Travis Khachatoorian: You are listening to Sagecast, the podcast at Pomona College featuring Sagehens making a difference in the classroom and in the world. I'm Travis Khachatoorian. Marilyn Thomsen: And I'm Marilyn Thomsen. This season, we're doing things a little differently. We're handing over the mic to Pomona professors to guest host conversations with alumni on what's next in their fields of expertise. Travis Khachatoorian: Today, professor Ryan Engley is taking the reins. He's an assistant professor of Media Studies at Pomona College specializing in television studies, serial media and psychoanalytic theory. Marilyn Thomsen: His guest is Pomona Alumnus, Aditya Sood, Class of 1997, President of the Hollywood Production Company, Lord Miller. During his career in the entertainment world, he has helped produce many acclaimed films including The Martian, Deadpool 1 and 2, and the animated films Across the Spider-Verse. Travis Khachatoorian: Sood has also been a member of the Pomona College Board of Trustees since 2017. Here's their conversation on what's next in the world of film and television. Ryan Engley: Hello. Thank you for joining us on Sagecast. I am Assistant Professor of Media Studies, Ryan Engley, joined by Aditya Sood, President of Lord Miller and producer of film and television. Aditya, thank you so much for being here with us. Aditya Sood: Thank you so much for having me, Ryan. Ryan Engley: What I want to start with is always the question that students ask me if I say that I'm talking to Aditya Sood, President of Lord Miller, what do you want me to ask him? They'll always say to me, "How do you get started?" And that is the classic, classic question. To broaden that a little bit and to make that interesting, not just for Pomona College students currently, or alumni, but any listener, what are you seeing right now in the industry specifically maybe related to Lord Miller? What are you looking for in people and has that changed a little bit over the last few years and what kinds of qualities does the new blood in the industry need to have? Aditya Sood: Sure. Well, look, it's a great question because it was the only question I ever asked when I was a student here, because it's the great unknown, entertainment, especially for someone who didn't grow up in Los Angeles. It seemed incredibly alluring, really mystical, and you had to figure it out yourself. It was a little like getting dropped in an upper division, a class at Pomona without having all the prerequisites. Right? Ryan Engley: Mm-hmm. Aditya Sood: I think a couple of answers I would have to that. I mean, the simplest thing is you just have to be of value to someone and that can come in a lot of different forms. It could come in, you worked harder than anyone else, you know more things than anyone else, maybe do both of those things. That's really good combination. You're nicer than everyone else. Your uncle owns the studio. That's helpful. I don't know how to manifest that, unfortunately. But the truth is, there is always a need for more people to enter in this or any other business. And so, you have to figure out how to get the opportunity. And that can come from when you're at a school like Pomona. It can come from the career development office, it can come from contacts with alumni. I'm a big advocate about students who are here finding each other and getting to know each other and being a cohort. A lot of schools do this really, really well. I think Pomona's doing it better and the Claremont schools are doing it better, but there are other people who are like you who want to figure it out. And if you can share information, if you can share relationships, it's not a zero-sum game. You can really be helpful and collaborative. Entertainment, filmmaking, it's a very collaborative industry. You need to rely on a lot of other people. And so how you get these jobs is actually no different. Ryan Engley: So that's for all time. That answer, that's for all time. Aditya Sood: Yes. Has it changed? Ryan Engley: Yeah, yeah. Aditya Sood: Honestly, it's weirdly hasn't changed. I mean, people change. But the values, the ethics, the creative instinct, I think that is pretty constant. There's a reason why we tell stories, and it probably has more to do with our internal biology, which is we all know it takes a very long time to evolve. So, even in the 30 years I've been doing it, we still want to see stories about people falling in love or people fighting or people figuring out what their issue is with their dad, whatever. Ryan Engley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aditya Sood: All the critical thing, those don't change. How we tell those stories change. And obviously, every time you make something, you're adding something to the canon of work. And if you want to be innovative, you do need to do something new. And one thing I always talk about is my favorite ideas, the things that I always react to when I'm looking at a new material is I want something that is simultaneously a little bit familiar and a little bit new. It's familiar so that it's understandable to the audience, that it's digestible, but you're taking me somewhere that I haven't been before. You're showing me a character I haven't seen or a perspective I haven't seen. And I think the combination of those two things leads to the best, most successful commercial entertainment. Ryan Engley: That's fantastic. So, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what I think is really valuable and what you told everyone is that I think on my side of things, on not being in the industry side of things, we see changes in technology and we think that the industry has changed. Aditya Sood: Yeah. And it has. Ryan Engley: Okay. Aditya Sood: Yeah. I mean, to be very clear, it is a very different industry now than it was when I started, and I've seen it change in a lot of different ways. And all I'm saying is I think there's certain classical principles that don't change. Ryan Engley: Yes, right. Aditya Sood: But the applications of those things change and certainly the way the industry changes does necessitate a different way of working. Ryan Engley: Yeah. No, that's great. It's a classic Marshall McLuhan thing. People see a change in content and they think it's a change in form. And I think what you're looking at is that the form, is that be the nice person on set who's there, and that's still a way to get in. The industry is responding to, again, it has new abilities, new capabilities, new capacities, but there are some constants, some things that don't change and it's worth holding onto those and not pretending like now you need to be a completely new person. Aditya Sood: Yeah, I mean there's so many different aspects to this. I think if we're talking about personalities and how you conduct yourself in a business environment, I will say behavior is much better now than it was 30 years ago, which is great. And hopefully, that is the case across the world. It is a more open industry than it was, I think just by virtue of the interconnectivity between people. And I remember when I was a Pomona student graduating, I wrote my resume and I had been interning for three years at a couple of studios. And so, I was ready gung ho to go get my first paying job. And I remember a young assistant, who by the way later went on to be the president of another studio 15 years later, looked at my resume and said, "You can't send this to anybody. You have a 909-area code on your resume. People are going to think, where are you from? You got to be 310 or 213 or 818." And so, I literally had to go, this is really going to date me. This was before we had people had cell phones. I had to go get a beeper. Ryan Engley: Oh, my gosh. Aditya Sood: A pager, just because it would have a 310 number. And of course, what would invariably happen, and I lost more jobs this way, is that I had that number on my resume. Ryan Engley: Oh, my gosh. Aditya Sood: People would call me at 6:00 PM on a Friday to get an interview, but of course I couldn't be [inaudible 00:08:23]. And by the time I call, they would never call me back. So anyway, I'm glad to say things like that have changed. The accessibility has really changed. And even to some degree, one thing that seemed really sacrosanct, I think it is important still, but it's not a limiting factor in the way that it certainly was post COVID. You don't even have to be in Los Angeles to do it in a way. Ryan Engley: Yeah, yeah. Aditya Sood: And certainly, writers and other creative people have been able to do it from elsewhere, but we're becoming more fluid. Ryan Engley: Oh, that's interesting. What do you see as what's next? And I want to ask this, and you can take this however you want to. I think there's a number of different, again, on my side, on this conversation, we see the finished product and we know that it's in development. But again, the layperson is that these things are just, it's taking time. Okay, it is time that makes something. Aditya Sood: Right. Ryan Engley: Maybe even just since post COVID, but especially with advancing technologies, things like AI, I know people are interested in, but what's changing at the different levels of production? So, pre-production, the generation of an idea, the actual on the ground production of it, and then the editing of course, afterwards, that has to be done. Then the release and then evaluating reception. I mean, that's big... Aditya Sood: That's a whole nine-part question. Ryan Engley: It's a nine-part question [inaudible 00:09:54]. Aditya Sood: But we'll take that step by step. Ryan Engley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aditya Sood: Look, filmmaking. And when I say filmmaking, it applies to both film and television. I mean, it is largely an industrial era process that is formulated 100 plus years ago. There are humongous parts of it that are the same. A hundred years later, you end up making these movies with an army of people. We just made a movie last summer based on Andy Weir's book Project Hail Mary... Ryan Engley: Oh, awesome. Aditya Sood: And we were out in London and there are hundreds of people on set doing very specific jobs. Some of those jobs existed 97 years ago. Ryan Engley: Right. Aditya Sood: And some of those jobs we probably had for the first time on our shoot. Ryan Engley: I don't know if the Lumiere brothers had a key grip, but... Aditya Sood: They probably did, to be honest. I don't know that they had a digital technician. Ryan Engley: No. They certainly didn't know you were there. Aditya Sood: But it's funny, the things that are changing that are probably the most readily apparent to the audience are like, how am I consuming, by the way, I hate saying content. In fact, I have a swear jar at the company. I really think we make film and TV and sometimes it's based on original ideas. It's not as they're based on things. And I don't say that to be precious about it, but I actually think that is what we're doing. Ryan Engley: Doing the distinction matters. Aditya Sood: You don't have to be a bullet point in someone else's keynote address. But I think that fundamentally we are using the tools of filmmaking to create an emotional response in an audience. And what the way people are consuming, like I said, have changed in television, went from broadcast TV to cable TV and then now to streaming and form content. My son, who's turning 10, I mean he consumes media in a way that I couldn't have ever imagined, and I still get him to watch The Muppet Show from the late 70s, which was my favorite thing. And he knows more about 60s era comedians as a result. But he's watching highly specific YouTube videos that are made by amateurs or prosumers or bloggers that the diversity of that experience just couldn't have existed. That the hyper specific niches and the tools that of doubt been given to people to connect with other people find that it's kind of amazing. And it also has resulted in a fracturing of what used to be a very monoculture. There were four movies in theaters every weekend and one new one would come out and one would go away, and there were three and then four broadcast networks. And so, 42% of the country watched Happy Days at the same time and had the same references. And there are fewer and fewer of those experiences that people have. But you then see times, sports as an example, the Super Bowl live events, but then you see cultural events like Squid Game or certainly I think people saw Barbie and Oppenheimer. Ryan Engley: Yeah, that's huge. Aditya Sood: I think it is good for our culture to have shared experiences and touch points. So, some of this stuff's not going away, but certainly the way consumers are seeing things has changed radically. Ryan Engley: Yeah, I think that, and you tell me this is wrong, so my impression is that what has to have changed on your side of things is that there was a certain level when it was three and then four networks, and then of course and UPN and the... Aditya Sood: WBH. Ryan Engley: And of course, and there were only so many movies coming out. There was a certain amount of, you could predict in a way what was going to be a cultural conversation by dint of there being a bit of a limit. And so now that's been loosed, and so it's harder to know, do you have the thing that is going to enter the zeitgeist and create a zeitgeist of its own? And so, what's that like for you now? Aditya Sood: Well, I think there are two parts of that question, right? One I would say is a business question, which is if you're a studio and you're figuring out what am I going to invest in, you're making calculated bets. And then, I think there's a part of that that's a creative question. And by the way, I don't mean that the studios aren't creative. Ryan Engley: No. Aditya Sood: And I don't mean that the creatives don't have a business function as well, but if you're making the judgment of, I've read a book and I just think this is a good idea for a movie, at the end of the day, that's no different than it was 100 years ago. It's no different than it was when people were putting up plays in the 17th century. Ryan Engley: [inaudible 00:15:01] Aditya Sood: Yeah, exactly. So, I joke that for all of the talk about business models, we're figuring out how to monetize content. Every word I hate. The truth is there's only one model. You make something, you try to make it really good, and then you just have to sell more tickets than it costs to make. And if you do that, they sometimes let you do it again. And that's been true for 5,000 years. So that's not changing. It can't change. There's nothing else that makes sense. Yes, I guess some VC could lose a lot of money to subsidize it for a while... Ryan Engley: Sure, yeah. Aditya Sood: But it's not endless. So, at the end of the day, you have to think creatively. You have to think about yourself, a human nature, why you think stories work. And then when you find things that you believe in, then you have to work really hard to make them, and then you try to make them as good as you can. Ryan Engley: I think that's true. I think that people have a very good sense of was this made out of a passion for the people who are involved? Aditya Sood: Yes. Ryan Engley: And I think that that's one of those things, just to make a very quick metaphor for teaching, I always tell people, I've been doing this now for 13 years, and I tell graduate students, if we're talking about they're going to teach for the first time, how should they comport themselves? And I say, you really, really have to be yourself because the students, if you're putting on airs or you're pretending to be somebody else, you know more than they do in the terms of the content of your course, but they can tell if you're trying to be someone you're not. And I think it's the same thing for audiences. When a movie gets put out and it's like, again, you know more about this than I do, or, so if the studio is putting this thing out and they're telling you that it's something and it's not, I think audiences are pretty good at being able to tell and they are able to develop a relationship towards something that has made more level of authenticity. Aditya Sood: I think that is something that people throughout the industry have say increasingly and have actually been saying for a while, which is the audience is more and more sophisticated and knows when they're being sold a bill of goods. Ryan Engley: Yes, yes. Aditya Sood: And you used to be able to get away with it, and maybe because there were also more limited entertainment options. Ryan Engley: Right. Aditya Sood: But the other thing you have to think about is there used to be four, for a long time there were probably two movies in theaters or three movies in theaters. Ryan Engley: Right. Aditya Sood: Then all of a sudden, there were three movies in theaters, and then a few, three times a week there would be one and then the seventies on broadcast television. So, there are six movies, and then at some point when Blockbuster showed up, now all of a sudden, there are three movies, but then there are also two and a half thousand movies that are accessible. So, you're actually competing against those. And now essentially you are competing against every movie that has ever been made because for the most part, 99% of them are accessible. So, you got to be better than that. So, the bar weirdly goes higher and also because it's cheaper to do that. Ryan Engley: Yeah. Aditya Sood: So, what it requires to get someone to spend the money, I'm talking about theatrical movies, but it's true also for television, right? It's true. You're competing with everything that ever existed once you had Spotify. It's every song. Ryan Engley: Yeah. Right, right, right. Aditya Sood: And so, I think that audiences got more sophisticated. The discovery process is very different. It used to be the old way you would get a movie to open is you would have a bunch of money to market the movie and you would start spending the last couple of weeks. And what you would really do is spend it all on NBC, must-see TV on Thursday night because the movie would open on Friday. Ryan Engley: Right, right. Aditya Sood: And you knew that 40 billion people were watching Friends. Ryan Engley: Right. Aditya Sood: And then they would go shoot the movie the next day. And once that broke down, all of a sudden reaching the audience in that way became increasingly more difficult. Ryan Engley: Mm-hmm. True. Aditya Sood: Talk about carpet [inaudible 00:19:13]. Ryan Engley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aditya Sood: It was a blunt instrument to reach people. So now, all of a sudden, there are these experiences that people have. I mean, the Barbenheimer thing, just to go back to that. Ryan Engley: Yes, yes. Aditya Sood: No one could have manufactured that, but people just found it and it was authentic and they wanted to participate in it. I will also say this, which is a very good friend of mine once told me that every movie is someone's favorite movie. Ryan Engley: Yeah. Aditya Sood: So, that even that crazy not-successful movie you worked on as an executive and I worked on quite a few 20-odd years ago, all of a sudden, they get revisited and then people start telling you, "No, actually, Death to Smoochy is a really good movie." Ryan Engley: Yes. Aditya Sood: And I was like, "Really?" Yeah. Ryan Engley: It has totally come back. Aditya Sood: Every movie comes back. I think every movie comes back and there is an internet theory that every movie is a dream, like Fight Club or in someone else's route. So, there's an infinite capacity for those two trends. Ryan Engley: Yeah, that's fascinating. I don't think I had thought that in the present when you're making a movie and then eventually it's going to come out in the present, you are not competing directly with or should I say, not only directly with whatever's coming out, but also indirectly with the past as an entire block. Aditya Sood: And now, you're also competing with. YouTube is the biggest purveyor of all media and TikTok and Instagram and social media. There are all of these other things that just capture the attention of people and they're personalized in a way. I think so much of what great storytelling is, and art more generally is how an artist creates an experience that an individual identifies with. Ryan Engley: Yeah, yeah. Aditya Sood: And is surprised that someone else out there either shares insight or had a similar thought and it makes you feel less lonely. And I think that's actually weirdly the thing about social media. As much as there are all of these issues about people being all of the negative think things that can come from social media, I think people feel it's highly specific to them and they're feeling it in a very visceral, and some would argue addictive, some would say inescapable way. Ryan Engley: Yeah, there's an alchemy. It's like what people, again, it's like this impossible confluence. I like this. And I think it's very powerful when it comes from film and television that because at a certain point when you're in these algorithmically funneled hyper-specific communities, it's not so surprising that you're going to see some kind of content, the bad word that touches you in some way. But then, it's almost like, I don't know, maybe this is too romantic, but film and television are coming from the gods and it's like suddenly this thing from the Gods touching me in this very specific way, in the way that I'm only used to seeing in my hyper-specific community of people who I now actually know just through having to interact with them over and over again. So, I think that's part of why I think Barbenheimer worked was that it's like, oh, it was funny to say the two things together, but then it was like, no, these are two really good movies with two very different kinds of tones and ideas, and it became this cultural touchstone. Aditya Sood: It is true. And weirdly, both movies are examples of two of my favorite genres or types of movies. One is the story about a person who realizes that their entire metaphysical reality is glitching and they're trying to figure out their place in it. And the other one is, let's put on a show. And what you don't realize is Barbie is the first one and Oppenheimer is the second. Ryan Engley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aditya Sood: But they touched two very core parts of the human experience and it'd be great if there and two of those movies come out every week. Ryan Engley: That would be amazing. That'd be amazing. So, I want to ask a question about animation because this is, something's happening with animation. Aditya Sood: Yeah, Ryan Engley: I think that when I was a kid, so the Simpsons was the biggest thing going, and they're still on, which is one of the things for me is when I started watching The Simpsons, I was Bart's age, and now I'm Homer's age, so that's a little difficult to deal with, but now here nor there. So, The Simpsons and a number of other shows were a part of this change in taking animation seriously. Aditya Sood: Right. Ryan Engley: That this could be something that is not just for kids and that there is aesthetic value and also even intellectual value. I think what I'm trying to say is I think the animation is sometimes a bit of a cheat code because you get adult audiences and maybe even some kind of nostalgic thing, and then you're introducing a younger audience into something that they're into because their parents are into, but also, it's beautiful, it's colorful, that it's a different kind of production. You can have voices and there can be people you know, and you don't have to get everybody on set in London for six months to do whatever to do the thing. So where is animation right now and whereas where do you think that's going? Aditya Sood: Well, if animation is a cheat code, it is the most time-consuming labor-intensive, complex cheat code ever. Ryan Engley: Is it great? That's what I want to hear. Aditya Sood: Yeah, listen. I mean, animations wonderful. I feel so fortunate to work with my partners, Chris Miller and Phil Lord, who throughout their professional career have done nothing but both champion animation as a medium and not as a genre. And then, I think have been incredibly innovative. Ryan Engley: Shout out to Clone High. Aditya Sood: Shout out to Clone High. Listen, if you've known Chris and Phil as long as I have, and you remember their, well, I guess they're student films at Dartmouth, but actually Chris and I think back in the day tried to make a Lego stop-motion when we were like seven years old with my dad's camcorder. So no, I mean, look, animation obviously, when it can do all of those things, and it is a pure, I don't want to say it's a pure filmmaking technique because it's all pure filming, but it is, every single aspect of it is so tightly controlled. Ryan Engley: Sure. Aditya Sood: And it's not to say that there aren't happy accidents and there aren't things that you discover the immense amount of those things, but it is a different way to get to the same result. At the end of the day, you're just trying to get emotional response from the audience. And so, I think one thing that's happened with animation is there used to be a bigger class of live action films, sometimes with younger protagonists, sometimes we just call family movies that have been competed away a little bit. I would say by animation, also by superhero movies a bit. Ryan Engley: Sure, sure, sure. Aditya Sood: I think that's actually a huge area for people to re-explore. If you think about the most successful movies of all time, a lot of them are, and they could have been animated. I mean, Wizard of Oz could absolutely have been an animated movie. Ryan Engley: Right, right, right. Aditya Sood: And Star Wars could have been, and Harry Potter could have been. In fact, Spielberg wanted to do Harry Potter as a CG animation [inaudible 00:27:19]. Ryan Engley: [inaudible 00:27:19]. It succeeded wildly in video games. Does that make sense? Aditya Sood: There you go. So, I think animation, I mean, it's limitless what it can do. I love the fact that we are exploring new kinds of stories. I don't know if you saw Flow One. Ryan Engley: I love cats, and yes. Aditya Sood: I thought that was an absolutely gorgeous movie. And again, just really beautiful filmmaking. Ryan Engley: Yeah. Aditya Sood: And I thought, well, Robot was great. Ryan Engley: Yeah. Aditya Sood: And I thought, I think that there's a real range of things that you can do. And so yeah, it's exciting to be part of that. Ryan Engley: Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. So, I'm going down my list here, television now. Aditya Sood: Yes. Ryan Engley: So, TV specifically, I know that you, because you mentioned this before, you're currently working on Spider Noir with Nick Cage. So, TV is my area of study. I love television. I tell everyone that, well on the first day of my TV studies class that look that ultimately, look, we know what's important in the world, especially after a global pandemic, and there are things happening all the time. We know what's important. Amidst all of that TV, probably unimportant. However, among the unimportant things in the world, nothing is more important than TV. That's what I tell everyone. Aditya Sood: I don't think it's unimportant. If you think about how much time we spend in our lives watching television, there's no way that it's unimportant. Ryan Engley: This is my point. But yes, listen, I agree completely. So, we were in this moment where we had the linear television model and then Netflix explodes that, and then we have the binge model of release of television that's dominant for a while until really last four years. And now, we've had this return of the weekly release and the weekly zeitgeist. Even Netflix is breaking their own model. This is how they do Stranger Things, or at least the last season, they're releasing major episodes weekly. So, there's a little bit of everything old is new again with that. But what are you seeing in television and what's specific to TV and what seems to be the next thing? Aditya Sood: Well, in terms of the release part of it, all of these streamers have, they know their data, they know their content and their customers incredibly well, and they probably have different solutions for their own platform. So, I think for some of them, the binge model makes sense, for some using, trying to keep that conversation going and really works. So, I don't know that there's a one size fits all. Ryan Engley: Sure. Aditya Sood: Of course, I grew up in the broadcast and early cable days, so I'm used to waiting. We also used to have to wait three years between Star Wars movies, and so I'm comfortable with that. I like that. But also, everyone, there have been shows that I've binged in a weekend. And I remember when it really started, I feel like it was 24 was sort of the first time, that was such a unique serialized show that people were watching. But then I remember when the DVD sets came out, and I would just have friends who were like, "Yeah, I just watched the whole season. I watched 24 episodes in two days," and it was such a crazy experience. Now of course it's New Teen, and then all of those shows started coming out in those DVD things, and then people serialized storytelling really became much more of a dominant form for a really long time. And so, we like that. We love epic sagas, we love soap operas. It's share us out. That's what that is. We want the party to keep going. Right? Ryan Engley: Right. Absolutely. Aditya Sood: But yeah, I don't know that there's going to be a one size fits all thing. I think we're going to find there are times where you want to concentrate. It's like the Super Bowl. You want to concentrate everyone's attention at once. Ryan Engley: Right. Aditya Sood: It's probably not possible. I'm surprised no one has done, we're going to air this once, and then it's off the server, then it's gone. Of course, people will be able to record it and all that, so they can't quite do that. But that would be an event. I think in terms of the kinds of stories that we're telling, I mean, we've obviously seen in one form or another, especially over the last 25 years, the sophistication and the complexity and the scale of television has grown exponentially. We're doing this show with Nick Cage right now. It's his first television show. So, I guess we're seeing if Nick can make the transition from film to TV. Ryan Engley: You're doing God's work. Aditya Sood: He's doing an incredible show. I can't wait for you to see it. But I think we're seeing that. I don't think it's just a function of scale. Though obviously, Game of Thrones, what they're about to do with this Harry Potter show, that Lord of the Rings show. I mean, there are things that are massive scale. But you watch a show like The Bear, and there is the complexity of human interaction and then the brilliance of the observations, and I love that show. Ryan Engley: Oh yeah, no, of course. Hacks. Aditya Sood: Hacks. I think hacks is incredible and there's so much stuff. And again, I think you can tell stories that you probably weren't able to tell in the past, which is that's the dream for everybody. What's interesting is you do realize there are certain forums that we want to experience, we want to experience, they'll look different, but there's a reason why family sitcoms are really important. Everyone, just about everyone, everyone grew up in a family, has a family, and you want to experience that procedurals. People want to know what happened and why and how. There are, I think we go back to those forms and now how do you reinvent it them so they feel fresh? Ryan Engley: Right. Absolutely. No, this is great. And this is such a, I'm going to take up time in this interview to say something that is ultimately relevant, but did you know, because you brought up the DVD thing for 24, I don't know if you know this, but the first recorded ever instance of someone saying binge-watch, it occurred in a Usenet chat room for the X Files. Someone was looking for if anyone had VHS tapes of the X Files because they wanted to do a binge-watch over Labor Day weekend or something. It was like in 1997. Aditya Sood: Listen, I was a big user back at, come on, in the mid '90s. Ryan Engley: There you go. Yeah, yeah. So, comes wrap. Maybe you even interact with this person. No, this is great. I think, yeah, no, so that's a fantastic answer. And I think you brought up the The Bear. So, a weekly release works for that because the emotional complexity of that show. You want to take a breath a little bit in between episodes. Aditya Sood: Yes. Ryan Engley: And I do think that because we have these two models, we are in this opportunity where producers can choose what works with this thing. Do we want to move on to the next thing immediately... Aditya Sood: Right. Ryan Engley: Or is a breath appropriate? Aditya Sood: I wish producers could choose. I think the streamers get to choose. They kind of tell you. I mean, you can make your case. But of course, my experience with The Bear, just because I'm busy or I'm on location or whatever, is that I end up watching it at the end of the season and then I ended up binge-watching. It's intense, but you can watch a couple. Ryan Engley: Yeah, yeah. No, I think this's just true. This is totally true. This is interesting. So, I think this be my last question for you. AI and the industry, Aditya Sood: Sorry, not familiar. Ryan Engley: Yeah. Okay, so stands for Alford. No. So this a big conversation, big touch point. I'm not asking you to answer in any way. This can get you in trouble, but what is Lord Miller's relationship with AI and where do you see it going? Aditya Sood: I don't know that I can speak sort of for the company as just like a policy. I mean, look, we value artists. We value human creativity. We also know that there are, since people started making films, there are tools that people are using. One of my favorite movies of all time is Singing in the Rain, which is about technological change and how it rocked... Ryan Engley: [inaudible 00:36:08] Aditya Sood: Exactly. And I think as much as you can have, I think we have our own internal compass about what people are comfortable doing and using. You're also not going to be able to keep the genie in the bottle. So, I think for us, and I don't want to say for us, I'll say for myself... Ryan Engley: Sure. Aditya Sood: The most important thing is human ingenuity and human control tools. So, in the way that people thought CGI when it was introduced was going to, they first thought they was going to make movies really cheap and fast. And let me tell you, the exact opposite thing happened. Ryan Engley: Right, right. Aditya Sood: And by the way, I think that's probably the case with almost any new tool. The whole thing about, like if you widen the highway, you don't make traffic though faster, you just increase the amount of traffic. Ryan Engley: Yeah, yeah. That's right. Aditya Sood: In the same way, I think with these technological tools, you're basically increasing the amount of options that are available to people. And that has all, nonlinear editing when it was introduced, didn't make filmmaking go faster from cutting on the movie all. I just let you shoot more footage and make more choices and do all those things. I talked to a, I was at a party a couple of weekends ago, and I was talking to this guy who's a VC, and he told me that their philosophy, or I think it's their company motto is "Human plus algorithm is better than algorithm." And I thought that was really, was really smart. And I agree with that because we're not going to be Luddites, right? Ryan Engley: Right. Aditya Sood: And we're not going to not use things that can be very powerful in human hands. But at the same time, the human element is what makes art work. And then at the same time, I think we all know that every time there is a new sea change, it's hugely disruptive. And to be a compassionate society and industry and understand you can't be as good as learn to code. Ryan Engley: Yeah, yeah. Aditya Sood: That's not the answer. But there's also, there's tremendous skill and artistry that across the board and going from people who work on sets to writers, to directors that is unique to them. And if you can allow them to continue to do the things that are truly unique to them and leverage what these things are, I think that can be powerful. I don't want to be Pollyanna-ish about it. Ryan Engley: No, no, no. Aditya Sood: But I think that at the end of the day, it's what's going to happen. So, if we can use those to make better films and to have people do more interesting expressions of their artistry, I think that is a positive, but there's definitely a cost to it. Ryan Engley: No, I think that's a great answer. And I mean, it's so interesting about CGI. When Toy Story came out, I remember it was like, this is how all movies are going to be. There's not going to be live-action films. This is going to kill animation. Then you just brought up Flow, which is exactly the kind of film that CGI made films were purported to destroy. Aditya Sood: I mean, look, there's not a lot of hand-drawn 2D animation anymore. Ryan Engley: Sure. Aditya Sood: But then, someone's going to come up with a 2D animated thing and it's going to be amazing. The thing that I read a while ago that really sticks with me is that 150 years after the invention of the light bulb, the candle business is like a 4 billion industry, and there's a reason for it. There's a reason why we crave that. We want that experience. Well, by the way, I prefer candlelight and incandescent lights just as a person, not as an environmental concern. It was a better light. I felt better around it. Let's bring back gas lamps. But I say the truth is there's reason why vinyl comes back. There's a reason why apparently cassette tapes are coming back. Ryan Engley: Yes, yeah. It is true. Aditya Sood: I love physical media, and I don't say that as just someone who wants to live in the good old days, but there is a value to all of that, and I think we discover it. Sometimes there's a period where we don't value it. Ryan Engley: We lose it. Aditya Sood: Then we lose it. Ryan Engley: There's always, the analog has the value, and I think I just see this with my students is, I'll tell you why tapes are back a little bit, is because we have in this room, we have a million devices that all do a million things, but there is this experience where you're touching something that does one thing. Aditya Sood: Single purpose. Ryan Engley: Exactly. And people are into that. So yeah, no, I love the answer. And I also think it comes back around to the first thing you said, which is that what matters is you're going to come in, you're going to be like the nicest person on set. You're going to come in, you're going to bring whatever it is in your humanity into the production, and that is ultimately the thing that's going to carry the day. Aditya Sood: I think so. Ryan Engley: Yeah. Aditya Sood: I hope so. Ryan Engley: Yeah. That's great. Aditya, thank you so much for joining us today on Sagecast. Aditya Sood: Wonderful time. Thank you, Ryan. Ryan Engley: All right. Of course.