The best way to learn a new technology is to make something with it.
I signed up for a 48 hour competition, sponsored by RunwayML, Coca Cola and YouTube, and I created a short movie in 5 hours. These are the things I learned:
Good stuff
I created a "movie" in 5 hours, and I spent $50 while being an amateur in movie making.
For someone like me to create something without using AI would require at least $3k and 48 hours. At least.
If someone more knowledgeable than me tried, they could have made a short movie that the non-AI equivalent would have cost at least $50k and one week of work.
What I am trying to say is that the benefits are exponential once you start using AI
Now, for the bad news.
Bad stuff
It is EXTREMELY difficult to create scenes with the same character. If you watch my movie, you'll see that the main character keeps changing.
It is also very difficult to create exactly the shots that you want. I kept changing my script because I couldn't get the right shots.
Check out some videos I posted on twitter. Hilarious stuff.
AI is terrible when it comes to human faces that have to show emotions. Just terrible.
Creating scripts with AI is laughable. Plot holes, unimaginative stories, confusing endings.
Having said that, I plan to create a big movie just to try more technologies (like lip-syncing) as I believe the space is going to be huge.
You can see the short movie below.
https://youtu.be/_wcxJLcyeow?embedable=true
Also published here.