05/01/2026
Every week I get the same email.
“We love what you do, but our budget is tight…”
“Could you do it for cost? Great exposure…”
“My cousin DJs .......can you match his price?”
Different sender, different season, same energy.
Here’s what running an events business has taught me.
The clients who lowball you on the discovery call are the same ones who push back on the post-event invoice and leave a one-star review when the band stops playing exactly when the contract says they will.
The deal-getters cost you the most.
Sticking to your price isn’t ego. It’s the difference between a sustainable business and a slow burnout.
So I made a movie trailer about it.
That’s me, fighting giant alien Lowballers with a magic cane. The
joke is the joke.
But also every shot in that 38-second trailer was generated with AI:
✅Seedance 2.0 by ByteDance
✅The narration is Google Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS.
✅The score is ElevenLabs Music.
✅The foley is Tencent’s HunyuanVideo-Foley.
✅Edited with Anthropic’s Claude Code using Remotion.
Time to Make: 60min
Cost: Priceless
Over at Fusion Interactive Agency we’ve been working on something around exactly this and we’ll have more to share very soon.
The real point: we are six months, maybe less, from AI-generated video that nobody will be able to tell from real footage. That’s not a prediction. For most viewers, the trailer below is already almost past the line.
If you’re a creative, an agency, an event business, or someone who hires either: what you charge for “the real thing” is about to matter more than it ever has.
So stick to your number.
Yours Truly,
ARTHUR. RISING.
Rated FP. Full price.
