𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗚𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁:

Kimberly Offord is an award-winning AI Filmmaker and creative visionary whose work sits at the intersection of music, culture, and technology. She has produced groundbreaking AI-generated music videos for two Grammy-winning artists, including three official projects for Lalah Hathaway’s VANTABLACK album: the original “Tunnels” video, the official Tunnels Remix video, and the viral reel “Black.” Her work also includes a music video for singer Sy Smith and cinematic projects for entrepreneurs and corporate clients such as Bronner Brothers. Kimberly’s AI short film Cafe Conversations placed in the Top 50 of the Reply AI Film Festival in Venice, highlighting her global recognition in the AI film movement. She is also the creator of the Playground Pastime AI Film Contest, the Chicago AI Film Festival, and the Black AI Film Festival launching in 2026—initiatives that are defining new spaces for underrepresented voices in AI-driven storytelling.

𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄:

AI isn’t replacing filmmakers—it’s removing the gatekeepers. In this conversation, Kimberly Offord, founder of Playground Pastime and the Chicago AI Film Festival, shares how AI is reshaping visual storytelling and clearing space for underrepresented voices to lead a new cinematic movement.

Listeners will get a front-row seat to two standout AI films, including last year’s Festival Winner, and hear how the Playground Pastime ecosystem is opening doors for creators who’ve traditionally been kept out of the industry. This is a conversation about technology, but even more so about access, visibility, and rewriting the script on who gets to tell powerful stories.

𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝗨𝘀:

The AI Readiness Project airs every Wednesday at 3pm with hosts Anne Murphy of She Leads AI and Kyle Shannon of The AI Salon. Subscribe to stay connected to the people shaping what’s next.

Reimagining Cinema_ How AI is Opening New Worlds for Underrepresented Creators

Growing smarter, and leading with what makes us human.

Kyle Shannon: Time to lead with what makes us human. You feeling? You feeling human

Anne Murphy: feeling so human feeling so human. Ever, ever so human. Today

Kyle Shannon: you're not feeling cyborg, you're feeling all human. Well, last time I talked to you, I, I said, how are you doing? And you were like,

Anne Murphy: yeah,

Anne Murphy: it? It was really lovely.

And, uh, as I shared, then I fell asleep, and now I am, now I'm awake more or less, which by the way, is I wanna mention one Festivus moment. I know we'll get into it officially, but it's regarding sleep, right? So it was on day two. It was during, we, you, it was bo both of us had found a window, I guess, but we hadn't conferred with one another.

And then you were like, oh, I heard Anne's voice. So you woke up and got on the call. Neither one of. Neither one of us were awake. We were sleep talking.

Kyle Shannon: We didn't, I assumed you knew what you were talking about. I, I heard your voice. I had an alarm clock set and I think our speakers finished a little early and I heard your voice and I was like,

Anne Murphy: our speakers finished early.

Kyle Shannon: I like woke up, like, you know the sounds where you just take a deep breath, you're like, and I ran over to the thing and there you're, and you're like talking away. And I'm like, oh no. It was so bad. It was so bad. No idea. Anyway, let's talk about festival. We just had festivals.

Anne Murphy: Let's talk about festivals.

Kyle Shannon: Festivals just ended.

Anne Murphy: We just had,

Kyle Shannon: it was, it was the 20, 26th and seventh. Last weekend. Last weekend, yeah. Or maybe, I dunno, I don't know. Weekend before. Anyway. It was, it was in, in recent memory. This 24 hours over. Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Recent

Yeah. Share their wisdom. And it was more than wisdom. This year. I, the thing I took away, Anne, is I talked about this last night in my live with you. I felt like last year there was sort of this, people were sort of in wonder, in awe that they were doing ai. They're like, I think I'm kind of doing this AI thing.

It was, it was this kind of, you know, here's what I do in my life and here's ai. And this year it felt much more like I got my head around this thing. Now I'm, I'm professionalizing it. I'm, I'm on a track. I'm moving forward. Yeah. I'm, I'm excited to talk to you about what I'm doing, but I'm doing all these things and Kimberly offered who we're about to talk about, she talked about the fact that, um, uh.

It's so good. Like what, what were, what were your big takeaways? Astounding. Like now you've had some decompression time and some fire aside with the dog time,

Anne Murphy: decompression

Kimberly Offord: time.

Anne Murphy: Well, one of the things is I think you and I see. Many members of our community making this like iterative progress, right?

Kyle Shannon: Yeah,

Anne Murphy: it's insane.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: And part of it is of course, because we're all working at the speed of light with ai. Part of it is because we all now have like. Most of us have collaborators who we, you know, we leverage them, they lever like they leverage each other. We have structured programs that we run, so, and that we participate in, um, that our people run and our people participate and they grow in the streamlined fashion.

So yeah, it was just utterly remarkable to think about like the, the statement that I've made a couple times now of there is not one person among us who couldn't say yes to helping a community, friends, family, a company, because I would say major

Anne Murphy: any kind of project, you name it, we can put together in probably, I don't know, what a day a team and, and get it launched.

Kyle Shannon: Oh, you wanted this to be thorough? That would be two days. Yeah. Amazing. And

Anne Murphy: that would be two days Exactly. I would think it's two days.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. The, the other thing, it

Anne Murphy: just,

Kyle Shannon: the other thing that helped me about it was I think, I think from GPT for good to the first Festivus to this one, there's something about the spirit of it that gives people permission to try.

Right. And I felt something was possible. And, and you know, here she was, a year later, she's now working in rural Mississippi for a print newspaper, like helping that print newspaper survive using AI where she's this central figure in the community. Now it's just this like, so there's both this possibility thing, but there's also just evidence of people in our community who have done it, Kim offered, who we're about to speak to, you know, went from making some films to making some really cool films or some really cool people to doing festivals.

I mean, it's just like, it's like the, the expansiveness of, of impact is so inspiring. It's so cool.

Yeah. And of those people, they're inspiring some to follow in their footsteps. Right? Like the AI cert, our, our She Leads AI certified Educator program. All of those women who graduate from IT now want to pour into the next cohort and the next cohort. Those cohorts are gonna go out and teach women all, well teach anyone all over the world how to do AI in the human centered, responsible AI way that we teach it and that we do it.

Like the family tree is pretty awesome.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, when you just said that, it reminded me of the session with, with Brandon, the families, you know, having the, the parents there talking about the families, how they impacted their kiddos, and, and Brandon was the young kids. And then we had the middle kids.

Anne Murphy: was a really cool session.

Kyle Shannon: No, go ahead.

Anne Murphy: Go ahead.

Kyle Shannon: I, I was just thinking,

Anne Murphy: well,

Kyle Shannon: how lucky it was. We have a time delay. Uh, I was just thinking how lucky it was.

Anne Murphy: Yes.

Kyle Shannon: How lucky those kids are, to have parents like that, that are teaching them not just how to use ai, but teaching them critical thinking skills and like, you know, the, I forget the woman's name, but the older, the older kids, um, I forget her name, but anyway, but how her 16-year-old kid came to her.

And it's just really cool. So, anyway, um, well, yeah, go

Anne Murphy: ahead. Just to, just to like, well, it was like, just to give like one more example from the parenting panel, which alone was worth its weight in gold. Um, Neela, who has, has created an app called Juni. She is pouring all of her experience as a young parent into it with, you know, based on the realization that lots of us had of like, you know, if you've gone to the hospital to have your baby, or if you've had your pa your baby at home or wherever still, eventually you are left with a baby.

You have to figure out what to do with, like, no one knows what to do with a baby

Kyle Shannon: who

In this way and like publish things. And Liz, with her, I mean, Liz's app as a reminder to people who didn't, who or, or to, uh, just to let you know, is allows parents to deal with the 80 bajillion emails that we get from every, every organization our kids are involved with, including their universities, which seems to never stop.

So I've gone from daycare through universities with 8,000 emails.

Kyle Shannon: Yep.

Kyle Shannon: It was so good. And, and the one thing that I'll, I'll say to, to our, uh, to our audience and to listeners, um, one of the questions, one of the comments, uh, in the, in the que in the. Comments just now, or one of the questions in the comments just now is, you know, who are these people? You know, who are these parents?

I wanna meet them. Um, you can, if you go to ai festivus.com, AI Festivus is done. It was a live event. Um, but you can for $27 for, it's like the best deal in the history of deals for 27 bucks, you can get the deluxe replay bundle, which is all of the recordings of Festivus, all the transcripts. Jelly Pod podcast.

Definitely do AI group in the AI salon 'cause someone needs to start it. Hmm.

Anne Murphy: Is that is wife is life hacks figure, figure in parents parenting or

Kyle Shannon: in fact, think, don't we have

Anne Murphy: a life hacks group?

Kyle Shannon: There's a, there's a life hacks tonight at five 30, uh, five 30 Mountain? I think so. Um, there's a life hacks group tonight and I think they're talking about something about parenting.

They're vibe coding some app together. So anyway. Oh,

Announcement: cool.

Kyle Shannon: It's very cool. So go check that out. Anyway, you should go check out here. Let me, I'll just do very, very quickly. You should go check out the AI salon. If you haven't, you should go check out. She leads AI if you haven't.

Announcement: Yes,

Kyle Shannon: both of them have all sorts of exci exciting things you should check out.

Kim.

Kimberly Offord: Hello.

Kyle Shannon: Beautiful to see you again.

Kimberly Offord: Good to be here again. Good to be seen.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. That's so good.

Kimberly Offord: Good to be seen. I like it. That's so good.

Kyle Shannon: Um, I think folks know who you are, but why don't you take, take a little moment here and, and, uh, just tell us, tell us who you are.

Kimberly Offord: Okay. Cool. So I am Kim offered. You can call me Kim.

And those who know me, um, from, I'm from Chicago, but those who know me from there, they know that I'm a realtor in the area. And I used to be a managing broker as a matter of fact, but, um, my background is in marketing. And so that's how I got started in this whole AI thing was through, um, using it for marketing and it just spilled over into this whole new world.

So that's me in a nutshell.

Kyle Shannon: That's so cool. Did you have a passion for storytelling when you were doing the marketing videos for real estate? Did you have a passion for storytelling before that? Were you like a, a video editing nerd? Like the editing, like what, how did, what, what made you shift from marketing stories to, you know.

And I was in it. Ah, and I was so fascinated by that. I kept that book for years. I don't know where that book is now, but I kept it for years. And then, um. I would always go to her family's from Tennessee and all of her great uncles and aunts were living. And they had stories for days where they would just sit on the porch and tell stories, you know, and so you would listen.

Anne Murphy: Yeah.

I have really loved seeing people like Chris Valone who was on stage, I think after, maybe before you at Festivus. You know, the stories of people like Kyle taking. Stories that they've written, you know, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, I have a whole pile of, of, uh, short essay, personal essays that I've written that are now coming to life with ai, like the ability to take that.

Creative work that happened for some of us at a very formative time of our lives, right? Mm-hmm. We were, we were in a different place.

Yep.

Anne Murphy: And bring it to life right now is like such a full circle moment. And for somebody like me who hasn't had a chance to do a lot of creative expression in my life, like now I can.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah. I'm that type of person where, well, lemme just say this. So. Um, I can read music, right? And so I, I have piano lessons as a kid, but I'm not that great of a musician, right? Mm-hmm. Um, but I have a really good ear when it comes to music. Mm-hmm. But it was really frustrating because I couldn't get out what I heard.

Anne Murphy: Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Offord: Um, I love, I'm an art collector and I love art, but I can't draw a bit. Right. And so, you know, it's like I have these visions in my mind of what I want on my walls, but I wasn't able to to do it, you know? And so ai, you know, was finally my way of getting all this stuff outta there and it's just magical.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. I, I think that's a, a really important point, Kim, that the, there's the anti AI crowd.

You know, I, I understand why they're upset and things like that. I, but I think one of the presumptions is that people just push a button in outcomes. This stuff and what you just described. Was very much not that there's a whole component of you before.

Announcement: Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: You push any button before you write any prompt of, you've got some idea in your head.

Announcement: Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: And then I think we all know if you use AI for a little bit, the very often the, the distance between the idea in your head and what actually gets generated by AI can be very, very different. Can you just talk to

Kimberly Offord: Yeah.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Like, but, but your, your point of view on that. 'cause you're kind of in the middle of the firestorm making all these films and establishing yourself and doing festivals and I, I just would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah. So, um, what, you know, when I say so, very good, very good example. I had this, this one video and I showed it at Festivus.

And um, I've had, I, my first video where I got a million views and I continuously was asked. What prompt did you use to get that

Kimberly Offord: You know, and, and I had to say, you know, no, each individual image that you see is a separate idea. It's a separate prompt. It's a separate thought. It, and as a matter of fact, I pulled a bunch of images that told different stories and put them all in this [00:21:00] one video.

And, you know, everybody loves it. And it's not just one, you know, one prompt. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's a series of, of just thoughts and, and what have you. Like just the other night I was prompting, I had a story in mind. And I got this one image that told a whole, totally different story in my mind.

Announcement: Wow.

Kimberly Offord: And so I then started building a whole nother vi, a whole nother film off of just that one image because it gave me a different story and I started building on that.

So I think that's the part that people don't get because they do see this stuff out there that, you know, where people did just put in one prompt and they got it and it's 10 seconds and they put it on Facebook or wherever and it kind of goes viral because it's controversial or it's funny. Mm. You or crazy or whatever.

Hmm. And they will say to me, um, so I wanna do this vertical series. And I'm just like, okay, how many episodes? Oh, about eight to 10 episodes. And then I'll say, okay, what's your budget? Number one? But number two, when do you think that this is gonna launch? Oh, in about a month on now. And I have to go through this whole conversation with them, that it's not just one prompt.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. It

Kimberly Offord: actually takes some skill. And I'm like, yeah. You know, so they're, they're, they're seeing, and I think, like I said, I've said this before, I think conversation, um, and understanding, um, of the process actually is so needed.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Yeah. Absolutely. So, um, when you, when you mentioned that your mom had.

and, um. That you had to have felt some type of way about it, you know?

Kimberly Offord: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: I'm guessing.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you know what? There were those stories, but then, um, I also had, you know, my family, we, we bought the big story books, the Uncle Reman stories and you know, the Bird, rabbit, all of that stuff. Mm-hmm.

Um, yeah. And I think that's what gravitate what people gravitate to me, especially African Americans, but they're like. What is this? You know what, I haven't seen this.

Announcement: Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Offord: You know, so, um, it was, it was, and that was, that's part of the reason why I do what I do, because I think it's so important for people to see themselves and to tell their own stories, you know, and see their stories.

I, I, I always make the statement, you know, create what you wanna see, you know? Yeah. With ai. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Love

Anne Murphy: that.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. It's for, it's further evidence that, you know, this is about your voice as a filmmaker, as a storyteller, right. The, the AI is just a mechanism. Yeah. Can you talk about, um, talk about your music videos?

The technology comes so far in a year. Can you just talk about the science fiction part of this and, and, and video projects, but also that process or that, that evolution would be lovely to hear, hear about?

Kimberly Offord: Yeah. So I have, um, this, I love world building.

Kyle Shannon: Mm.

Kimberly Offord: And so my world is playground pastime, and that world is a retro Afro futuristic world.

So time is kind of like, where are we here? You know, like, are we, is this like the forties, fifties, twenties, or is this. This 22, 23 or, yeah. What is this? You know, and I like to keep it that way.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm.

A micro series called the B side. And the B side is like a retro afro futuristic twilight zone, um, with, with different segments that are telling different stories that kind of are all intertwined, um, together. And so that's where all the, the sci-fi goals, um, you know, again, my love for it as a kid and you know, just having fun with it.

I was, didn't have a million followers. Um, I had not gone viral is just that, you know, her interests. My videos fell within her interest. And, um, I did something that I tell people to do. Um, I created two videos on my own. Nobody asked me to, um, because there were two songs on her new album that I loved and I created two videos to those songs and I tagged her and, ah.

Anne Murphy: Oh wow.

Kimberly Offord: And so good.

Kyle Shannon: This

Kimberly Offord: is

Kyle Shannon: the real estate market in you coming out, isn't it?

Kimberly Offord: I tagged her and it wasn't that I was looking, I never thought in my wildest dreams that she would ask me to do anything for. I just wanted her to see

Kyle Shannon: yeah,

Kimberly Offord: what I, how I interpreted her videos.

Kyle Shannon: So cool.

Kimberly Offord: And here's the thing.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

So fast forward into 2025, she did a remix album of that whole entire album. And I said to myself, oh my goodness, if I could redo that video with all this new technology that has just popped up that wasn't there in 2024, oh my God, this, I could, I could just take this to a whole nother level. And I reached out.

She said, okay, cool. Lemme see what you come up with. And, um, yeah, I, the, the, the, my workflow time was shorter.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

I was able to put her 10-year-old self in that video. She cool. Loved it.

Kyle Shannon: Oh, that's so cool.

Kimberly Offord: So it was like, you know, it was amazing, you know, just what I could do differently because the a i AI had improved so much so quickly. Wow.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Anne Murphy: You know, um, at Festivus, joy Purdy talked about.

And I started it and it's, when I look back on it, I'm like, oh, that was, that was back in the day when I was just using Chet EPT or Chet EPT and Quad. That was pre Manice days. And now I can just absolutely crush it. So I get, I get that. And I wondered, are you, do you think that way too? Do you wonder, do you try to like get it done while you can or what?

Kimberly Offord: Um, I do. I do. Mm-hmm. But I've been, I've been putting, I've, I've been in a continuous loop going backwards because I'll go back and take videos I've already done and redo them.

Anne Murphy: Oh, wow.

But yes, I do try to get through projects. You know, I don't, and it, most projects don't take me long to do anyway. But it could be a matter of, like, I had a project that I started the week before Nano Banana Pro came out.

Announcement: Oh. Oh.

Kimberly Offord: I had edits.

Announcement: Oh,

Kimberly Offord: and then Nano Banana Pro came out and I was like, oh goodness, this is taking me like two seconds to do.

And I use Nano Banana Pro for the rest, you know, for the beginning of what I had already done and you know, and then on the back end on what the edits that I had to do too. So I do it all the time too.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Kimberly Offord: yeah.

Kyle Shannon: That's cool. So now talk to me about, um, your transition into, into film, film festival, land, because you know, the.

Kimberly Offord: yeah. Um, so I have always been, I have, okay, so participated in AI film festivals and, um, before this whole AI thing, I'm skilled in event planning.

Mm-hmm. So I, I, I like doing it. Um, but as I started participating in ai. Film festivals. One things that, one of the things that I noticed was that a lot of the winners at that time, they weren't really film, they were really, uh, weren't films focused on underrepresented communities and neither were the creators.

That here is a space for you. Here's a welcome space for you, you know, to submit. And so I started out. Um, last year with the playground pa uh, playground pastime, um, AI film, um, contest. And we had like 90 submissions from all over the world. We had some, and I showed some of them on Ai, Festivus, and they were a variety of different films.

Everybody was. More so concentrated on storytelling

Announcement: mm-hmm.

Kimberly Offord: Than they were on special effects and you know, you know, sci-fi and there was some sci-fi definitely. But there was a lot of good storytelling and that's what I really liked about it. Um, and so I had the festival, I was like, Hey, let's just do it.

You know, let's jump in. Let's do it. You know, I'm one of those type of people, like

Kyle Shannon: you're talking to a pair of them too. You and I were talking today about what things do we need to Yeah. In on,

Kimberly Offord: Hey, I got chat pt, I can do whatever I wanna do, right? Yeah. And so, um, you know, so we did. And so, so then I came back and I said, well, let's do Chicago AI Film Fest.

And so it just evolved from there. Yeah. And here's where we are.

People that look like me and, and, and, and lots of other things. Right. Just lots of bias in them.

Kimberly Offord: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Shannon: I would love to hear from you, you know, I assume there's been evolution. We know there's been evolution in the technology. Has there been evolution in the core models in terms of more balanced, in terms of bias, or have you just gotten better at prompting and, and sort of, you know, creating models and, and mood boards and things like that, that give you things you want?

Like, can you just talk about the balance of, are you seeing improvements in the core models, and then how do you, how do you navigate that from a prompting and you know, that that space as you've, as you've, you know, evolved as a well?

Kimberly Offord: I think from my point of view, I just got better at prompting.

Kyle Shannon: Okay.

I love, love, love, love, love midjourney when it comes to creating images and, um, every time they change their model, I do have issues creating images of color. They're always ambiguous. Maybe they look biracial, you know, and we know every person, every, everybody comes in different. Skin colors and different sizes, different heights, different, all that widths and lengths and all of that.

We all have different ones. And you know, the default for most of those is going to be for a thinner person.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Offord: You know, um, and what the normal idea of beauty is. And, and even, um, pretty sometimes a little over sexualized too.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

I will go and talk to whomever.

Kyle Shannon: Good.

Kimberly Offord: I'll excite to them. Listen, there's no reason why I prompted this and this is the image that I got, you know, that's great. What. You know, what are we doing here? You know? Yeah. Um,

Kyle Shannon: do any of them get back to you?

Kimberly Offord: Um, no. No, but I, you know what? I, I had one, I had one that did, I had one that did, and I said, you know, I asked them, I just came around and asked, I was like, who, what are your training models?

Kyle Shannon: we're early.

It will make a difference. It will make a difference. That's great.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah. Absolutely.

Anne Murphy: I, one of Kimberly, one of the things that has surprised me in that vein is. Okay. How many women creators will publish images that we, we already 100% know, are damaging to our psyches? Right. This is a, this has been asked and answered.

Right. If we there, I did a study just out of probably spite, um, Barbie versus the images that were coming across my FYP that were being created by women creators.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah.

Being metic or like resilient and continuing to go back to the well and like redoing it and redoing it, maybe walking away from it. But the other thing is that there's something I feel like that's happening with. There's almost a pressure just like there is on women in general in real life, to look a particular way.

There's almost a pressure to create imagery in that looks like the ideal version that we grew up with, or something where it's very like internalized misogyny a little bit. But what I've appreciated is that you've made these prompting, like I got one of your prompting packets, couple, like maybe two, maybe a year or two years ago.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah, I'm, and I agree with comment. Oh, gamer comment. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that comment. Yeah. Then also if you noticed, um, a lot of people are, are starting on that trend where they wanna create, um, influencers and they'll create this voluptuous, sexy woman who's selling whatever.

And then look, women do it too. We'll create this guy with these beautiful abs, and he is always walking around with his shirt off and, you know, and all of that. And it may get you a lot of, it may get a lot of followers, it might, you know, but are you, what are you doing? You know, are you building a brand?

Anne Murphy: recycling. Yeah.

Kimberly Offord: Mm-hmm. I get away from that, you know?

Anne Murphy: I really appreciate that. Yeah.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Yeah.

Kimberly Offord: And a lot of people have looked at my images and they'll say, wow, there's just something really sexy about this. You know, like, I'll have, you know, guys will talk about it. And the women, they're fully clothed all the time, every time. All of my images, 99% of my images, they're fully clothed.

There's hope. You know? Yeah. There's

Kyle Shannon: hope. I think it, yeah, I think it, I think it, it goes to something that I've been thinking a lot about that, that I think as. Tools get more and more capable.

Kimberly Offord: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Shannon: That ultimately our jobs are going to be to have ideas and have a point of view about the kinds of stories we want to tell and how we wanna tell them.

And, and that's the sole job. Right? And so, so it really comes back to each of us personally saying, you know, what are my values? Who are the people that I want to impact? How do I want to impact them? So thinking critically about these meta issues

Announcement: Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Um, is part of the job, I think, moving forward. I'm just, I'm curious, like, it seems like you're, you're, you're sort of deep deeply in that, like, it seems like that's just part of what you do.

I mean, has that been an evolution for, you've been, have you been passionate about this all your life?

Kimberly Offord: I, this is, this is all my life.

Kimberly Offord: This is me. You know, this is me. And, and I think it comes with, see, that's what, that's what's so special about all of this is because we're not all living these fantasy lives.

You know what I mean? I'm living this every single day. Yeah. And as an African American woman mm-hmm. I am what I am. This is the package that I'm in, and, you know, and so it deserves to be seen. It deserves to be heard. Just like those stories. And, and here's the, here's the real good thing about it is that the public wants to see and hear mm-hmm.

All these things that are different and, and like them as well. So, yeah. Yep. It is part of my experience. It's my everyday experience.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. That's good.

Kimberly Offord: Yep.

I just, I just think it's incredible. Good. Good job, Kim. Keep doing it.

Kimberly Offord: Thank you. Thank you. You know, I believe, I believe, you know, there was, at, I think it was like a week ago, I was talking to my best friend and she was like, I cannot believe it. The number one song on the country chart is ai. Mm-hmm. The number one song on the gospel chart right now is ai, and then you had all this other, these other songs or whatever people have been talking about.

And, and the reality of it is, is that, okay, why is that, why is that, why is it that those songs are number one? Is it that the public heard something that they wanted to hear and, and it didn't come from the gatekeepers? Is that, is that what's, you know?

Kyle Shannon: Well, and, and, and also, I mean, to your point, you know, it's to, to your point about, you know, someone said, what was the prompt you used for that film?

Announcement: Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Um, I have an interesting question about identity. So I'll, I'll share something that's, that's semi embarrassing when I, when I say it out loud, but I've written seven screenplays in my life, and it wasn't until I finished my sixth screenplay that I felt comfortable calling myself a writer for whatever it is.

That's my deal. Right. I'm curious right now, do you think of yourself just from an identity standpoint, are you a realtor that makes films? Are you a filmmaker that self does real estate? Are you just, you like, I'm curious, like where you're in the sort of embracing I am a filmmaker or whatever, like I, I'm a storyteller.

Where are you in that spectrum?

Kyle Shannon: Mm.

Kimberly Offord: I went to a film festival not knowing that my film had actually won one of the awards at the film festival.

Kyle Shannon: Wow.

Kimberly Offord: I won the award. I went up to talk and the, the organizer said, Hey, tell us a little bit about, you know, whatever.

And first thing I said was, well, I'm not a filmer, but. And then, and you know, and, and he said to me, you are now, you know?

Um, and, you know, I had to just stop and say to myself, Kim, it's, it's, first of all, I, I would classify myself really as a first and foremost as a storyteller.

Kyle Shannon: Great.

Kimberly Offord: So that's the first thing.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Offord: I'm now getting into the point, getting to the point where I'm saying, Kim, you are a filmmaker. You know? So

Kyle Shannon: good.

Kimberly Offord: And, and then being able to verbalize it

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: and like live it.

Kimberly Offord: Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm there. I just got to that point.

Kyle Shannon: Oh, that's so good. It's so good. Yeah.

Anne Murphy: So good. Yeah. Yeah.

Kimberly Offord: Yep, yep. It's hard for some people I know to say that. 'cause I, I hear it a lot, I hear a lot of people who, who do this.

It's like, well, I guess I'm a filmmaker. You know,

Kyle Shannon: we heard, you know, it's, it's funny, it's one of the things Anne and I, I think we bonded on it very early on, is that early in, in both the AI salon and also she leads, there's a tremendous amount of apologizing for what people were not. There was a tremendous amount of apologizing for, well, I'm just me.

Kimberly Offord: you're, yeah.

Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: You awarded a film festival. Yeah. You're a filmmaker. That's so cool.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah, and I think because people always say, you know, you have the AI slop comments. Yeah. And then you have the, oh, you took a shortcut. Mm-hmm. Type comment. And then you have the, oh, well that wasn't creative comment. You have all those different comments and you have a respect, like, I have a deep respect for every artist that I have hanging in my, in my house.

And I was like, oh God, these are people. That's one of those, another one of those moments, you know? I was just like, oh God, these are people I've admired. These are people who I've watched their films, you know? Mm-hmm. And it was great. It was great. Yep.

Anne Murphy: Of course it was you. We do a, a monthly workshop for women in ai.

Well, for women who feel like they are beginners in ai, right? They're kind of just stepping off the curb, getting into the game. We have never once had a beginner and a true beginner show up. Every woman who comes to our beginner's workshop will be like, Hey, what do you, you know, ha, have you logged into chat GPT?

Kimberly Offord: Right.

Kyle Shannon: The intermediate beginners. It's so true. It's so true.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Absolutely.

Kyle Shannon: That idea of giving permission, you know, it's, Kimberly, I would love to hear some of your insights from Festivus. One of the, one of the, the, the pieces of feedback that I heard pretty consistently is that people said that they felt that Festivus gave them permission.

I would love to just hear from you, you know, you participated in, in Festivus and spoke there, but you also watched some of the things. What, what were some of your big takeaways from the event?

Kimberly Offord: Um, so like you've mentioned before, my biggest takeaway was just everyone that, that had spoken previously, everyone got up and talked about how much they had done.

Kyle Shannon: Mm.

Kimberly Offord: Since the last one.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

Kimberly Offord: And um, that was really inspiring because it was almost as if everyone who spoke at the first one, it was like we all kind of felt like we were the be begin intermediate beginners.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

Kimberly Offord: And we were trying, we were feeling this out and seeing where it was gonna go and, you know, and all of that.

It's like, yeah,

Kyle Shannon: I can't

Kimberly Offord: even imagine. Um, because everybody is going fast forward, you know, trying to keep up with the ai, but in the process really moving, you know, moving ourselves. So I, great job and keep it up because, I mean, most festivals help the attendees. That one helped. The speakers and the attendees.

Mm-hmm.

Kyle Shannon: Oh, that's so good.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: That's so good. And it, and you're right. It was, and, and, um, Anne and team put together the run of show, and there were, there were a lot of ways we could have done it. Right. You know, one of the ways we could have done it was sort of group all the similar kinds of talks, togethers.

And then, oh my God. I was inspired by that too. So there was just something about it that, yeah, I think it, it really did just, there was so many different perspectives there. And I think to your point, people have accomplished a lot.

Anne Murphy: A lot,

Kyle Shannon: a lot. Yeah. Um, you

know,

Kyle Shannon: which, oh, sorry. Go ahead Anne.

Anne Murphy: Well, I was just gonna say like, I.

I, I feel like that accidental almost, or, or serendipitous opportunity to learn something that isn't in your zone of genius. Yeah. That isn't in your, you wake up in the morning, you're like, yes, I wanna learn about business transformation of ai.

Kyle Shannon: Right, right.

I really love hearing stories about that. And then you think about, you know, we're, we're, we're going along, we've got subject matter experts, and then Rick McCauley and. And, uh, Pauline or, uh, Mar, uh, Marlene, Paul get up and they just like fire hose of just like, value, value. Do this, do that, do that, do that.

And people are like, oh my God, I, I have to get the replay 'cause I wanna do it side by side. Like,

Kyle Shannon: yeah.

Anne Murphy: That is so cool to me that you can have the things that expand your point of view. Because to me, there's only one thing that you can do wrong with ai, which is not to bother to have a point of view. You have to roll in with a point of view.

Announcement: Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: It's just,

Kimberly Offord: yeah. Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Love it. Love our community. Love the generosity. Super grateful, Kim, for all the times that you've shown up for this broader community and, um, we of course want to show up for you as well.

Kimberly Offord: Absolutely.

Anne Murphy: So can you talk to us a little bit about the film festival? Absolutely. You wanna hear details?

Kimberly Offord: Okay. So, Chicago AI Film Festival. Um, I, we are still accepting films, um, for the, uh, film festival, uh, for judging and, and, and to show, um, at the film festival. Um, and the website is right, right there.

The length and the width of your body, and it could mean a lot of different things. And we are concentrating on storytelling. So really good storytelling. And listen, even if you are a beginner at AI film, still send it. Because even in your beginner stage, your point of view is still your point of view.

And I'm so excited and thankful that she leads. AI is one of our community partners and that has been so wonderful. Just the community. You all talked about this, I believe, at the Festivus at some point. I heard you, Kyle, talking about you have to have a, i maybe it was a video that you posted, I think it was a video you posted Oh, yeah.

On LinkedIn. Mm-hmm.

Kyle Shannon: When you

Kimberly Offord: talked about having a community. Gotcha.

Kyle Shannon: It's, it's critical.

Kimberly Offord: Yes. Get with a community because

Kyle Shannon: get in it.

Kimberly Offord: Yes. That is how the other film festival did well because we partnered with communities and that's how this one is doing. Mm-hmm. Well, as well, partnering with those communities, that is essential.

Kimberly Offord: they'll submit

Kyle Shannon: You're having the celebration in Chicago, but they can submit from anywhere.

Kimberly Offord: Anywhere. Yep. We've already gotten 'em from all over the world.

Kyle Shannon: Good, good. So good. Yeah. So, and, and again, the, the thing that we talked about before, the permission to, you don't have to call yourself a filmmaker, but the permission to say, I'm willing to put something together and submit it to this. Even if you're a beginner, you will surprise yourself because we all have stories to tell, right.

I mean, this has been

Kimberly Offord: absolutely.

Kyle Shannon: Your experience, it sounds like, right?

Kimberly Offord: Absolutely, absolutely. Tell send it, send

Kyle Shannon: it, send it. I love it.

Kimberly Offord: Love it,

Anne Murphy: love it. Um. Can I ask a question about, I've never been to a film festival.

Kimberly Offord: Okay.

Anne Murphy: Can you describe what the experience is like? Because I think that there's gonna be a group of us showing up in Chicago.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah. So, um, for ours we're gonna be, um, I'm excited about this because it, uh, we are having it in one of the theaters at University of Chicago, which is our most, one of our most historic universities in the Chicago area, in the Hyde Park area.

Kyle Shannon: Wow.

Kimberly Offord: Which is like walking distance from where the new Obama Center. We'll, we'll be opening this summer. Um, but uh, we're gonna do a day of, of watching films. There'll be some panel discussions and we're working on a breakout session where po possibly, um, you know. Folks can go and learn a little bit.

Mm-hmm. But for the most part, we are gonna be, you know, just kind of watching those films and having that pin panel discussion and just, and, and, and networking with one another. 'cause that's the best part is the

Kyle Shannon: networking.

Kimberly Offord: Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Love it. Well, Kimberly, thank you so much. You know, it is so good to see you.

Kimberly Offord: Thank you. Thank you. And you all, welcome to come and we'll have pizza and all that great stuff.

Kyle Shannon: Love it.

Kimberly Offord: Alright. Bye everybody.

Kyle Shannon: Bye everybody.