I’m learning another AI script and I believe and hope that this will be the last.
They snuck in.
We were too busy to counter offer it, and AI is instant while human endeavour takes time. I would sooner the future people had nothing and we made no money than that I have to learn any more of this dross. And I’m happy to take the risk of putting myself out of a job over it.
We can still make human scripts and we will and we will pitch them and they will be good. No more of this stuff. No more.
This particular script refers forward: “this will be a call back”. There is then no call back. It suddenly magics envelopes that people care about without giving any reason for them to care. It tells us how the audience is supposed to react. “Big laugh moment” “Powerful pause”. None of this is earned. God it is so bad. It’s almost impossible for me to express what an atrocity it is.
I’m gonna learn this because it’s my job and I said I would. I’ll deliver it with skill and charm and then draw a hard line with the guys who book us. No more AI scripts. Let us bring the pitch and give us the time to do it. Properly.
And they want endless zoom meetings. I’m in rehearsal from next Monday in the day. I’m not gonna jump out to go to a zoom meeting. You work in an office, it’s your job to do that stuff and to make work for other people and yourself to justify your existence – I’m not gonna get swept up in it. You want an entertainment, I’ll make you one and I’ll keep you posted but not every five minutes.
Mel helped me learn the last one – the first AI script I had to learn. She and I will never forget one of the similes. “Like coins of sunlight kept for later birds”. It doesn’t matter what it is referring to – the poem doesn’t know anyway. But … That bad simile is the perfect example of why this stuff just shouldn’t exist.
It sounds okay if we aren’t examining it. We like coins. We like sunlight. We like birds. We even have a notion that the early bird gets worms. What of the later bird? The later bird gets coins of sunlight. “Kept”, not “saved” despite possible alliteration. AI has no jive. Assonance? Aliteration? Rhythm? Nah. Purpose? Nah. It’s reductive.
The work is the art much of the time when you get people involved. This stuff is so empty but… it’s ubiquitous suddenly.
Coins. So… what, shiny spots of sunlight? Kept for the birds that miss the dawn? (The previous line is : “the balance holds what memory has made” btw. I’m not withholding context here it is just nothing).
Nick Kershaw kept the tracker lines for The Riddle. They made no sense but we put sense on them. That’s kinda cute cos it’s human. Ditto Vampire Weekend exists. They just sing words that fit and their band is named after two things we like. They anticipated AI. But they’re full and it is empty. Everything creatively I’ve ever been part of within that tech is empty. Keep it out of art and it’s a useful tool because a lot of sectors just need to get things done and they can be done empty. You just can’t make empty art, it’s noise. Nothing more. A curiosity at best.
Yeah so I’m done learning this stuff if I can help it. It’s not right that people substitute this for other people’s creativity. This isn’t a stand for workers rights, it’s an expression of taste.
Meanwhile I’m going to bed to process my coins of sunlight. The later birds will enjoy them with their nuts of delight.
Oh God it’ll be my birthday when this is published. Happy happy happy. I’ll be forcing rubbish into my head with a plunger and vomiting it back out all day.
