What Is Post-Permission Cinema? (And Why We Are Done Waiting for Green Lights)

A term, a movement, and a manifesto for AI filmmaking by Andrew “Oyl” Miller.

Whether you’ve spent 15 minutes or 15 years in the trenches of advertising, you know the exact weight of a 100-page deck. You know the sound of a client’s legal team slowly killing the best idea in the room and filing down the edge just to be safe. You know the calendar math: concept approved in Q1, cameras rolling in Q3, spot airing by Q4, assuming nothing dies in the room, or any corporate restructuring happens between now and then.

Our entire industry was architected around one load-bearing bottleneck: Permission.

Permission to access capital. Permission to hire a crew. Permission from a CMO, a legal team, a regional brand manager, and a nervous account director to turn a script into something that actually lives in the world.

I am here to tell you Permission is Over (If You Want It).

Welcome to Post-Permission Cinema.

Defining Post-Permission Cinema

Post-Permission Cinema is the filmmaking reality we now live in. A moment in creative history where generative AI has completely vaporized the friction between conceptualization and execution.

It is the ability for a single creator, or a small team moving in a singular fashion, to write, direct, and ship broadcast-quality narrative work without requiring traditional gatekeepers, institutional funding, or the logistical weight of a traditional production.

It’s scary and raw. There are no fall-backs. Accountability is out in the open.

In the Post-Permission Cinema era, the barrier to entry is no longer budget. It is no longer accessible. It is no longer who you know inside a network, studio, or holding company.

The only barrier left is vision, taste, and the willingness to execute.

I coined this term because the industry needed one. We have been describing pieces of this shift in word tags and technical jargon: “AI filmmaking,” “synthetic media,” “generative content.” But we haven’t yet zoomed out and named it in the larger historical rupture those pieces add up to. Post-Permission Cinema is that rupture. It is a named era, the way we name the French New Wave or the birth of digital non-linear editing. Something permanent has changed. The least we can do is call it what it is.

The Four Tenets of Post-Permission Cinema

Operating in this new reality requires a complete rewiring of how we think about creative production. These are the core tenets:

1. Execution Kills the Pitch Deck

Nobody wants to scan another generic mood board with the same tired references that have been passed down from Tumblr to Pinterest to TikTok, and smuggled away in art directors’ messy desktops. When the tools exist to generate high-fidelity cinematic renders in minutes, when you can go from a script idea to a locked cut in a weekend, writing a deck about what a film might look like is a waste of everyone’s time, including yours.

In Post-Permission Cinema, the pitch is the pilot. You no longer ask a client or an executive to imagine the final product. You drop the final product in an email. The new starting point is the rough-cut. Pixar style. Let’s judge the details right after we have the script. We are flattening time and exposing taste, or lack thereof.

I’ve spent years seeing teams put together the best pitch decks and treatments in the business. Beautifully typeset. Full reference imagery. High taste references and GIFs. Careful strategic framing. I’m proud of that craft. And I am telling you, as someone who lived inside that system, that those decks were always a substitute for the thing we actually wanted to make. Now we can just make the thing.

Execution is the only currency that matters now. No more hiding behind borrowed references.

2. Taste Is Your Only Moat

When anyone can prompt a photorealistic scene using Luma Dream Machine, Veo, Runway, or Midjourney, and when the render button is universally accessible, the technology itself stops being a competitive advantage. The question of craft becomes, what will you put into these dream machines? Sloppy input leads to sloppy output. Just look at what our feeds have become.

What separates a filmmaker from someone mashing “generate” is everything that comes before the prompt and everything that happens after the output: the conceptual architecture, the instinct for what to cut, the understanding of pacing and tone, and why a certain piece of music makes a sequence land differently. And most importantly, when what you’ve generated doesn’t hit the mark.

This is where years of agency rigor and rendering harsh judgment in the name of raising the creative bar pay dividends in ways no one expected. I’ve spent two decades learning how to build narrative tension inside a 60-second broadcast window. Learning how lighting, camera movement, set design, wardrobe, casting, and all the individual disciplines add up to elevate a piece of work. Learning how a single editorial choice can be the difference between a film people share and a film people scroll past.

None of that experience became obsolete when the tools arrived. It became the whole game. Your eye plus your judgement will define you.

3. The Pipeline Is Flat

Traditional production is a strictly linear march: Pre-Production → Production → Post-Production. Each phase is a separate kingdom with its own vendors, timelines, and handoffs. The whole apparatus was designed to manage the complexity of physical production, which required sequences and dependencies almost by necessity.

Post-Permission Cinema compresses all of that into a singular, overlapping workflow. Scripting, storyboarding, scoring, and cutting happen simultaneously and recursively. I’ll be editing a sequence, and it will suggest a narrative direction I hadn’t considered, which sends me back to the script, which changes the shot list before I’ve even “generated” the shots.

The director is no longer managing a logistical army. They are conducting a symphony of algorithms, agents, and enhanced capabilities, and more importantly, they are making artistic decisions at every stage that used to get diluted across a dozen departments and handoffs.

4. The Audience Is the Only Approver

We used to let ideas die quietly in conference rooms. A concept would get as far as a deck, hit a budget wall or an anxious client, and simply disappear, un-made and un-seen, as if it never existed.

Today you build the work. Then you push it directly into the cultural slipstream and let the timeline decide. Creators are already operating this way. Brands and studios will be next. If they’re smart.

The internet is a ruthless and honest editor. If the work is undeniable, it moves. If it doesn’t move, the problem is yours to solve, not a committee’s, not a budget holder’s. That accountability is clarifying in a way that the permission economy never was.

This Isn’t Theory. It’s Already on the Air.

I want to be precise about this because the discourse around AI filmmaking still tends to exist at the level of demos and proofs-of-concept, tech presentations, and Discord threads. What I’m describing has already crossed into the broadcast world.

In early 2026, I directed one of the first fully AI-generated commercials to clear network standards and air nationally. A 30-second spot for Proofpoint, produced with ONLYCH1LD, and broadcast on ESPN. I applied these lessons immediately to creating two spots, Luma Taxi and Luma Suds, for the Luma Dream Brief that were selected by an elite creative industry jury, run as real ads, and officially submitted to Cannes Lions. Once again, I am taking these lessons and momentum and putting them right back into practice. No bending the knee. No asking nicely. More firsts are coming.

The tools are ready. The networks are accepting the work. The festivals are beginning to evaluate it on the same stage as everything else. We are in full transition now. There are sea changes happening under the surface that will start manifesting in radically diverse ways.

The era of Post-Permission Cinema is not approaching. It has arrived and now surrounds us.

Why Naming This Matters

Every wave of innovation is first dominated by technical conversations. It took storytelling breakthroughs like Jurassic Park and Pixar’s string of early hits to transform technical achievements into a larger, more human, and compelling conversation.

Right now, AI filmmaking is dominated by tech bros flexing workflows and render hacks. Where are the writers? Where are the storytellers? Where are those trying to go beyond the multitude of Elon Musk remixes and cat memes?

I jumped into these tools early, and I want to start naming what’s going on. I want to start having a more nuanced discussion and move beyond all the triggered trolls in my DMs, copy and pasting the same stale arguments. When you stand up first in an area, you can’t help but provoke debate. But would you rather have the machines go fully autonomous, or have some humans in there, wrestling with the tools and fighting to push beyond the edges? What if creatives took over the tools and conversation from the platform companies, venture-funded labs, and trade press, trying to figure out how to cover it? Creators are getting drowned out and marginalized now. We have to punch back.

Post-Permission Cinema is the term for what we are all living through. It describes the power shift. It describes the pipeline change. And it describes the creative obligation that comes with it: there are no more excuses.

The interesting thing is how it is triggering the top and bottom of the pecking order. The old guard and traditional gatekeepers are shaking, as are the anonymous YouTube commenters and trolls. I’m swimming somewhere in the messy middle.

I’m for the independent artists. For poets and writers and makers trying to make themselves heard. I believe it’s a privilege not to use every tool at your disposal. Does Steven Spielberg have any use for emerging tools? Probably not, unless they serve his vision. However, a filmmaker with 300 subscribers on YouTube is in a different boat. The world is not paying attention yet. And I believe the hungry artists with something to say will do whatever it takes to give their ideas shape.

These tools are for anyone who has ever felt blocked.

For anyone who has been denied access. For those who have not been able to raise funds to make their ideas come to life.

Why spend any more of your career idling at red lights that never turn?

The roads are open now.

Where we’re going, you don’t even need roads. You don’t need a green light. You don’t need a studio. You don’t need a network pickup or an agency brief or a client budget approved in Q1.

You need a vision, a set of tools that are already in your hands, and the discipline to stop waiting for someone to tell you it’s okay.

That permission was never going to come anyway. So stop asking and just make like you’ve never made before.

And as we’re seeing early on, traditional gatekeepers are paying attention and trying to figure out what’s going on. Conversations are happening, and models are shifting.

You can’t control that. But you can control what you make.

So what are you waiting for?

Andrew “Oyl” Miller is an advertising Creative Director, Copywriter, and AI Film Director. He spent 15 years working at Wieden+Kennedy on brands like Nike, PlayStation, MLB, Amazon, and IKEA—and is now one of the first people to direct a fully AI-generated commercial for broadcast television. You can follow his insights and updates on his newsletter.

Waking Up With MLB "Breakfast Club"

Hauling baseball scarecrows, midnight huddles, and building a cinematic tribute at magic hour. A BTS look at the making of MLB’s Opening Day commercial in Japan.

For one week, we chased baseball across Japan.

It was a dream production between Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo, MLB, the Fridman Sisters, Stink, and more. We all committed to a simple vision, and burned daylight at both ends (as well as through the night), to pay tribute to the ritual of fans watching early morning baseball in Japan.

What resulted was a deeply textured and authentic love letter to the fans who have been there. The ones who set their alarms before the Ohtani’s and the current generation arrived on the scene. It was also a warm invitation for all fans to rise up and enjoy the poetry and momentum that is MLB in this era.

Here is the resulting Opening Day commercial, “Breakfast Club.”

As we shuttled around Japan, I kept my iPhone and Canon busy documenting the journey. Capturing moments between takes and making sure I had all the memories of this monumental and epic team effort.

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Andrew “Oyl” Miller is an advertising Creative Director, Copywriter, and AI Film Director. He spent 15 years working at Wieden+Kennedy on brands like Nike, PlayStation, MLB, Amazon, and IKEA—and is now one of the first people to direct a fully AI-generated commercial for broadcast television. You can follow his insights and updates on his newsletter.

From Laptop to Cannes: Making "Luma Taxi" and "Luma Suds"

How a hybrid generative-AI workflow and the Luma Dream Brief turned two solo, cinematic experiments into official Cannes Lions entries.

I made two commercials completely by myself.

And now, thanks to an opportunity from the Luma Dream Brief, they are both headed to Cannes Lions as official entries.

The first spot, Luma Taxi, was born from an idea I’ve had in my head for ages: drop futuristic tech into the Old West, and play it entirely straight. No winking at the camera, no lengthy explanations. Just cowboys and cowgirls operating as early adopters to a new technology and never looking back.

The second spot, Luma Suds, pulls from a deeply personal canon of world-building. Having spent over a decade living in Tokyo, I’ve constantly looked for ways to subvert the gritty, cinematic Japanese crime drama. I wanted to create a laundry detergent commercial with literal life-and-death stakes, living in a dark, criminal underworld where yakuza family members keep lying about the nature of the red stains on their clothes. It’s always that damn “beet root.”

Both of these films were made by me, sitting in front of my laptop, orchestrating every aspect of the generative-AI production.

The era of the one-person studio is a reality now.

Here is a look under the hood at how they came together.

The Blueprint and the Build

Everything started with a script. From there, I wrote a brief outline of the world-building and tone, and uploaded those documents to Luma’s agents.

Then came the visuals. I started by nailing the look of the characters as stills before moving on to the settings. It took a lot of trial and error to achieve the gritty, lived-in, photorealistic worlds I was imagining, but Luma did a pretty incredible job of matching the aesthetic in my head.

As the visuals developed, I moved into Suno to start working on the music. Because each film plays in a very distinct genre, I had clear guardrails for the sound I wanted. I generated around 15 to 20 tracks, picked my favorites, and dropped them into the timeline on my free trial version of Final Cut Pro.

Once I had a music bed and my early generated footage, I started cobbling together a rough cut

The “Pixar Method” of Gen-AI Directing

My AI directing process is heavily modeled after the Pixar method. In Ed Catmull’s book Creativity, Inc., he lays out a rigorous model for iterating and dialing in animated features. You start with very rough sketches cut together into sequences. Over time, the animation is developed and rendered in higher fidelity, replacing the original sketches. The point is that, from a very early stage, you can start to feel the pulse of your characters and the shape of your film.

I worked the exact same way with these edits.

I watched the rough assemblies over and over, diving into the problem areas, tackling the things that bothered me the most, and making those my priorities. This is where taste comes in. Something that only comes from experience lived and absorbed outside of the prompting box.

Honestly, there were moments I desperately wanted to include that the tools just couldn’t pull off. I wanted snappier back-and-forths between the characters, but AI “actors” aren’t quite there yet. So, I pivoted. I shifted my approach and leaned heavily into visual storytelling.

Iterating in Real-Time

Over the course of a week, I just kept staring at my rough cuts. Once the basic blocks were in place, I started finessing the transitions. Was the music connecting us? Were the cuts satisfying? How could I make it more surprising? These are the exact same questions I’ve been asking for the past 20 years while making commercials the traditional way. So many of those instincts and skills carry over directly into AI; the timeline is just massively compressed. It almost feels like you are rewriting the script over and over again until the film is done.

And in AI, there are no “re-shoots.” If you realize you are missing a shot in the edit, you can generate it and plug it in within minutes.

As the cuts got sharper, I zeroed in on the details. How could I land the end card and the product reveal? Were there facial expressions I wanted to try again? Did I need supporting sound effects? Was the footage getting repetitive? It was time to fine-tune and kill my darlings.

Solving for Story

With Luma Taxi, the spot was entirely driven by the narration. I wanted it to feel like an Old West fable, guided by a gravelly, unreliable narrator telling us exactly how things went down. The voice was designed using ElevenLabs. After about seven variations, I found the exact tone and texture I needed, a voice I definitely want to use again in future projects.

I fine-tuned that voice to match the rhythm of the visuals and the music until it felt seamless. If there was a gap that felt too quiet, I’d write a little more VO to connect the thoughts. My original VO ran long (as they usually do), so I just continued to watch the cut and perfect the narration all the way through production.

With Luma Suds, the trickiest part was executing the opening “problem” trigger: the young yakuza spilling wine on the godfather. I spent dozens of generations trying to crack that scene “in-camera,” but the physics and blocking never worked out. Even when I described exactly what I wanted, the AI actor would do something completely out of pocket, like grabbing the godfather’s arm and violently shaking it to spill the wine. Killing the tension and drama of that moment.

Instead of fighting the physics, I leaned into the reaction shots of the partygoers to tell that part of the story. It actually ended up playing up the gravity and consequence of the moment far better than a direct spill would have.

The Era of Post-Permission Cinema

Looking back at these two spots, the biggest takeaway for me is how much of traditional filmmaking still applies. The tools have changed, but the fundamental need for human instinct hasn’t. For two decades, I’ve relied on taste, timing, and problem-solving to make ideas work. Now, I’m applying those exact same muscles to a generative workflow.

We are stepping into an era of post-permission cinema. You no longer need a massive crew, a sprawling location shoot, or a bloated budget to bring a wild, cinematic idea to life and get it all the way to Cannes. If I had my choice and an unlimited budget, I’d always choose the traditional way. But I am aware that change is coming, and new lanes and forms will emerge from these tools. My approach is to get in there early, deeply learn and test the tools, and help push the boundaries of what is possible.

Most of the early AI work I’ve seen has not been for me. At first, I thought it was just for quick memes and fan fiction featuring Elon Musk. Getting deeper into the tools, I now see that you can make whatever you want. The tech bros will continue making their “Hollywood is cooked” spectacles, but when true artists get behind the keyboard, different tones and voices will be unlocked.

It’s an exciting time for makers. Where your ideas can now go directly into production. No client approvals. No messy group meetings watering things down. No uncomfortable compromises. If you have an idea, you can bring it to life in a very final and polished way. It has collapsed time and stacked disciplines in a way we’ve never seen before.

You just need a laptop, a clear vision, and the willingness to iterate until the story clicks.

The barriers are gone. Now, the only thing you need is a great idea.

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Andrew “Oyl” Miller is an advertising Creative Director, Copywriter, and AI Film Director. He spent 15 years working at Wieden+Kennedy on brands like Nike, PlayStation, MLB, Amazon, and IKEA—and is now one of the first people to direct a fully AI-generated commercial for broadcast television. You can follow his insights and updates on his newsletter.

Two Commercials I Directed Are Heading to Cannes

My Luma Dream Brief entries “Luma Taxi” and “Luma Suds” are moving forward as real ads and official Cannes contenders.

I got a fun email this morning.

Two commercials I wrote and directed for the Luma Dream Brief have been selected to run as paid ads, and will officially be entered into the 2026 Cannes Lions. From here, any of the selected ads that win a coveted Gold Lion will split a share of a $1,000,000 prize pot.

The past year has been a grind and a blur in the AI film space. What started as a curiosity quickly gathered momentum. 2026 has seen one of my AI-commercials run on ESPN, and now two more are official ads for Luma AI, and heading to Cannes.

Anyway, here are my spots for Luma, now running as paid ads.

The first, Luma Taxi, takes us to the town of Luma where the horses have gone on strike and autonomous vehicles help the Old West mayhem go without a hitch.

And Luma Suds, the generational yakuza epic meets laundry detergent commercial of my wildest dreams.

Under the Hood: The Hybrid Workflow

For both commercials, I used a hybrid workflow I’ve been developing over the past year. AI filmmaking leverages powerful technology, but the best examples I’ve seen are far from the “just push a button” meme you see in your feeds. There is still a lot of room for human authorship and decisions to be made. Here is how these films were built:

• Writing as Storyboarding: It starts with rough notes and outlining, which then turn into a draft of a script. I usually start storyboarding at this phase, but I like to do it in writing. I’ll write out dense descriptions of the scenes and moments I have in my head, which naturally evolve into the core prompts.

• Generating the Blocks: Next, I start generating the key sequences. The prompting and results can still be like rolling a pair of dice, so a lot of re-rolling is involved.

• The Edit: Once I have the basic building blocks, I drop the clips into Final Cut Pro. From there, I start pulling selects and getting the spine of the story into a rough edit. It’s a lot of back-and-forth with the Luma model to fill in the holes and perfect key moments.

• Setting the Tone: Early on, I go into Suno AI (a generative music model) to start playing around with the tone of the score. I like to get music on the timeline to edit against. Even if it’s rough, I can always switch it out later with a more crafted version.

• Voice & Character: For the Luma Taxi spot, I created an original AI narrator in ElevenLabs. It had to be gravelly and period-accurate, a voice with enough authority to make even the absurd sound like a black-and-white legend. I was pleased with how it fit the genre and tone I was going for.

I sat with both edits for a couple of weeks, watching them through and making little tweaks to the timing as I lived with them.

With generative AI, there are always moments you wish turned out differently, or frames you wish matched the exact, specific vision in your head. But like any traditional commercial set with a hard deadline, at some point, you have to let go and put it out there.

I’m excited to have the spots out there and running as real ads. It’s all so surreal, and I already have a number of upcoming projects in the pipeline. Stay tuned.

Andrew “Oyl” Miller is an advertising Creative Director, Copywriter, and AI Film Director. He spent 15 years working at Wieden+Kennedy on brands like Nike, PlayStation, MLB, Amazon, and IKEA—and is now one of the first people to direct a fully AI-generated commercial for broadcast television. You can follow his insights and updates on his newsletter.

How I Became an AI Film Director After 20 Years in Advertising

From Nike campaigns to uncanny valley experiments to an AI commercial on ESPN—how Veo, Luma, and pure obsession unlocked a new way to make films without permission.

Still from Luma Taxi Dream Brief AI commercial. Written, directed, and produced by Andrew “Oyl” Miller. 2026.

For a long time, I stayed away from generative AI video tools.

What I saw in my feeds looked like memes and party tricks.

I’ve spent over two decades in advertising, writing and producing commercials and content for brands like Nike, PlayStation, IKEA, Amazon, and more. I had my routines, my established network, and my way of doing things. I’ve collaborated with and had deep creative discussions with legendary directors like Tony Kaye and Frank Budgen. I’ve been lucky enough to glimpse into a dream world of film, and I fell in love with the craft of it all. Yes, tools and taste are ever-evolving, but I deeply fell into a belief that traditional film techniques are the only way.

But then, last year, Google dropped a generative AI video model called Veo 3. I soon saw a random clip of an AI-generated character speaking, with near-perfect lip-sync.

That was the Big Bang of my rocketing journey through the AI film universe.

Suddenly, a lifetime of imaginary characters and dormant stories flashed through my head. Old directionless fragments and shards of ideas in dusty notebooks suddenly had new life. There was so much inside of me that had never found a proper outlet or received the official industry blessing. But when the sky cracked open, and I saw that a cluster of pixels could approximate life and human-ish performance, the writer in me started shaking. I didn’t know exactly where this was going, but I was suddenly, violently compelled to get these ideas out.

Welcome to the Infinite Sandbox in the Uncanny Valley

I started with the low-hanging fruit: Stormtroopers. As a lifelong Star Wars nerd, placing Stormtroopers into our everyday world was a cheap engine for endless gags. They went camping, they went to Cannes, they went to Burning Man. The possibilities were literally endless. It became a meme. Others jumped on.

But soon, I knew I needed to get my own voice out there. I saw AI not just as a way to create blockbuster spectacle, but as a potential platform for unique writing and voice. So naturally, I dipped into the 1980s.

I started thinking about archaic, crusty baseball coaches who hated the modern game. Men triggered by everything, armed with zero self-awareness and iron-clad beliefs from an ancient era. Being in advertising, I knew a funny character wasn’t enough. I needed a platform. I needed world-building.

That became Deadball Academy. Set in present-day Scottsdale, it’s a facility run by a group of coaches stuck in 1984 who bring in modern baseball prospects and corrupt them with deeply backward instruction. It’s a whole universe with lore and bizarre pockets of backstory. I quickly realized there was a LOT to mine here.

The episodes started writing themselves. Sometimes by hand, sometimes as fragmented dialogue and jokes in a notes app. When I strung together enough lines that made me laugh, I started building prompts. It became a new form of mini-screenwriting: establishing a setting, defining a character description, placing a line of dialogue, dictating the delivery, and always defining the cinematic camera look and movement.

Prompt. Prompt. Prompt.

Judge. Re-write. Edit. Curate.

The characters and voices came flooding back. Some were stuck in the uncanny valley; others looked insanely, undeniably good. Nothing was perfect, but it was allowing me to build a rip-o-matic for a cinematic universe that simply didn’t exist before.

Building in Public (and Becoming the Villain)

Whenever an idea outside of Deadball Academy popped into my head, I pursued it. I leaned into Midjourney to test visual styles. I used Suno to tap into my love of songwriting, generating rough, pounding tracks to score my films. Quickly, I was building up a workflow and stack of tools that let me operate a film studio right at my desk.

All the while, I was building in public.

And the internet reacted exactly how you’d expect. I started getting nasty DMs and anonymous trolls flooding my channels. I get it. AI is polarizing, and like it or not, I’ve become the bad guy to some people. But my curiosity, and the voices demanding to be let out of my head, wouldn’t let me stop. Sorry, not sorry. You don’t last in advertising without developing a bulletproof coping mechanism for intense criticism. I just kept pushing. I hear the voices, and the silent judgement, and I keep going.

I’m not looking for your approval. I’m looking for possibilities.

The Trojan Horse and the Million-Dollar Brief

Then, the inbound interest started.

One of those calls turned into writing and directing my first AI commercial, for cybersecurity start-up Proofpoint, which actually aired on ESPN. That is still an insane sentence to write, but it’s internet fact now. I’ve got the receipts. I partnered with the visionary team at ONLYCH1LD, and their openness to this new form was infectious. I even made a bonkers BTS gag reel using the “lead actor” from the Proofpoint spot, CLIFF DATAMAN. Yet another exercise in using the tools for world-building. I just keep leaning into the tangents I find most interesting.

Right around that time, an old Wieden+Kennedy colleague reached out about the Luma Dream Brief.

The AI film contest from Luma AI asked AI directors to use the Luma model to make an ad for a fictional Luma-branded product. Entries would go before a panel of advertising, film, and creative industry legends. Their picks would then be run as real ads for Luma, and officially submitted to Cannes Lions.

I’m not an awards hound, but I recognize how they contribute to career momentum. The thought of creating breakthrough work in an emerging film category was a strong motivation. On top of that, the contest also offered a one-million-dollar prize if the AI commercial ends up winning a Gold Lion.

As someone who has had some of my best work not given the blessing to submit to Cannes and other festivals, for weird, internal political reasons, the idea of no gatekeepers and a chance at entry appealed to me. Gatekeepers in advertising can be brutal. This contest arrived at the exact right time, offering a clean path to submit something with my uncompromised vision directly to Cannes, complete with a shot at a million dollars.

I dove into Luma’s tools and quickly built up a series of spots. What Luma did was validate my deepest belief: the best idea can come from anywhere. Committees, meetings, and endless feedback loops obfuscate that truth. Luma provided a cheat code to circumvent the murky layers of the industry. No feedback. No hidden agendas. No rubber stamps.

Just a clean shot.

If someone wanted to pair a multi-generational yakuza epic with a hard sell for laundry detergent, no one could stand in the way.

What’s Next?

This is where I stand in 2026. Turning a new page, letting my curiosity drive the way.

I will keep pushing, refining, and mastering these tools. But more importantly, I am looking to push beyond advertising. I’m looking to formalize series and put my voice out there in bigger, longer, more ambitious ways.

I have drafts of screenplays and novels waiting in the wings. I now see a world where AI filmmaking bridges the gap between a written page and a green light that I’ve been chasing for years at the end of a long and winding tunnel. Proof of concepts. Opening scenes. Theatrical trailers. That is the new brief.

My mission statement is this: I will keep making things that no one is asking for.

How can I use AI not just to increase my output or be more efficient, but to truly amplify my voice and get my stories made? It’s a crazy dream. It’s a lonely road. But the curiosity and possibilities keep me building. Studio Oyl.

What that means is I’m just a guy at a laptop, letting my fingers do the dreaming.

Andrew “Oyl” Miller is an advertising Creative Director, Copywriter, and AI Film Director. He spent 15 years working at Wieden+Kennedy on brands like Nike, PlayStation, MLB, Amazon, and IKEA—and is now one of the first people to direct a fully AI-generated commercial for broadcast television. You can check out his work on his website.

New Work: Evil Has Always Had A Name

A live-action short film for the launch of Capcom's Resident Evil Requiem.

I didn’t have writing a Resident Evil prequel short film and campaign line on my bingo card. But when it comes to writing long-form cinematic content, count me in.

Massive shout-out to Lucas McClain, Jonathan Marques, and Nomadic Agency for bringing “Evil Has Always Had a Name” to life in such a powerful and filmic way. 🧟‍♀️ 🍿 🔥

Directed by Rich Lee. Starring Maika Monroe.

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Andrew “Oyl” Miller is an advertising Creative Director and Copywriter. He spent 15 years working at Wieden+Kennedy on brands like Nike, PlayStation, MLB, Amazon and IKEA. You can follow his insights and updates on his newsletter.

Luma Dream Brief Entry - Luma Taxi Commercial "Ride On"

For the last four years, I’ve spent my days wandering the Arizona desert, staring at the vast, empty horizon and dreaming of things that simply couldn’t exist.

In my head, it was always a collision of future-forward tech and the grit of the Old West. But in the agency world, those ideas usually die a slow, silent death. They get pushed aside by “logic,” budget spreadsheets, or that one tuned-out, nasally voice in the corner of the conference room asking, “But whyyyyyyyyy?”

Logic is a dream-killer.

But then the Luma Dream Brief gave me a preemptive green light and a license to dream. No pitch decks. No “safety” edits. Just a raw workflow and the tools to finally build the thing I’ve been seeing in the heat haze:

A frontier town in the Wild West, where the horses have gone on strike, and the cowboys are fighting for their lives on bucking autonomous vehicles.

This is Luma Taxi. In an alternate timeline of approvals, it’s a Super Bowl ad. In our reality, it’s a dual launch on Substack and LinkedIn.

In the spirit of Luma Taxi, Ride on.

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Andrew “Oyl” Miller is an advertising Creative Director and Copywriter. He spent 15 years working at Wieden+Kennedy on brands like Nike, PlayStation, MLB, Amazon and IKEA. You can check out his work on his website.

The Last Trickster Poet of Hollywood

A remembrance of an evening with Val Kilmer—where he conjured a provocation: the creative life begins when you stop asking for permission, find art in the everyday, and dare to make your own reality.

It wasn’t a conversation, not in the traditional sense. Val Kilmer didn’t stand behind a podium. He didn’t read from notes. He shuffled onstage, found an armchair that looked like it belonged in a sunken living room from 1978, and just—sat.

This was at my college, a small liberal arts school with an ambitious lecture series that had recently hosted former presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, and an up-and-coming senator named Barack Obama. These were people of consequence. Leaders who made policy, waged war, held power.

But none of them had been Batman, Iceman, Doc Holliday and Jim Morrison all rolled into one. None of them had that strange electricity of myth and menace, all bottled in a single person.

The moment Kilmer appeared on stage, the air in the room changed.

This was post-Heat, post-Batman, the tail-end of a decade when he’d shape-shifted through a rogue’s gallery of icons. He was famous in a way that felt dangerous. You didn’t know what he’d say—and that was the point.

He opened the floor to questions immediately. No script. Just Val, free-associating through Twain and Shakespeare, quoting his own films, rhapsodizing about his kids, about cameras, about the stubborn, irrational act of making art. The whole night orbited one message:

Create your own reality.

Nobody’s going to hand it to you. And even when they do, you’ll have to fight to keep it. Surprise people. Be undeniable.

He told the story of landing The Doors. He hadn’t waited for a studio call. He recorded himself singing Morrison songs. Slipped one of his own into the demo, unlabeled. Even Oliver Stone couldn’t tell which was which. Neither could the remaining members of the band. He became Morrison, and by the time casting decisions were made, there was no decision. Val was the Lizard King.

He talked about being the first person he knew to own a video camera. He filmed constantly. It was the same footage that would, decades later, form the spine of Val, his devastating, luminous 2020 documentary.

And somewhere in those rambling minutes, something clicked in me.

That night, Kilmer didn’t just perform. He modeled something. A way of living as an artist—scrappy, obsessive, defiant, enchanted. Shortly after Kilmer’s talk, I started carrying around my own video camera. I shot everything. DIY remakes of Psycho. Art films about levitating scissors. Late-night antics at Denny’s . I wasn’t trying to make something perfect. I was trying to live creatively. To treat reality as pliable. To find everlasting moments in every day. Val would understand.

It’s easy to remember the fun stuff. He did say “I’m your Huckleberry,” and yes, he told a story about Marlon Brando so strange it felt like a hallucination—involving face paint and a kimono. But what stayed with me were the deeper threads—about fate, failure, and the fragile, self-styled scaffolding that holds up an artistic life.

When someone asked about his reputation for being “difficult,” he didn’t flinch. He spoke about being a guardian of truth—for the characters he played. If he found something essential, he fought for it. The work didn’t have to be easy. It had to be real.

He talked about his son thinking he was actually Batman, not Val. Even after showing his son the movie, the boy was not convinced, and assured that he was Batman, and not his father onscreen, despite the blockbuster proof. What is reality anyway?

Maybe we are all Batman.

Kilmer painted, drew, made collages. None of that showed up in the tabloids, but it pulsed through him that night. A creative energy too unruly for one medium. You realized that the onscreen personas were just fragments and borrowed masks—glimpses of someone constantly inventing, constantly seeking.

I watched Val recently. Listened to the audiobook of his memoir I’m Your Huckleberry. Rewatched Tombstone, then Heat. And suddenly, I was back in that auditorium. In the dark. Watching a man peel away the myth and try on masks, only to reveal something stranger: a deeply sincere, wildly imperfect, defiantly poetic romantic. It was impossible not to feel inspired by that.

He made rebellion feel sacred. Mischief felt like method. He refused to play the Hollywood game, even as he conquered it. His career was a masterclass in turning dust into gold and getting bored the moment it gleamed.

Yes, he made baffling choices. Burned bridges. Took detours no manager would have greenlit. And yet he carved out something rare: a career that was his. A life of ecstatic contradictions.

He turned down the easy version of success. Maybe he regretted it. Maybe he didn’t. What’s certain is that he kept surprising us, right up until his voice gave out, and then—somehow—kept talking.

That night affirmed something in me.

I stopped waiting for permission. I stopped bowing down to so-called gatekeepers and forces I can’t control. I started making things. Well, I started making more things. Different things. Experiments. And I’ve kept on, trusting that if you throw enough wonder into the world, something unexpected will come back. It worked for Val, and over time, I’ve seen it play out in my domain as well.

Val Kilmer was, and is, our Huckleberry.

A trickster-poet in a cape. A dreamer who saw art everywhere. The crew-cut scene-stealer who once stole Top Gun from Tom Cruise with a single, arrogant chomp of chewing gum.

The Lizard King who refused to let The End define him—but instead transform him.

And when we look back, when we really trace the strange flickering light he left behind, what do we see?

We see the ghost of Jim Morrison swaggering through firelight, singing prophecy through a veil of leather and smoke—somehow about something more soulful than an expected chronicle of sex, drugs, rock n’ roll.

We see Doc Holliday, pale and facing the void, still faster on the draw than anyone alive. A Southern specter, one foot in the grave, the other in poetry.

We see Batman, not the brooding demigod of later years, but something more tormented—more Shakespearean. A Batman who looked like he’d read Hamlet and meant it.

We see Chris Shiherlis in Heat, silent and wounded, a thief with the face of a fallen angel and the soul of someone already halfway gone.

And we see Val himself, in Val, the final act, stripped of voice but not spirit. Archiving his own myth with love, regret, and more vulnerability than Hollywood ever knew what to do with.

Each of these characters was a mask. And each mask revealed something truer.

Because Val Kilmer didn’t just play icons. He inhabited them. Bent their voices to his cadence. Let their ghosts borrow his skin. He moved through genre, through persona, through time, as if this life was just one long improv scene and he was dead set on finding its truth before the lights went down.

And maybe that’s the real secret:

He was never just acting.
He was becoming.

Becoming the outlaw.
Becoming the poet.
Becoming the myth.

Becoming a cosmic jester with paint on his hands and a camera in his palm, chasing beauty across deserts and backlots and dreams.

Some actors fade.
Val burned.
With brilliance. With mess. With risk. With refusal.

He created a reality larger than the screen. A creative life so alive it bled off the edges. A rock opera of detours and digressions that joyfully haunt us all.

So here’s to Val.

Our Huckleberry.
Our Saint.
Our fading gunfighter, laughing into the abyss.
Our shapeshifter in the spotlight.
Our silent poet in the wings.

Val, if you're listening—
as you're out there still filming, still dreaming, still editing the reel of your cosmic cut—know this:

You didn’t just live a life.
You performed a constellation.
And we, lucky as hell, got to look up.

Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi Trailer Reaction

Star Wars always gets you with the music. I remember when I saw the trailer for Episode 1 back in the day. It came after a lengthy dry spell for the franchise, when there was no guarantee that Star Wars live action films would ever come back. Of course we got an entire prequel trilogy. Then Disney bought the franchise and they've been pumping out content around the clock.

But when I first saw the trailer for Episode 1, I was mesmerized by the flashes of imagery set against John Williams' masterful themes both old and new. It felt instantly Star Warsian, and the effects on screen looked fresh and modern. This was going to be Star Wars for the modern era. Of course, the prequels came out and were initially criticized, but nothing can take away the power of that original trailer. Star Wars, as one of our "forever franchises", exists largely in our own minds as fans. The head canon is strong in the Star Wars community. That's why you see the crazy blowback around Luke Skywalker's character arc or the decision to include a certain plot point of not. Fans are over invested in the franchise, and take the unfolding stories on an insanely personal level.

Star Wars marches back again with the May 2022 arrival of Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney Plus. Ewan McGregor is back as the titular Obi-Wan, who was universally revered as a bright spot in the otherwise tepidly received prequels. What's more, is he is joined by Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin Skywalker slash Darth Vader alongside McGregor's Obi-Wan in those prequels. It's a match made in revisionist Star Wars heaven.

The first trailer delivered the feels with the John Williams' score and fresh scenes of McGregor as Obi-Wan. It also showed a diversity of landscapes beyond the well-trodden Tatooine. We saw some Blade Runner-esque urban environments. They showed some new intimidating red lightsaber users who packed a menace in their appearance and how they delivered their lines. We even see a cameo from a young Luke Skywalker appearing around 7 years old. Aside from a touch of breathing, Vader and Anakin Skywalker have been held out. The central question and tease remains, what will the nature of Obi-Wan and Vader's relationship be. And will we see the two former friends appearing in the same time and place together? Or will they merely be communing aka "Force Zooming" as we've seen possible in recent Star Wars offerings. The trailer does what it is supposed to do, by giving hungry fans their first new visuals and vibes from the upcoming series. It remains the details and plot points well out of sight for now. More to come.

While recent Disney Star Wars offerings have operated at the periphery of the franchise's galaxy, minting new heroes (The Mandalorian) and glorifying fan hyped background characters (Boba Fett), Obi-Wan Kenobi boldly dives right into the center of Star Wars as we've always known it. We're picking up the pieces directly adjacent to the universally beloved original film that established the beloved franchise and immediately sent it into hyperspace.

The plot points in Obi-Wan will not be mere footnotes or side curiosities for the overly invested. The character decisions and story here will have direct implications for how we view the original films. They have the chance to fill in things that we have always assumed, and perhaps boldly challenge what we thought we knew by showing events from a "different point of view."

The latter is where my new hopes lie for the franchise. I would love for this series to show us more than what we expect and have envisioned for over forty years. It's got to be about more than Obi-Wan meditating in the sands of Tatooine. It's got to be about more than Darth Vader in a Rogue One rampage, simply being one dimension and bad ass wielding his iconic red lightsaber.

The show creators have a chance to fundamentally reshape how we view the original films. This is an exciting and terrifying proposition. You doubt that Disney would let them take too much of a risk, and would rather they simply pull out their action figures and dole out a healthy amount of fan service.

But what if they did something radical?

Here's what I would love to see:

I'd love to see Obi-Wan reshape Darth Vader's narrative. I've always thought that Darth Vader was not the one-dimensional terror we've become accustomed to. I always saw The Empire Strikes Back as not a blood thirsty tyrant looking to kill Luke Skywalker. I saw Vader on a hellbent mission to reach his son Luke before the Emperor could destroy him. I saw Vader as the protagonist who was carefully toeing the Empire's political lines, so that he could essentially serve as a double agent to track down and save his son from the world of hurt that he had caused.

With that head canon in place, I think it would be incredible if we learned that Obi-Wan and Vader/Anakin Skywalker had formed a secret alliance. That Vader vowed to protect the secret of his son from the Emperor, and that Obi-Wan agreed to be Luke's bodyguard, in the trenches of Tatooine. All until a future time when Vader could figure out how to get the monkey of the Emperor off of his back and rejoin Obi-Wan and his son.

In this light, perhaps the whole theater of the lightsaber duel on the Death Star was simply to keep up the illusion of Vader hating Obi-Wan. When in truth, it was the only way to protect Vader's mission and buy him more time to connect with his son.

There is also something fascinating that could be done with playing on a split personality of Vader and Anakin. It's not impossible to think that Vader had moments after being confined in his black suit, when he partially or fully returned to being Anakin Skywalker. It's also possible that he spoke to Obi-Wan, in person or through the Force in this state of being Anakin. Here is where things could get really interesting. Perhaps Obi-Wan will try to fully return Vader to the light side, with varying degrees of success. Maybe within this show, we will see the seeds of Vader's ultimate return to the light.

After all "Obi-Wan once thought as you do," Vader famously said to Luke in Return of the Jedi. Maybe Vader himself also felt a vulnerability to returning to the light. Consider how terrifying it would be if the Emperor realized that you were considering switching sides? It's a dark secret and vulnerability that could serve as the central dramatic tension not only for the series, but it could fundamentally reframe how we see the characters and events in the original films.

Star Wars has made its name and cultural sticking power based around shocking plot twists and character reveals. What would be more galaxy shaking than finding out that the big baddie we've always feared, actually was the central protagonist of the franchise all along?

Come May 2022, we'll see if the creators have managed to take any big swings with the material, or if the powers that oversee the franchise have cajoled them into maintaining the status quo.

I'm rooting for a disturbance in the Force...

Azuki NFT Releases First Fractionalized NFT

We have hit a wall with NFTs. The word is out. You either love or hate them. But whichever side you fall on, you feel like you know what they are about. And it's either for you or not. Of course those who are writing off NFTs already, are sounding a lot like the people who dismissed the Internet as a fad back in the 1990s.

Yet, even as a convert to NFTs and the potential of web3, I can understand where the hate is coming from. It's like when the Internet only had a few web pages and you had to get access by getting "minutes" on a physical CD. The infrastructure of web3 doesn't exist yet. It forces you to use all of your powers of imagination as to what the space could look like once that infrastructure is built out. Leaving value to the power of imagination alone looks an awful lot like speculation.

But I just ask myself a simple question: Will people's lives become more digital in the future? Or will people start abandoning technology. Will the Internet become the fad that it was predicted to be in the 1990s? If you think people's lives will be more digital than they are today, then that is a vote of confidence for web3.

But if web 3.0 is the destination for mainstream adoption, we will start needing more than imagination and speculation to get us there. This means we need innovation. We don't need cryptopunks version 47. We don't need 394 different flavors of monkeys. We need honest innovation that unlocks the next chapters of this story. We need NFT projects that make people go "oh, I never thought of that." We need NFT projects that move the needle and start filling in the wild imagination of early adopters.

This brings me to a new wave of NFT projects that are standing out. Projects like Azuki NFT, an anime inspired PFP project that comes with a blue chip pedigree and an ambitious roadmap to match. Azuki started out as a series of anime inspired characters and a promise for future metaverse integration. Its members have worked for Marvel and Disney before, and what they are looking to accomplish is directly related to that path. Instead of designing characters that raise the stock prices for Disney shareholders, these creators are looking to mint original IP that will fund their own vision that they will be able to control and profit for. No longer putting their hard labor in for the House of Mouse, they are out to make an impact for themselves. This is the promise of web3. Digital ownership that many can participate and profit in.

The Azuki NFTs quickly shot to the top of the NFT rankings and their floor price quickly vaulted out of reach for most. Which makes their recent offering intriguing. They have just "fractionalized" one of their IP's core characters, a bean farmer named Bobu, and offered those fractions at an affordable mint price for new members to join the community. There were 50,000 such fractions minted and they went fast.

Azuki is promising that the Bobu fractional NFTs will be an experiment in project governance. Effectively creating a DAO based around one of the characters in their world. It's like if JK Rowling suddenly decided that Hagrid was going to be owned by the fans and offered shares of ownership in the character. Holders of the fractional Bobu NFT will be able to vote in the community to help decide the direction of the character. The projects roadmap lists ambitions to create animations, games and even films around the Azuki universe, and Bobu's fate will be fan controlled. This is having a stake in the game. And as word of the project moves forward and sales of the fraction continue to rise, they will keep generating more funding that goes towards fulfilling their future ambitions. It's a brilliant marketing move that has brought more attention to the Azuki brand, and has also lived the spirit of web3 by giving those who missed the initial wave an affordable entry point into the project. It's a show of innovation that could be adopted by other out of reach NFT project like Bored Apes, should they look for ways to acquire new members in a future wave of the project.

It's still early innings for these projects, but every time one project decides to try something new, the whole space can learn and benefit from the attempt. And hopefully, we will see more of these properties taking risks and trying to add new innovations to what they are offering. One of these days, someone will add a new use case that will serve as the springboard to mass adoption of web3. We are still playing in tech savvy, early adopter spaces. But with every new attempt, the mainstream gets a little closer. Innovation is the only path toward opening the floodgates. Because everyone who already cares about NFTs is here and content. It's the 99% that need to get excited about this space, and so far, they haven't seen anything that gives them enough FOMO to join. Yet.

Shibuya NFT Creates Web3 Native Film Platform

Hollywood has long been looking for new ways to fund and market films. With the emergence of NFTs and web3, filmmakers and film producers have actively been searching for ways to harness the exponential fund-raising potential that the space has demonstrated. As out-of-nowhere, original IP like Bored Apes have vaulted into the spotlight, Hollywood has been left on the outside looking for where they can plug in their IP.

Yes, we have seen traditional IP money printing NFT launches around the typical tentpoles. Marvel and Star Wars minting one off collections for a limited number of fans. But these moves are a flash in the pan. Web3 has moved on from the quick flip, cash grab days, into having a large concentration of smart and creative people looking how to build out meaningful ecosystems within the space. With web3 native creative projects, it seems like eventually, the next Star Wars or the next Harry Potter could be spun out of passionate creative team delivering surprising characters and worlds to an adoring and high-spending audience that funds higher production ways to bring those creations into the world.

The latest web3 film attempt to step onto the stage is the Shibuya project by crypto-creators @pplpleasr1 and @maciej_kuciara. What they have brought to the table is a stylish website and the opening moments of an original animation that hearkens to the style of Japanese anime powerhouse Studio Ghibli. The website features a stunning and modern version of Tokyo's central hub, Shibuya, rendered in a metaverse friendly style that has all sorts of future leaning implications. The film, is an Alice and Wonderland style animation, which ends with a cliffhanger of Alice standing in front of two doors, left and right.

As you get into the project details, you see that you can mint a "Producer Pass" which acts as a governance token to the project's DAO. With the NFT, you can vote for which door Alice should open. It's like the interactive films that Netflix has been playing around with, only in this case, you vote with buying into the ecosystem. Once the votes have been cast, it will unlock Chapter 2 in the story, upon which a new round of Producer Passes will be minted and the process of deciding the main character's fate will be in the hands of the community again.

The project also has "White Rabbit Tokens" that will be generated based on how early users join the project. The earlier you get in, the more tokens you will accumulate. At the end of the film, the film itself will be fractionalized into an NFT, and all participants will be able to stake an ownership in the final film.

Hopping into the Discord and AMAs you find that there are plans of this being the first film in a web3 film platform, where original stories will be created, and then delivered "direct-to-community." It's like Netflix meets Patreon or other crowdfunding analogies from the web2 era.

Again, reverse engineer your favorite franchise, and you can start to see how a launchpad for characters and stories could escalate. Luke Skywalker could have been introduced this way. George Lucas could have presented the opening atmosphere of Star Wars and allowed fans to buy into it from the get go. Imagine owning an NFT minted in 1977 that represented a share of ownership in the character Darth Vader. The future is impossible to predict, but creative minds are actively looking how to scale their original stories and turbocharge their development and funding via the power of web3.

It's also possible that eventually Hollywood will see the profit potential in fans wanting to have some skin in the game of the franchises they love. What if instead of having an Ironman lunchbox, you could own a part of Ironman, and participate in the success and profits of the character moving forward. Suddenly we aren't talking about fleeting animal illustrations. We are talking about cultural forces opening up and rewarding fans' for their passion and promotion. Think of the money big studios could cut from their marketing budgets, if they just allowed an energized and invested audience to preach the good word and hype up the latest release. We are several steps from this point, but all signs and ingenuity are pointing this way.

Until then, check out the Shibuya project and see if the community will send Alice through the door on the left or right.

Boba Fett Chapter 7 Review

Well, The Book of Boba Fett has come to an end.

While the lasting reactions and memories of the show will take some time to settle in, I can give a glimpse of what I was feeling in real time. The bar for the series was quite high, coming off of the smashing success of The Mandalorian, so it had a tough task looking to meet those expectations.

In the end, the latter series did not top what they were able to achieve with the former. Boba Fett feels like a sidestep in the more sweeping thematic story of The Mandalorian. It was an amusing aside that created some all time visuals, but that left fans scratching their heads about the sudden U-turn in attitude from the titular star.

In the head canon of fans, Boba Fett was the most badass bounty hunter in the galaxy. A man who once stood up to Darth Vader. A loner who Darth Vader had to plead to use more humane tactics. With this build up of a character that was long fan beloved, and extremely limited in actual screen and story time, we had no idea what we were in for. But given the triumphant and brutal return of Boba in The Mandalorian, we did expect that the character would flex his muscle at all that stood in his way.

What we got in the series however was a suddenly pacifist Boba Fett, who spent long stretches without his signature helmet on. He was a character long on monologues and short on action. And while the sudden turn of Boba Fett into a ruler who wanted to lead by respect and not fear was intriguing, the thought was never paid off. We never concretely understood why he had the sudden change in temperament. We were just asked to accept it.

The series suffered from a lack of dramatic conflict. An interesting opposing force was introduced near the end of the series in rival bounty hunter Cade Bane. It seems like the story would have gained in tension and menace had a character like Bane challenged and threatened Boba in the opening episode. There was never a face to the danger that Fett was up against. There was a masked crime gang, but we were never taught to fear them, only to believe that they had a stranglehold on Tatooine. It seems there is a strong story to be told here, and I wonder what employing some Breaking Bad level tactics could have revealed. Breaking Bad put on a masterclass of revealing one menacing underworld character at a time that the main character had to go through. Each character was introduced as unhinged and brutal in their own way. From Tuco Salamaca to Gus Fring, we always knew exactly who was threatening the well-being of the characters in Breaking Bad. In The Book of Boba Fett, evil had no face. We never got to see Boba really agonize about who he was up against. It would have led to much more dramatic storytelling and still could have worked with the slow burn tempo of the opening episodes.

In the end, all of our heroes come back to Tatooine to assist Fett in his defense of the town from the Pike Syndicate. Big shootouts and set pieces abound, and we are given some cool and noteworthy action. The setup gives an excuse for Boba Fett to satisfy fan desires by showing him riding on top of a fearsome Rancor beast through the dusty streets of Tatooine. The beloved Grogu shows up and saves the day in Boba Fett's show with his new mastery of the Force. In the end, Fett is seen as the hero of the town and the other characters go off on their next adventures.

While the ratings proved to be a success, you have to wonder where the story of Boba could go from here. Will a season two see him defending the town from a new crime gang?

I was expecting to see some tie in to the Han Solo Star Wars film, which heavily featured crime syndicates. The Emilia Clarke character from that film, Qui-ra, was set up as a capable crime lord working alongside Darth Maul. That would have been a blockbuster worthy pairing to be the tormentor of Boba Fett in this series. But they were no where to be seen. Instead we got a masked gang who we had to accept as being brutal and ruthless.

In the end, The Book of Boba Fett feels like a series searching for an identity. There are cool sequences that lean into the space western trope. There were soulful moments where Fett learned the culture of the Sand People, where it felt like Star Wars culture was moving forward. But then there were also the bland gangster scenes that felt like they could be further developed. And lastly, there were full episodes devoted to The Mandalorian, which served as great asides in that parallel story, but felt shoe horned into a series supposedly building up Boba Fett. It makes you wonder if this wasn't a part of the original series vision, but came down in feedback from Disney looking to get the most popular characters of the new Star Wars era back on screen as soon as possible. Understandable from the Disney brand perspective, but it came at the cost of muddling the narrative around Boba Fett.

The positive side is we are still getting more Star Wars live action. While the series didn't take big risks or develop Boba in the most coherent way, it did create some magical visuals and nostalgic Star Wars vibes that kept me entertained. I'll always want the best for Star Wars, but I'll keep coming back for their live action offerings whenever they drop.

Next up, Ewan McGregor returns in the title role for the upcoming Disney Plus series, Obi Wan Kenobi.

A presence we have not felt since...

PODCAST RECO: BONG JOON HO ON THE DIRECTOR'S CUT

Rian Johnson sits down with Korean film director Bong Joon Ho to discuss the full span of his career.

There were two moments from his childhood that really seemed to stick with him and make sense as an origin story for his career in film. Bong was born in the countryside, in a lush, green town on the side of a mountain. When Bong was young, around 7, his father got a job in the city and he found himself uprooted into a concrete jungle. He said everything about the shift of environments was shocking to his system. He found the landscape harsher and colder. He found the people more serious and intense. He didn’t understand at the time why his family had to leave his birthplace and he wrestled to make sense of it in his own mind.

He also talks about how he watched Psycho around the same time, at age nine, and how it was his earliest memory of a film really sticking with him. He couldn’t believe someone could make something like that. He was fascinated by how the story unfolded, all leading up to the shocking twist at the end.

Flash forward to Bong’s filmography and you see these early imprinted themes strung throughout his work. He deals with themes of urban darkness contrasting against the beauty of nature. In his films you can feel that longing to return to the lush greenery of his childhood. Cities are often portrayed as cold and clinical places, full of calculating and equally cold characters.

Bong also speaks about the maturity of the Korean film industry. And how when he started out, there really was no industry and he would need to wear all sorts of hats to get his films going. Now, very quickly, there is an organized and unionized film system in place. He says as more opportunities have come, the Korean film scene has leveled up. He thinks that soon it will be on par with the craft and services you can find in Hollywood. In that sense, his films are much easier to make these days, because there is that shared understanding and experience in film.

He also speaks about the pleasure of being a writer director. He loves to plan out and craft his scripts. He’s working on a followup to Parasite at the moment, as well as another project. Like many creators, he has found the lockdown time to be a fruitful one and he has made good strides to set up his next projects. He also talks about his routine as a writer, and how he needs to work in cafes. He found the words hard to come by in the early days of the lockdown when everything was closed. Now that his favorite cafes are back, he is writing two films simultaneously. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to find out what those projects are all about.

Podcast Reco: M. Night Shyamalan on How I Built This

Check out the inspiring interview with M. Night Shyamalan on How I Built This. It’s a great podcast if you’re not familiar. Usually they focus on entrepreneurs and tech founders, but they’re doing a little series from the Sundance Film Festival focusing on storytellers.

I feel like M. Night Shyamalan gets written off too easily. Because of his mega-success with The Sixth Sense, he’s been branded as some kind of one-trick pony. He’s The Plot Twist Guy. Yes, that was a cool and signature moment that left a cultural dent, but as this interview reminds us, creative people are more than just a signature moment.

In this wide-ranging interview, Shyamalan breaks down his creative process. He talks about how he carves two hours out every morning to focus on writing. But he goes easy on himself. He allows himself to stare at the wall. He creates a safe space for himself and doesn’t apply un-needed pressure. His only rule is he can’t be productive in non-writing ways. Either his pencil moves, or he works out thoughts in his head. For two hours. Every morning. It’s a solid practice.

He also talks about his early beginning in film making. He grew up with a Super 8 camera and would essentially make his own versions of his favorite movies. Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, Star Wars, etc. He says that looking back on those experiments, he realizes he missed the most satisfying part of filmmaking, the creativity. He realized that his imitations kept him busy, but they weren’t fulfilling. It wasn’t until he started trying to tell his own stories that something sparked inside of him. Since then, he’s never looked back.

When asked about Hollywood’s lack of diverse voices in storytelling, Shyamalan said he didn’t wait for a seat at the table, but he brought his own seat and tried to make the table longer. I thought that was a pretty unique and inspiring take. He says that staying true to your unique background is your power. That you have to commit to telling the story that only you could tell. Rather than trying to tell a story that Quentin Tarantino or David Fincher could tell. What can only come from you?

And finally he touched on how he has stayed creative during the pandemic. And how 2020 was actually his busiest and most productive year yet. He didn’t have to worry about traveling to promote his work, and instead he could just work. He could get his two writing hours in every day. It allowed him to write, produce and direct his next film as well as his next television project. It’s a good reminder of how to take the limitations we’re all facing, and using them to carve out a space to connect deeply with what it is that you do. May we all have more of that in 2021 and beyond.

Nike Korea: You Can't Stop Us - Shim Sukhee

From Creative Boom:

Crowns & Owls is behind this inspiring short for Nike, featuring the incredible story of Shim Suk-hee – the South Korean female gold medalist speed skater and national icon.

"She is someone whose bravery in confronting her experience with systematic physical, sexual and mental abuse within 2019 South Korean sport triggered a widespread movement, forever changing legislation and discourse around the subject," says the London-based directors.

Nike and Wielden&Kennedy gave Crowns & Owls complete artistic freedom during the project. So it developed an idea of setting the piece inside an ominous concrete tunnel, where Shim starts her journey alone, before being joined by the next generation of South Korean speed skaters who follow her out of the darkness and into the light.

It was a challenge to bring to life, as it required Crowns & Owls to build a huge tunnel at one of South Korea's largest indoor ice rinks. Working with set designer and long-time collaborator James Hamilton as well as Director of Photography, Pat Aldinger, they were able to make the dream a reality. "Technocranes, snow cams, ice rickshaws, probe lenses and two amazing local ice hockey players who learned to be camera operators within two days were just some of the elements we relied on to tell this story," Crowns & Owls adds.