Quick context

As I meet people and talk about Ekran, I am often asked: “why are you working on this?” And I’ve said this story so many times that it’s probably useful putting it into writing.

While Ekran was understood and accepted very positively by the world, gained a ton of users and amazing reviews, I think it can be so easy to misinterpret what it aims to be and the difference it will make in the world. Therefore it is extremely important for me to emphasize what the long term vision for Ekran is.

Creative agency and the future of artistic expression

Everyone wants to make cool things. I believe that everyone should be an artist. Everyone wants to express themselves in some way. Everyone wants to give the world something. To live a truly beautiful live, you SHOULD be giving the world something. Everyone wants to make art and do creative stuff. But the truth is that the average individual is incredibly lazy, has a ton of self-doubt and fears trying new things. I live in a bubble of extremely high agency people. But the general public lacks the agency to make anything. There are people who know somewhat how to use CapCut (it’s really not hard to use and access) but are too judgmental of themselves and don’t genuinely explore their ideas. There are talented veterans who can use editing tools well and get to their vision. But there is always something that you just don’t know how to do. There is currently nothing in video editing that allows people to explore different ideas easily, without the stigma of spending a ton of time thinking and tweaking through different things. CapCut makes tutorials on how to make X edit. Some people copy those tutorials, and add little things that make the creation truly theirs and not just a clone of the CapCut tutorial.

Before AI, no one knew how to code. A regular person did not want to make websites themselves. Everyone used to see software as a blackbox that needs a skilled professional. No one wanted to get their hands dirty. All of a sudden everyone is an engineer. There are tools like lovable, v0, bolt, and many many more. Non technical people were given the ability to make websites themselves. Technical people were given more freedom and ease of exploration to develop ideas and make them faster.

That does not exist in making films yet. There are no tools that just let people explore the ideas. As easy as video editing can get once you learn enough, it is still a ton of shortcuts and manual work. Most people just want to see an output. Most just want to have fun making it. Some don't even know what they want. If we remove barriers to exploring creative ideas, everyone will suddenly become an artist. With Ekran, my goal is to bring a Hollywood video editor right into your pocket. I want to make creating beautiful films as easy as chatting with your files, or even uploading them and getting an output that matches something you would make yourself, with your touch.

Everyone has a natural need to express themselves and it manifests itself in many different ways in life. Most of the time however, it only manifests itself and is not fully explored as a concept. People don’t know what they’re good at. And sometimes they never find the agency or time to understand what they're good at. And the new wave of creative tools should enable everyone to explore that with ease.

An example is that there is a surprising number of people that love looking at the “memories” videos that Apple Photos makes all the time. They are hardcoded transitions and zooms. They lack a certain human touch. They lack personality. They lack the owner themselves. Oftentimes they do hit the spot, but you can’t modify any of it, aside from just switching the elevator music they slapped on top of it.

Knowing how to use editing tools, how to edit things well, how to form a story and then iterate on it multiple times takes a ton of time and effort. It usually goes something like this:

1. 1. i have an idea this is cool

2. 2. damn this is hard

3. 3. nvm I just got it

4. 4. this is awesome

5. 5. this is terrible.

6. 6. i can’t do this. it's so over

7. 7. this is AWESOME

8. 8. let me tweak this

9. 9. I hate all of this

10. 10. this is incredible. this is it. it's done

But the process above is unique to persistent people with high agency. Without ease of exploration, 90% of people who never used video editing tools end up at 2. And they never go beyond that.

While you can’t make everyone in the world disciplined or courageous enough to just go and try things, you can remove barriers and people will naturally begin to adapt what has been unlocked.

But there’s more. I used to be a creative in New York before I went all in on startups and software. Filmmaking is something I’ve never pursued deeply enough, even though I spent my college years all around a ton of filmmakers and creatives. Somewhere along the past few months I’ve been going back to my roots and realized that the missing piece in my life is making more art and especially learning new forms of it. I am essentially working on something that will enable me to produce more output, with higher quality, and learn much more about being a great filmmaker. All while providing value to everyone else involved.

What Ekran does not aim to be

Ekran does not want to automate art and filmmaking. I believe in a future where we remove barriers as much as possible and enable every human on earth to make beautiful things with ease. Imagine a world where making incredible things, in my case films, is as easy as chatting. Ekran does not aim to replace higly skilled professional video editors. Let's look at things like Cursor, or Windsurf the AI code editors. They are not replacing humans, and we all know that is not going to happen. What they are replacing is lazy humans. Lazy software engineers essentially replaced themselves with AI tools. The great software engineers use AI as a productivity tool and it made them 10x better at their job. I think this will apply to every single industry.

People will not be replaced by AI, people will be replaced by people that use AI. I believe that people won't stop hiring video editors, they will instead look to hire video editors that use AI tools. Video editors who are dedicated to their craft and do anything it takes to become better at it.

I don't believe image generation or video generation will replace the human touch of arts. Maybe a decade or so into the future, video generation will become so good it can be truly prompted to generate hyperrealistic films. That will only make it easier for humans to make beautiful things. I don't think we will ever reach a reality where video production with directors, producers, and real, human actors is obsolete. Humans have a special filter to find what is truly human and filter out what lacks uniqueness and human touch. As AI generation gets much better, human sensors get better too. We've become highly aware of when we are speaking to an AI vs. a human on the internet. We've learned to be alerted by words such as "delve", "intricacies" and many other words and common AI generated sentence structures and word patterns.

While the internet became flooded with AI slop, a fundamental shift in humans began: people started to push the boundaries of uniquness to the extreme, to differentiate themselves from the commonnality. I am not anti-AI, anti-technology, or anti-progress in any way. But to best explain what I am trying to say, let's read this quote from my all time favorite director, David Lynch (RIP):

That is why Ekran is specifically focusing on the video editing part. It is a tool that makes the creative process much easier, allowing so much more quantity and so much more quality of work to be produced. Technology is a great tool and sometimes a medium for art. And the goal is to let everyone become better at chanelling their creativity.

Making everything a chat

The current state of Ekran as of March 2024 is essentially a video editor with a chat inside of it. I think that there is so much more to explore beyond what the AI era has brought to the world so far, beyond chatting with anything. A chat inside a video editor is only the barebones of the idea of what a video editing copilot will look like. I came across a Tweet that explains what I'm trying to say very well:

Ally Bell

@withtenacity

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I want disembodied AI tools. I don’t need to chat with everything. It doesn’t need a name, a voice, or a personality. What most problems need is an extension or multiplication of the self, not an anthropomorphic companion.

1:53 AM · Mar 24, 2025

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And I resonate with everything said above. However, users absolutely love what this is. And everyone people just want the ease of use, just being able to vibe while editing stuff. So it is pretty clear the direction of the product will be somehwere along the lines of chatting. As Ekran evolves and becomes an AI that can make any type of edit very fast, with the user still in full control, obviously time will tell and new features and ways of using the tool will emerge. Ekran is a copilot, that wants to serve as an extension of people's brains, not a replacement for them. Most people just want a cool outcome, that they can then adjust to their taste, or use as is. We are making the process easier, and more fun.

Ekran has only been alive for a little bit over a month, and the vision is not even 1% of the way. There will be a ton of critical thought, design, iterations and development that will make ekran the ultimate video editing copilot that is not a flashy demo with a chat.

I am bringing a Hollywood video editor into everyone's pocket, one video type at a time. It will be a copilot, that is an extension to everyone's brain. Because that's what software should be.