Dear Diary: Let's talk Films, Life, and up until Now.

I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more.

This was written by Robert Browning. I didn't know that when I started my journey in films in 2017. I just read it on the road just outside my film school. I was naive, I was passionate. I was ready to fight one more.

The time in the film school took longer to pass. I used to write stories before 2017, but there I learned to shape my stories, give them a structure, make them follow rules. Are you even a writer if you do not follow structures? As I learned more about how to write, I grew distant from the love of writing. It used to be a feeling before, now it was a weight.

As Covid hit, much like the rest of the world, my film school also hit a pause button. And a confession: Man, I loved it. I started this blog at that time. As I grew away from the practice of writing films every day, I started to come closer to stories. It was intimate to write while being away. This was the feeling and it was... weird. I wrote poems, stories, series, haiku, everything. Then, someone hit the play button, and the blog was dead again.

What would you write, if you forget how to write? I would write my heart out. Maybe even add a "Dear Diary" at the start.

Well, it was not the same experience with films for me. In fact, it was the opposite. I grew more in love with films as I made them. Film-by-film, set-by-set, films kept amazing me.

My first film was not in 2017, but actually10 years before I started Film journey. It was winters of 07 when my father bought me a red-colored baby camera. It was a Sony Point and Shoot. I shot video of a waterfall, my brother sliding on a slide in the park, my mother and father setting up a Diwali Lamp, a selfie of me on my roof acting crazy, and a kite flying in the sky. I stitched those videos one after the other in Windows Movie Maker. I wish I still had that one with me, like I used to collect massive GBs of shoot data for no reason now.

With no reason, I made my first film in the film school. It was a three-shot, 1-minute long film. Ah... good times when I didn't worry about a 3-second hook rule.

The film was wonderful in my mind, but it didn't land the same on screen as in my mind. So did the next, and the one after that, and the one after that, and... yeah... till my last one.

Why do films look better in the mind than on screen?

Anyways, with each set I grew a little, I felt a little, and I learned a little. I also learned to accept change. Things kept changing so fast, I couldn't keep up with the pace. I just learned about halogens and now LEDs are the industry standard? OTTs, TF are those? And why is Marvel releasing like 40 films a year? My little brain needed to go back into a lockdown.

I wrote a fantasy short fiction in 2021. I wanted to experiment with VFX, and particle effects and what not. It was so good on paper. But on set I realized I wasn't ambitious; I was still naive. I didn't need to learn more; I needed to forget everything once again.

Now, it's been 5 years to that, and I am ready to forget once again. Things are still changing so fast, I am still struggling to keep up. ChatGPT... AI... Robots... Are aliens coming too?

Anyways, I started learning more about it and started understanding more about it.

Cut to:

Now, I have been in the A.I. industry for 8 months. AND CALL ME A FOOL, but I don't think AI is replacing filmmakers, EVER.

Will AI replace jobs? —Duh.

Will it change the filmmaking and film viewing experience? —Certainly.

But not filmmakers.
No billion parameters will be naive. No input token limits will be goof enough to call a Windows Movie Maker video a film. No LLM will ever feel the urge to fight for one last time.

But working in the AI industry, I got to use all of the text, image, and video tools. I studied the ins and outs of how this thing even works at a fractional level. And I've got to say, maybe not films, but it will be... and is replacing many traditional jobs. I haven't been on a set for a long period now, but I still remember to accept change and welcome the future with the open mind that films have taught me.

Earlier this year, I quit my AI job thingy with a thought: now what? So, I started working to channelize my learnings, my findings, my understandings, and my experiences, and came up with an idea. An idea to stop and take a breath before a shoot, an idea to keep up with the pace of today's world, an idea to be at the top of the AI game, an idea to make something which is actually the need of the hour for both: Traditional Filmmaking and A.I. stuff.

I worked on this tool called RanGen Studio and somehow made it work for the best of all worlds.

I'll update about it later and won't get into details right now. It would feel like a cheap marketing sellout. And, I just wanted to share a piece of myself with the internet. I just want to say, I found a new fight. And, it's going to be okay.

P.S. You can however follow RanGen on Instagram