I don’t think the team at Moonvalley, a Los Angeles-based AI video generation startup, can encourage a way to make a movie. So on Tuesday, the company released its “3D-Aware” model to the public, pledging a “hybrid” approach that provides more control for filmmakers than other standard text-to-video models.
Moonvalley first launched the Marey model in beta in March and is now releasing it as a monthly credit-based subscription. Users can pay $14.99 for 100 units, $34.99 for 250 credits, and $149.99 for 1,000 credits. Users can generate clips up to 5 seconds long. This is in line with industry standards for published video generation models.
The startup co-founded by former Deepmind researchers who worked on Google’s own video generation model, claims that Marey is one of the few models fully trained with openly licensed data. This fits neatly with Moon Valley Target Customer: filmmakers who want to avoid future lawsuits over AI-generated content that could resemble copyrighted material.
For independent filmmaker Anchel Manuel Soto, Marie’s biggest selling point is democratizing access to top AI storytelling tools, especially for those who have long felt they were locked out of traditional filmmaking. Soto, who grew up in Puerto Rico, said he had to cut hundreds or even thousands of dollars just to rent a camera to make a film.
“We had to go back home and ask for permission to tell our story,” he said. “AI gives you the ability to do it on your own terms, without saying no to your dreams, because someone refused to fund it because they didn’t think that a story from your country could return the profits.”
Now, Marey has helped Marey reduce production costs by 20% to 40%, so he works more freely, says Soto.
Soto previously worked with Moonvalley’s studio Asteria on the HBO docusary Menudo: Forever Young. According to General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja, Asteria, also known as Xtr, was acquired by Moonvalley this year. (GC was a major shareholder of Astalia and invested more money into the combined entities.)
Marey’s “hybrid filmmaking” approach
Naeem Talukdar, CEO and co-founder of Moonvalley, demonstrated to TechCrunch how Marey can be used in pre- and post-production, how to control objects, characters, movements and scene composition, whether it’s to test scenes before filming or adjusting camera angles after the fact.
Talukdar told TechCrunch that Marey understands the physical world that could lead to more interactive storytelling as technology develops. With such understandings that Marey currently shares with other models such as Google’s VEO 3 and Openai’s still Pribate Sora, Marey can do things like imitation moves while respecting the laws of physics.
For example, a bison video running through the grasslands can be translated into a Cadillac running through the same environment, with grass and dirt responding to the movement of the car. Alternatively, Marie could overlay a character that looks like George Washington on the actor and translated it as gestured from the actor’s facial movements to the muscles of his forearm.
Perhaps even more unique is that Marey supports free camera movement. Talukdar showed us how you can shift the camera’s trajectory with your mouse. He integrated the zoom into a video of a woman on Rocky’s train and zoomed in by simply dragging the cursor. He also said that Marey can achieve camera movements of nearly 360 degrees and follow instructions to create footage as if it was taken from a handheld camera or Dolly.
Marey can change the background of the video, allowing filmmakers to start with the source footage and build the scenes they need. Tarkudar played a video of a man riding a motorcycle on a suburban road. It was the same man, a helmet, riding slightly different bikes on the country highway.
Over the next few months, Moon Valley’s plan is to unfold new controls such as lighting, deep object trajectories and character libraries, says Talukdar.
Marey’s public release has created a direct rivalry with models such as the AI video generator growth areas such as Runway Gen-3, Luma Dream Machine, Pika and Haiper.
Additional report by Marina Temkin.
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