Recurring idea
Media & streaming
The stories, platforms, and incentives behind what we watch.
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AI video tool Luma can now export AI-generated footage in production-grade formats built for professional VFX and color workflows. Visual Fox Effects: fur rendering, fair compositing
Context & related ideasAdobe Premiere can now generate fill-in video and sound directly inside an existing film edit, using surrounding footage as context. B-roll getting A-list treatment.
Context & related ideasSeedance 2.5 is tackling film scene coherence by extending AI-generated shots that keep characters, sets, and sound consistent. 30 seconds of continuity and suddenly we’re calling it emotionally available.
Context & related ideasGoogle Flow now gives AI video a rough-cut stage - letting filmmakers draft cheaply in low resolution, lock shots, then finish selected footage in 4K. The cutting-room floor just moved above the line.
Context & related ideasRunway has launched the first model router built specifically for generative media - matching image, video and audio jobs to the best-fit model. The models are starting to audition for the workflow.
Context & related ideasThe business model of independent cinema remains ‘somehow, the film happened’.
Context & related ideasGoogle is courting Disney and Universal to license film libraries and characters for its AI tools, formalizing access to Hollywood IP for training. Even the training models have representation now.
Context & related ideasDanny Boyle says his new film Ink uses about 30 seconds of AI-generated footage to recreate Margaret Thatcher. Even the machines are starting as extras.
Context & related ideasCreators and streaming colliding - somewhere, a media executive just detected gravitational waves in the engagement dashboard.
Context & related ideasThe streaming wars accidentally produced a full cinematic universe of VODs. At this point, consolidation is starting to look like video acquisition overdose.
Context & related ideasNever quite understood why they went with Casablanca instead of the White House. Bogart would’ve made an excellent president.
Context & related ideasThe TV screen keeps getting bigger. Human attention remains stubbornly the same size.
Context & related ideasStreaming still catalogs stories like libraries; audiences discover them like weather systems - through shifting currents, pressure zones, and brief clearings of cultural visibility. Making scenes programmable shifts discovery logic from shelf to signal.
Context & related ideasA video library without memory isn’t an archive - it’s a very expensive fog bank with timestamps.
Context & related ideasEvery streaming platform eventually reaches the same conclusion: the real content strategy was the infrastructure we uncovered along the way.
Context & related ideasModern sports consumption is basically competitive anxiety with push notifications.
Context & related ideasEven in the age of AI, much of sports’ recorded history remains hard to search, license, or analyze at scale. Sports archives do feel like dark matter: massive, influential, and mostly inferred through gravitational effects.
Context & related ideas97% of media companies are looking for an AI strategy. The other 3% are looking for Alex, Alec, Alexa, Alice in Wonderland…
Context & related ideasAs Hollywood contracts, two-minute vertical microdramas are turning into a billion-dollar business. Who knew the microbox would take down the box office?
Context & related ideasPrestige media promised a bigger room. Turns out the audience had already left the building.
Context & related ideasTrailers are still one of the few formats designed to sell anticipation instead of attention.
Context & related ideasIn-car streaming: the moment the backseat stopped asking 'are we there yet?' and started expecting a content roadmap.
Context & related ideas9:16 may be the 6-7 of media formats: widely discussed, vaguely understood, and somehow culturally decisive.
Context & related ideasThe Circulation Problem of Classical Cinema
From Storage Logic to Circulation Logic
- AI & machine learning
- Discovery
- Media & streaming
- Product systems
- Platforms & distribution
- Technology & culture
- Humans & machines
The First Reader
When Product Design Externalizes the Cold Start Problem
- AI & machine learning
- Discovery
- Media & streaming
- Creators & publishing
- Product systems
- Platforms & distribution
- Technology & culture
- Humans & machines
The Hogwarts Graduate
Overqualified wizards enter the working world. A sideways journey through ambition, meritocracy, and the strange business of finding your place without a wand.
Context & related ideas