Get tickets to the next Artist and the Machine event in NYC on May 14th, you can access Early Bird applications on their site: https://artistandthemachine.com/

2025 Grimes Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4LZfOaPifQ

In this episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Dani Van De Sande, founder of Artist and the Machine — one of the most important gatherings anywhere in the world for artists, technologists, and creative leaders working with AI.

Artist and the Machine is the leading Summit at the forefront of AI & Creativity. The bi-yearly gathering in LA & NY is known for its elevated, strong curation that fosters inspiration and partnerships across brand innovation leaders, creators, and founders pioneering the future of Human-Machine collaboration. The AI & Creativity Summit returns to NYC on May 14, 2026 to gather 400 handpicked leaders in the space, featuring a Main Stage, bespoke breakout sessions & workshops, and interactive demos. If you’re exploring how AI is transforming creative work - you’ll want to be in this room.

Dani has built a rare kind of event: a place where engineers, filmmakers, researchers, and creative directors share a stage and show what they’re actually making right now. Not predictions. Not hype. Real tools, real experiments, and real creative breakthroughs.

In this conversation, Dani and Orlando explore the rise of the creative technologist, why artists and engineers need to be in the same room, and how the most interesting work today often couldn’t have existed even a year ago.

It’s a thoughtful, optimistic conversation about the people building the future of creativity — and the communities forming around them.

🔍 Highlights include:

• Why the creative technologist is the defining role of the AI era
• How Artist and the Machine brings artists and engineers together
• The difference between AI hype and real creative practice
• Why the most interesting work today is happening at the edges of disciplines

🎙️ Meet the People Designing the Biggest Moment in Advertising

In this special post–Super Bowl episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Mark Gross, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Creative Officer of Highdive, and Chris Bellinger, Chief Creative Officer of PepsiCo Foods USA - two of the creative leaders behind some of the most talked-about Super Bowl advertising of the last decade.

The Super Bowl has long been the most concentrated moment of attention in media. But what it means to advertise there has fundamentally changed. What was once a single 30-second TV event has become a multi-week, multi-screen cultural launch shaped as much by social feeds, memes, and war rooms as by what airs during the game itself.

Mark and Chris unpack how Super Bowl advertising has evolved in the second-screen era, from the rise of 60-second storytelling to the limits of celebrity-driven ideas, and the strategic decisions brands now face around timing, secrecy, and amplification. They go deep on the creative risks of emotion on the loudest stage in advertising, and how Lay’s “Little Farmer” became an unexpected, last-minute pivot that reshaped the brand’s tone and expectations moving forward.

The conversation also pulls back the curtain on game-day realities: war rooms, real-time decision-making, competitor overlap, and the uncomfortable truth that even the biggest ads can’t be fully controlled once culture takes over.

What emerges is a rare, honest look at how modern Super Bowl advertising is actually made not as a single moment, but as a system of craft, strategy, intuition, and risk.

🎧 Highlights include:

● How Super Bowl advertising shifted from a one-night event to a multi-screen cultural launch

● Why 60-second spots now outperform 30s on the biggest stage

● The celebrity arms race and when “no celebrity” becomes the real surprise

● The creative risk of emotion in the middle of a football game

● How Lay’s “Little Farmer” came together through late pivots and leadership conviction

● Why sequels are harder than originals in advertising

● What really happens inside Super Bowl war rooms

● Measuring success beyond views: shares, comments, and cultural impact

🔗 Visit KoobrikLabs: https://www.koobriklabs.com

🔗 Connect with Orlando: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orlando-wood

📍 Chapters:

[00:00] Meet Mark Gross and Chris Bellinger

[01:13] How Super Bowl advertising has changed over the last 20 years

[02:56] Is the Super Bowl still the most valuable media buy?

[04:48] Teasers, timing, and pre-game release strategy

[06:40] Celebrity saturation and creative risk

[10:07] Making emotion work on the biggest stage

[12:07] Inside the making of “Little Farmer”

[15:15] Media buying and late-stage creative decisions

[19:09] Does Super Bowl pressure change the work?

[22:26] When an idea only works on game day

[24:01] TV winners vs internet winners

[25:29] Designing for memes and long-tail culture

[26:45] Where agency and brand priorities collide

[30:45] Sequels, expectations, and creative pressure

[33:37] Holding spots vs releasing early

[35:32] Extending campaigns beyond the game

[38:50] War rooms and real-time decision-making

[42:49] Defining success after the final whistle

[44:18] Competitor overlap and creative collisions

[48:40] Final reflections and what comes next

#TechnicallyCreative #SuperBowlAdvertising #MarkGross #ChrisBellinger #Highdive #PepsiCo #CreativeStrategy #BrandStorytelling #Advertising #CulturalMarketing #KoobrikLabs #OrlandoWood

🎙️ How Brands Win Advertising’s Biggest Day

With Mark Gross (Highdive) and Chris Bellinger (PepsiCo Foods U.S.)

In this episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Mark Gross, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Creative Officer of Highdive, and Chris Bellinger, Chief Creative Officer of PepsiCo Foods U.S. — two of the most experienced creators in modern Super Bowl advertising.

Together, they were behind last year’s breakout Lay’s spot The Little Farmer, and this year’s follow-up, The Last Harvest — a beautiful, generational story about a father passing his potato farm down to his daughter. In a sea of celebrity spectacle, their work stands out for its sincerity and emotional craft.

But the Super Bowl has changed. What used to be a single broadcast launch is now a multi-week cultural campaign. Spots are teased to press, released on social feeds days before kickoff, and supported by full-scale war rooms tracking the game in real time. With ads now costing around $8 million for 30 seconds, the stakes have never been higher.

In this conversation, Mark and Chris break down how Super Bowl advertising really works today — from emotional storytelling and celebrity strategy to PR runways, social media scorecards, and what success actually looks like the morning after the game.

🎙️ Meet the Woman Helping Film Culture Make Sense of Itself

In this episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Cara Cusumano, Festival Director of the Tribeca Film Festival — one of the three major American film festivals alongside Sundance and SXSW, and still one of the most important gateways to legitimacy for filmmakers worldwide.

Film festivals remain the first real hurdle for a film or filmmaker to be taken seriously. The place where work moves from being made to being seen, debated, championed, and absorbed into the cultural bloodstream. And in a moment when more creators than ever are making more content than ever — with near–studio-level tools available from their couch — that curatorial role has never mattered more.

Cara oversees one of the most complex and influential selection processes in global filmmaking, sifting through more than 13,000 submissions a year to find what’s audacious rather than merely loud. As the filmmaking system is pressured on all sides — economically, culturally, and technologically — this conversation makes the case that festivals, and the humans who curate them, are more essential than ever.

Under Cara’s leadership, Tribeca has also been notably forward-thinking about new tools, including AI. Rather than sidelining creators who experiment, the festival has created intentional frameworks that ask the same timeless questions: Is there a point of view? Is there a voice? Is there something human at the center of the work?

What makes this episode especially resonant is Cara herself. When asked whether she actually watches everything, she laughs and admits she lives in fear of missing something great. That moves beyond love and into dedication — a reminder that taste-making isn’t algorithmic. It’s human.

🎧 Highlights include:

● Why film festivals remain the path to legitimacy for filmmakers

● How Tribeca filters signal from noise in an era of infinite content

● The evolving role of curation as the film industry fractures

● Tribeca’s approach to AI, tools, and creative experimentation

● Why taste, restraint, and vision still matter more than polish

● How festivals balance indie discovery with major cultural moments

● “I live in fear of missing something” — dedication as a curator

🔗 Learn more about the Tribeca Film Festival: https://tribecafilm.com

🔗 Visit KoobrikLabs: https://www.koobriklabs.com

🔗 Connect with Orlando: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orlando-wood

📍 Chapters:

[00:00] Introducing Cara Cusumano and Tribeca

[04:00] Film festivals as the path to legitimacy

[09:00] Signal vs noise in the age of infinite content

[15:00] AI, tools, and Tribeca’s forward-thinking stance

[23:00] Discovery, innovation, and community

[31:00] Programming across film, TV, games, and podcasts

[41:00] Shorts, new voices, and emerging formats

[52:00] “I live in fear of missing something”

[57:00] Why festivals — and curators — matter more than ever

#TechnicallyCreative #CaraCusumano #TribecaFilmFestival #FilmFestivals #Curation #Filmmaking #AIinFilm #Storytelling #CreativeTechnology #IndependentFilm #KoobrikLabs #OrlandoWood

In this second bonus episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood continues his conversation with one of the most talked-about — and least understood — figures in modern Hollywood: Jon Peters.

In Part One, we explored Jon’s unlikely path from beauty school to Barbra Streisand and A Star Is Born. In this episode, we move into the next chapter of his career — the years when Jon steps out as an independent producer, helps bring Caddyshack to life, and forms one of the most influential creative-business partnerships in film history with Peter Guber.

This conversation is still loose, funny, messy, reflective — and very “Jon.” We get deeper into how instinct, relationships, gamble-taking, and timing shaped a run of films that defined an era.

We explore:

• How Caddyshack became Jon’s first big independent producing moment

• Why Jon believes producing is really about spotting — and backing — raw creative talent

• The origin story of the Guber-Peters partnership

• How two unlikely partners built a string of hits together

• The road from producing movies to running Sony Pictures

• Loyalty, ambition, ego, conflict — and what happens when the stakes get massive

• How Jon looks back on all of it now

This is Part Two in a multi-episode series examining the real story behind the headlines — the ambition, the chaos, the successes, the fractures, and the emotional truth behind one of the most unusual careers in Hollywood.

If you’re interested in how big films really get made — and the personalities it takes to make them — this chapter goes even deeper.

More to come.

In this special bonus episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with one of the most mythologized and misunderstood figures in modern Hollywood: Jon Peters.

Jon’s life story reads like a Hollywood screenplay — from being pulled out of a troubled childhood and thrust into beauty school, to running a chain of iconic LA salons in the 1970s, to meeting Barbra Streisand and producing A Star Is Born, to orchestrating the Sony Pictures takeover, to holding the rights to Superman for nearly 25 years. His fingerprints are on Batman, Rain Man, Flashdance, The Color Purple, American Werewolf in London and more.

This first conversation is wide-ranging, messy, intimate, and completely Jon. We explore:

• His unlikely path from hairdresser to Hollywood power player
• His time with Barbra Streisand and the origin of their creative partnership
• The chaos and brilliance of his producing years
• His relationships with Peter Guber and studio heads like Steve Ross
• His battles with addiction, his recovery, and the love that grounded him
• Why his confidence — and instinct — became his superpowers

This is part one of a multi-episode series diving into the real story behind the legend, pulling apart what’s myth, what’s true, and what only Jon could possibly describe.

If you’re fascinated by Hollywood history, improbable careers, or the personalities behind the films that shaped generations, this is the beginning of a remarkable ride.

Stay tuned — the next chapters go even deeper.

🎙️ Meet the Man Shaping Hollywood's Future

In this season finale of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Yves Bergquist — Director of the AI & Media Project at USC’s Entertainment Technology Center (where every major studio, from Warner Bros. to Netflix to Sony, collaborates on the future of storytelling), and CEO of Corto AI, a company decoding the narrative DNA of films, ads, and media.

Yves is one of Hollywood’s leading voices in AI — helping the industry understand how technology, data, and culture intersect. But this conversation isn’t just about algorithms or analytics. It’s about stories: the ones that shape audiences, and the ones we tell ourselves.

In a remarkably candid exchange, Yves shares how his work mapping creative data has paralleled his own journey of reinvention — from public failure to personal growth. It’s a rare, human look at how the next wave of creativity will be built on both intelligence and empathy.

🎧 Highlights include:

● How USC’s Entertainment Technology Center is redefining AI for Hollywood

● The “Content Fingerprinting Initiative” — using math to protect IP in generative media

● Corto AI and the narrative DNA of storytelling

● Why Gen Z wants a John Hughes-style revival of “people misbehaving” movies

● What Yellowstone and House of Guinness teach us about storytelling as marketing

● Yves’ personal story of failure, forgiveness, and self-discovery

● Why the next Golden Age of creativity will be the most human yet

🔗 Learn more about USC’s Entertainment Technology Center: https://www.etcenter.org

🔗 Explore Corto AI: https://www.corto.ai

🔗 Visit KoobrikLabs: https://www.koobriklabs.com

🔗 Connect with Orlando: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orlando-wood

📍 Chapters:

[00:00] Introducing Yves Bergquist — data, culture, and storytelling

[04:00] Inside USC’s AI & Media Project

[07:00] The “Content Fingerprinting Initiative” and copyright in the AI era

[12:00] Decoding the narrative DNA of stories

[17:00] Global storytelling trends and the Gen Z renaissance

[25:00] Corto AI and the future of brand storytelling

[34:00] How data and emotion drive creativity

[44:00] Yves’ candid story of failure and redemption

[57:00] Why the future of creativity is deeply human

#TechnicallyCreative #YvesBergquist #USC #EntertainmentTechnologyCenter #CortoAI #AIinHollywood #Storytelling #DataScience #CreativeTechnology #Innovation #FilmIndustry #KoobrikLabs #OrlandoWood

Every few years, advertising reinvents itself. This time, it’s happening from the inside out.

In this episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Martin Pagh Ludvigsen, Director of AI and Creative Technology at Goodby Silverstein, one of the most iconic agencies in the world. Martin leads The Labs, a department that lives inside the creative floor (not the IT wing) and prototypes the impossible. His team bridges imagination and production, helping GSP’s creatives turn wild ideas into tangible reality.

From the “Ask Dalí” project; where museum visitors could literally talk to Salvador Dalí, to the BMW “Real for Real” campaign that tackled AI Slop head-on, Martin explains how creativity and technology can coexist when AI becomes the subject of the idea, not just the software behind it.

Together, Orlando and Martin explore how The Labs operates inside a 40-year-old agency that still acts like a startup, and what happens when creative technologists are trusted as artists, not just engineers. This is a conversation about curiosity, craft, and culture in an age where “trust is the new oil.”

Orlando and Martin explore:

● How Goodby Silverstein built a creative R&D department inside its creative floor

● Why “Ask Dalí” became one of the most talked-about AI art experiences in the world

● The making of BMW’s “Real for Real” and the cultural backlash against AI Slop

● Why great creative technology starts with why, not how

● How AI can elevate creativity when it’s part of the idea, not just production

● Why “trust” and “authenticity” will define the next era of advertising

In this episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Kati Haberstock, Head of Production at Erich & Kallman and Ad Age’s 2024 Small Agency Producer of the Year, for a refreshingly real conversation about what it means to be a modern producer.

Kati’s career reads like a masterclass in production: from Smuggler, The Directors Bureau, and Buck to Framestore and now agency-side leadership at Erich & Kallman. She’s seen every angle of the process—live action, post, animation, and business affairs—and she brings that experience to bear on every project.

Together, Orlando and Kati explore how producers are evolving from project managers to creative problem-solvers, why curiosity is the secret weapon of good production, and how AI-driven bidding tools are changing workflows. Kati also reveals her “unsiloed” approach to running a lean, high-output agency where everyone moves faster, smarter, and with more freedom.

It’s a celebration of production fundamentals that never change—hard work, diligence, creativity—and how they’re being reimagined for 2025.

What Orlando and Kati Cover:

• Why great producers never stop learning (and never say no)
• The evolution of the producer’s role from last call to first collaborator
• How Erich & Kallman punches above its weight on every project
• Why efficiency and creativity can coexist
• The rise of AI-assisted bidding and data-driven operations
• Building a modern, unsiloed production culture
• How to train the next generation of producers for speed and independence
• Why client trust still matters more than any tool or tech

In this episode of Technically Creative, Orlando sits down with Erik Weaver, Head of Virtual and Adaptive Production at the Entertainment Technology Center at USC, a studio-funded R&D group founded at the request of George Lucas. Erik explains how ETC bridges Hollywood and Silicon Valley, from drafting the first pass at digital cinema standards to today’s work on studio-grade AI pipelines. The goal is simple, make new tech practical, controllable, and copyrightable for professional storytellers.

Erik shares how the team moved from on-set virtual production to AI-first workflows, why control, consistency, and quality matter more than novelty, and how their short The Bends used custom LoRAs, zero-trust cloud, and 32-bit EXR outputs to hit professional finishing standards. He breaks down provenance tracking for copyright, clean model tiers, and why performance will be the next frontier for AI in production. The conversation stays focused on story, culture, and the people on set, technology is a toolbox, not the point.

Orlando and Erik explore

• What ETC at USC is, who funds it, and why it exists for the industry
• Lessons from digital cinema, volumes, and the VAD that still matter in AI pipelines
• AI as a professional toolbox, not a shortcut, control, consistency, quality
• Clean models, provenance, and the current path to copyright for AI works
• Building secure, on-prem or cloud zero-trust environments for training private LoRAs
• The Bends case study, custom blobfish assets, LoRA training at high VRAM, 32-bit EXR delivery
• OSVP to AI first, where Blender, Nuke, ShotGrid, and gen tools meet
• Cost, compute, and why practical workflows still need real artists in the loop
• Why multimodal will win, and why performance capture and synthesis are the next edge
• How to keep cinema culturally relevant for a generation that wants interactivity