filmmaking
(10)
Helena Bian and the case for a beautiful tool
Before Harlowe, Helena Bian spent years making lighting for other brands. Then the engineer with a lifelong interest in art began asking why the tools behind a beautiful image so rarely looked the part.
Nick Lynes and the words that changed the picture
A script brought Nick Lynes to a filmmaker. The partnership that followed put him at the centre of a different story: how to change a performance without losing the person who gave it.
David Shijoon Bae and the six-week question
A delayed dorm repair sent a Harvard engineering student into construction software. Before FlowManual, David Shijoon Bae was already learning how to get an institution to listen.
Brent Pearson and the button that became a business
His first idea met a chorus of “buts.” Brent Pearson listened, built Enboarder around the part people wanted, and spent the next decade asking what it takes to make someone feel welcome.
Jonathan Morrison Heard a Charger Click and Made a Song
A gadget reviewer heard a sound in a phone charger and followed it all the way into a recording studio. Jonathan Morrison's story is about what happens when a tech channel becomes a place to make things with other people.
BJ Dodenbier Is Still Climbing
A zombie film, a career in marketing systems, and a 13,528-foot reset: the former Aequor CMO has spent years turning messy journeys into stories people can follow. Now the next journey is his own.
The Six-Person Studio That Put a Movie Camera Inside a Game Engine
How a former VR outfit turned into the off-the-shelf toolmaker for virtual production - selling filmmakers a camera that shoots worlds that do not physically exist.
The Company That Made Hollywood Lighting Cheap Enough for the Rest of Us
A camera-accessory side hustle turned into the lighting brand on more film sets than almost anyone else. The trick was refusing to charge ARRI prices.
Koyal
Koyal is an agentic AI filmmaking platform (Y Combinator F25) that turns a script or an audio clip - a song, a podcast, a voiceover - into a finished, personalized video with consistent characters, settings and camera work. Founded by CMU/MIT/Meta alumni siblings Mehul and Gauri Agarwal, the company follows a Pixar-style 'audio first, visuals second' approach and has run paid pilots with Universal Music, T-Series and Bollywood studios, producing music videos for artists like A.R. Rahman, Ricky Kej and Shankar Mahadevan.
Daniel Blackman
Daniel Blackman is the founder and CEO of Smashcut, a next-generation online learning platform built for real-time, media-based education in the visual and media arts. An NYU Tisch film school graduate, he spent years in executive roles at Google, YouTube, The Daily Beast, Barnes & Noble.com and HarperCollins before co-founding the instructional video company Howcast and, later, Smashcut. Backed by a $7M Series A from Pearson Ventures, Smashcut partners with universities like NYU Tisch to bring collaborative filmmaking and documentary education online.