Fix Inconsistent AI Video With This Storyboard Trick
Eve Whitaker on fixing inconsistent AI video with a simple storyboard approach that keeps your on-camera content on brand and repeatable.
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Episode Transcript
Transcript lightly edited for readability.
Every single shot looks like a different character, different face, different outfit, different vibe, even though you thought you gave it the same direction. That's the consistency problem. It's the number one reason most people's AI videos look amateur. You could literally put yourself on a buffalo riding across the lawn saying, "Hey, come on down. We have an open house tomorrow. I'll be here. The buffalo won't." But you know what? The floor is lava. I did one of those where like the floor was actually in lava. You know, it's like this is this house is hot.
It didn't take the advantage of the big guy away. It just gave that same advantage to us. My tool in a year will probably be obsolete because that will just be baked into every AI video generator. AI is not replacing you, but the agent who uses it will. This is AI agent advantage. One expert, one tool, one thing you can implement today with your host J man. You know that feeling when you spend an hour generating AI video clips and every single shot looks like a different character, different face, different outfit, different vibe, even though you thought you gave it the same direction.
That's the consistency problem. It's the number one reason most people's AI videos look amateur. Today, we're fixing that. One expert, one tool, one system you can use before your next video project. Welcome to Welcome to AI Agent Advantage. I'm J man and on this episode uh as always it's brought to you by our founding partners Wise Agent Subi and the CE Shop. These are the companies that we that believe in us and what we're building here. We're grateful to have them in our corner. All right, let's get into it.
Today I'm sitting down with Eve Whitaker. She spent 25 years in television, MTV, Paramount, Sony executive producer credits you would recognize. Then she saw something in 2022 that made her walk away from all of it. The tool we're breaking down today is Spark Sheet 360, a customuilt GPT that handles the pre-production side of AI video creation. Eve, welcome to the AI Agent Advantage. Ah, it's good to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you. So, we're going to get all the way into it, but first I want to start with you, right?
Let's talk about the origin story uh of the tool and and of yourself like tell us a little bit about you know your background where you came from. Yeah. Um so I'm from Montana and I was that kid that grew up in the 80s and do you remember those like tape recorders that like had a tape deck and just an AMFM radio? Yeah. Yeah. So, I used to walk around and like record sounds and like the sound of the toilet flushing, the sound of my mom calling us to dinner, the sound of the dog barking, and then play them back in almost like an edited
storycape. And it was just something that I love to do. So, I have been in production since I can remember. I didn't know at the time. Um, but that's, you know, what happened. and I ended up going to school and getting an MFA in media arts which led me to LA. Um, I've always been a storyteller. Uh, my undergrad was in broadcast journalism and got into documentaries. Um, went to LA and did uh everything under the sun from reality shows, those lovely dating ones. um to working on game shows to uh I ended my LA time working for a film producer.
Um running a television network uh doing a bunch of different things, marketing and production for him. um before I had my last my last harrah in television which was working for a television show called the list. Okay. Which covered trends and uh it was a unicorn in the industry because it lasted 11 years. I was there for nine of them and that's how I first got introduced into AI because um my producer started coming up to me being like I want to do a story on AI and ironically enough I worked for the film producer that was the producer of Terminator 2, Larry Kasanoff and
I and so I just thought AI like Terminator 2, you know, like it just for sure. Where is Sarah Connor? Yeah. Right. Like all that. So I didn't I was like AI like what is this AI you speak of? And I remember a producer showing me midjourney. Um and then soon to follow was ChatGPT. And the tool that got me going holy cow was uh get Munch. I don't even know if it's around anymore. Very similar to Opus Clip. Okay. where it would take a long video and cut it down into bite-sized clips for social media.
And I was blown away because the producer that showed it to me, I'm like, we have a person on staff that their only job is to take our 22 minute show and cut it down. And we were a weekly show and she could cut down maybe one and a half shows a week. Um, so we had to pick and choose and then a producer uploads one show and we walked away and 40 minutes later it was cut up into every format, every, you know, and I was like, what?
And so was this, was this like right in 2022? I imagine you were at the cutting edge and kind of introducing the tools before it was more mainstream. Yeah, it was end of 2022, beginning of 2023 because I was looking at the first time I posted on social media something I did and it was in August of 2023. So, we had been doing it. I no longer work for the list at that point and I'd gone off and started my own business. And that was the first time that I posted an image I created in my journey.
And so, we're going to call it the Git Munch moment for lack of a better And so you you saw this and you're like, "Wow, we had a person on staff. This what this is replaces them almost." Did you just immediately say, "I'm I'm walking off into the sunset. I'm going to start my own thing." Or did you even know what the thing was that you were going to start because everything was so new? I had no idea. I had been the co-executive producer and had worked on that show for nine years.
And it was one of those like the the it had run its course. And so for me, I I think I knew like I didn't want to work in television per se anymore. I love television, but I the writing's been on the wall in television long before AI. Um it's just harder with YouTube streaming, everything's changing. And you know, I was lucky enough to be in LA during kind of the heyday where anyone Yeah. anyone could get a job with reality TV. I mean literally like you get a job and you get a job.
Um and I just saw like and I liked AI. I think that was it is I got to where I remember my very first job out of grad school is I started a brand strategy company with a couple other people that I had gone to school with. And it used to take us two weeks to do basically a brand analysis on a company figuring out their A doing their brand DNA and it took three of us that would sit down and it would take about two weeks to do this.
I mean we were doing other things but that was our like window. Yeah. I remember getting on a workshop online that just popped up on my newsfeed because I was probably looking at AI stuff and it was actually from a couple interviewed on the list. um which was kind of funny and I remember oh I like them and so I started watching their their workshop and they showed ChatGPT and the prompts of how to come up with your own ICA and um basically brand analysis and strategy and I took what they showed us and kind of developed my own thing with it but now it's
something that literally can take 15 minutes of answering a few questions to have what used to take me two weeks. And that's when I knew, oh, and it's not like I went after it from a money like, oh, I'm going to make all this money. It's more always been like a thirst for knowledge that came back that I haven't had since I was in grad school. I was I was transitioning from grad school from undergrad, right, when digital became a huge thing. So, I learned how to edit like deck to deck and with like the big three quarter inch tapes.
And right as I was graduating my senior year, real editing, right? And right as I was graduating my senior year is when the AVID system came out, which was the first nonlinear system I was exposed to. And I just remember being like, I'm going to grad school. I'm staying like I'm doing this. And that's when Photoshop became, you know, accessible and all these tools, After Effects. So AI reminds me of how I felt then where I just wanted to know it. I just there was like I was compelled and it was I'm like a kid in a candy store like, "Oh, let me play with
that and see what it will do." And and so how did you describe that decision to because it's not like if I'm in Rochester, New York and I make that decision. Not a big deal. But you're you're in the movie capital of the world and have all these friends surrounding you. They're like you're like, "Yeah, I'm see you later. I'm going to go do this." Like, how did you describe that decision to everybody else? Did they think you were just crazy? And no, it's it's interesting.
It's a series of events. Like you never really plan like and I tell people this, like I didn't plan what happened. Um, I had gone on a hike with a couple in April of 2023 and the they own a company in Texas and I ended up talking to the husband who owns it. He's the CEO and there was something about our conversation with marketing and I hadn't done a lot of marketing um in a while. like I'd done a lot of marketing but I moved into co-e of the yeah list and I was doing just a lot of you know I was there for nine
years so it became easy it was always interesting it was a fun show because like I said we covered trends but I was just I didn't really realize and it was you know soon after COVID that I was just kind of beat down with doing the same thing and so we had this conversation and I won't go into it we just talked about marketing and his business and it was we were both kind of jazzed up and after that hype He said, "Can I hire you as a consultant?" And I was like, "No, I run a television show.
I do not have time, but right, I do have, you know, I don't mind getting on Zoom with you every once in a while because, you know, this has been a great conversation." Well, that was the first seed that was planted. Like the AI, I'd already been introduced to it, but I wasn't I wasn't consuming it like I soon did. And basically I decided like, hey, I think I have a client. Maybe I can do this. And so I called him up in June and was like, hey, so let's talk about that consulting gig.
And he's just been This is the thing. It was just Yeah. And what's amazing is that he was also into AI. So he and I were both he had a new product that he wanted to launch and we were both taking it through chat GBT and sending each other stuff and neither one of us even I think knew how to prompt at the time, you know, like it was just we were just using the tools. Um, and so I kind of went down a path of being like a fractional CMO that used AI and got a bunch of clients.
And then about a year ago, AI video got really good. And it was okay before. Yeah. But it wasn't something that I was going to do or teach because it wasn't just it just wasn't there. And um and so I did that, left the television industry, started working for him, took on other clients. Again, positioned myself as a fractional CMO that used AI. I believe AI is a tool. Um, I I try not to be like I'm the AI marketing person because I think that's will soon be as as outdated as saying like, you know, I am I have a I'm thinking of an analogy
with a website, you know, that like I don't we don't say the worldwide web anymore, right? It's like it's just become what it is. Um, right. And I think that will be AI eventually. Uh, and so when August of last year, so almost a year ago, uh, AI video got pretty darn good. And I started like I was still doing stuff for clients using AI, but then on the weekends I was making videos and I was posting them. Um, and people were asking me how how are you doing that?
And started asking me to come into their groups and and start teaching their communities. And um, pretty soon I was being asked to be on podcasts. And I think because of my background in understanding production, I was talking about things a little bit differently than all the other AI video people. Yeah. Um, one of the first workshops I did, it struck me that when at the end the owner of the community asked for like takeaways and nobody said, "Oh, it was really cool how Eve showed us how she's animating these images in MidJourney." They all said like, "I didn't understand what the difference between a
closeup and a medium shot was and why you use them." And when you told us to cut on action, I had never heard that before or try to cut to the beat of the music. So, it was all this stuff technical aspect of it. My who I am, my DNA because I've been creating using video for so long that that hit me like, "Oh." And I've always loved teaching and so I finally because I wasn't I'd been teaching some AI marketing stuff but it didn't get me as excited is when I started teaching AI video and that's when I just love it.
And so is that when the the tool came to be like you when you when you were you got the feedback of the technical aspect and all this was cool you're like I need to come up with something to help people with that part of it. is that let's talk about the the tool and in plain English. Uh what does because you've already been throwing out some acronyms and stuff that people are probably like EVP. Um what does Spark Sheet 360 actually do? Okay. So um well my brand is Video Spark.
So that's the Spark. Okay. That's where that comes from. Gotcha. What happened was a video um generator came out called Seed Dance. and Sea Dance changed the game in prompting when it came to AI video generation. So, if your audience, do they know prompting? Like, I'm trying to get now a feel because I hate throwing out acronyms people don't know. So, is the level uh if somebody's watching this, they're beginner to intermediate. They know what prompting is. They've probably heard of they've definitely heard of Sora if they follow me because I've I flooded the worldwide web with Sora videos every chance I could.
And I even when I when it was going to be retired, I was like, "Let me get a bunch in the hopper here." So I have Me too. That's funny. Okay, so that that helps. Okay, so um so Seance was released and um Sora was very similar to Seed Dance. So those of you that know Sora, the prompting of Sora, what I like to tell people is you could prompt Sora in a nonsophisticated way. It did not need an incredibly detailed framework for how it needed to receive the information to get very close to what you wanted, right?
Um, and so Seance gets released and I'm prompting it and it's able to do uh really cool things, do multiple shots, very similar to Sora in that sense. Uh, other AI video generators work better with like one shot at a time. And so you would have to take them out of that program and take them into an editing program, whether it's Cap Cut or Final Cut, iMovie, whatever you use, and actually string those clips together to get the length of the final video. Um, and so what was happening was, um, yeah, I went back to my roots with story boards.
And a storyboard is essentially when we would go out in do a production in LA. If we were doing a film or a television show that was scripted, not non-scripted reality, uh we would storyboard it so we all were on the same page, meaning we knew what we were going to do and we had like a and it helps the the photographers and the cinematographers set up their cameras and get a really good idea. We'd actually have storyboard artists that would, you know, sketch these out.
So, like each scene, here's what's going to happen. Yeah, exactly. Uh, like a comic book. Okay, that'd be a good way to say it. Like a comic book. And um and so I someone showed me that in Sora you could upload a storyboard and it would it would make it it would turn it into a video. And I was like, game changer. So I started messing around because at the time ChatGPT did not have a very sophisticated uh image generator. It had kind of gotten okay.
Yeah. Um so I had been messing around with with creating my framework and just dumping a bunch of my knowledge of camera angles, emotion, why we do certain things, right? stuff that if you're not in the industry, you're not even going to know to think about it. It's just not going to be there, right? And I began to do research on why stuff was consistent and why it wasn't when it came to AI video generator generations and how AI reads, yeah, the information, takes in the information, whether it be in a picture or whether it be in a text prompt.
And I was shown where somebody made a character DNA sheet is what they called it. And they used Gemini because at the time Gemini had Nano Banana. You could use Nano Banana wherever you get it. But they were using Gemini to basically take in and they had their character, which it could be a character, a cartoon character, it could be the image of a real person. Yeah. And they prompted it in a way that it created an image that put their their face close up and then their entire body and then the details of them on one image and that you would feed into the
AI and that would keep it consistent from generation to generation. So just to slow it down for them, you're basically defining what your different shots would look like. Here's what I should look like closeup. Here's what my full body should look like. Here's Yep. So then it's not like, oh, my face looks good, but I'm 300 lb. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Cuz and down to the point where I would even started prompting I started taking that version of it and going even further. And this is not in storyboards right now.
So this is just in the character DNA sheet. So basically letting the AI, it's almost like a mug shot, except the mug shot's going to have very specific. the long and then like any tattoos. Exactly. Tattoos are hard still. But yes. Yeah. But I mean like any specific details that would be unique to that character because we used to do it. I won't go into it, but the way that we used to keep our characters consistent was overcommunicating with the AI, creating a prompt that would create our character and then creating that character and then feeding that character image and the prompt back into AI.
Okay. So, it was just this very like stacking bricks way of getting the same result that when I realized that you could take one sheet with all this information about your character and upload it into seed dance, it would follow it and it kept it consistent. And I was like, "Oh, if it can do this, it can do everything." And so I began to break down environments because that's if you're on a set like your environment. I just call it the environment DNA, but it's really what your set looks like.
What's the room you're in? Is it important? Because right if it is and it needs to stay consistent, you need to show and show the AI what that looks like. Um, and so you can really create now an entire movie clip by clip because it, you know, you're still confined to the amount the length that each clip will be based on the video generator. I think Seance 2 is coming out and it's the first one that you can do a 30 second clip with one prompt, but we're still right now pretty much the average person, it's about 15 seconds um, per video generation is the
length. And would you think like that's a good length anyways as far as our attention is concerned, right? Like you need to cut around that time or Yeah, I think for the average person, yes. Um that unless and I I had this conversation in a class in my school yes a couple days ago where I said think about starts when you start watching TV start paying attention to how often it cuts because it's the same in movies, right? And I said if you are watching it's usually an artsy film where it stays on one shot and the action takes place within that shot or one
character and it it goes for too long. There is a storytelling purpose to why the director chose to do that and it's usually to invoke some kind of tension like it makes us feel a little tight doesn't feel comfortable. It's like if someone walked up to you and just like stood behind me right now and just staring and they're not saying anything. It's just you're like what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? So the same thing. Yes, I think 15 seconds. I mean it won't always work.
I mean I would like it to get to be a minute so we could have especially because a lot of the AI video generators now allow you to actually put a story board in that does cut within those 15 seconds. Yeah. So if it's Yeah. if it's 30 or if it's 60 at least then you could have multiple cuts and still yeah but it's just you know because people ask how do you get yours to be longer than that time and I'm like you just think about the last shot of one clip and how it will cut into the next shot of the next one
and that's where the character consistency comes in. You know my tool in a year will probably be obsolete because that will just be baked into every AI video generator. Um I know Google's Omni has tried that. um their character consistency is horrible right now. It makes me laugh that they literally like touted it as like and there's a place where you can have you can build your characters and they will be consistent every time. And I'm like but they're not like like so inconsistent. I have a character that's this little blue monster that I use for everything.
I've seen that. Yeah. Yeah. He's my little test subject because I made him simplistic enough that the AI should absolutely be able to understand his features. But in Omni, he has horns where he doesn't have horns. He has little pompoms on his ears, you know, and sometimes he has he has a yellow belly, but sometimes it's just all blue. And that's where I'm like, this is not not consistent. It's not there yet, but it could be tomorrow. So that's where the the tool came from is I just began to build and at the same time as I was building it and doing it for me,
not for other people. Like I never thought to sell it. It wasn't something that I was like, "Oh, I'm going to build to make a million and I don't think I'm going to make a million bucks off of it." But it was something that what I did was I built it and then at the same time uh ChatGPT as I was building versions of it right released their new uh image generator and it just it was easy after that because it just understood and so I was like okay I can take these frameworks and these methods that I've come up with I can put them
into a custom GPT. Um, I haven't. Everyone's like, "Are you turning it into a skill for Claude?" I'm like, "No, Claude does not does not do great images." Like it not at all. Not like that. Right. Graphics but not images. Yeah. Exactly. Like Claude design. But anyway, I won't go off subject. So did that and uh I gave it to my school group to beta test and then pretty soon online people were people I didn't know were asking me about it because so many of my students were posting in my Facebook group about how incredible Spark sheet 360 was and people are like what's Spark
Sheet 360 and they're like go to Eve Whitaker go to Eve Whitaker and so that's when like you know what I'm gonna sell this and so it's the first first custom GPT I sold. It lives inside for those that are are chadg.com/gpts would be normally where you would find custom GPTs that are offered uh to the public. The only way to get this is directly through you because it's a it's privately, right? Is that right? Yeah. So, you can take if you search that up, you wouldn't find Yeah.
and make it so they're sharable for anyone that has a link. And so, I just have it on a website. You purchase it, you get the link. Yeah. and and we'll share that. So, who was this built for? You know, if I'm an if I'm a real estate agent who's I want to say never, but maybe I made a few AI videos and I slopp around with Sora. Uh, is it for me or is it for people kind of more advanced in the AI video world or anyone and everyone?
No, it's so like the real estate industry I find to be one of the most exciting industries for AI because what you can do because the I mean I'm in marketing too, right? So what's a great marketing before and afters or hey this yard looks like this now imagine it looking like this now. So, you can literally go take photographs or have photographs of your listings and let's say it has a right a yard that isn't landscaped. Well, you can prompt AI to landscape it, make it look great, and then use my tool to create a storyboard.
So, you're again, think of it as overcommunicating with your AI um video generator to where maybe I want a dog walking on the lawn or something and I want to do something that's a little bit more hooky, you know, like there's some action there. Yeah, you can create your storyboard to plan out. It doesn't have to be a story, right? It can literally be a moment in time. Um I was thinking before and after. You can put in a room if you want to do an animation of like maybe you're mid-century modern.
Look, this house could be mid-century modern. Well, maybe you're actually like coastal, whatever. Look, it can be this way. You can do that. And it could just very easily in probably 15 minutes if you had the images, create that storyboard. And what the storyboard does is it allows one you to make sure it it's what you want before you put it into your AI video generator and waste your your credits. You get that right and then you put it in and you don't even have to have a sophisticated prompt.
I was showing students today. I said, "Look at my prompt. It says animate the storyboard." I want to push it a little bit further because I'm I'm prone to hyperbole. And so I'm thinking like I don't want to be normal. I don't want to just like walk through a house. I want to be like, "Hey, this house I could ride a buffalo into town cuz I'm in Montana, right?" And like doing something like that where they were kind of really stopping to scroll now and going, "What is Eve up to now?
She's she's riding bison." Like this is crazy. Yeah. 100%. You and I think very similar. Yes. you. The thing I love about AI for marketing in general, no matter what industry you are in, is your ability to create a hook that will stop the scroll. I mean, it's my favorite one that people loved is I just I look like I'm at like a very uh bougie black tie event. I'm in a gown. the camera starts panning or uh zooming in so people think I'm gonna start talking and all a sudden someone walks by and just like smashes cake in my face and I th like
literally I put it up and I asked like grab your attention and people went crazy. I'm like you grab their attention. You have three seconds. It's really less than three seconds but we'll just stick to what most people say to grab attention. So 100% if you have a if you have a listing and you want to grab someone's attention, you like on the funny side, the sky's is the limit. I mean, you could literally put yourself on a buffalo writing across the lawn saying, "Hey, come on down.
We have an open house tomorrow. I'll be here." The buffalo won't, but you know what? You know, like go Bills, right? Right. Go Bills. Well, and and it's funny because with uh with Sora, my number one video was I got a golden buzzer on America's Got Talent. Oh, please tell me. I didn't really I didn't really. It was just Sora. It was like I was playing all of a sudden gold and I'm like, "Oh my gosh." And and you know, people don't watch the whole thing.
They just go, "Oh my gosh, congratulations." I know. I'm like, "I've been working so hard for this moment. It's unbelievable." And I'm just like, why if if if the creativity is limitless, let's forget about normal things. Let's forget about walking through a house. Like here's the kitchen. Are you serious? Like the floor is lava. I did one of those where like the floor was actually lava, you know? It's like this is this house is hot, you know? Like it's just doing doing creative things and just having fun with it.
I think that's great. Quick shout out to one of our founding partners, the CE Shop. Look, continuing education doesn't have to feel like a punishment. The CE shop provides online real estate education that actually makes sense. Pre-licicensing, post-licensing, continuing education, all of it built to fit your schedule so you can keep your career moving forward without putting your business on pause. Check them out at the ceshop.com. Link in the show notes and be sure to tell them that Jqu sent you. There's a a gal, you probably know her or know of her.
It was just an example I used a while ago on video of actually being real video, but she was a real she was a real estate agent and she would go in to these houses and give these like dead pan hilarious like and this is the pool table. This is where you're going to like you know shnook your next person or something like just like really funny stuff and she blew up. Y like and so that's where you know marketing in general no matter what niche you're in it's changed.
It's changed a lot since COVID, but it was changing way before COVID. And I say this all the time is like the day of uh getting up and saying what you do, what your your product or services, and where to find you is done like it. There's too many of us doing it. So, you got to be different. And AI does open up that door of creativity for sure. Okay. So, let's get tactical for a minute. Walk me through it. I I I get Spark Sheet 360.
I open it up. We're familiar with ChatGBT. So, you open it up and you start a chat. What What do I do first? Like, tell me a real example. Yeah, sure. So, it's going to have four options or you can just go start here. Um like four suggestions. You're saying like four blocks? Yep. So, it would say like, do you want to create a character DNA sheet? Do you want to create an environment? Um so, I don't use any of those anymore. I just know exactly what to do and it's real simple.
So, if you don't want to use those, you would just take your image or so there's two ways. Let's say you want to have a consistent uh image, whether it's a character or a room or the front of a house, whatever it is, right? Let's let's say it's it's me as an agent. I want to be in it. Okay. So, I would take you and I would take that photo of you and I would put it in and I would say, "Create a character DNA sheet." DNA.
Gotcha. Okay. So then I would have that and I would take it and I would download it and I'd put it off to the side. And then what do I want you doing? So is it specific? I I'm in South Florida and I want to ride dolphins like surf on dolphins while showing waterfront properties. Okay. So then I literally might just and I call that like just vibe prompting. So you could also just open it up and then put your again you got to tell you got to give the specifics to the AI.
So the specific would be you right. It can come up with the dolphins. It can come up with the waterfront properties unless you want those to be specific. Unless I had a waterfront property that I want like my listing on the water in South Florida, then that's that's the additional context that we're adding. Yep. So, if you don't want to create, if you don't care if the people or the listings, if it's just like a fun video, you don't need to create the character. You can just go straight to the story board and you can literally just open it up and say, "Hey, create me
a story board. Um, here's my my DNA sheet of Jman. Um, I want him riding on dolphins in uh the ocean." Okay. And a jet ski to go by him. It causes a wave. After the wave uh clears the frame, he's standing on a uh beach saying open house tomorrow. Yeah. Just I like that. That's awesome. You know, you just kind of talk it through shot by shot what you want to see and it will just do it. I don't have to have that technical knowledge like you just say, okay, you know, zoom in on Jman and then white.
Like I don't need any of that. Just very plain English. It's baked in the best way and I did that for people to be able to use it is um talk about the more of the emotions and what you want the people to feel because that's what's baked into it. Like it's exciting, it's high paced, it's how you would describe a movie, right? Give it those just natural adjectives you would use to describe if you saw a movie and you're like did you see that movie when he did D and then yeah and then I jumped and it was I just describe it like that
right you can give the most like simplistic or most detailed prompt to explain it and then the beauty of it is it creates the storyboard well it doesn't have to end there you look at it and if it doesn't look like the comic book version that gets turned into a movie that you want. You say, "Hey, great job, Spark Sheet." But look, this is actually what I was thinking when I said the wave cleared the screen because why would anyone know what that is? What I meant was a wave comes up that's so big that the viewer can't see anything but water.
And then when the wave settles down, all of a sudden, Jman is now on the beach. So you just and so that way you're not going to waste your credits because you know a lot of people are very I mean I do this for a living so I have every subscription and I I don't worry about like people have even made fun of me. They're like you have way too many credits for all the videos you're cranking out and I'm like well I do this for a living but write off.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a write up. Yeah. It's a write up. Uh, so then you can get the storyboard where you want it and then you give it to the AI and it just makes it, let's say you did it without the storyboard, you might get 50 to 60% of what you had in your head come out into the AI video. With Spark Sheet 360, that goes up to more 80 to 90. It is still AI. AI is still going to be crazy. Yeah. Do its own thing.
drift. It just does. And so I love it when people are like telling me that like, "Oh, you know, Sea Dance is acting up on me." I'm like, "No, it's AI." I had a a woman today say, "I can't get my cat's teeth to look like my cat's teeth. They look like human teeth. How do I fix it?" And I'm like, "Well, I would take close-ups of the cat's teeth and make sure that that's part of your character DNA." And then also, you just have to render it out a few times.
I usually do, and this is render means like when you put the the prompt in, it cooks the the thing. I always say it's baking, right? Like you put it in the oven, let it cook. Yeah. Yeah. And then the render is when it's rendered out, the final video clip. And um because I edit, so that's the pre-production, right? Post-production is the edit bay. And I one of the I think the most a big misconception about AI video is it's going to come out perfect. It usually doesn't.
We usually fix it in the edit bay. We fix it in post. It's the same as in real life production. And so you do I take all four of the, you know, it's the same prompt and I just say, "Make me four variations." There's usually enough good in each variation to be able to put together exactly the video I wanted. Now, I do stuff for clients, so I need things to sometimes be specific to what they want. If you're making something for you and you're listening right now going, "Well, I don't edit." Right?
That's fine. You might be okay with it not doing exactly what you wanted. I call them happy accidents a lot. And sometimes I sit here and I laugh and just crack up at some of the stuff that the AI does because it's funny and sometimes it works better than my ideas. Yeah. And I think sometimes like you're saying like the water hits, I'm in front of the house and it doesn't say exactly what I want it to say. Well, guess what? Cut the voice, use music, do a text overlay or something simple like that, right?
There there's always ways as long as you have that video that's still still better than the video that you created yesterday, which didn't exist, right? So, we're creating and and I like that the the story board, would you say, is like your imagination coming to life? Like the idea you had in your head is here and then you're creating multiple iterations of that till your vision comes to life. Exactly. And I can see it. It usually does it in eight different shots or six depending. Um I use a combination of two AI tools the most uh for video generation.
um one of them being Google's new omni and that allows for 10-second clips. So those storyboards are usually six pictures that make up the 10 seconds and then um if I am prompting it for seed dance, it allows for 15 seconds. So it's usually eight squares on the story board. And so for those that want to try seed dance, is it seed dance? Uh so you can get you can get to it through uh the main company is called Bite Dance. By Bite Dance. Oh, that's Tik Tok.
It's Tik Tok's parent company, right? Yes, it is. Exactly. So I get it through um because I play with so much AI, I always recommend people use what I call an aggregator site. There are several. Um, the two that I use are Higsfield and Open Art AI. If you are new, I say use Open Art AI. Okay. It basically takes all the models that are out in both like image generation and um video generation and it puts them all under one roof. you get a subscription and that way you can play with all the different models because different AI video generators do allow you to
do different things better. But for me, the foundation one that just does a really good job for beginners is Seed Dance, Seed Dance 2.0. We're going to put in the show notes in the description so they have access to it and go play. Now, Google's Omni, uh, our last guest last week, he talked a little bit about the the hack of having Google Workspace will give you everything else at that pro level Omni included. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. And so that's would you say it's a similar experience to Sora?
Are we is it about for those that used it in the past or way better right now? No. Omni is No, not at all. Okay. No. Omni is a game changer. So seed dance is more like Sora. Um the only thing that makes Omni like Sora is the avatar. So that's it. What Omni has done that no other AI video generator has done to my knowledge as of today again tomorrow it might be different. You can actually upload existing video that you shot with your phone or you created using another AI video generator, okay?
And actually manipulate it. So I created I shot a video of me in my living room and I went up and I touched a painting and then I snapped my finger and I took that into Omni and I said, "When I touch the painting, I want the flowers on the painting to grow over the entire wall." And when I snap my finger, I want a buffalo to appear in my dining room or in my living room. And it just does it. It also allows you like I did an example of a hand where I just videoed my hand just like moving.
Oh, I saw that with like an orb and then it finished with like a little puppy. Yep. Exactly. Yep. So, that is the uh the one thing besides their avatar I've never seen. I mean, Sora, like you said, you could create your own avatar, but sometimes it looked like you and sometimes it looked like your cousin or a guy that someone said look like you and you're like, he doesn't look like me. Um, you know, like it just was never done well. Um, where Omni, it actually creates your avatar the same way.
You have to do it on your phone. You have to do it with the Gemini app. And it's a series of you reading some stuff and answering, moving your head up back, and that's how you get it. Once you create it on your phone, it's the same as Sora. You can call it in whether you're in Google Labs using Flow, whether you're on the Gemini desktop app or on your phone. Um, but that's the only major difference uh the avatar and then uh the being able to manipulate stuff like that.
Like it's insane. I like I like the uh existing video, especially like if you're somebody that's created a lot of video and then you want to like take it to the next level to use AI with that. Well, like I showed I took just a picture of like Bose headphones that I got off of the internet. I was able to put it in and give a very simplistic prompt, make this look like it's in a studio, a white studio, and it's spinning, you know, like you would see like a car in a showroom spinning.
And then I then made another video that I gave the image, the same image of the red headphones, right? Used that as a reference image. That's again overcommunicating with the AI. So I gave it the reference image. I called in my avatar and I said, and you call it in by basically hitting the at and then it comes up. You can't share avatars like you could in Sora yet. So you could only use your avatar. And I so I had my avatar come in and walk right up to the camera, snap her fingers, the headphones come on, and I turn around and I walk away.
And it just like it looks real in every aspect. Like people are like, "What?" Yeah. And it's so easy. That's the difference is it's so both with seed dance and with Omni, it's just it's taken the the the complicated complex prompting that you used to have to do if you wanted good AI and it just was like ah we'll just we'll get the AI to understand just common talk and not crazy JSON prompts and these weird things that you had to use AI to rewrite your prompt to get what you wanted, you know, like there's none of that.
Yeah, there there was a point there where I was using AI to to create realistic movie scenes for Sora, you know, like Back to the Future. I think it wasn't Back to the Future really, but it was like enough where people knew what it was and I didn't violate any copyrights. Um, so I have 15 minutes after this episode. What is the single thing I should do with Spark Sheet 360 right now? Not someday. Immediately. Right now. There's no tomorrow. What should I do? I would go online and I would find an image of anything that you love, right?
I always say start with a puppy because everyone loves puppies, right? Uh just grab an image of a puppy and put it into Spark Sheet and have it create a character DNA sheet of the puppy. So, you can see what it does and how it lays it out and how it's literally like a sheet. Then take that and make up a story and just have a beginning, middle, and end. Your story does not have to be complex. I can create a story where uh the puppy literally walks up, sees a flower, smells the flower, sneezes, rolls over backwards, and then gets up.
Right? It just has to be a sequence of events. Just talk to it. Tell it that. Give it the length, right? Say 15 seconds or 10 seconds depending. generate that storyboard and then go put it into the AI video generator of your choice and tell it to um to generate it. Now, yeah, there's one caveat. I don't want to complicate things, but if you really want to get into it and you're finding that you love it, um I you can take if you have already written a script or a prompt, right?
You can take that in. You don't have to just virompt it. You can take something and put it into Spark Sheet 360 and tell it to create a storyboard based on your prompt. So, a lot of other people, and the reason I say that is because if anyone has done stuff, some people are like, "Well, what if I already have a tool that creates prompts that does my my framework of the stories that I want to tell?" I'm like, "Oh, that's even better. You can totally give it to that and it will be way more specific, right?" And then you can load your storyboard and
your prompt into your AI video generator and it's even just to make it even better. Yeah. Yeah. So, what is the mistake most people make the first time they try to create AI video and how does this tool pre prevent it? Too much too much information, too much detail like Yeah. It just it doesn't too much makes it confused. It makes it confused. So, start simple. Start with one character, right? like maybe add in another character or something, but keep it simple. Um, it the more detail, especially if you get fixated on like a small detail, but it's important in the story, you can most
likely get it to happen, but you're going to burn through a lot of credits. And I think that's when people get frustrated and they abort the mission where I say just come up with something simple. That's what I did. And I think that's where I loved it was I wasn't trying to do one specific thing. I do now. Yeah. But at the time when I was learning it and doing this stuff, it was like what will it do? Will it do this? Will it do that?
And so I just played with it. And spend the time in Spark Sheet to get your storyboard as close to what you want as possible. Again, you're going to take it into your AI video generator and it's it's really built for seed dance. It works in Omni, but Seance just reads it better. And it's not that I like built it with some like special knowledge files for seed dance. It's just seed dance understands it where if you took it into V3, it's not going to Nope.
[laughter and gasps] You know, and some people say V3 is arguably the best AI video generator, and I'm like, no, it's not. So what I'm hearing you say is like using the using the spark sheet for people that don't understand like your video generation platforms you get credits and your credits are associated with how many videos you make and the length of those videos. Is that correct? Exactly. So the more time you spend in the in the pre-production before you make the video, the less credits you will waste and say that's not what I wanted.
Right. That's not what I wanted. And so you're wasting your think of it like the arcade for those of you who used to go to arcades and have quarters and we the same thing we had tokens right and you're like ma ma I need more tokens you know same same kind of a concept where do that work ahead of time so that it gives you the the output that you're looking for that is and it's the same in real life like we would spend more time in pre-production than we would anywhere else like if you have pre-production down your script you're what you're doing and
you plan it then when we would go into the field we would get it right because what I have told people and the beauty of AI if I don't get it right I just have to sit down and rerender it and it's going to cost me 50 cents not even but right in the real world we didn't have that luxury if we had to go rent the studio again or go you know secure that set millions hundreds of thousands right so I learned just from my history of being in the industry, you got to get this down.
Make sure everyone's on the same page. The beauty about AI is you just have to make sure you and the storyboard are on the same page. And it's still going to go wonky and do something crazy, but you might like it. Now, you mentioned someone in your in a workshop previously who really stayed with you. Tell me a little bit about that. Did I mention it on this call? Remind me of that. you haven't yet in in the intake sheet. He was 87 years old. Oh, thank you.
Sorry. Thank you for There's hint. There's the hint. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I'll I'll expand on that because I think it was two things. Yes. So, there is a gentleman that has been taking all of my workshops. He joined my video school. Um, and he is 87 and he is making the coolest short videos and posting them in my community all the time. And he just giggles and said how this has just brought a spark back into his life and how he has always been a creative person.
Yeah. And he said, "Eve, I've never had my outlet. I've never had my canvas." And he's like, "And I have it now." and he is creating some of the coolest I mean it gives me goosebumps just talking about him because I'm like I can't imagine going to 87 having what's in his brain but not having the means to go to LA and get a film done or being like I can't draw or paint you know how everyone has kind of their outlet and how AI video has allowed him and he's like my wife is just giggles at what I make my grandkids kids are cracking
up over it. Like he's just become cool grandpa and he's 87 years old doing this stuff. And so I love him in the sense that where people say they're not techy. I'm like Paul sometimes gets a little hung up on some stuff like gets a little confused. Omni was very confusing because Google offers it in three different places and he was like please explain to the old man what I have to go where you know but besides that he's using the tools and creating stuff that look amazing.
I mean and that's exactly what this is about isn't it? Like it's not replacing creativity but it's opening the door for him to find his thing. I had this conversation yesterday. I get very fired up about this because it is such a conversation that we have so much, especially me being in LA. I'm sure you get it too. Um, just being in this world at where we're at and um, how it's taking jobs and what it's doing to the entertainment industry. And I'm like, here's the deal.
This is my overall true belief. I can feel it in my bones what AI is doing. Yeah. It is going to change the landscape not only of my industry but all the industries because it is now given the tools to the common person that would never have the means or the ex the access to those tools to do stuff that only people of means or privileged had before. the amount of artists that are being created, storytellers. I had in the same workshop in Omni where I had my 87 year old, I had my youngest student who was 10 creating cool stuff like I am like
so when people I love it and I do I have family members that are anti-AI and I am like nope I see it's going to change. It's not going to change tomorrow, but I do believe they did predict that it AI would create the first solo billionaire and it did like four months ago that it didn't take the advantage of the big guy away. It just gave that same advantage to us. I love that. Well, uh, so we have the same we end the show with the same question every time.
What is your single best tip for someone who's is just getting started with AI? I love this. Pick one tool because right now there are thousands. So decide whether you want to play with image, video, marketing pro, whatever it is. Pick one tool. You can find a thousand how-to videos on YouTube. School is a wonderful place where everybody is teaching something with a community that is supportive in a way that has never been there before. School spelled with a K, S O L. Um, and stick with that tool.
Put your blinders on because you'll hear a lot of rest in peace ChatGPT. Now Claude is the, you know, the new popular person. Yeah. clickbait. Don't get overwhelmed because everyone I talk to feels a that they're behind and b they're too overwhelmed and it's like deer in the headlights. They don't know what to do. And I'm like, it's simple. You just take an action. Take one step, pick a tool, play with it, you'll get comfortable, and then pick another tool. And pretty soon you'll start picking the tool based on what you want to do versus just learning.
And that is how I would start for someone that's never done anything with AI because AI I am not a techie person. AI to me is it just understands I I just verbally brain dump. I talk to AI. I use a app called Whisper Flow. Whisper. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't even type anymore and I shall show people my prompts and I'm talking to AI like it's a person like you know I didn't really like that so could you you know get rid of that stuff and then like they laugh because my prompts look like and I'm like it just works.
It works. And pro tip because I I told my mom this and the amount of phone calls have decreased significantly for help. Download the app, whether it's Chat GPT, pick an LLM, a large language model. I like ChatGPT for the simplicity of it. If you're trying to learn a tool and you get stuck, just take a screen grab, take a picture, put it into Chat GPT. You don't have to do it on your phone. You can do it on the desktop and ask ChatGpt. Yeah, I taught myself how to edit using Cap Cut.
I know how to edit, but I've always used Final Cut Pro. And I realized most of my students are not going to use Final Cut Pro. So, I'm like, "All right, I'll learn Cap Cut." And I got frustrated at first because I'm used to it being a certain way. It's all pretty much the same, but I'm like, "I know there's got to be a way I can slow this clip down." So, I would just take a picture of my screen and ask Chat GPT, "How do I do that?" And if it gives you an answer and it's not correct, I just say, "Hey, nice try.
Here's the menu that you told me it would be under. It's not there. Where do I go? And it would go, "Oh, you're right. You're on a Macintosh. That tool is my bad." Yeah, I know. You're absolutely right. So, yeah. So, that's uh I kind of gave a double advice, but those are my two things. One tool, start slow, use AI to help you learn AI. That is gold. Thank you for that. Now, everyone else, if you got value from this, do us a favor. Share it with one agent who's still trying to figure out AI, just one.
That's how we grow this thing. Subscribe. Subscribe if you haven't already. Links to everything Eve has mentioned, including the discount on the Spark Sheet 360, are going to be in the show notes and the description. And next Friday, we'll be back with another amazing guest with one great tool you don't want to miss. Now, before I let you go, I want to say thank you to our following partners, Wise Agent, Subi, and the CE Shop. They make this show possible, and they're building tools that actually help people in this industry.
Check them out. All the links are in the show notes. And thank you, Eve, for spending time with us today. H how can how can people find you? What's shout out your school quick? It's called Video Spark. Videospark school group. So, you get on school school.comspark. Yep. If you just go to the school s k and type in video spark I come up. Perfect. Well, thank you everybody. Thank you for spending time with us. It's not something we take lightly. And make it an AI day.
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