MacInnes Studios

01/22/2026

John MacInnes has joined the faculty of University of Southern California School of Cinematic Art teaching Directing AI Filmmaking.

01/05/2026

The Duffer brothers chose to close out the finale of Stranger Things with David Bowie’s “Heroes”. If you want to know the love story that inspired this epic song then you’ll want to watch this. I’ve written scripts for A list Oscar-winning talent and worked on (what was) the world’s biggest entertainment property, Call of Duty. As a screenwriter you have to know your story/character/world inside out and this is exactly what you need to use AI in a meaningful way. One of my scripts was an intimate biopic about Bowie making “Heroes”. That script never got made but I’m now doing the next best thing using AI to recreate the story in documentary form for director Francis Whately and the BBC.

BBC Two & BBC iPlayer have set Bowie in Berlin, a documentary marking the 50th anniversary of the iconic musician’s arrival in the German capital

07/22/2025

I had the great pleasure of chatting with The Lion King director Rob Minkoff and AI filmmaker Eleanor Argyropoulos withthe AI XR hosts Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz and Rony Abovitz at Digital Hollywood earlier this week. Check it out:
https://youtu.be/OxJvurun_x8?si=jMKQmG6fDRwdKr9W&t=1487

03/03/2025

Congrats to OSCAR WINNER Zoe Saldana! I was a huge admirer of her work. So much so that as a then unknown screenwriter I wrote a script with her in mind. That script then won the Academy Nicholl Fellowship and Zoe optioned the script as both star and producer! Sometimes the stars do align and they did last night when she took home the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress! Well deserved!
https://www.macinnesstudios.com/outside-the-wire

11/05/2024

I'm hoping history doesn't repeat itself! Eight years ago it felt like a bad joke. Today it feels like the cold chill of fascism.

Back 2016 Harry Shearer asked me to produce the first ever real-time TV pilot. For nearly 30 years Harry had provided half the voices for The Simpson and now wanted to create his own weekly political satirical show in the vein of Spitting Image. Instead of rubber puppets we’d be using the Unreal Engine and photorealistic digital avatars to enable Harry to play all of the characters. My team made full-rigged avatars of Trump and Obama and I brought onboard the A-team of real-time performance, Cubic Motion and Ninja Theory from the UK. Nothing like this had been done before, but everyone was eager to prove what we all knew was possible. Epic Games sent a support team and NVIDIA provided the hardware. hashtag hashtag hashtag

Harry Shearer:Too Soon? First ever real-time television pilot

05/10/2024

This months reading list:
Life Inc. - Douglas Rushkoff
Read Write Own - Chris Dixon
Vivienne Westwood - Vivienne Westwood
Catwalk - Vivienne Westwood
The Curse of Bigness - Tim Wu
Feel Free - Zadie Smith

I grew up knowing about Vivienne Westwood's work but so much I wasn't aware of. Inspirational woman and artist! Inspired my change of company colors.

04/08/2024

More mocap tests with Alastair Macleod, Harper Tramm and Cameron Taylor from Software Development LLC and their new vcam with students from Theatre of Arts Hollywood. This time in Santa Monica at James DeFina's stage at ASTRO PROJECT LLC. It was a great opportunity for some of our movie cast members to get more acquainted with performance capture.
Unreal Engine

03/22/2024

I had the pleasure and honor to be invited to talk about real-time movie making and our UE5 feature film at the Alliance of Women Directors - AWD at Canon Burbank.

My career started as a screenwriter but I only recently learned that before sound came along movies were mostly written by women. According to The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, the percentage of women directors has doubled over the last 25 years from 9% in 1998 to 18% in 2022. Hopefully these numbers continue to go in the right direction but women remain dramatically underrepresented, as do women working as writers, editors, cinematographers, composers, and in other vital roles.

What sort of films would we have if the majority of directors were women? What type of world would have to exist for this to happen?

Thanks to Zuzana Gedeon .
Unreal Engine , ,

03/21/2024

Re-thinking how movies are made in th heart of old .

In preparation our feature shoot we’ve been working with students at the Theatre of Arts, the oldest running acting school in Hollywood where the likes of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean perfected their craft.

Our performance capture shoot is going to generate an enormous amount of motion, visual and audio data so we’re working with PeelDev to streamline our workflow. All of the data is accessible through one interface so as the director and producer I’m able to make immediate creative decisions at source about what data needs processing. Our low-budget indie production is only possible because of innovation like this, but this massively saves time a money whatever the size of your production. It’s a win-win for everyone. I get to workshop my scenes and bullet proof our workflow and acting talent get learn what the future of filmmaking looks like. John MacInnes

is a MacInnes Studios production supported by Epic Games, Amazon Web Services , Nextira and Perforce Software . Shout out to Alastair Macleod, Cameron and Harper at and big thanks to David Conolly , Juan De La Rosa, Henry Layton and all the students at Theatre of Arts Hollywood. Unreal Engine

Follow our production here: https://linktr.ee/baadviibes