The Robots Are Taking Over

"Ghiblification" sweeps the internet, Sundance is on the move, and more news pertaining to short film.

Author

Jason Sondhi
March 31, 2025

In our previous newsletter, I suggested keeping AI news siloed to occasional batch updates. Welp. OpenAI introduced 4o Image Generation last week, and the field experienced its biggest viral moment since the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022.

Unless you’ve been off the internet this week, you’ll have seen hundreds of images like this, signalling a potentially meaningful shift of AI image generation up the adoption curve.

I have thoughts, but I want to respect the passionate feelings this arouses in many and won’t litigate the issue here. There are valid critiques–the cheapening of the concept of “art”, the disrespect of hard-earned skill, the theft of artist styles, and, overhanging it all, how this might transform the creative economy. These all deserve grappling with. For now, I will only make the observation…it’s getting close. For years, we’ve talked about generative AI filmmaking as an eventuality, but it was still somewhere over the horizon. That’s no longer the case.

This wave of Ghiblification, which is a fairly simple image stylization, actually obscures what an impressive tool the 4o release is. OpenAI married its ChatGPT-style transformer-based language modeling with image generation, so unlike pure diffusion models that resolve from noise, 4o feels like assembling an image using compositional parts, with the model “understanding” the whole semantically. This means it is much better at “giving you what you ask for”. Whether that’s handling text, new angles, multi-turn iterative changes, or isolating and tweaking specific aspects. Daisy-chained with other services like Kling.ai or Lumalabs.ai, we’re seeing videos that possess consistency in style and environment, two things that have been a bugaboo for AI video workflows.

4 months ago, I watched unreleased AI shorts from filmmakers you’d recognize, made in partnership with one of the leading tech players. They were fascinating, but quite rough still. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I’ve seen a bunch of AI short films this week, and while they are not up to the standard we look for in our curation, the truth is that the vast majority of shorts don’t meet that bar. These films were not particularly good, but I no longer perceive the tools as being a primary reason for that. OpenAI just screened a bunch of shorts for Hollywood execs this month, and I’m very curious now about what will screen at Runway’s 3rd Annual AI Film Fest in June. For good or ill, I feel a wave has started, and no longer will it be just technologists and first adopters experimenting with AI, but instead a surge of talents at all experience levels jumping in.

To come back full circle, though, despite their weird role in this viral moment, I think we can safely count out Studio Ghibli in our AI-generated future. Bless them ^_^

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

  1. Runway Releases Gen-4 - The OG in the AI Video space, Runway released their newest Gen-4 model this morning, alongside a series of shorts. Founder Cristóbal Valenzuela took to X to tout “This model is a very special one that we completely developed from the ground up for one thing: telling great stories.” With an emphasis on consistent characters, locations, and objects across scenes, this could be a very meaningful milestone.

  2. Changes to Nicholls Fellowship Draw Screenwriter Ire - Screenwriting’s most prestigious competition is changing. Formerly an open submission process guaranteeing two reads of a feature script by professional readers hired by the Academy, the venerated initiative now switches to a partner model where schools and labs will nominate projects they vet.

    Unaffiliated submitters can still submit, but do so through The Black List, with staff there nominating scripts upwards. Criticism was swift from writers concerned that the new process is more expensive and favors insiders, but Blacklist founder Franklin Leonard touted the upside of having scripts on his service and being available to a broader swath of readers than just the contest judges.

  3. California Proposes Update to Incentive Scheme - We touched on this last week when discussing the new DANIELS film, but Variety has the details on two legislative bills that aim to help keep Film & TV productions in the state by increasing tax credits and expanding what productions are eligible. With the disruption from the strikes and wildfires, now is a critical moment for Los Angeles if it is to continue to be an industry town.

  4. Sundance Chooses a New Home - A lengthy evaluation has concluded, and America’s top festival is moving to Boulder, Colorado. The mountain town, situated 30 minutes outside Denver, beat out Cincinnati and Salt Lake City. My next Sundance will be my 10th, so while I will remain nostalgic for Park City, the cost of accommodations in the small resort town has always been sky high, and the quality of the facilities low for a festival of Sundance’s caliber. Can Boulder correct these issues? We’ll find out in 2027.

  1. Ariana Grande Co-Directs Debut Short Film - Inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the Wicked actress and pop superstar unveils brighter days ahead, a 26min short films with a loose sci-fi premise. An elderly Grande relives memories of her life virtually, providing a structure for what are, basically, several distinct music videos. Not my cup of tea, but leave your thoughts on the film’s Shortverse page.

  2. Early Short of Ne Zha Filmmaker Jiao Zhi - Tasha Robinson, writing for Polygon, digs up an early short film and provides formative background info on the director of China’s buzzed-about animation blockbuster, which has now climbed into the top five in all-time box office receipts.

  3. Common Side Effects Gets a Second Season - The Adult Swim show from the same creative team behind the short-to-series show Scavengers Reign has been renewed! Congrats to Joe and the team.

  4.  How ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ Rewrote the Indie Movie Marketing Playbook - I had a lot of fun reading this deep dive into the memorable Fox Searchlight campaign that turned a film with a $400k budget into a $45M cultural phenomenon.

  5. Adolescence Director on One-Take Filmmaking - Screen Daily interviews Philip Barantini, who directed the four “oner” episodes of the Netflix smash show. The filmmaker, who broke out in 2019 with a oner short, gets into his process and whether he’d do another single-take show.

  6. What to Watch: We stayed in this weekend and watched AppleTV+’s new show The Studio. From Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, the show has drawn rave reviews since premiering at SXSW earlier this month. But, more than the insidery Hollywood satire of the premise, we were stoked to learn that the show was shot by Adam Newport-Berra, the cinematographer on five S/W-selected shorts, and edited by three-time directing alum Eric Kissack (The Gunfighter). Congrats gents!

🪐 Into the Shortverse

Spring is in the air and in America, that means baseball. We put together a topical collection of short films revolving around the National Pastime.

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Today is “Transgender Day of Visibility” and we’re marking the occasion with a collection of 16 shorts that showcase trans stories.

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We close out the new collections with our monthly roundup of exciting and notable films that arrived on Shortverse.

📅 This Week on Short of the Week

Chasing the Night by Abraham Adeyemi

'Just one more drink' becomes a spontaneous night out, and an inevitable conversation awaits.

Bits by Lilliya Reid

A provocative SXSW fave about a young woman who narrowly escapes a serial killer only to be left with feelings of neglect & desire.

Honey by Doron Max Hagay

Doron Max Hagay is featured on the site for the 4th time with his latest short. A failing relationship takes a turn when a couple discovers a drunk girl on their doorstep

Everyone Does It by Craig Ainsley

A sci-fi time travel comedy! When Joel wakes after a night with a girl from out of town, he overhears her talking with her friends and he can’t believe what the hell they are saying. Who are these people? Where are they from? How on earth did they get here?

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