Building LEOM | Day 14 | Losing Crew Days Before the Shoot
Posted 2026-08-05 · https://youtu.be/WE-YAdEufq8
Transcript: YouTube auto-captions, cleaned of filler and obvious mishearings, one passage about industry culture lightly trimmed, otherwise verbatim. A build diary spoken to camera, not the film's script.

We're back. The shoot has been delayed. Long story short, some people did not read over the materials. It was in there that this that the intent was to make it in a large part with the new tools with AI with diffusion models with the capabilities of bringing something like science fiction to life and actors gaffs gaffers have well one of each but have dropped out in crunch time here after agreeing after having the materials then agreeing. What are you going to do? You know what? I'm here the night. Pre-lighting is supposed to happen tomorrow. It was supposed to happen tomorrow. And, that's no longer the case.

Some scrambling. It's going to be fine. It's going to be more of a crunch on my end for the VFX side. So, I will be sharing this in the shout out to everyone in the future vision XPRIZE slack workspace to hopefully get some help. A lot of people I'm sure have already submitted as their schedule is permitted. For me it's more so running up on the deadline is what it is. It's not ideal, but need help. Cuz it's going to be only 5 days to up until the deadline. So, I'd like to make that like even 4 days of not just keying out everybody, but actually compositing them and in into shots and lighting and doing passes there.

It's going to be tight. But you can't do anything but laugh at the situation. People drop out other parties who even other extras buddies I don't know too many people in the film industry but I tell them that mention what I was going through here and they're like oo yeah like it's a no. It's it would be something that if I still want to come, I at least want to tell my agent and manager about. Wow, this is a buddy. It's like, all right. So pushing back a number of days. So what is the best use of time in this couple of days leading up to a huge undertaking, big project. Costumes are at a decent spot. Everything's at a decent spot.

You know, I noticed that nothing's at a great spot. And I guess that's the nature of trying to bring what's in here alive and knowing somewhat of what, when you're organizing this, when you're directing this, like there are natural shortcuts that you're taking in certain ways. And I'm trying to do no half measures and just really coming to grips of the impact that comes along with a decision like that and stuff happens and that's life like couple people drop out couple important people drop out when you think you did you went about it a decent way and thought that things were good but there's I'm noticing specifically on this is a this is a vibe coding channel, right?

Like this is a productivity channel. This is that's what I that I'm interested and passionate about. And this project is top of the top of the list and has very personal and something I've if you've been following along talked about it but this is like a script that I've been carrying with me this story that I'm trying to tell of what if the future was awesome. What if the future was awesome? And this is someone who super appreciates all the cautionary tales, all the sci-fi that the twists and the turns and the just real drama stakes what it means. I love those stories. There's no getting around it. I really do.

They're entertaining. I come away with some something every time I watch one of those. And but like it is a super theme of the project of this is a optimistic future and social just society is in a really good place. We have the healthc care figured out. We have an abundance of food and the food supplies in a great space. Scientific breakthroughs and the medical side. We figured out this weird learning curve we're on with social media. We figured out work and our place and to this point and to these people credit who dropped out. I'm not just bashing. And I'm just trying to take it in terms of like wow this is where we currently are at and people are on various points of the this adoption curve right of the tools and of the tools I definitely knew that we've talked about on the channel to an extent of in terms of like just the workspace and better like context loading and being able to scale impact in terms of what you're capable of in work but on a coding standpoint and communication standpoint and research standpoint but even to be expected I can't act totally shocked going into the creative world; people are at different points on the adoption curve, and we'll leave it at that.

But I'm in a different camp. They're they're talking about it. It's not human. But this is my thing. This is my thing that's carried through time. What one story have you stuck to or mission or goal have you stuck to? You're bouncing project to project. Okay. Right. Naturally, and you've worked with green screens in the past. You've worked with green screens in the past. What? They don't stay green screens. You can't key out the green on any pro workflow that I know unless there's like this photochemical workflow to key out the grain and put other stuff match the camera movement to the wall to the subject.

No, VFX artists go in there. These are people on computers. These are people on these machines with GPUs and this memory RAM and these other components that make up this beautiful experience of organization and connection and capability and utility and can do things autonomously. You know, it's the classic example. I'm sure you heard of it but back a 100 years ago they had office buildings full of computers and those were not machines that was not hardware those were human beings job titles all over New York all over the country all over the world okay so these people were doing calculations by hand going through it the best and brightest so our best and brightest are on monotonous tasks that these computers ers have been introduced by other bright best and brightest and we go okay mathematicians we're going to get you to higher leverage higher impact we're going to get you one layer of abstraction out of this workflow and we're saying okay this gaffer this actor young kid I say that he's my age and it's and it's a no-go both have worked on green screens so instead of me going in and spending all this time and resources in which I can be helping people on other things.

I can move quicker on this project. It's feasible. Without this, I could not provide the If you're sticking around over the channel and maybe this is a couple months in the future and you saw maybe you saw the trailer and or seen the feature at this point and it was good, it was good for you and you liked it and there was a takeaway or some value was, that you had from it. Cool. That would not be possible without these tools. Plain and simple. You know, I'm talking very matterof factly. This is this is my read. It's 11. And it feels like I have a day off tomorrow cuz it was going to be this crazy sprint, right?

And now it's like a little bit of a breather, a little bit more stress because I'm going to be more pressed for time on the back end by a number of days. You pour a lot of resources in. I was able to free up my time from other work in which I'm helping other people and then it turns into okay this is an opportunity that I see and is absolutely want to be a part of this specific conversation and okay the timing is the timing we'll get the submission in it'll be what it is even though parking a lot of money and then I don't actually have the ability to super use the tools to a high degree in terms of the compositing the workflow.

It's not going to be perfect this submission, but it doesn't need to be perfect because that's not the point. Like I said in other videos, it's the experience. It's going through it. It's learning lessons like these that I've learned today and this whole week and this whole this last two weeks and this next the following week and a total of three weeks this sprint this series. So, instead of me going in and doing all the VFX, what these people don't realize is that it's the ability to, to move quicker on things to not dump. I have higher utility with the tools, meaning I can get this done quicker and it's possible and sooner than what would take if I had, the tools did not exist.

VFX only. I need to go into Unreal Engine. I need to place everything. I need to have all the talent to help me go about that. Or just dumping my time in. Or I can move quick on something. U fail quickly, succeed or succeed overnight in 21 days. And I'm able to keep it pushing in terms of what I'm supposed to do. Helping small and medium businesses, making videos like, like this. But, back to some of the coding stuff to promote agency. That's what the story is of my screenplay of my trilogy. It's bravery. It's agency. It's willpower. It's intentional. It's moving with intention or having stillness with intention, right?

It's the whole thing. It's the whole thing. And it's an important conversation. And that's why I'm making this thing because I because it's because it's the right conversation. And so keep, name of the game, I'm not one to get hung up on things. Oh, poor me. Keep it, take it in stride. This will affect the back end and just my ability. So, I don't know if anyone can relate here in the Slack channel for the X-P prize competition. If anyone's had a similar experience, I' I'd I'd expect I'm not the only one. And I just think you got to have you got to have patience and a degree of temperament, not getting frustrated.

I tried to get the actor on the horn after the gaffer was just went ghost mode, but to his credit u took the time to reply and at least let his mind be known. And dialogue's fine. I wanted to have more dialogue. I wanted to I wanted to really have a conversation about it. And it's super you got to be super have super high temperament cuz the second you show too much passion or show your cards too much then it's immediate debate mode and maybe I could have taken something away from what he was saying like don't use the tools not gonna happen. But yeah, it's interesting. It's very interesting and a lot of a lot of work to do up to this weekend shoot.

Super sprint production, high produ high production value and turning it around in a week. This is going to be this is going to be fun. I'm having a blast. This is this is a blast. But on a strictly vibe coding agentic engineering standpoint, I found some good things in terms of I'm juggling, spinning all these plates, juggling all these people. And I came up with a new agent to run that's a basically slashjury. And what jury does is, it fires off on whatever, top of the morning, whatever cadence, whatever frequency, and understanding the meetings, all it's going to do is put itself in the standpoint of a basically the team, every single person on the team down to, the A players to the D-listers and going into those meetings.

Things. Ask questions based off of the materials they have, all communications, everything that they know in terms of call transcripts, in terms of emails that threads that they've been on and whatnot. Assigns a confidence score based off of their responses, right? And and then you go, okay, every single person, if I have a meeting with, call it the if I have a meeting with the studio manager of where this shoot is happening, stunt coordinator based off our last conversations, it was good, but maybe one question came up. It's going to put it itself he's an a play a player for sure and those questions in his shoes to get the full view and being very scrupulous in terms of trying to have the whole 360 covered what are the questions for him okay boom then what are just down the line of every single person DP 80 blah and even the grips and staff and stuff what's the questions for the studio manager the top stuff is super important.

What's what's this the ceiling height? What's the load rate? Is it rated to carry a certain load? All these were in the first conversation, so that's a bad idea, a bad example, but super important questions down to and scheduling logistics stuff with the AD like down to, hey, where's the refrigerator for the extras or the grips and whatnot. So, it goes through that process and then every meeting, every morning, it's not like, hey, you got to circle back around because I'm only thinking of things that are top of mind for me in terms of priorities for the top people. It's like, no, everybody is, gets questions or at least I'm presented with it to then read, understand where people's heads might be at, and identify gaps accordingly.

And that's a meouch type thing. And then, filter out. I'm not going to ask everything to the person in question, the meeting recipient or who I'm having a meeting with, but it's a workflow that you can imagine could be plugged into, copy paste into any org smallmedium business doing, up to, any revenue number you can imagine. Communication can be better. Putting ourselves in other people's shoes could be better. So, that is a great lesson that I've learned in this process. A great agent I think I've made and I think it's I think it's one of those ones that are going to be on a reoccurring timer in terms of workflows and adding into my core workflow and whatnot.

And that's an exciting thing because that doesn't come around all the time. Just overall interesting stuff in my ask to the to my colleagues who are also fellow sub submitters competitors of this X-P prize this future vision competition put on by X-P prize and yeah I can I think people will be done and submitted by now so hopefully someone, good little group here can be interested in getting this over helping me get this over the line. And I'd appreciate it and we'll figure it out in terms of what would be needed there. But yes, all the best. Stay tuned. Gonna I think in the next couple days have a live stream in which I'm just you could see me an hour of work using the tools and just kind hopefully just flying through whatever that one hour looks like.

I think that would be good. Haven't done any live streams because it's just been more short excerpts rather than sitting down and just riffing. But all good stuff. Chat soon. Thanks for watching. Let me know what you're building down below. Thanks.