You tell me your first, last name, where you're
located and the name of your business. My name
is Eric Archer and my company name is CGA Creative.
CGA are the initials of all four of my kids.
So named it after them as this AI wave came about
and I felt like I needed a structure for all
my AI work. I named it after them. Hopefully
they'll work for it someday. They're all small.
i'm in the i'm in the boston area i'm about 30
miles north of boston up on the uh north shore
i love that how old are the kids may i ask i've
got uh two seven nine and eleven all about uh
birthday up pretty soon so please tell me more
about cga creative sure well uh as the you know
as i got really into ai a couple years ago i
just felt like um I needed a place to put things.
I make videos and I just wanted a place to put
things. And, you know, I could see I just needed
a space for that thinking, any projects. So I
just made a little Wix website and gave it a
name and started putting things there as I made
them. it's just sort of uh evolved with me over
time it's intentionally a diy website so i can
always update it myself and it doesn't look very
good but uh you know now i'm starting to get
um some paid work doing doing generative ai video
production and a little bit of other ai type
of stuff but mainly video production work wow
okay so tell me about your history prior to getting
in ai Sure. It's been all video all the time.
I got a film studies degree in school and then
went to New York and worked in TV for five or
six years and then out to L .A. for a few years.
And then back here in Boston, always doing television
and video. So when I started to get excited about
AI, I naturally applied it toward what I had
always been doing. Yeah, well, that in my my
first thought. Eric was like, nerd. I like it
in a good way. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, let's
just apply it to whatever I'm currently doing.
So what does that look like? You know, I only
know AI utilizing it to give me prompts and things
like that. But for video, what does that look
like for you? Well, now you can generate all
kinds of different. video components whether
it's a video clip or imagery or audio so you
can do voiceover sound effects most of the elements
that you would need to create a video you can
now generate with these new ai tools and there's
a lot of them and increasing amount of them and
so a lot of what i do is just learning about
them and the way that i do it is just uh in a
project way and that's sort of how you you could
think about how ai would apply to whatever your
subject matter is um what are you currently working
on and then what out there with the ai stuff
might help you and that was just for me how i
got into it was like okay this chat gpt thing
how could it help me well with all the writing
oriented things research planning learning all
that kind of stuff okay great uh maybe even writing
proposals to clients certain things that are
harder to do reviewing like you know contracts
and so but that's how super helpful great uh
and then you know trying to get really good at
that yeah and just and and then you inevitably
learn chat gpt more broadly just because you've
been putting hours in and and same thing with
like a mid journey that was one of the earliest
um image generation tools that came out a couple
years ago right around when chat gdt did and
um it was like oh my god i can generate any image
how can i use that you know and and when i had
the opportunity to make a personal project i
made a ken burns style thing because it was like
ken burns's images it's pictures right one after
another slow zooms nothing fancy just good story
and it was like let me try that because i can
make pictures now so It's always just been, what
is my project all about? And where might these
tools help? And I just keep finding that it's
in more and more ways. More and more tools are
helping me in more and more ways. And I'm finding
it a lot of fun because it's... It's advancing
me. You know, I'm able to do more. I'm able to
create more and make more money and all kinds
of good stuff. So I find it rewarding in a number
of ways, creatively, financially, you know, take
your pick. Yeah, it all sounds interesting enough.
It just sounds super time consuming. So you find
something, you find something that works with
you and with your project and then you implement
it. How long does it take? It just seems like
it's just. A lot for me, right? Because I'm learning
for someone that's listening. It's like, how
does this, how does this really work? And how
time consuming is it? Well, it's absolutely time
consuming. And so that's why I think you really
want it to be about something useful to you,
specific to you, like really helpful to you because
it's, you know, it's, it's learning, it's learning
something new. I will say that a lot of this
stuff is the easiest technology you're ever going
to learn because it's conversational and, and
general purpose. So you can be like, tell me
what i need to know about this thing you know
uh which is amazing um but i think to it's not
a it's not a uh you should be applying yourself
as much as you can to learning like as much as
you can stand to learn you should be learning
it's that kind of time yeah okay that that sounds
like but again for someone that has that time
and then learns it to the core, it could be so
useful. So with that being said, with CGA Creative,
do you actually help individuals create videos
and then that's how you get paid? Is that where
the financial piece comes in? A little bit. A
little bit of it is speaking engagements where
I'm showing people the tools and some of the
know -how, but most of it is the actual production.
So, you know, hey, I have a video need that I
think this AI stuff might be able to meet or
I want to try it out because it might be cheaper
or I might be able to tell stories I've never
been able to tell before. Can you make this stuff?
And so then I go and try to wrestle with these
things and figure out if I can make it or not.
So, yeah, I mean, I think what's cool about that
is, you know, you used to have to be in a New
York or L .A. to kind of get that. type of work
and now you can get it from anywhere on based
on how quickly you can learn and apply your talent
and market yourself so um that's very exciting
i think to the individual creator out there tell
me about your vision when you decided to create
cga um well you know i i uh i studied film in
school and went to New York and LA to pursue
it in the biggest way possible. And then, you
know, life happened and reality came into the
picture. And I'm fortunate that I'm still in
the television industry, but it's a much smaller,
you know, one might say like realistic place
to land. I shot for the stars and had some cool
experiences and, you know. it's not for the moon
fell among the stars is the expression i think
so you know i'm in the game but it's it's an
obscurity to you know for the most part uh but
this gen ai stuff came along and it was like
whoa wait a minute maybe uh maybe we can actually
do some filmmaking after all maybe we can um
exercise that creativity i always pursued for
real in a way that i didn't see coming You know,
I mean, it was very recently that I was paid
for the first time to make an original piece
of video, like 20 something years of making it
like their way. You know, someone came along
and said, hey, we want to pay you to make whatever
you want. And I was like, it happened. That's
AI. Thanks to AI for that. I'm here for it. You
know, I think it's new and different and not
everybody likes it. Even people that have been
doing television work alongside me this whole
time don't want to do it. So it's not for everybody,
which will change a lot about the industry and
what that looks like and everything. But I wanted
a home for all of that work that I intended to
make a lot of. What's the most unexpectedly human
thing that AI has been able to help you and your
team create? so the the first video i made with
ai was uh about my ancestor my great great great
grandfather my dad had done a bunch of like uh
ancestry .com research and it turned out that
my ancestors were all from the area i still live
in salem massachusetts the witch trial area uh
and um we go way way back and it was interesting
i i wasn't ever super into that material like
uh you would think i might be but i just wasn't
really for me um until i needed a subject for
an ai piece to work on that ken burns piece i
mentioned earlier and i saw this research and
it was like huh you know i never could have like
shot this before i couldn't have made a video
about this really but let me give it a shot now
and so i made my great great great grandfather's
image many times over and i turned it into a
little two -minute thing i learned all about
him i i brought him to life of the custom gpt
and talked to it and uh told my dad all about
this and like so it was a really cool way to
learn about my family and um my area just think
about like where i came from and and my you know
so that was super human it was like you know
it was very educational and um uh a lot of people
connected with it for that reason and thought
they would love to do that for themselves and
you know i'd love to bring the story of my ancestor
to life i have this great story i mean stories
get pretty amazing when you go back in time and
the real the real stuff is fascinating and to
think you could bring it to life now it's like
oh wow that there's some raw material for you
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy
that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking
forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes
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