This project started with a simple question: What does career adaptation look like for someone who grew up in the analog era but needs to thrive in an AI-driven job market? The answer, of course, involved K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, Conky from Pee-wee’s Playhouse — and a strip mall business offering A.I. optimized resumes to go.

The concept for this piece came from personal experience. A couple of months after being laid off, I found myself navigating an ocean of job applications, haplessly trying to outwit ATS screeners with little success.

Every LinkedIn application submission felt like pitching pennies into a wishing well, with the “500 people clicked apply in the last hour” banner reminding me of glimmering coins covering the bottom of 1990s shopping mall water fountains. 

I’ve always identified as a GenXer tech nerd. Generative AI has fascinated me since I first began using ChatGPT on launch day almost three years ago. Since then, I've also become enamored of image, video and audio generation tools, finding ways to streamline workflows, and build my creative vocabulary, by adding AI to my traditional experience.

Rather than posting a straightforward portfolio piece, I wanted to tell a story I hope others can relate to: coping with the discomfort of straddling a line between what's familiar and what feels foreign or even unfair. Perhaps that’s why I chose a pair of comforting computerized companions from childhood to shepherd me through this personal parable.

In addition to ensuring there were no extra fingers anywhere, the challenges with this piece were maintaining narrative coherence, character consistency, stylistic uniformity and comedic timing across scenes created with several different AI models. My hope is to demonstrate what's possible when you integrate AI tools with traditional post-production. For the record, all of the sound, video editing and color work were done in Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Logic Pro.

All of that aside, I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it. If you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you at steve@stvmrgn.com.​ 🙏 ✌️