Culver Cup Winners Create Movie Magic With AI

MetaPuppet’s Mnemonade, depicting a woman with dementia, claimed the Culver Cup during LA Tech Week. In this original, emotional and very personal film she unlocks fragments of her lost memories, triggered by each dish, which is served by a mysterious waiter. “Mnemonade is a tribute to my grandmother, whose memories faded with dementia,” the filmmaker said.

The story gave MetaPuppet the opportunity to leverage cinematic AI’s most important native qualities, nostalgia and spectacular visual effects, which he confidently deploys to great effect. “AI helped me visualize her fragmented thoughts in ways I never thought possible,” said MetaPuppet, who recently joined AI-forward production company Secret Level.

The Culver Cup, co-hosted by FBRC.AI and Amazon Web Services (AWS), challenged filmmakers to use a uniform set of 3D assets provided by Global Objects and a creative brief by director David Slade. Participants had access to cutting-edge AI tools like Luma’s Dream Machine, which generates high-quality video from text and image prompts, and Playbook3D, an engine for rendering 3D scenes. These tools allowed filmmakers to deliver high-quality shorts in just a few weeks, ensuring the final films were fully up to date.

The Culver Cup format is unique in the world of AI filmmaking, but competitions like it are increasingly common. Platforms like RunwayML and Curious Refuge regularly run similar contests, giving important platforms for those early adopters like MetaPuppet, who are pushing the boundaries of what generative AI can achieve.

The runners-up were no less impressive. Krystal Trixx’s Artificial Symphony explored the intersection of art and technology through kaleidoscopic visuals, while Borys Kondratenko’s Echoes of Eden offered a stark, AI-generated portrayal of environmental collapse. “Both films were visually stunning,” said Todd Terrazas, co-founder of FBRC.AI, “but Mnemonade stood out for its emotional narrative. The way MetaPuppet used AI to portray the fragility of memory was beyond what we expected.”

Here are the final winners:

Champion: Mnemonade – MetaPuppet

Finalist: I […] You – Maddie Hong

Semi-Finalist: Relatively Disconnected – Paola Rocchetti

Semi-Finalist: Dad’s Treasure – Matthew Wenhardt

The top 8 submissions can be viewed at Escape AI.

While the Culver Cup demonstrated AI’s potential to streamline production, it also underscored the technology’s ability to open new avenues for personal storytelling. The event featured cutting-edge tools, yet the focus was always on the characters and their stories. “In AI filmmaking’s infancy, the tech has outshined the story.” Said MetaPuppet. “In this film I wanted the story to speak louder than the tools used to tell it.”

The question now is where AI filmmaking goes from here. As tools like Luma’s Dream Machine and Playbook3D improve, filmmakers are likely to push the boundaries even further. The success of Mnemonade suggests that while AI is often seen as a way to speed up production, its real power lies in helping filmmakers tell deeply personal and emotionally resonant stories.

For MetaPuppet, the journey is far from over. “AI allowed me to do something I didn’t think was possible—to recreate memories and emotions I thought were lost. That’s where the future of filmmaking lies, in giving us the tools to explore human stories in new ways.”