Is it Great?

GenAI Video is a major development in filmmaking, and whatever your stance on its artistry or ethics, it needs attention. The AI technology company Runway threw a fancy party to celebrate films made with AI assistance in NYC this week, and we were on hand to observe. What’s the current state of the tools? How good is the work? What is the vibe coming from the technologists and artists? Read my thoughts in this piece.

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

1. Mike Mills’ Return to Music Video - One of the iconic MV directors of the 90s and 2000s may have moved on to features (most recently 2021’s excellent C’mon C’mon) but he is lured back to the medium by his art heroes, the Takling Heads on the occasion of the band’s 50th anniversary. He recruits Saoirse Ronan to star in the 1st ever video for the iconic track “Psycho Killer”.

2. Everyone is Already Using AI (And Hiding It) - New York Mag’s Lila Shapiro has a long and evenhanded piece on the spread of AI technology in Hollywood, and interviews Natasha Lyonne, Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela, and others to uncover what no one’s talking about.

3. Runway CEO Interviewed in The Verge - Speaking of Valenzuela, right before AIFF, a conversation with The Verge EiC, Nilay Patel dropped. Patel is a good interviewer and pushes Valenzuela with some hardball Qs, so it’s worth listening to or reading.

4. New Masterlist of Opps for Short Filmmakers - Getting back the business of short film, the Short Film Conference dropped a massive but curated list of talent development initiatives for short filmmakers in partnership with SFC | Rendez-vous Industry. Good stuff!

5. Palm Springs ShortFest Unveils Lineup - The largest short film fest in the US, Shortfest kicks off at the end of the month with a stellar lineup of premieres and favorites from worldwide festivals. Deadline has the announcement, and you can browse the lineup on the fest’s website.

6. Max Joseph Revisits A Brief History of John Baldessari - I’ve been long convinced that this 2012 doc, commissioned for LACMA’s annual Art + Film gala, is sneakily one of the most influential shorts of the century. Max Joseph, the editor behind the trademark style he helped define, dusts off his FCP 7 project file and talks audiences through the process of creating the film in this very enjoyable 20min video on the Digital Spaghetti YT channel.

7. Massive Grant Awarded to S/W Alum - The 2025 Tribeca Festival AT&T Untold Stories grant recipient has officially been unveiled. This massive, $1M prize goes to a filmmaker to support a debut feature project, and Liz Sargent is the winner for her proposed adaptation of her short, Take Me Home. We featured the short in 2023. Congrats Liz!

8. New Music From Two Alums - We’re stoked for Dugan Gundelfinger and Jake Oleson, for celebrating their debut music releases this week. Gundelfinger featured on the site last month with Heroic Dose, and it seems the drug comedy short was somewhat autobiographical because during a trip in summer ‘24, he became “one with his guitar” and rekindled his childhood passion for music. Check out his album infinity casual. Oleson, a doc filmmaker who has recently become a celebrated digital artist utilizing NeRF technologies, and who was commissioned to create Vimeo’s launch film for their partnership with Apple Vision Pro, just dropped threads, the lead single off his forthcoming EP.

9. S/W Senior Programmer Profiled in Creative Boom - We’re proud to see Serafima Serafimova interviewed in Creative Boom for her new Covid-themed animated doc, The C Word. Give it a read, and check out the short!

10. S/W Co-Founder Releases New Camera App - Many of you know that my co-founder at Short of the Week and Shortverse, Andy Allen, is a globally celebrated designer and talented technologist. For a few years, he’s been working on a series of bespoke, hand-crafted apps under the label Not Boring (shoutout Baldessari!). The latest addition to the suite dropped this week and !Camera is just what it sounds like, a camera app for iOS—but fun! I shot the pics for the AIFF piece this week using the app, and it might just get me back into phone photography. Give it a try.

📅 This Week on Short of the Week

🪐 Into the Shortverse

The Animation Workshop: The Best Films

With Potlems entering our collection of S/W official selections this week, we compiled this collection of 16 of our favorite works to emerge from the Danish school, The Animation Workshop.

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🏳️‍🌈 Pride Month 2025

June is Pride Month in much of the world, and we celebrate the occasion with a massive 33-film curated collection of some of our favorite LGBTQ films.