A sincere thank you for the encouraging and provocative feedback to my last letter. These letters are a way to share what we’re learning, and kickstart new conversations. Please feel free to hitusup@makemake.com with your reactions, questions, and experiences.
It’s been a big year of reimagining at MakeMake. After 34 years of building various companies, we decided to turn the award-winning expertise of a52, Elastic, MakeMake Entertainment, Primary, and Rock Paper Scissors into one modern, multidisciplinary studio—MakeMake.
In my last letter I spoke to you about our brand mission: Re-enchantment. Today, I’m talking about an industry-wide challenge…and opportunity.
The distance between an idea and making it real has never been shorter. Synthetic content can be generated almost instantly, but audiences are increasingly skeptical. How can you trust a story when there’s a blatant lack of human heart and understanding behind it? This is the connection crisis.
MakeMake Prototyping™ is our solution. An end-to-end, iterative methodology designed to protect the creative vision and carry the human connection from inception to final pixel. At the moment we have projects where we’re prototyping strategy, story, script, design, direction, edit and animation all in one seamless workflow in real time. It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever experienced, and it feels obvious and natural, because this is how we are meant to work together.
Artists are still the best "tool" for moving human hearts. MakeMake Prototyping™ mixes Artist Intelligence with Artificial Intelligence, bringing a punk hybrid approach to combine efficiency with traditional tactile craft. Our approach puts artists at the helm of the most advanced tools on the market, using AI as a force multiplier for craft and ensuring every idea and image retains our fingerprints.
This process results in work that feels made, not "generated”. And it requires contribution from all over the studio, in ways you wouldn’t expect.
If you’re interested, I’d love to share more about how we’re using prototyping as a creative process here at the studio, and I’d love to show you some of the work we’re doing. And as always, I’d love to hear about what you’re up to. Reach out at hitusup@makemake.com.
Angus
P.S. Our friend Wyatt who is a DP recently said, “the single point everything in a production used to go through was the camera lens. Now, it’s the timeline.” This means that editors - and anyone working with a timeline - can now shape an entire sequence without having all of the necessary pieces at hand. That’s a fundamental shift for us as artists. It’s making us rethink how we work, and giving us a deeper understanding of how the entire filmmaking process can function more effectively and more collaboratively. More on that later!
