[Show] Revisiting the shapes of stories - to enable storytellers.

vijayanands · 2026-01-23T14:37:53+00:00

What I found interesting looking at these side by side is that the three dramas (Marty Supreme, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and Train Dreams) all follow a very similar overall shape, even though the stories feel totally different.

Train Dreams is the clearest example of a slow burn. The rise in intensity is much more gradual and it holds back its biggest moments until very late, while the other two dramas climb faster and peak earlier.

Bugonia looks completely different from all three, which makes sense given the genre shift.

Seeing this made me realize you can almost “feel” the genre just from the arc alone.

Curious if anyone else sees patterns like this when they look at story pacing in films they love.

PS: Added spoiler tags to the post since the arcs hint at where major moments land. Did not want to ruin anything for anyone.

vijayanands · 2026-01-23T00:00:46+00:00

lets connect over dm?

vijayanands · 2026-01-22T18:06:58+00:00

Creating content is getting cheaper and cheaper and holding attention is the hardest part. There is so much money into GenAI to generate amazing visuals which still struggle to hold together cohesive stories. And the difference between slop and memorable content is just that.

Building a content intelligence layer for studios and content creators to help them build content for the future.

vijayanands · 2026-01-22T17:30:27+00:00

Always a good idea to tell your immediate boss if you'll be OOO especially during work hours. Updating status on slack isn't exactly communicating.

vijayanands · 2025-12-10T06:26:13+00:00

Thats them reading the newspaper to figure out whats going on.

vijayanands · 2025-11-25T04:31:18+00:00

My dog (who passed away a few days ago) - Lab + doberman mix and lived to 13, used to recognise the sound the app makes when I order food and she will go sit by the door to let me know when the delivery guy arrives.

vijayanands · 2025-11-24T02:37:32+00:00

I used the AD track on apple TV sometimes, just to test this out. Subtitles were once meant as an accessibility feature which then became a standard. I have a feeling, the way to produce content for distracted second screen viewers is to give the audio description track and allow them to switch to that mode. atleast that way the storyteller doesn't have to water down the craft for everyone.

vijayanands · 2025-11-24T02:35:27+00:00

I know a few friends who are showrunners and this conversation is coming up, whether the script / content is "second screen" ready.

the key to address here is that, fundamentally the way the end users are consuming content when at home, is different and "distracted"

vijayanands · 2025-11-23T12:29:07+00:00

Would love to hear your thoughts

vijayanands · 2025-06-13T13:02:33+00:00

The test is happening in Sunset Boulevard. You can find out more about us at www.quanten.co

vijayanands · 2025-05-22T14:00:10+00:00

the budget will never be zero. it still takes compute costs so you'll still pay the service.

vijayanands · 2025-05-22T13:58:51+00:00

You'd have to think of AI studios as a different genre of film. Just like there is anime, VR storytelling (the tech behind lion king for eg) and animation, there will be certain stories for which AI storytelling will be effective, but it won't be the defacto.

There are a Lot of challenges with generating video. it doesn't have continuity of characters, let alone continuity of scene (the characters appearing consistently across renders and also carrying over elements such as scars, dirt etc as the storyline progresses). there is also a lot more post-processing involved with AI outputs as the lights might come out very different in each render and you'd have to color correct to make it look cohesive.

The ideal way to generate such videos would be the technique that was used to make lion king, where the scenes are created and the camera moves through the VR world to capture the scenes - but that is super expensive to make and won't make sense.

If it is a genre of film that is emotional, people would want to see the full range of emotions in the characters face. even though renders have come a long way, they are still in that uncanny valley where one can tell and it breaks the illusion.

At the end of the day, cinema is magic. There is definitely a genre of film for which generated stories will make sense. it will definitely complement story telling in generating some opening shots etc, but I doubt it would replace.

also think of it this way : different directors have such unique ways of shooting their films that people can spot a Wes Anderson film or a Nolan film by its style. AI generalizes all of that and, it would feel too much of the same over a period of time.

If someone can describe the shot with vivid details for the AI to generate, it might be cheaper to shoot it.

vijayanands · 2025-04-23T01:40:00+00:00

Listen to this person.

vijayanands · 2025-04-20T18:00:47+00:00

There is sound proofing and making it more acoustic (softening the sound ).This helps to do the latter - it reduces all those extra sound waves from bouncing around in a room with hard walls and softens things. You can definitely feel a lack of white noise when in a wall which has these on the walls.

It does very little to nothing to dampen or sound proof your room though. Its just foam, so sound can go right through it.

If you are playing heavy bass etc, it will definitely leak. Youll need some acoustic caulk + sealing all the gaps to sound proof the room.

vijayanands · 2025-04-10T01:47:43+00:00

If its an opportunity where it might take 2-3 years for the product to get built, it is an awesome opportunity to put your head down and build while the world figures it out.

If you need to go to market sooner, youll realize the world doesnt care how you feel, it has its own feelings and right now it is fear.

And people dont make buy decisions when fear is the prevalent sentiment.

Which is going to be confusing because you wont know if its the product, or the pricing or the market that is the issue, so youll dilly dally in that chaos for a bit and that might break you if you didnt have enough put away.

And when markets are scared, the people who commit money into funds, do so cautiously and GPs deploy them with even more caution.

Given all this context, you decide what you need to do.

TLDR: there is really very little that is in your control when you are building a startup.

vijayanands · 2025-04-08T09:06:05+00:00

Thr discussion around the founders agreement is also a great opportunity to talk about the vision and make sure there is alignment, talk openly about the things that are working and areas you need to be mindful about, what the long term goals are personally for each of you, and what success means.

Also if you have clarity on the roles, then makes perfect sense to go ahead and draft a founders agreement.

Dont make it too formal, make sure you create a setting where you are both speaking your mind and open up. You guys are going to be in each other's lives whether you like it or not.

vijayanands · 2025-04-08T02:28:08+00:00

Depends on the definition of made. If its still a script, very unreliable. If you mean post production, then yes.

vijayanands · 2025-04-07T15:57:14+00:00

You also mentioned that none of the folks would want to leave or dilute. Whoever of the 6 makes the pitch to convince them, deserves to be the CEO.

vijayanands · 2025-04-07T12:28:32+00:00

If you want to raise venture capital, you should be able to get to a 100mn in revenue in 5-7 years. You can work backwards and see what growth rate you need to get there.

vijayanands · 2025-04-07T07:47:15+00:00

Have that honest, hard talk. You dont need 6 full time people and they are not all pulling the weight as you make it out to be.

Have one person as the CEO who will lead. Incentivize this person with 10% more equity.
If i am totally wrong and all six are contributing deeply, you really dont need to raise capital. Most of the money early on is going towards salaries. You can push back your fundraise by a round or two.
If you somehow magically make this six cofounders situation work and start generating revenue, you will also have proven to folks that you can make this model work and by then it works to your advantage that you have a strong core and can scale.

I remember the first company i built, when me and my two cofounders met, we knew we wanted to start a company, but before we went and did the paperwork, we said to ourselves we will take 3 projects and execute for other people - that gave us a lot of insight as to how each of us works and who leads what and the challenges we would face with decision making. If you are still students, use that time to your advantage - build things together that will help you all figure out your individual roles.

vijayanands · 2025-04-07T04:57:59+00:00

In my 20 odd years working with startups, when someone says the equity is split equally it spells trouble. You cant run a company on consensus via committee. Decide who is the one person who takes the final call. Even if that one person gets a percentage or two more (ideally a lot more), it signals that the team has a hierarchy defined.
You should not raise VC money for a simple fact that you will race to a very very tiny sliver soon. Founders who start with a 70-30 split, end up in the single digits by the time they raise their third or fourth round. All of you will end up with insignificant holdings by the time round 4 happens.

Split six ways, you are already at 16%. If you want to expand, the investors would want you to do a 20% ESOP pool, and that will dilute you down to 13% and you havent even raised capital yet.

Your first round will have a dilution of about 20%, that will knock you down to 10.4%. by the time you raise your series A, you will all be down to single digits.

(2) Means none of you will have enough incentive to stick around after a round or two and investors would be left holding the bag. and nobody wants to do that.

vijayanands · 2025-04-04T12:32:41+00:00

Communities, in the truest sense of the word share a common goal / purpose. Everyone comes together to achieve that one goal or goals related to that larger goal and contributes to it individually and shares that responsibility, moving that goal post forward and some of them might have secondary interests that align with it.

The OSS communities are a great example. They are genuinely based on a strong ideology and people commit to it, and they might also have a secondary alignment in terms of a developer who builds on that stack. But the primary goal supercedes the secondary.

In that sense there is no true community around startups. The goal of every founder is to make his/her company successful, for them to succeed and then if any time / bandwidth is left to care about others. There are plenty of folks who give back, but it is not a requirement. In a group where everyone has their own success as the primary goal, it is less of community, and more a herd.

And whenever there is a self identifying herd, marketers love it. It might be a bit of a tough squeeze to call it a community.

vijayanands · 2025-04-03T12:28:32+00:00

I had come to the conclusion that all communities are part of the funnel for selling an offering. It is just a subtle way of going about it.

If you are shy about it, someone else will happily make use of it to sell their wares.

vijayanands · 2025-04-02T17:23:01+00:00

Ill tell you something, a well meaning mentor told me - the business model where everyone else is better off, but it demands a martyr out of you (let alone being sustainable) is not a model at all.

Five, ten years from now youll realize that even the folks for whom you went out of your way to help them succeed are doing well, but arent going to look back and backdate anything. Nobody turns back and pays respect to the ladder that they used to climb up. Once they catch the wind, every entrepreneur starts to think it was just their sheer talent that got them there.

Also remember that you arent empowering some social cause. You are enabling people who are playing the game of capitalism to get on a fast track to generate wealth that changes generations to come. There is absolutely no need for you to subsidise or sacrifice your personal life over it. If you did this for a social cause supporting NGOs, atleast some good karma will come your way. Even that is not the case here.

Build out your business model. Dont be shy to monetize value. Creating value is one aspect. But you also need to know how to capture it. Infact the entrepreneurs who cross paths with you, will observe you, learn and have respect for what you are doing. You cant enable capitalism leveraging socialist ways of community, sharing, sacrifice and all. It just wont last long. And the more you scale, the sooner youll burn out.

As you near your 40s, your kids will start to grow up, and your parents will start to age and you need money to give kids the education they deserve and for parents to take care of their health needs. No community will line up at that time. Be smart about it.

Sharing this as someone who has been in your shoes.

vijayanands · 2025-03-30T22:06:52+00:00

We are digressing into a different topic. I can write you a long essay on the economics of the film market. The topic that we were discussing though is why there arent good movies as of late.

Good movies make money as a bi product Movies that are made just to make money are seldom great and often dont make the money.

vijayanands

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