It's Fucking Done

Code Platoon, week 15. The final week. There are still a few days left, but today I feel like I'm done. The group project is finished. The presentation is finished. The last big lift is over, and I'm fucking overjoyed.

The day started with the morning algorithm. I jumped on the grenade knowing this was probably my last time doing it. I needed help, but I reasoned my way through the problem with that help. It went well. A good way to close out that part of the experience.

Then it was time to run the ball over the line with Young Money.

The team had already finished most of the code. I'd told them I would handle the final check and the presentation, so I spent about an hour and a half making sure everything was pushed up, nothing was outstanding, and the whole app worked in its complete form.

That was satisfying. But the presentation was the story of the day.

I'd had some elaborate ideas about doing AI animation or something along those lines. What I actually knew was much simpler: I wanted to get out of this fucking seat. I've basically been sitting here all summer. I wanted to go somewhere and do something interesting for the final presentation.

Our app is called Young Money. It's about money. Aliante Station is the casino closest to my house. Surely there was something I could say about money at a casino.

That was the plan. That was pretty much the whole plan.

I drove over with my "rig," which was really just a ring light stand. All I needed was something to hold the camera. I set it up, hit record, and started improvising. I recorded outside the casino, walked around inside, and grabbed whatever footage looked useful. Some talking, some B-roll, some random shit that might work once I got it home.

I was there for maybe 35 or 40 minutes. The presentation wasn't technically due until tomorrow, but I wanted to be psychologically done today. So I put myself on the clock.

Usually, this is where making a video eats the rest of the day. You have to scrub through everything, figure out which takes are good, make the cuts, and get the narration lined up. I also needed a voiceover covering the technical requirements of the presentation. Having a bunch of footage is only the beginning.

This is where Astra came in clutch.

I gave it the 15 or 16 short clips I'd recorded, my teammate's walkthrough of the app, and the presentation requirements. It put the footage together. It made the cuts. It produced a draft I could actually use, then generated a script and cues for what I needed to say. I recorded the voiceover from that script.

Some of my footage was landscape. Some was portrait. It handled that too and made the different shots look good together.

I'm still a little stunned by it. AI is getting crazy. I went out with a stand and a loose idea, came back with a pile of clips, and had help turning all of that into an actual presentation.

The whole video took probably two and a half hours. For a roughly ten-minute video, that's fast. My personal project presentation took something like four or five hours to record and assemble. This took about half that, and I was thrilled with the result.

There was even time to make Young Money a theme song. I went with a little '90s-style riff and dropped stabs of music into the slower moments, like when the demo involved filling out forms. Just something to make those stretches more fun. I also included an alternate intro take at the end. I didn't really have bloopers this time, but I still wanted a little of that extra personality in there.

The finished video had the music, the cuts, the footage from the casino, and all the technical requirements. My teammate's app walkthrough had a real place in it, which mattered because he'd wanted to contribute to the presentation. The whole thing came together.

I finished just before stand down, with enough time to show the team. They were blown away. One guy joked that the other team should just quit right now.

That felt good. I've made enough videos over the years to have some instincts about this stuff, and I could feel that experience showing up in the final product. The setting, the improvisation, the music, the pacing. Having AI handle so much of the editing let me get all of that into a finished video while I still had energy for it.

Watch the Young Money presentation on YouTube.

I'm proud of this group project. The team did a great job getting the app finished, and I'm glad I got to carry it through the final check and presentation. Getting to show everyone the finished video before the day ended was exactly what I wanted.

We also got official word that everybody still here is graduating. There are ten of us. A small graduating class, but hey, we made it to the end.

It's fucking done. Here we go.