Gen Jam Workshop: Use AI to Create Short Film Trailers ❄️🎬
- Date
- 2025-01-29
- Location
- Park City, UT, USA
- Host
- Machine Cinema
About this event
If you’re curious about what generative AI can actually do for visual storytelling, this workshop gives you a practical way in: make a short film trailer, fast. Rather than talking about AI in the abstract, you’ll work through how these tools can help shape mood, narrative, imagery, and pacing in a format that filmmakers, artists, and creative technologists can immediately understand. Set in Park City and happening in person, Gen Jam Workshop: Use AI to Create Short Film Trailers is built for people who want to experiment seriously. Expect a hands-on session focused on making, testing, and refining ideas—not just watching a demo. About the Event This workshop is centered on a clear creative challenge: using AI tools to create short film trailer concepts and outputs. The trailer format is a smart one for experimentation because it forces clarity. In a short span, you need tone, structure, visual identity, and a hook—exactly the areas where generative tools can open up new possibilities and raise important creative questions. The event sits at the intersection of AI, film, autonomy, and arts culture, which means it’s not only about producing slick outputs. It’s also about understanding how these tools fit into a real creative process: where they help, where they constrain, and how artists can stay intentional while working with systems that generate content quickly. Because this is an in-person workshop, the format is likely to be collaborative, conversational, and grounded in shared experimentation. You’ll be in a room with other people who are also trying to figure out how AI changes image-making and story development, which creates space for better questions and sharper feedback than you often get from watching online tutorials alone. Whether you come from film, visual art, creative coding, design, or you’re simply AI-curious, the value of the event is in doing the work live: seeing ideas take shape, comparing approaches, and learning through iteration. What to Expect You can expect a workshop environment oriented around active creation, not passive listening. The central activity is building or shaping a short film trailer using AI-driven workflows, which may include concept development, visual experimentation, editing decisions, and discussion about how to guide tools toward a coherent final result. A session like this typically works best when it moves from framing to making. That means you can expect some combination of: An introduction to the creative brief or challenge Context on how AI can be applied to trailer-making and short-form cinematic storytelling Guided experimentation with generative tools and creative prompts Time to develop scenes, moods, or narrative beats Opportunities to review, compare, and discuss outcomes with others in the room You should also expect the workshop to surface useful creative tensions. How much of a trailer should be planned in advance? What makes an AI-generated image feel cinematic rather than generic? How do you preserve authorship and taste when the tool can produce many options very quickly? These are the kinds of practical questions that matter if you want to use AI well rather than just use it often. Because the event is framed as a workshop, the emphasis is likely to be on process: trying ideas, adjusting inputs, seeing what breaks, and figuring out what actually leads to compelling results. That makes the session valuable even if you’re brand new to the tools, because watching a process unfold is often the fastest way to understand what’s possible. Why Attend This event is worth your time if you want a more concrete understanding of AI as a creative medium. A lot of AI conversation stays stuck at the level of hype or fear. A workshop focused on making short film trailers gives you a much better lens: you get to see how these tools perform under real creative constraints, where timing, tone, and storytelling actually matter. For filmmakers and visual storytellers, the trailer format is especially useful because it compresses the whole craft into a small but demanding container. You need a strong premise, evocative imagery, rhythm, and emotional progression. Learning how AI can support those elements can help you think differently about previsualization, concepting, pitching, and rapid prototyping. For artists and creative technologists, the event offers a chance to test the expressive range of generative systems in a setting that values craft. This is not just about output volume. It’s about aesthetic choices, intentional direction, and understanding how to turn generated material into something that feels authored. You’ll likely leave with more than inspiration. You’ll leave with better instincts: how to approach AI tools with purpose, how to shape a cinematic idea quickly, and how to judge whether a generated result is merely interesting or actually effective. Practical Details Gen Jam Workshop: Use AI to Create Short Film Trailers takes place in person in Park City, USA on Wednesday, January 29 at 11:00 AM MST. The in-person setting matters here: this kind of creative session is stronger when you can respond in real time, see how others are working, and ask questions as ideas develop. Because the workshop focuses on making, come ready for a session that is likely more participatory than observational. You’ll get more out of it if you arrive prepared to engage, experiment, and talk through creative decisions with others. A few smart ways to prepare: Come with an open mind about what AI can and cannot do well Think about the kinds of trailers, genres, or visual moods that interest you Be ready to discuss story, pacing, and visual tone—not just tools Plan to participate actively, since the workshop format is built around exploration If you’ve been waiting for a reason to move from curiosity to practice, this is that moment. Park City is an especially fitting place to explore the future of cinematic storytelling, and this workshop offers a focused, grounded way to do it with other people who care about where film and generative AI are headed.
Who should attend
This is for you if you want to understand AI through making, not just theory. - You’re a **filmmaker, editor, or screen storyteller** who wants to explore how AI can help with trailer concepts, visual development, or early-stage prototyping. - You’re a **visual artist, designer, or media maker** interested in using generative tools to build mood, imagery, and narrative tension in a cinematic format. - You’re **AI-curious but creatively serious**—you don’t need to be an expert, but you do want a grounded, practical experience rather than broad hype. - You care about the relationship between **authorship, autonomy, and emerging tools**, and you want to test those questions inside an actual creative workflow. - You enjoy **workshop-style learning** where the value comes from experimentation, discussion, and seeing how other people approach the same challenge. - You’re interested in the future of **film and arts culture** and want to be in the room with others exploring how generative AI is changing the language of visual storytelling.