The Power of Pop: the Spanish production company that champions video creation with generative AI

Daniel Cuenca, head of The Power of Pop, a Madrid-based production company specialising in audiovisual creation with artificial intelligence, sheds light on the use of generative AI tools for the creation of images and videos, used in a wide range of applications such as video clips, advertising or corporate videos.

At a time when the creation of images with Generative AI is beginning to be democratized thanks to tools from tech giants such as Microsoft (AI image generator) or X (Grok), there are still certain limitations in the section on Videos. The commercialization of these models, as well as their limitations in terms of Resolution or customization, involve significant barriers for the most curious citizen, but also for the professional who seeks to take advantage of the cost savings that these can entail.

Despite these restrictions, little by little we see audiovisual content created with these generative video tools with spectacular results. As an example, the Coca-Cola's latest Christmas ad, which takes the brand's festive imagery as a reference to create a new product built with AI tools. Another example is Rhythm of Life by Vodafone, a spot without a single real pixel, in the words of Amr El Badry, senior manager of brand identity and global communications at Vodafone, which was directed by filmmaker Sebastian Strasser of the production company Lipstick.

As in any technological development, it is only a matter of time before the technological initiatives of the large industrial giants become progressively more and more accessible to All types of production companies. In Spain, we find dozens of examples of production and post-production companies that use AI processes to accelerate their editing, improving audio, optimizing cataloging or generating storyboards of his upcoming projects. However, there are few cases as particular as The Power of Pop, a production company born in the post-pandemic effervescence that has championed the use of AI in multiple expressions: video generation, video upscaling, automated video editing, music generation, automatic translation, subtitling...

Daniel Cuenca, head of the production company, shares his journey of exploring and integrating the possibilities of generative AI in professional audiovisual creation, whether to create a universe of a video clip from scratch or to enable training videos in multiple corporate contexts.

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A personal concern and an industrial opportunity

Cuenca, who had been working for five years as a graphic designer in a company dedicated to tourism, alternated his day-to-day life in an office with the Shooting video clips for bands from the Spanish independent scene. It was his true passion and it took up more and more hours: there was no afternoon that he did not have to start pre-producing a shoot or editing, while weekends were reserved for shootings.

"In the beginning, AI models They were not useful for professional uses. They generated many Aberrations, characters with strange anatomies… Now we've reached the point where You can't tell If a video is created with AI or not”.

The arrival of the pandemic caused her to close her main job, which was the perfect impetus to launch herself into the world of Audiovisual production. It was then that he decided to found El Poder del Pop, a production company that, either working with international clients or Amazon Music or creating video clips for bands from record labels as emblematic as Elefant or Subterfuge, made a name for itself in the industry by forming a portfolio of collaborators that Cuenca would call according to the needs of each project.

Today, El Poder del Pop continues to create international music videos for artists such as La Casa Azul, Edurne, Fitness Forever, Helen Love, Soleá Morente, Putochinomaricón or Capitán Sunrise, among many others, but the 80% of its turnover has turned to the application of AI tools in audiovisual processes. "I always keep a close eye on tech news, and two years ago I saw the direction the industry was going to take. I focused on learning everything that had to do with image and video generation, and I began to learn in a self-taught way by exploring all kinds of software. Little by little I started making videos with generative AI, and from there things got more and more," explains Cuenca.

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First expressions of dizzying technology

The process of learning generative AI tools is endless. Such is the evolution at a "breakneck speed" of these solutions, that users can find creation models that are updated"Overnight" to offer new features or better quality. On many occasions, these improvements are what mark a solution from being a mere proof of concept to a product applicable to Professional Environments: "At first, they weren't useful for professional uses. They generated many aberrations, characters with strange anatomies, totally incorrect anatomical movements and a rather poor quality. Now we've reached the point where you can't tell if a video is created with AI or not."

The first major generative AI video project that Cuenca developed was a format for a Hackathon organized by the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): a competition in which you had to create a video based on a key concept in just 48 hours, developing script, stories, creating the images and animating them. The result was awarded in the category of Best Music, since not only the images were created with these models, but also voice and music.

With regard to the Music Creation, Cuenca says that artists are usually open to working with generative AI tools. Such is the case of the artist Captain Sunrise, who decided to bet on The Power of Pop to illustrate a song about the irruption of technology entitled "Alexa, do you love me?": "It was very good for us to put images created with AI. In addition, at the VFX level, we were able to use these tools to replace a character and change it with a robot, or to put images recorded on video and transform them so that they had a video game aesthetic." Another example is the latest video clip of Trötegalôpe: "They told us that, for the song they were making, the aesthetic they needed was that of a video created with AI."

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Generative AI creation tools applied to video

There is still no great all-in-one software or service that works as an AI-powered content creation hub. This forces users to use a combination of tools depending on the needs of each project. Cuenca usually starts from the creation of static images using Midjourney or Freepik, to later animate them with solutions such as Runway, which recently signed an agreement with Lionsgate to explore the use of AI in filmmaking.

Additionally, El Poder del Pop benefits from solutions such as Kling, which currently stands out as one of the few solutions that offers 1080p content export; Pika, which has incorporated the possibility of being able to include physical elements (photographs, images, clothing or location) in the generation processes; Magnific, an image scaling tool; ElevenLabs, which offer a wide variety of options in the audio field, including synthetic voices, or Suno AI, a solution that allows you to create realistic music from scratch from prompts. Most of these tools can be used by hiring Subscription Plans "quite affordable" that allow unlimited uses, avoiding models based on Tokens offered in the most basic marketing models.

Once the audiovisual content has been generated, Cuenca is in charge of editing it using the software DaVinci Resolve: "Before I edited in Final Cut Pro or Premiere, I spent the churro I went to DaVinci to make the color and, once finished, I went back to some of the software if any readjustment needed to be made. I realized that this was quite a cumbersome process and that it took quite a long time," she explains. Finally, he decided to bet on the solution of Blackmagic Design and now he uses it exclusively: "It's a program that I'm quite comfortable with and that is updated non-stop. In the latest version come many Machine Learning and artificial intelligence that make our lives much easier."

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Limitations of Generative AI Video Creation

The opportunities offered by image creation with these generative AI tools are countered by the Great limitations of a technology still in a development phase. Cuenca points out that, on many occasions, they force you to go "practically blind" trusting that the "trial and error" ends up giving the expected results: "There are times when you start creating videos or images and, suddenly, you have the best results on the first try. In others, you have to spend hours or even days trying to make content that resembles what you want." This implies that, leaving aside the pre-production and editing process, the generation of images can be extended between one or two weeks.

"There are times when you start creating Videos or Images And all of a sudden, you have the best results in the First attempt. In others, you have to be hours or even days”.

Among the main frustrations that creators encounter, the "Low level of manipulation" of these models, which could greatly speed up audiovisual creation: "Suddenly you have something that works really well for you, but you know that if you had a little more control over the camera it would be great. Which, in fact, there is: some of these tools have camera handling options, but in the past versions. So if you want to have the best quality and resolution, you can't have access to these movements."

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Efficiency and profitability in audiovisual creation

With an emerging industry, multimillion-dollar investments and a legal landscape still being defined, the emergence of generative AI has a long way to go to reach its long-awaited consolidation. Another issue is the ethics of the use of these tools, an endless debate in which Cuenca positions itself in for technological and business evolution: "I've never seen artificial intelligence as an enemy. It is not going to take away our work, but the work is going to be taken away from us by a person who knows how to use these tools. For me, it is the equivalent of if at some point you had refused to use the computer because the typewriter was very good for you. (…) A work made by a human will never surpass that made by a machine, but I do believe that it can give us many tools to bring our vision to reality in a more efficient and economical way".

"A work made by a human It's never going to get over the one that is made by a machine, but I do think it can give us many herramientas to bring our vision to reality in a more efficient and economical”.

For The Power of Pop, the opportunities have been more than evident. The company has changed its business model, without entirely dispensing with the shooting of video clips or short films, to focus on offering Creation and post-production services using artificial intelligence in corporate environments. Whether they are pre-campaigns of marketing, creation of Advertisements for Google Ads campaigns or Internal Videos, generative AI is a cost-effective alternative for a world that is focused, more than ever, on the audiovisual sector: "There are companies that cannot afford to shoot as such and that can use a video that simply shows their product. That's why, in recent years we have created content for companies that are in SEO positioning, focused on sectors as varied as blinds or even large energy companies that need internal videos. We have everything."

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez

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