FamAbLE

Wow, it has been a while since I have written one of these. I have really been trying to focus most of my energy on the videos themselves, while also trying to be more present at home. Making these videos takes a lot of time out of my schedule, so I am always looking for ways to make myself more efficient. I want to remind everyone that Famable is pretty much a one-man production team. The family helps out with the recording and telling their side of the story, but other than that, it is all me doing everything else.
​I haven’t really had a subject that felt worthy of a blog post recently. But I finally got one after a conversation with Brandy. She mentioned we had a commenter talking about the AI in our videos. I wanted to take a minute to address that because it is an important topic. You see more and more AI on YouTube these days, and I want to explain exactly how and why we use it.
​When most people say “AI,” they are talking about generated images or video clips because that is the part they can actually see. But AI is really just a blanket term. The truth is, I have been using AI for a while now to help behind the scenes.
​There are AI tools built right into my editing software, DaVinci Resolve, that have made my life ten times easier. For example, we use a lot of background music. It adds an extra layer of emotion and helps tell the story of how we were feeling at the time. I am very particular about it. I have my own rules for how long a song should play, and it should go pretty much unnoticed by the viewer.
​In the early days, if I wanted a specific section of a song to fit a scene, I had to manually slice it into pieces and stitch it back together so it sounded natural. It took forever. Now, DaVinci has a built-in AI feature where I literally just grab the track and shrink or stretch it to the exact length I need. The software creates a seamless version for me instantly. This saves me so much time, which means I can get videos out to you quicker. A year ago, I was pretty inconsistent. Some episodes took three or four weeks to finish because life gets busy. Tools like this help me stay on track.
​Now, let’s talk about the video generation. I completely agree with the critics. There is a ton of AI slop on YouTube right now. But using it as a tool to serve a purpose is a little different.
​The only time I use AI video generation is to help tell a visual story that I couldn’t portray otherwise. Let me give you a perfect example. Let’s say I walk into a hotel and have a strange altercation with someone trying to sell me a timeshare. I am obviously not going to whip out my camera and film the argument. That is not fair to the other person, and it is just not right.
​But it makes a great story for the vlog. If it is a long story, I like to have visuals to play over it so you aren’t just staring at me talking. In the past, my options were to spend hours hunting for stock footage, or get up, set up lighting, put on a bunch of wigs, and act the whole thing out myself. Which I still do from time to time. But that takes way too much time for a three second joke. Because of that, I used to just scratch some of those funny ideas completely.
​With AI, I can recreate that scene exactly how it looks in my head. I usually start by generating a picture, getting it perfect, and then bringing it to life as a short video clip. I try to make it obviously funny and exaggerated. I am not trying to trick anybody. I always assumed it was obvious that these little three second clips were just a visual representation of my imagination. It just helps my creativity flow and saves stories that would otherwise get cut out completely.
​So, does this make our vlogs any less real? No. They are the exact same videos. Our opinions, our observations, and our perspectives are 100% genuine. We are just delivering our experiences as accurately as we can. I don’t think using a tool to create some quirky b-roll makes the channel any less credible.
​I do get why people are upset with AI on YouTube, though. I am the exact same way. If I click a video and hear an AI robot voice reading a script, I am clicking right off. To be honest, most of it sucks anyway, but as the technology gets better, I am sure a lot of the quick, grab-and-go information channels will be taken over by AI.
​But I feel like real storytelling from a human perspective is here to stay. People are always going to crave real human experiences, and we are going to keep delivering them.
Thank you for reading my rant.
James