Last night I had the wildest nerdiest fun attending FBRC.ai / Curious Refuge’s AI Filmmaking Party at Las Vegas’s HyperX Arena. Hosted by the dynamic duo CR founders Caleb Ward and Shelby Ward, it was a first of its kind competition with hundreds in attendance to witness 16 Generative AI artists in a bracket elimination tournament in which they would go head to head in timed generative AI challenges.
Judged by the Wards and filmmaker Dave Clark and AI Educator Tim Simmons the event felt like Extreme Pictionary on a stage. A party game in the near future seems inevitable. It’s worth noting the event utilized Leonardo.Ai as its generative software which was new to almost all the contestants as opposed to Midjourney. The key difference is that the latter has that fuzzy lag of rendering, often 10-15 seconds, whereas Leonardo.ai’s images were instantly eye popping, lending itself to a live raucous event.
Across 4 rounds, judges would announce prompts submitted by attendees like:
- A friendly moose serving as a white water guide saving a person
- A Ferris wheel made of donuts
- A giraffe slipping on a banana
Contestants would then generate on the fly with 2 giant screens behind them, a true apples with apples experiment to see what their imaginations and skills with prompting, gestures in the sketch window could achieve under a 1 minute time pressure. The judges would vote and the crowd’s response would serve as an often used tie breaker.
The nerd fest had its moments of drama!
At one point, one contestant stopped drawing halfway through their 60 seconds, believing his image perfect, needing no more generation. His opponent Jagger Waters looked to be down for the count until the last moment delivering a flourish that yielded an insane set of freakish puppies with flowers that made the crowd go wild. She would go on to win the night, the lone female contestant, taking home a set of Apple Vision Pro goggles.
Waters was among a mix of early adopters competing, including Minh Do, Will Hatcher, Ryan Cramer; conversations through the night of this pop up cohort captured the giddy energy of the AI filmmaking space, a mix of punk rock vibes and geek festing much like Nem Perez’s “Our T2 Remake” event last month. These are early “moments” of a creative culture in a primordial state.
The crowd was genuinely entertained and played along, their live heckling commentary was a cross between people noting a Westminster Dog Show and a Fashion Runway. People were charmed and opinionated, and barked out strategic feedback “stop while you’re ahead!” when the current generation was eye popping and a further prompt might undo its beauty.
While so much high level anxiety and industry economics drives the daily newsfeed of Generative AI, this event shows us that it’s possible there are categories of fun and creativity we’re just beginning to understand.
