Moo cows, Spreadsheets & AI

Or how I embraced Claude doing the stuff I don't want to

Cows, heifers and calves enjoy the lush green grass of eastern Ohio at the LB Porteus Farm.

Seven ranches & farms, eight states, six weeks. It was a daunting video production schedule for our team. Doable, but still a lot of lifting.

As the executive producer, it was my job to make sure all of the logistics were taken care of so our team could just focus on the creative process when we were out on location. And as EP, it was also my fiduciary duty to be as economically efficient as I could for our client -- mind you this was shortly after the Iran war began, and if you blinked, airplane tickets rose 25% by the time your eyes refocused.

I knew shared spreadsheets were going to be the only way I could keep all of the threads organized, and have a nexus the entire time could visit to see how things were progressing and make sure there were no loose ends.

Once upon a time, the word spreadsheets would make me break out in a cold sweat.

Now I find spreadsheets a "meh" necessity. But the best part is I’m now having Claude do the boring rote part for me. We all have too-busy minds now. We are constantly feed information and pulled in multiple directions. There are times just finding a moment to step back, take a breath and regather our thoughts is a luxury we can't afford. Those are the moments I find myself turning to Claude.

Bulls go through a sorting pen to get loaded on a trailer and taken back to Los Hermanos Ranch in south Texas.

Some basic rules I follow:

• I let Claude create my templates. I tell it what I need to check, rank it in importance, and then have it create something that is usable, usually after a few rounds of iteration.

• I don't ever let Claude have my clients' information. While it would be useful -- and not hard to code -- to have it automatically populate the data for me. But while using an open AI model, I censor what information I am feeding the LLM. It's just ethical to do so.

• I used Claude Code to create a scrubber that searches for best prices for the various aspects of travel, while also weighing it against convenience and efficiency (what good is it saving on hotel rooms if it is adding another hour in drive time?).

  
  

So many moving parts, so little time. Embracing the soothing simplicity of cells.

It's a well-trained assistant, not the creator

I know there are production houses out there that are fully implementing AI to not only generate their content, but also their ideas and scripts. I personally know producers who have used AI to create video content, change audio, make animations and more.

While I think there are cases and scenarios that it is acceptable to use that, I also established Legacy Mediaworks to be a business that is based in authenticy. All of our scripts and ideas originate from people, not an algorithm. All of our video and photos are based in reality.

What we will use AI for:

• generate captions

• organize transcripts

• search for a soundbite

• create a stylized look - like a masked blur

  
  

It's an assistant, not the auteur. It's the tool, not the artist. In fact, using AI as a generator is becoming less "generative" as more websites, publishers, and artists are blocking bots from scrubbing their content. This has led to a proliferation of bot-generated dummy sites that are used as sources for the bots themselves. In essence we are having the bots create slop for the bots.

Located well off of paved roads, and surrounded by countless square miles of short-grass prairie, Stomprud Angus Ranch in NW South Dakota was a tranquil place of solitude.

During one of our shoots in eastern Oregon, we were blessed to be able to spend a couple of days with the Bentz family. Every Saturday all of the siblings and their family join the family matriarch, Linda, for a weekly dinner at her house after church.

The ranch house was a cacaphony of laughter and children's voices as three generations of family gathered to enjoy each other's company. We were incredibly fortunate to be let into these people's lives -- even if only momentarily. And we are incredibly honored to have been trusted to share their stories.

It was a reminder that the bonds we have with each other is something that technology will never replace.