[Simon Morris] We wanted to round out our keynote today. Hearing from one of the UK's most exciting young creatives. He started creating content in 2020 during lockdown, and since then has created a brand, the Studio B production company, which specializes in creating visual effects content for leading brands like Netflix, Amazon, Sony, and Disney. His social media following has amassed over 25 million subscribers and has billions of views each year. Joining us all the way from my hometown of Bushey, Hertfordshire. Please welcome to the stage Brandon Baum, [Applause] [Narrator] Everybody is talking about the asteroid heading towards Earth. What could it possibly be? [Music] [Narrator] It's everywhere, it's huge. [Speaker unknown] Oh my god. [Speaker unknown] I have a more serious relationship than I had with my last boyfriend. [Mr. Beast] Now you're getting me excited for my own show. [Speaker unknown] Guess I'll take it from here. [Speaker unknown] Come on, let's go. [Speaker unknown] I guess happy hour is over. [Speaker unknown] Really? [Speaker unknown] Come on, come on. [Music] [Tom Holland] I don't really know what's going on. [Music] [Speaker unknown] I got a B. [Applause] [Brandon Baum] Stories are magical. They are a portal into a world filled with mystery, wonder and excitement. You see, a great story has the ability to make us laugh, cry, but most importantly, inspire us to dream.
I fell in love with filmmaking at the age of 12. My first film shot on my brother's iPod. I overlaid a green screen asset and bosh, Oscar worthy.
Suddenly, in the palm of my hands, I had the power to capture, create, and share content, and a glimpse of Hollywood somehow felt accessible.
Inspired by the greats, James Cameron, Spielberg, Lucas, I dreamt of one day opening my own studio, launching a YouTube channel, and telling stories to the world. I'd locked myself in my bedroom watching Andrew Kramer After Effects tutorials, obsessing over every trick that I could master. Bursting with excitement to share these creations with the world, I'd upload them to YouTube, where they'd receive a grand total of...
...two views. Thanks, mum.
I was hooked. I spent every waking moment watching, learning and creating content on YouTube. learning and creating content on YouTube. Eventually, I began my pursuit into the industry. After about a year of shadowing, pestering and just eventually showing up uninvited, I managed to land my first job as a runner. I was cleaning up trash, serving drinks, sweeping the floors and... ...I loved it. I was surrounded by people like me, people who loved to tell stories. Then one day I met these two guys, called Woody and Kleiny. Now, when I met them, I was shell shocked because they had 50,000 subscribers.
In front of me were two creators who had successfully built up an audience online. It was the first time I realized there was a viable path telling stories in this undiscovered territory. So naturally, I quit my safe job in TV and dove headfirst into the wild West of YouTube, producing and directing content for creators. Now, back then, YouTube didn't hold the same prestige that it does today. I remember countless conversations with friends and family telling me that I was crazy, that no jobs could come from YouTube, but over the following four years that 50,000 subscribers turned to an astronomical 15 million.
I'd fallen in love, and this new chapter felt like a brand-new opportunity to tell stories like never before.
For four years, I had the honor of meeting and working with so many of YouTube's greats, all of who, who are betting on a platform, the industry still didn't take seriously.
We were finding our way in the dark. We pushed boundaries, took creative risk, and we failed a lot. But with every misstep, we learned more. And in the process, we discovered how to tell stories that touched hundreds of millions of people.
And then, five years ago, lockdown hit. Everything stopped, the lights, the cameras, the magic, gone. But my obsession remained. And with no way to film with others, I saw this as an opportunity to start creating my own characters, building new worlds and telling stories filled with magic. So, I set up my own channels, and on day one of lockdown, I made a pact with myself that every day I was going to upload a brand-new video. Now, of course, what was supposed to be a three-week lockdown turned into a three-month lockdown. But I kept to my pact, ideating, shooting, editing, and uploading every single day. And by the end of the lockdown, I had reached an insane 1 million followers.
As a new chapter emerged, a brand-new opportunity to tell stories like never before had quietly opened.
Stories make the real world disappear. They conjure emotion, they summon imagination, and they transform the way we see ourselves and each other. Now that is real magic. Storytelling has been prevalent since the dawn of time, since the campfire oral epics of our ancestors to today's blockbusters. The tools have evolved, but that magical feeling storytelling blossoms has never changed. But every time a new tool emerges, the same fear follows, that somehow the magic will be lost.
When sound was first introduced to cinema, critics dismissed it as a gimmick. Studio execs claimed that audiences wouldn't want to hear actors speak.
Then, as computers were introduced to edit movies, filmmakers claimed that the magic somehow lived in the physical splice of the film and that the same soul couldn't be recreated inside of a computer. Heck, when Tron hit the big screen, it was banned from a nomination in the visual effects category because the Academy deemed its use of CGI as cheating.
Sound familiar? Just a decade ago, Hollywood said that Netflix movies weren't real movies, and they didn't belong at the Oscars.
And today, Netflix is not only one of the biggest investors in storytelling, they have claimed over 25 Academy Awards.
The latest trick has arrived. It's fast, it's new, it's powerful, and it's called AI.
And like every tool before it, it has divided the room.
Today it feels like we've entered a creative civil war. On one side, the traditionalists claiming that AI is ripping the soul from our art, and on the other side, the absolutists claiming that AI is the final form of artistry.
And honestly, my take, I am [_] bored of it all.
We've become so obsessed with the mechanics of creativity, so consumed by what's real and what's artificial that we've forgotten the reason we create in the first place.
Let's go back for a moment to the 1970s, a time when the idea of making movies inside of a computer was unthinkable, laughable.
But then up stepped one curious filmmaker, George Lucas.
In 1977, he released Star Wars and shattered every preconceived notion of what cinema could be. He didn't chase technology for the sake of technology. He chased it because it was the key to unlock his story and tell it in a way the world could have never imagined.
Then came James Cameron with The Abyss, Terminator 2, Titanic, Avatar. He didn't just use new technology, he forged it and pioneered its very workflow into existence.
In December 2022, I had the insane honor of being invited to the premiere of Avatar 2. I sat there in pure disbelief at the insane technical marvel in front of my eyes as I was whisked away into a world filled with wonder.
Then later that evening, I saw one of my heroes.
I plucked up the courage, calmed my nerves, took deep breaths, and there he was, Mr. James Cameron.
It was a dream come true.
I had the privilege to thank him not only for the film, but for pioneering the CGI industry and bringing a new form of magic into existence.
And then literally just a few months ago, this happened.
Cameron announced that the next avatar film would open with a disclaimer that reads: No Generative A.I. was used in the making of this movie.
Instantly I felt like I was hit by a wave of déja vu. Now, look, I get it, I really do. He's protecting the legacy of an industry he helped shape and in turn, shaped him. But here's the irony. He was only able to shape it because he dreamed bigger. Because instead of joining the chorus of doubt, he leaned into the unknown and pioneered it. That's why we watch Titanic sink, it's why we saw Pandora fall. And it's why we know James Cameron as the storyteller he is.
And then literally, as I was creating this presentation a few days ago, something remarkable shifted.
Cameron sat down with Andrew Bosworth, CTO of Meta, and his attitude towards AI had evolved.
He acknowledged that we stand at a crossroads, not to replace artists, but to amplify them, to integrate AIs into workflows in a way that empowers human creativity. You see, one of Hollywood's greatest challenges today are the spiraling costs that are choking innovation.
As budgets rise, studios grow cautious and original storytelling becomes too risky.
And so, we get this churn of prequels, sequels, and remakes.
But risk isn't something to avoid. It's the heartbeat of creativity. Without it, entire worlds of imagination never get built. Stories stay locked away. And arguably most importantly, emerging storytellers never get their shot because the stakes are simply too high.
But now AI has the potential to change everything.
By increasing the cadence of production, we can bring costs down, not to replace the creative process, but to unleash more of it. Suddenly, studios can take greater creative swings, greenlight more projects, open the doors to new emerging voices, new talent, you.
Now, let's be clear. I'm not arguing that Cameron should be using Generative AI in Avatar. Honestly, I couldn't care less whether he uses it or not. I just want to watch one of the greatest storytellers of our time bring his story to the big screen.
And let's face it, when you've got one of the biggest budgets in cinema history, unlimited resources, and almost a decade to work on your movie, there's probably not much more AI has to offer.
But for the storytellers that don't have the budgets, that don't have the studio backing or the huge team, AI offers a brand-new opportunity.
Suddenly storytelling is more accessible, faster and more feasible than ever. I am here today because of the portal that opened up in the palm of my hand when I was 12 years old, a scratched-up iPod that became my gateway into storytelling.
The reason AI excites me isn't because of the tech itself. It's because of what it represents, access, democratization, and a paradigm shift.
Enter YouTube, a platform once home to fail compilations and cat videos, has now ascended to become the most dominant forces in our living rooms. A platform that is free to distribute, where you can tell your story and a discoverability engine will hunt down the audience it was intended for. The need for creativity isn't fading, it's exploding. Over 1 billion hours of YouTube content is consumed on TV's alone every single day.
We are stepping into an era where the power to decide which stories get told, no longer rest in a single Hollywood boardroom.
The floodgates are open. Both the tools and the distribution have been brought to billions of potential storytellers.
A brand-new storytelling pipeline isn't coming.
It's already here.
One of my favorite stories, a group of remarkable young filmmakers based in Sierra Leone, using just an old iPhone, they produced an entire hour-long feature film using visual effects, they then uploaded it to YouTube. It went viral, capturing worldwide attention. Eventually, reaching global superstar Idris Elba. Idris reached out to the group, and he's confirmed he's working with them on an upcoming project. Never before in human history has a story like that been possible. I'm excited to enter a world where this is the first of many, and where the pipeline of work isn't just coming from the blockbusters, but independent storytellers all around the world.
When we democratize storytelling, we democratize the access. Imagine a future where budgets are no longer barriers, where boardrooms don't control breakthroughs, and where the only gatekeeper is the audience. And the only true measure is the feeling you leave with them.
Now, to be clear, that feeling is not generated by AI, but it's also not formed by a polygon in 3D, it's created by you. No matter the tool you use.
You've probably heard the phrase Generative AI is lifeless, it's soulless.
But I can't help to wonder. Is that because of the technology itself? Or because the right storytellers are still yet to grasp it.
Tools don't bring stories to life, storytellers do.
Take Pixar. A studio that pioneered using code and computation to bring toys to life. They forged a new frontier of computer animation, and despite this, hold one truth to that call.
That story is king.
And that's the point. Change is always uncomfortable, but it also brings with it something extraordinary, a brand-new chapter to tell stories like never before.
Tools open doors. They expand what we're capable of, they redefine what was once thought of as impossible. But no amount of machine learning or automation can replicate the spark of human imagination. Because while the tools bring the picture to life, they don't define it.
Great storytelling does.
I've been lucky.
What started with a green screen and two views is now an insane 15 million subscribers and 15 billion views. My dream of owning a studio has been brought to life in Studio B, helping some of the biggest brands in the world redefine how they tell stories online.
Studio B's AI task force is building launchpads for our artists and our production teams, not only to increase cadence, but to help us fail faster, so we can stumble on gold quicker. And yes, even with the increase in output, we are still hiring more artists because great artistry lives at the core of every great story.
Now my story is far from over. In fact, I still feel like I'm in act one.
My dream is to tell stories that bring people together, to build worlds, to create characters, and to maybe one day bring it all to life in a theme park that brings the greatest stories of our time to life.
The magic of a story doesn't happen inside of a screen. It's not forged in code or printed on a page.
The real magic happens in the audience's mind.
It's the lump in your throat when Simba loses his father.
It's the chill down your spine when Vader says, "I am your father." And it's the roar in the cinema when Cap lifts up Thor's hammer.
That's what turns a scene into cinema, a video into a memory, and a story into something unforgettable. And when we get that part right, the tools fade into the background, the technology disappears, and all that's left is how we made people feel.
Because while the tools will keep evolving, the magic of a great story will always stay the same.
Thank you. [Applause]
