yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (45:20.088)
the story, the lenses, so to have it really on the first week is important. And then from there, it’s…

Orlando Wood (45:26.946)
And is that Laura training or are you pulling references at that stage as well? So you’re doing storyboards, plus you’re doing reference assets and things like that, and then building what production design is generally gonna look like. are you just harvesting lots of creative reference data from the agency and from your own team at that stage?

Sebastian Strasser (45:48.367)
I mean, every director works differently. if you see my white hair, so I’ve been in the trenches for a while. If I look back at what I’ve done 20 years ago, right, when I went with a luggage full of books of my favorite photographers to the agency with those post-its and said, like, this is the vibe. I was never shooting that shot precisely like this, but it was a vibe. We don’t do that in AI anymore because we don’t need those photographers really. It’s much more important that the director has an understanding.

Orlando Wood (45:50.145)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (45:56.677)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (46:08.738)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (46:15.15)
Mm-mm.

Sebastian Strasser (46:18.228)
of a very clearly, and that’s what I talk about the cockpit, a very clearly staged, structured workflow which starts with what is your idea, then it goes to what you want to achieve, then it goes to the structure, you know, the storytelling, the narrative arch, you have agents helping you to build, you know, I know those things, I’ve read the books, but…

Orlando Wood (46:25.216)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (46:39.936)
If you don’t know, you can be helped by Robert McKee and Blake Snyder and certain kind of, how is the hero’s journey? Where do you have to put the plot point? Where’s all his last moment? There’s certain things where Sasha is smiling because we talked about that when it comes to real. So either the director knows it or you help him. And then you move into what’s your world? Is it surreal or is it real? Let me ask a question. When you say a surreal world, what kind of?

Orlando Wood (46:40.056)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (46:47.005)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (46:59.459)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (47:09.09)
Versions of surreal world to exist just in the world surreal so if you if you’re an AI prompter and you prompt your surreal because that’s all Yeah, yeah, but then but then let’s let’s Yeah, and let’s go to Spike Jonze Different different realism surrealism. let’s go to Michel gondry just to name some fellow directors Yeah with this handcrafted. Let’s go to Kenneth anger a little bit more MDMA surrealism. Let’s go to show Dorofsky

Orlando Wood (47:12.254)
yeah. Yeah. My mind goes to Dolly immediately. And then, you know, and then more modern surrealism and that, you know, yeah.

Yeah, great. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (47:38.319)
Let’s go to Shondorovsky, right? What kind of surrealism is that? Let’s go to James Cameron, different kind of surrealism, right? mean, surrealism is just a word. If all you know is prompting cinematic, yes, then you get that kind of generic IKEA furniture called cinematic, right? But if you really have an education, so our cockpit, which obviously I’m not gonna talk too much about it, is very built on a certain structured.

Orlando Wood (47:41.23)
Yeah, yeah.

Orlando Wood (47:45.624)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (47:52.163)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (48:05.73)
by the pilot, you know, I was the founder of the company, so I drove the RACI, so I’m trying to structure it in a way that there is a workflow which helps you to answer all the right questions at the right point, which you actually do when you do good directing, and then it comes to a point where the machine knows so much of what you want that it’s getting quite fast, faster than on set.

Orlando Wood (48:05.908)
Mmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (48:12.558)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (48:16.441)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (48:23.308)
Yeah. And do you do you not want to talk about it because you don’t want to give up your secret sauce or do you not want to talk about it? Because you’re you’re you don’t want to get too technical because we’re we’re called technically creative. You can get technical if you want.

Sebastian Strasser (48:31.758)
Yes, I’m going to be honest about… Yes, it’s fine. But I can’t be stupid. I was in the kitchen, I was having lunch with my girlfriend in London at a restaurant called Gautier. It’s Alexis Gautier, an amazing cook, a French guy, and he became vegan. I don’t think he would answer me how he did that menu, because it was sensational. It has to do with we have our lipstick tech company now.

Orlando Wood (48:47.778)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (48:55.586)
Right, fair, yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (49:00.354)
That’s tech, that’s a different kind of secrecy, not that I don’t want to share. And we’re building those tools and workflows and it’s impossible for me to tell you how it’s done.

Orlando Wood (49:00.388)
Yeah. Sure.

Orlando Wood (49:08.748)
Yeah, because I mean, we have we moved beyond Laura training even. mean, the lower training, I mean, it feels like that was, you know, a year ago. And now now it’s sort of seamless and it’s agents, you know. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (49:13.44)
Yeah, I’ve done it two years ago. Two, two. It’s more than that, but it’s also so many different tools, even on the 3D level. You need so much know-how, ideally, about filmmaking and put it together with 3D even at certain points. That’s the beautiful, I never was interested in technology really. I’m interested in story. always say story is the story, not tech is the story. But…

Orlando Wood (49:23.321)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (49:32.76)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (49:37.368)
Mm.

Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (49:43.055)
To be honest, I’m now getting also interested in tech, not that I’m gonna be ever a tech guy, but I love to create this kind of environment with AI because it’s so powerful. It would give me so much power as a filmmaker in this years also to slip beyond the gatekeepers. I mean, sorry, Orlando for being so honest, but the Teletubbies, I’ve experienced the last couple of years or clowns, whatever you wanna call them. We have no understanding about art or filmmaking and they just sit next to the machine.

Orlando Wood (49:46.784)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (49:54.646)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (50:00.324)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (50:04.025)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (50:07.384)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (50:12.718)
and might it be Studio Bosses or Bob from Netflix or whatever the names are, you know, and they decide what gets done or not, I’m so happy that we can break through that wall, yeah? I also just create, wait for someone to say, this is cool, this is gonna work, this is gonna be on the market, you know? So it’s not for me, it’s for many, filmmakers to empower themselves to do the things. And that’s exciting.

Orlando Wood (50:14.954)
Mmm. Mmm.

Orlando Wood (50:22.424)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (50:28.388)
Mm-mm.

Orlando Wood (50:35.268)
Yeah.

Sascha Peuckert (50:37.798)
Yeah, and we’re going to see, think, that a lot much more like content creation by creators and hopefully those have taste and give us something that is can be digested well. think also like just to come back because Sebastian said the idea is the idea, right? It’s about the idea. And I think that’s so wonderfully like ties into the like the real real as well, where like the eye is not a tool, the eye is the idea. And I think what also another thing that we touched on something that Sebastian said

Orlando Wood (50:43.556)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (51:01.646)
Hmm.

Sascha Peuckert (51:07.722)
that I just want to focus again a little bit on is really like this like notion of like you need to have somebody you need to collaborate with people that really have a clear vision of what that is upfront that’s maybe like one of those things everything is very structured everything follows a process but it’s it’s not working in a world of like we somehow get to an end product so the clear vision upfront is very important and to sell that clearly to everyone that is involved

Orlando Wood (51:16.082)
Mm. Mm-mm.

Orlando Wood (51:31.022)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sascha Peuckert (51:37.534)
and then the process is very like as Sebastian said there’s a process there’s a there’s a equation to it to everything

Orlando Wood (51:38.574)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (51:46.276)
Mm-mm.

Sascha Peuckert (51:47.136)
But we need to know where the no star is, where we’re going. And if we cannot define that with our words, if we just know the word cinematic or Sebastian said surreal, then everybody understands whatever he wants. And because we don’t have this process anymore where we go from one step to another so clearly, it becomes a little bit of a, it can become a little bit of a chaotic scenario.

Orlando Wood (51:50.307)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (51:56.255)
Mmm. Mmm.

Orlando Wood (52:02.072)
Yeah.

Mm.

Orlando Wood (52:14.306)
Yeah, and you’re right. mean, that that kind of being able to so specifically reference, mean, Dav and I were talking the other day and he said he was in a meeting with somebody and he brought up Michelle Gondry and the kid was like, what, huh? Who you just go? no. But I think that, you know, Sebastian, it goes back to something that you said before, which is AI exposes taste. And I think that that, you know, and Sasha, you just kind of you you zeroed in on that as well. And and in all parts of the process,

Sebastian Strasser (52:27.584)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (52:36.6)
Yes, very much.

Orlando Wood (52:43.916)
It’s about using your expertise as a filmmaker that you already have. That’s the hard one knowledge in order to find a way to express that using this new tool in this new medium. And it sounds like with the cockpit and all of the, you know, the surrounding technologies you guys have, it sounds like you’re in a position to be able to really dial in every part of the production process to be able to.

amplify that taste at every stage.

Sebastian Strasser (53:14.264)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (53:15.812)
That’s very exciting. It’s very exciting. know, and I think that the other thing is like Gaia. What’s interesting about the real real is it’s celebrate. It sort of it does the AI, but it does it in a real sort of celebratory fashion because it’s part of the idea and you can really sort of play. What’s interesting about Gaia? The the the real real and also O2’s Daisy, you know where she it’s an old lady who takes scammers calls.

Sebastian Strasser (53:42.318)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (53:43.225)
Both of those were held up as really great examples because they’re very honest about their AI usage and they are very clear what they’re doing. Gaya, I think is really interesting because it doesn’t do that, but still I feel not let down. I feel not duped. I feel that I’m getting a story I wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. I think it’s clear from anybody who’s ever made anything that that would be an

a very, very difficult thing to shoot, if not impossible. The emotive performances of the cows and things like that. think that that’s what’s unique about that one to me. so I guess I wonder, what do you, yeah. Sorry? Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (54:26.316)
And it changes me, Orlando. I mean, if I’m honest, I have to say, I put my pants down. This Gaia work, really real also very much, but Gaia because of the meaning behind it. I was, for example, always vegetarian, and now because of that film and the research I’ve done, I’m vegan. That doesn’t mean that I expect everybody to be vegan. But for me, it’s important that people start feeling, you know? And also, it’s a way for me to start.

Orlando Wood (54:36.74)
Mmm.

Orlando Wood (54:43.79)
Mmm.

Orlando Wood (54:48.089)
Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (54:51.918)
Discovering meaning so so so I want to be honest. I don’t want to pretend like I’m some genius or toil Yeah, I’m very much part of the matrix. I’m a commercial director How much matrix can you be if you’re a commercial director and and yes? I’m successful And I can you know we can get to the other room and I can drown myself in the river with all those hundreds of awards But that’s not meaning that was in early time my ego my fight for attention and love and at some point the proof that I can execute and For a long time that was enough

Orlando Wood (54:53.54)
Mmm.

Mm, yeah.

Orlando Wood (55:07.492)
Mmm. Mmm.

Orlando Wood (55:12.334)
Mmm.

Orlando Wood (55:16.132)
Mm.

Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (55:20.984)
But on top of it, you know, and I have something which comes from my scars, the way I treat things emotionally, and probably if you see my films, I hopefully feel like on Gaia, there was another film I’ve done classically, like Berta Benz. I think Sasha knows that very well, that I always care about emotion in my characters. There’s always an emotion layer in my work. And now, I want to tell you something important. That comes from my life, but even more important is to do that point of view, combined with emotion, translated into…

Orlando Wood (55:27.78)
Mm.

Sebastian Strasser (55:49.891)
you know, into craft, authorship is the next level also for me. I have my screenplays, have the finance yet, I have my movies, and it’s not about career, it’s not about ambition. I think Gaia is an amazing example of that shift for me, and it can be for others because it can still win some awards because of its craft or the great idea, like Rereal, but it has a strong point of view. And it is about how we treat other life, it’s about empathy, it’s about the gap between what we say

Orlando Wood (55:54.585)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (55:59.557)
Mm.

Orlando Wood (56:11.812)
Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (56:19.648)
and what we are and how we actually behave. And that’s where I’m moving personally now. Together with my girlfriend, we’re building around themes we care about, about our stories. I wanna do a podcast, by the way. We’re planning in doing it. Maybe we can have you as our guest. We do, you know, it like, but I’m not saying this to, I wanna do, it’s using the power and the network we build through our careers and focusing our energy into something more precise, not just content, not just business.

Orlando Wood (56:21.39)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (56:29.344)
Mm-hmm.

great, do it! I’d love to, that’d be great.

Orlando Wood (56:46.756)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (56:48.918)
a world view and I think that it’s very necessary nowadays if I may say that I don’t want it to be a closing line but it really I feel that deeply it’s almost like a kind of Hollywood instead of Hollywood you know let let let’s look at what I can do and show me the money more work that reconnects us to empathy to responsibility to finding out what it could actually mean to be human and and if you use AI not just to worry about but to to

Orlando Wood (56:52.814)
That’s wonderful.

Orlando Wood (57:00.725)
Right.

Orlando Wood (57:08.622)
Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (57:18.136)
bring something, your creativity, your craft, the things you know, and then use them for doing very great commercials like RealReal, or very great messages like Gaia, or very great entertainment, or spiritual movies, or whatever you have to say. How exciting is that?

Orlando Wood (57:31.075)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I just have one question for the both of you. I mean, we’re nearly at time, but I just wanted to ask, so where does somebody, okay, so a producer or a director, they’re sitting here going, shit, I was a bit late to the game, I missed the Laura era, I moved beyond that, and you know, and I want to be able to express myself and show my taste, show my craft with these new tools.

Sebastian Strasser (57:51.438)
You

Orlando Wood (58:00.322)
Where do they begin?

Sebastian Strasser (58:03.572)
Wow, that’s the first time someone asked me that question because it’s actually so simple and obvious. Where did they begin? Should I think about, do you have an answer, Sascha, how I began? I mean, I was fortunate because I had a VFX company at that point and I saw AI Sneaky. Yes, and I saw, I really did watch AI Sneaky to my orchestra. So suddenly there was this new player and he took an instrument and went like, wow, kiddo, you’re quite interesting,

Orlando Wood (58:18.244)
Started on second base, yeah.

Orlando Wood (58:26.434)
Right.

Sebastian Strasser (58:31.694)
So I used AI for DMPs and for 10%. But for a producer, if I’m trying to envision that, or a director, yeah, it’s literally going to school. I mean, it would be the best to learn it yourself or go to a company that knows shit about it. Yeah. Yeah, we don’t need more directors at the moment. Yeah, yeah. It’s not about that.

Orlando Wood (58:41.828)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (58:48.75)
Right. Like lipstick. Get directors banging on your door. I’ve seen your roster. It’s pretty good. You’re all right for now.

Sebastian Strasser (58:58.744)
But I’m trying to help people and think of what they can do, you know, like to really learn it because it’s just a new instrument. And how do you learn a new instrument? You know, like I had a piano for a while, not a real one, a keyboard, but that doesn’t, didn’t make me a musician, right? So become a musician, learn the notes, learn the piano, get a teacher, learn to play piano.

Orlando Wood (59:12.354)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And Sasha, what about you? You’re, know, you’re an executive producer at a great ad agency. Where does it, where does it fit in the workflow? How can producers or EPs or people running creative production workflows, where should they start?

Sascha Peuckert (59:33.718)
think the first is just getting out there and testing. Working with Sebastian.

Sebastian Strasser (59:38.35)
and working with directors like me, right?

Orlando Wood (59:38.752)
Start with Sebastian.

Sascha Peuckert (59:43.42)
and learning from Sebastian. But I think like, you know, there’s so many great tools out there. There’s so many great ways to learn. There’s so many abilities to like start learning on a very top level that, you know, I didn’t, didn’t, I’m not a tech person. I haven’t coded. I think I’ve coded maybe like one line in my life.

Orlando Wood (59:54.02)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (01:00:04.676)
Hmm

Sascha Peuckert (01:00:05.298)
at school so I cannot presume from myself that I understand as much the VFX world or the coding world but you know vibe coding having a taste I think bring it back to you if you’re not interested and you don’t see in yourself somebody that has taste or that brings something to the table creatively speaking then

Orlando Wood (01:00:12.089)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (01:00:16.164)
Mm.

Orlando Wood (01:00:25.54)
Mmm. Mmm.

Sascha Peuckert (01:00:31.5)
and see who you are. Like find yourself, I think. Because Sebastian talked about bringing stories like Hollywood, he said. If we’re talking about emotions, every human has an emotion, everybody has an internal story, everybody has a truth to himself. And I think that truth is the thing that you bring to work as well. And knowing yourself very well helps you to identify where you get in. I personally don’t believe that

Orlando Wood (01:00:32.034)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (01:00:44.644)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (01:00:48.536)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:00:52.729)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (01:00:58.275)
Yeah.

Sascha Peuckert (01:01:01.556)
And I think I’m not alone with that, I personally don’t believe that there’s gonna be, the future doesn’t have the cookie cutter role descriptions. I don’t think the director will be a director necessarily, like it could be a strategist, director hybrid, there’s a producer that is a writer or something like that, or like coder or, or, or, because yes, because these tools are all democratizing everything we’re doing.

Orlando Wood (01:01:09.06)
Right.

Orlando Wood (01:01:17.092)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (01:01:27.684)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sascha Peuckert (01:01:29.046)
So understanding us ourselves, educating ourselves in craft and bringing that to the table to a team and becoming part of the team of the process as a whole is gonna be the step, I think, forward for people in the industry.

Orlando Wood (01:01:41.124)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (01:01:48.462)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (01:01:50.073)
But everybody is a small wheel in the big system because while Sasha speaks and I know him so much, he’s such a curious soul. He wants to know, he wants to learn. He brings so much emotion, empathy, and know-how to what he’s doing as a producer. At the same time, team one is publicist, right? So I know publicist are the biggest step with their great craft as a network like this, how they’re investing into scaling content.

Orlando Wood (01:02:09.604)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:02:19.585)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (01:02:20.138)
into using AI for all those metrics and scaling the content. But Sascha, still being part of Publicis, still being part of that network who’s also using AI for the flying, how you call, in-flight optimization and all those other things I don’t know about, he also is engaging into working with the right directors, and it’s not just about me, it’s about good directors. That’s why I mention all these great guys. There’s so many people out there.

Orlando Wood (01:02:38.648)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:02:44.664)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (01:02:50.286)
We’re working at Lipstick with Jessica Le Cagney from Reset at moment doing an amazing music video. I just go into the room sometimes and watch it go like, I’m so happy that Lipstick is doing this. There are so many beautiful souls out there and we can all be friends and we all can collaborate. And what I’m actually trying to say is we are working in scaling quality. So others can work on scaling quantity. want to, you know, I’m not, I’m redesigning for my company.

Orlando Wood (01:03:00.291)
Yeah.

Mm.

Mm.

Orlando Wood (01:03:10.349)
Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (01:03:19.308)
And I invite everybody to do so to redesign quality, to scale quality, investing quality, like we always did, right? The ones who, like you Orlando, you said the companies you worked on, you were a white and Kennedy, a biscuit, what was it about? It was, we were like kids, you were like kids, we still are kids, we want to do great work, right? Yeah, so let’s stop worrying so much, you know, use the tool, and if we don’t know the tool,

Orlando Wood (01:03:23.832)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (01:03:45.071)
get some, you know, it’s like when I was a kid, imagine I’m knocking at your door, Orlando, and I ask your mama, is Orlando at home? I want to play football with him, right? Yeah, let’s use that metaphor. If I want to work with you, or you want to work with me, let’s do it together. If we don’t have a ball, we go to Sasha and say, Sasha, do you have a ball? So maybe Sasha knows about AI, and he’s the Sebastian, you know, of AI, and then we get him and then we play ball. So don’t be so much yours, mine, or things. Let’s just do great work.

Orlando Wood (01:03:52.994)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:04:02.062)
Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (01:04:13.326)
And there’s amazing people out there and they need to come and be the first one to overcome the fear and anxieties and the hypocrisy also of calling AI a bad player or whatever. AI is not bad or good, again. If it’s a hammer, said once, hit yourself in the head or build a house, it’s up to you.

Orlando Wood (01:04:13.742)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (01:04:19.364)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:04:27.886)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:04:33.668)
But I think it all comes back to what you said, is is it’s about taste at the end of the day, Picasso’s dove is only five lines on a piece of paper. What makes it magical is that he could have drawn anything. He was a classically trained painter who’s done so many amazing things, and yet he chose five lines to do something. It’s one of the most iconic things he’s ever done. And like you said, you have the ability to do anything, but can you resist doing everything?

Sebastian Strasser (01:04:44.254)
Yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

Sebastian Strasser (01:04:57.527)
Absolutely.

Orlando Wood (01:05:02.146)
You know, can you choose the right thing to do? And I think that that’s, if there’s a through line to me of this conversation, it’s that, it’s that it exposes taste and you can kind of do anything, but you really need people with very strong points of view to make their way through the infinite.

Sebastian Strasser (01:05:02.658)
Yes.

Sebastian Strasser (01:05:20.814)
Perfect, perfect closing line if you want to close. I’m happy to speak more, but I actually wanted to say, I had it in the back of my head, when the dust settles to go picture, metaphoric, all that’s left is taste. I mean also education combined with taste, know-how combined with taste, having a point of view, having something to say. I say this sometimes to the young people at Lipstick, and we have so many exciting young people working there, and I go like, guys,

Orlando Wood (01:05:28.398)
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Sebastian Strasser (01:05:49.583)
Cassavetes actually said it, John Cassavetes, know, great filmmaker, independent filmmaker. He said there’s a whole avenue of excitement out there that only comes with education. And I don’t want to sound like the old guy saying, please get books and read. There’s many sources of education which are more modern. But we could not have a conversation, the three of us, about a glass of wine if we know nothing about it. Because you would say, Orlando, I like it. Sasha would say, I don’t like it. I would say, I like it. The conversation would be finished. But imagine if you are a sommelier.

Orlando Wood (01:05:51.768)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, of course.

Orlando Wood (01:05:57.834)
Mmm. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:06:03.555)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:06:11.172)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (01:06:19.072)
If Sasha owns a winery, and I do as well, we can talk about the same glass of wine for hours. Why? Because we educate it. And it’s the same with football, it’s the same with painting, it’s the same with filmmaking, it’s the same with music. The moment you educate yourself, the moment you know something, yeah, you start growing and nurturing inside yourself a point of view. Right? Maybe an opinion, maybe a question. Maybe great artists were just asking the right questions. They didn’t have answers.

Orlando Wood (01:06:26.722)
Yeah.

Mm. Mm. Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Orlando Wood (01:06:38.365)
Mmm. Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. Mmm.

Yeah. Yeah. yeah, and Sasha, I think that that, you know, that goes back to your answer there as well, which was about education as well. It’s about enriching yourself so that you’re bringing more of yourself and more knowledge to the tool itself. That leads to a greater outcome.

Sebastian Strasser (01:06:50.04)
but they’re asked amazing questions.

Sascha Peuckert (01:07:05.825)
Yes.

I don’t have a perfect finishing line like Sebastian, but I do think that that’s true. There was a very interesting podcast from John Stewart with two MIT professors the other day that talked about AI. And one is sort of optimistic and the other one is a more negative person on the outlook of AI. I think that is true. AI is a tool, whether it was for the real real, whether it is for our

Orlando Wood (01:07:11.48)
That’s okay.

Sascha Peuckert (01:07:36.706)
daily life, whether it’s for the future project that we will be working on or the future of entertainment. It’s what is a human doing with that tool and as more we know each other, think, and have empathy for each other and talk to each other and are not siloed in anxiety and fear, the more we will have a better outcome of this tool that has a lot of ups like it can make people, it can make us all so much more.

Orlando Wood (01:07:55.875)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (01:08:00.216)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:08:05.496)
Yeah, bring on Hollywood. think that’s, yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (01:08:07.16)
Well, yeah, I will sometimes a little bit afraid because if you look at technology, Orlando, and you can cut that out of the podcast, maybe, because I don’t want to bring a shadow to it. But we have a little bit of history of not using technology for the better. It always comes with a promise, you know, like, there’s the emails now. You don’t have to do a fax anymore and you don’t have to write a letter. And there’s no horseman bringing the letter anymore. And then you end up having 300 emails, having less time for yourself.

Orlando Wood (01:08:16.664)
No, go for it.

Orlando Wood (01:08:25.39)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:08:30.372)
Mmm.

Sebastian Strasser (01:08:36.428)
having to hug a tree or do whatever kind of yoga to breathe again, right? So unfortunately, AI has also the danger, part of societal, political, know, danger for employment and all those structural things, which people responsible for this have to look at. But also when it comes to us, it might be another step like the internet was, to be honest, and other things were, which brings us even more away from us as human beings.

Orlando Wood (01:08:36.472)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:08:41.795)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:08:49.198)
Mm.

Orlando Wood (01:08:52.696)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:09:05.89)
Hmm.

Sebastian Strasser (01:09:06.03)
it brings us even more away from feeling. And that’s why I think it’s important that when we use AI, that’s why you mentioned Hollywood, by the way, it comes from a lady, I speak sometimes, a therapist who said that word to me. And she said, Sebastian, you were at a time and age where you should use your power and craft to not want to do any Hollywood movie anymore, but do Hollywood on your own. And that’s why I think it’s important that we not only chase, you know, career.

Orlando Wood (01:09:09.177)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (01:09:19.416)
Yeah. Great.

Orlando Wood (01:09:32.644)
Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (01:09:33.418)
and money and anxiety because that’s all metrics elements, They push you. Yes, yeah, reset yourself. Say it’s a new step in the technology. There’s a new moment happening in the world. Look at what’s happening. Take a moment, breathe, try to feel, feel yourself again first, you know, before you start feeling others, and then see how you can contribute with this new tool to educate yourself about the tool, about other things you’re interested in.

Orlando Wood (01:09:37.272)
Yeah, we have to enrich ourselves.

Orlando Wood (01:09:52.068)
Yeah.

Sebastian Strasser (01:10:01.73)
and then try, please try to be on the good side of things. Because it’s very important now. I think we’re entering a new era, not only because of AI. I don’t have the language in English, I have podcast in German, I could quote much better, but it’s really a new era on many energetic levels, where it’s very important that the people who have something positive and good to bring to the party, that they use these tools and don’t hide.

Orlando Wood (01:10:05.39)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:10:11.172)
Mm-mm.

Orlando Wood (01:10:17.817)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (01:10:23.33)
Yeah. Yeah. Gone. Fantastic guys. That was so great. Thank you so much for doing this. I so appreciate you giving me your time. I’m so overawed by the real real. It’s such a good piece of work. Congratulations.

Sebastian Strasser (01:10:38.99)
Thank you Orlando. Nice to see you guys. Nice to meet you Orlando and great to see you Sasha.

Sascha Peuckert (01:10:39.798)
Thank you.

Orlando Wood (01:10:40.887)
And absolutely, you too, guys. Thank you so much. That’s right. All right.

Sascha Peuckert (01:10:42.956)
Nice to see you.

Sebastian Strasser (01:10:45.72)
So we stay here, right? Okay.

I said it before you cut.