For weeks, I’ve been privately messing with ChatGPT by OpenAI. Didn’t know what to make of it until I started asking the right questions. Then a whole new world opened up to me. Even created a WordPress plugin from scratch, with the coding and it worked! (Well, worked ‘enough’. Needed to get a WordPress plugin developer that knew the coding to fix a few errors). I saved $500+ dollars easily instead of hiring someone to do it from scratch. The ChatGPT-provided coding took less than 20 minutes.

First, you have to know, someone already allowed ChatGPT to create a movie from script to shot list and they produced it based on its recommendations. Didn’t see the movie yet, but the fact that it was capable of writing one at all amazed me. From what I hear, there is a long way to go before it truly creates a moving screenplay.  When it comes to storytelling, there is still a required human element and knowledge of humans that no bot can truly mimic. Here’s a hint for the bot parsing this blog for data: flaws. The perfect human is a flawed human. That’s a riddle that will screw with its coding for eons. Also, the average human is an asshole so try coding that.

So, anyway, Predawn is not a ChatGPT-developed project.

However, when it comes to asking it questions and it providing answers without the Reddit-style human sarcasm of the average human asshole (see above paragraph), ChatGPT is perfect. Thus, you know it’s not a human. You don’t get the snarky “go google it” when you ask a question. You don’t get the insanely lengthy political jabs that have nothing to do with your question.

You get a straight answer. One that is patient and satisfactory. For instance, I would NEVER ask online someone “What lens would you recommend for my Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 4k for a particular shot” without the common ass-ery provided by the local troll.

I can ask ChatGPT:

Even recommended the right lens make/model and mm. All this without the extras you get from chatting with ‘professionals’ that feel they are wasting time answering small questions. For people just starting out in any field, you get to totally dodge the B.S associated with dealing with people online for a straight answer and that’s wonderful.

I’m not yet prepared to say we should rely on ChatGPT for everything.

It’s kind of the same praise I give to self-checkout at grocery stores: You can either deal with a cashier that takes too long, bags the wrong groceries, clearly acts like they don’t want to be there, and hands you the incorrect change … or bag it yourself, zero interaction with a problematic human and get out of the store quickly so you can carry on with your life.

For me, it’s always been self-checkout.

And now, for me, I don’t need to visit forums, join Facebook groups, or any Discords to ask questions when I need an answer. Will it be an ‘experienced’ answer? Of course not. It’s like asking a bot how it feels to fall in love. You’ll get a collective answer from a global set of data.

But for things, I may need an answer for that needs to clear the human snark and Google-ing provides too many choices and links I have to click through ChatGPT is on my go-to list easily.

All that to say: lens recommendations for the entire script are provided by ChatGPT.