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Making God's Post-Production: Aiming for Netflix

Technical AI safetyAI governanceGlobal catastrophic risks
Connoraxiotes avatar

Connor Axiotes

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$550raised
$327,500funding goal

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  1. Thanks largely to Manifund donations, Making God has filmed a series of cinematic interviews, with big-hitters such as recent Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton, and will soon film with several more AI experts, ex-AGI lab employees, and civil society.

  2. Now we need to raise for post-production. In our previous production phase, we filmed in multiple locations across the world and worked with several production companies to produce over forty hours of quality footage. Proper post-production would mean that ‘Making God’ has everything it needs to make a splash at film festivals and land on a streaming service like Netflix.

  3. Your donations increase the chance a documentary revealing the risks from AI will land in the homes of hundreds of millions of viewers. We hope they will, at the least, have more knowledge on the issue, and be moved to act.

Post-Production Budget Breakdown

Hiring of Post-Production Studio: This will mean professional editors, sound designers, and colour graders can deliver the film quickly and to the standards necessary for mass distribution.

Purchasing Archival Footage: This will mean ‘Making God’ has the legal rights to use news reports, podcasts, and other third party content.

Purchasing Stock B-Roll: For elements that we cannot film (due to access restrictions) we will license clips, for example, the insides of data centres, political institutions, etc.

Hiring a Motion Graphics Studio: Our explainer sections, where we break down the technical side of AI, requires high-quality motion graphics. To ensure a consistent tone, we intend to use a motion graphics studio.

Maintaining a Post-Production Buffer: To cover unforeseen costs and potential locational hires.

Hiring a Composer: We are fundraising for this now to give our composer the time to compose an original score.

Hiring Session Musicians: Supplementary to the composer, to give them the talents to bring their visions to life.

Hiring a Graphic Designer: For the production of posters, marketing materials, and lower thirds.

Gaining Making God's Classification: To secure an age rating from The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).

Why should you donate to finish Making God?

We believe the public is mostly unaware of the rapid advances in AI and what they mean, and of the potential risks posed to them, their families, and their friends. Making God is a feature documentary built for non-technical viewers. Simple but accurate explainers, high-end, cinematic interviews, and a clear story of the race toward AGI and why it matters.

The result is cinematic and serious, but also optimistic and light-hearted! A mix we think is going to allow us to make a splash at film festivals and then (if we manage a nomination or win) a much higher chance of landing on a streaming service like Netflix.

Where we are now

  • We have already recorded more than 40 hours of footage, including multiple long-form expert interviews.

  • We have secured interviews with two of the field’s most high-profile pioneers and have additional shoots scheduled across the US, UK, and Canada.

  • Filmed: Geoffrey Hinton, Prof. Chan Loui, Gary Marcus, Will MacAskill, Tom Davidson, Holly Elmore.

  • To film: Prof. Yoshua Bengio (MILA, Godfather of AI).

  • Negotiating interview: Kylie Robison (WIRED), Daniel Kokotajlo (AI 2027), Chris Miller (author of Chip War).

  • Remaining principal photography runs now to 31 Oct 2025, with post-production scheduled for Nov 2025 to Jan 2026.

Timeline and deliverables

  • Nov 2025–Jan 2026 (three months): edit, motion graphics, score, mix, grade, QC and mastering

  • Deliverables: locked feature, M&E tracks, accessibility assets, trailer, poster/key art, and festival-ready masters

  • Festivals: submissions Feb–Dec 2026 as per deck timeline. Overfunding beyond $327,500 for post will roll into the festival run budget ($102,000).

Team

  • Director, Mike Narouei. Former Creative Director at Control AI, led multiple large shoots, work featured by BBC, Sky News, ITV, The Washington Post, directed high-reach campaigns and long-form documentaries.

  • Executive Producer, Connor Axiotes. Former senior communications adviser in UK government, wrote early AI safety policy work at the Adam Smith Institute, leads access and editorial. Has raised around $300,000 so far for Making God.

What success looks like

  • Acceptance at major festivals and subsequent streamer acquisition.

  • Viewership at scale plus pre/post viewing surveys on AI-risk understanding.

  • Media coverage and community/political/policy conversations citing the film.

Risks and how we manage them

  • Archival costs can spike. We have ring-fenced $50k for licensing and $40k buffer to absorb overages.

  • Explainers must be clear. The motion-graphics studio budget ($30k) is dedicated to short, accurate explainers.

  • Scheduling risk. We have set a three-month post window and are booking studios against that schedule.

Why fund this now

We have shown we can deliver. We have worked with quality teams, interviewees, and companies on a project of a genuinely professional standard. We want to maintain that quality in post-production. There is still a gap in the market for an accessible documentary explaining the risks of AI to the public, and we believe we can fill it.

Comments7Donations4Similar6
michaeltrazzi avatar

Michaël Rubens Trazzi

about 1 month ago

I think the world would be a better place if there were more documentaries on AI risk on Netflix, and I’m glad that Connor and Mike are putting in the work to try to make it happen.

Making any kind of long-form films involves many costs, which can make things quite expensive. Connor raised $300k already, and you are looking for $327,500 more, where the overrun would go into festival route ($102k), which puts the budget for the entire project at a minimum of $730k. After talking to Mike, the cost will actually be higher since the salaries of Connor & Mike will actually be paid by private investors during post-production.

For comparison, in a 2023 survey of UK documentarians (n=74), only 13% had a budget over £400k, and 8% was above £800k, which places “Making God” at around the top 10% of UK documentaries in terms of budget (given that survey).

Given the high budget, I think it’s worth clarifying:
- what is the total amount that will be needed for the project, including money being currently raised through private investments? how much total has already been raised (private / public)?
- how much of it has already been spent?
- from the spending, how much has been spent on things personally benefitting the team (salaries, housing, purchases of equipment like cameras) vs. general expenses (paying for the crew, renting equipment, flights, hotels for shoots, etc.)? what will be the split moving forward?
- when trying to sell the documentary to distributors, will you be trying to sell it for more than the cost of the documentary? will there be a discrepancy between non-profit funders who will not get anything from the sell vs. for-profit funders / people who got equity who will get some shares from it? what’s the current non-profit vs. for-profit status of the project?

Regarding some of the details in the track records (cf. previous proposal):

  • Worth clarifying that Mike mostly did motion graphics / editing for the SB-1047 doc, and only ~10 days was spent doing art director work.

  • 60M+ total views in 9 months & 32M views/engagements in one month: can you do a breakdown of where these numbers come from? How much of that was organic vs. paid for. (Note: Mike told that “Your identity isn’t yours” had ~50% views coming from promotion. Tiktok’s version has low engagement so seems promoted to).

  • Collaboration with Max Tegmark: how much was Max involved?

  • Apollo Research: do you have links? How long was the collaboration?

  • Commercials (Starbucks, Pale Waves and Mandarin Oriental): do you have links?

  • You write here: “directed high-reach campaigns and long-form documentaries”. What long-form documentaries did Mike direct?

I think for a documentary like that to be really impactful (think the “Social Dilemma” reaching 100M+ people) you need to have a lot of criteria being met, such as a certain number of exclusive interviews (with whisteblowers giving exclusive interviews, eg. from labs) and / or very high-profile people. On top of that you’d need distribution (think Netflix), which will require the criteria above, but even then it’s not a given, and will depend on the overall quality of the documentary.

Having said that, let’s look at the interviews currently listed:

  • Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton have strong AI credentials, though they’re not really “insiders” anymore. Additionally I don’t find Yoshua to be a great public speaker (eg. Ted) and Hinton has already given many long-form high-reach interviews repeating similar arguments (eg. this one), so I’d like to know how much new stuff he’s said in these interviews. 

  • The Gary Marcus interview seems to be high-production value (based on what I’ve seen on trailers online) and Gary is a decent public speaker, representing a slightly different view. However, Gary isn’t the most respected AI researcher and often comes off as unreasonably contrarian. For instance, consider this interview with MLST where everyone in the comments just wanted Gary out of the interview.

  • Rose Chan Loui: seems great to have her legal expertise, considering her knowledge of the complex legal procedures happening at big AI labs such as OpenAI. However, her 80k interviews seem to have little traction (1-2k views) compared to other 80k interviews at 35k-164k views, and she doesn’t strike me as having done a lot of public speaking.

  • Will MacAskill: great to have him. I think he’s a good speaker, though he’s already done quite a lot of interviews and is not really an AI insider nor has specialized AI knowledge relevant to this.

I reckon they have some “whiteblow-y” interviews, such as one with Sulaji’s mom, though she was already on Tucker Carlson and (last time I checked) the actual content of what she says about OpenAI has not yet proven to be true. There’s also Daniel Kokotajlo that is planned, but at this point he’s already been on dozen podcasts and his message is well known. So would be worth if you could clarify what interviews are really key here.

Or if no specific interviews are key but it’s more about the content, it would be great to clarify what is the particular narrative here that makes this set of interviews bring a coherent original narrative. For context, I have talked to Tristan Harris & one of the editor of the social dilemma about a documentary they’re also making on AI, which I believe will be out soon and might overshadow this one.

Additionally, I’ve seen some early-stages excerpts of what seems to be one of the angles of the documentary, where you have some amount of behind the scenes of Connor & Mike going on filming people, and I felt like the behind-the-scenes distracted from the interviews and didn’t bring a lot to the table. 

Regarding the post-production budget, having myself managed a budget on that front, this strikes me as something on the higher-end, especially considering Mike’s & Connor’s salary not being included here, which would make the overall budget higher:

  • General notes on using a production studio & motion-graphics studio: using a studio means that you’re basically trading a lot of the time that would be spent on dealing with hiring & logistics, with the studio doing a lot of the management for you. I think if you’re tight on time and have a high budget that’s something worth considering, but in that case if Mike & Connor are being paid for their time and actively working on the project, the studio route appears to be on the more pricey & “easy” side, which would significantly reduce the hours being worked but require paying a premium rate.

  • Post-production studio ($130k, 40% of non-salary budget) for “professional editors, sound designers, and colour graders can deliver the film quickly”. It seems that this would be paying a premium fee to get things done quickly, and I’m not sure why this is needed given the overall length of the project & the movie festival route. Worth noting that colour grading takes 1-2 weeks and sound design is also quite short, so most of that would be editing. If we say $100k is spent on editing, that means working with a high-end studio that would provide a lot of help (senior editor, assistant editors, maybe post-supervisor) at $12k / week for 8.5 weeks (given timeline). This doesn’t seem like an absurd amount but is definitely on the higher end. Especially given the large buffer ($40k) and that some things (like a post-supervisor) would usually be Connor’s or Mike’s jobs (paid elsewhere).

  • Archival footage ($50k) for “news reports, podcasts, and other third party content”: licensing TV news footage can be pricey, though can be negotiated down if purchasing from the same source multiple times on bulk. This essentially gives some amount of flexibility to license the key footage that they’d need. Podcasts can definitely be negotiated to much lower amounts. Would say this is mid-to-high range.

  • Stock B-roll footage ($40k) for “For elements that we cannot film (due to access restrictions) we will license clips, for example, the insides of data centres, political institutions, etc.”: what kind of access restrictions do you have? Can you hire someone to film that for you remotely? This seems extremely high, especially given the $50k for licensing, and ~$36.5k for motion graphics. Usually, for a high-end documentary you’d try to film these yourself or get people to film it. And even if for some reason you couldn’t possibly get someone to film it, data centers and political institutions are the most easily accessible forms of B-roll. To be more concrete, let’s say the mid-range b-roll is $80 and the pricey ones are $500. This would give you 80-500 clips depending on price. That means one mid-range to high price clip not filmed by your crew nor licensed every 15s to every minute of a 90 minute movie. With the licensing budget, that’s $90k, meaning ~27% of post-prod going to content you didn’t film.

  • Motion graphics studio ($30k) + graphic designer ($6.5k): similar to the post-production studio, I think this is paying for a premium to outsource a lot of the work. Having worked with motion graphics people, most of the work is in giving the motion graphics person the right things to do, but when that’s clear the work doesn’t require a lot of time (compared to editing). For comparison, a motion-graphics person at the top of the industry was asking for $3k a week, so this would cover 10 weeks of her work. And given their timeline they don’t have that amount of time for motion graphics. (Probably 4 weeks maximum). The fact that they’d be asking for 6.5k for a graphics designer on top strikes me as either duplicating work done by the motion graphics studio, and / or making the total be on the very-high end. One other datapoint would be hiring something like Rational Animations for the entire motion-graphics work, and I believe that would come at about $10k / minute of top-quality complex 2d animation, or $1k-minute of simple animation. This strikes me more as the simple type than the very complex type.

  • Post-production buffer ($40k): given everything is already on the higher end / handled by professional studios, having this large of a buffer (12% of budget) for things going wrong makes me think the budget is not really tight. If all of the studios end up charging you $40k more, are they actually doing their job carefully? Wouldn’t you agree on a fixed rate beforehand? Where would these $40k come from?

  • Composer $20k + $8k musicians: having talked to a bunch of composers, this would give you a good composer. In LA (where things are much more pricey) you can get quite experienced composers for $30k. And they usually include the musicians in their package. I expect that if you work with UK-based ones the price would be lower. You can also negotiate the price down if they end up having the rights to the music, instead of wanting to buy the full rights.

In conclusion, here are the main takeaways of this comment:

  • 1. all-things considered, this is the budget for a high-end documentary (top 10%), with some private funding that would be worth clarifying

  • 2. given that, a lot of the previous / future expenses are worth being documented, especially the non-profit vs. for-profit aspect, and the private / public funding

  • 3. some of the track record could also be more detailed, with more info on what was done, and the actual projects / metric breakdowns

  • 4. the current documentary proposal seems to lack what would make it a very impactful netflix documentary, and it’s unclear what original narrative would make it compelling

  • 5. the post-production budget appear to be on the very high-end, with some amounts that suggest a lack of planning, especially considering the director & producers would be compensated through other sources of funding, 27% on licensing / stock footage, and the fact that they’re working with post-production and motion graphics studio at a premium

I should also say that making a high-quality feature-length documentary is very difficult and I really want this to succeed. A lot of my comments apply to what I think a high-end feature Netflix documentary would need to be successful (which they’re aiming for), but I understand that this is a very high bar, and I wouldn’t want anyone reading this to think that what they’re doing isn’t worth doing. I think this is useful work and I’m happy that Mike & Connor are doing this and getting all these interviews. We need more high-quality AI Safety documentaries!

Looking forward the answer to these questions / comments on this. I think being able to see some promotional material of the interviews already shot would also help me (and others) understand better where the project is, and its potential.

(Previously retracted comments were asking similar things but contained errors. Also crossposting to the initial proposal)

🏆
Connoraxiotes avatar

Connor Axiotes

about 13 hours ago

Thank you, Michael. These are very fair questions! Mike has answered them here below:

Totals and scope

The total required to complete Making God is $1,400,000. We have received $350,000 so far through a mix of donations and investments. We have a further $400,000 promised in private investment. That leaves $650,000 to raise to finish production, complete post, and run an international festival and sales campaign. The $1.4M total includes the festival and sales budget, including the previously referenced $102,000 festival route line.

On the 2023 UK budget survey: it covers everything from micro-budget indies to broadcaster features. Our comparison set is feature documentaries intended for international distribution, with multi-country shoots, legal clearances, festival deliverables, and streamer-ready masters. Those commonly land in the low seven figures. Our $1.4M target is disciplined for that category. The earlier $730,000 figure was a minimum route to a festival-only cut. We are budgeting for a distribution-grade film because that is the appropriate path to broad impact.

Spend to date and why

We have spent about $300,000 to date. That has produced more than 50 hours of filmed material across multiple countries, including interviews with Geoffrey Hinton, Will MacAskill, and Gary Marcus.

Since March 2025, we've have taken $70,000 combined in salaries and have deferred a further $40,000 until investment closes. Our day rates are below union benchmarks and lower than other key crew. The remainder of spend is production: crew fees, rentals, insurance, legal, travel and accommodation, and production administration. Any equipment purchased is owned by the company and recorded on the asset register. No personal assets were bought with production funds.

Why this split: the value sits on screen and in a clean rights position for sale. Most spend therefore goes to filming, travel, crews, and lawful clearances. Modest pay for the core team keeps the project moving across months of prep, shoots, and edit, and we have kept that lean with deferrals to protect runway.

Going forward, donated funds are used for production and post costs that benefit the film directly. Producer and director compensation in post is planned to be covered by private investment.

Structure, sale, and donors versus investors

Tail End Films Limited will be the production company. A dedicated SPV will be created soon holding the Making God IP and contract with investors, which gives buyers a clean chain of title.

We will seek to sell the film for more than it cost to make, while being candid that documentary outcomes are uncertain. Investors participate under a standard recoupment and revenue-share waterfall, administered to buyer requirements and, if appropriate, through a collection account manager. To avoid any perceived mismatch between donors and investors, we have invited large donors to convert to the investment round on the same terms as other investors, with a sensible minimum ticket of $10,000. Donors who remain donors keep their credit and we report impact transparently.

Interviews and narrative

The general public has not been widely exposed to figures like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, and when they are, the material is rarely presented in a way that is both engaging and clear. Our job is to translate credible concerns into a compelling, accessible story for a broad platform audience. We will announce additional contributors once clearances are in place, and we only include claims that are corroborated and legally cleared.

On the early behind the scenes clips you saw: those were internal sizzles. In the film we appear only when it adds stakes or clarity. Otherwise the audience stays with the material.

Post production: what we are paying for and why

We are aiming for a streamer-ready feature documentary. That means resourcing the edit properly and budgeting for deliverables, rights, and quality control that buyers actually require.

  • Post production studio. Ensures the cut is properly resourced and delivered on schedule with QC, subtitles, and delivery elements buyers require.

  • Archival licensing. For worldwide, all media distribution, long-term rights across territories cost more than festival-only use, so we budget up front rather than weaken the film later.

  • Stock B-roll reserve. Used only where filming is impractical and a licensed shot completes a sequence. We prefer to film ourselves and will commission remote shooting where that is the smarter option.

  • Motion graphics and design. Builds a clear visual system so general audiences can follow complex ideas. Mike leads creative and does hands-on work to keep costs efficient.

  • Composer and musicians. Secures a quality score with stems and cue sheets on terms a buyer accepts. Where a composer prefers some back end, the cash fee can reduce.

  • Contingency. A prudent buffer for multi-vendor work and international clearances. If it is not needed, it is not spent.

These are ceilings, not targets. We will lock fixed bids where possible and redirect savings to the cut or reduce the top line.

Track record clarifications and links

  • SB-1047 short. Mike handled motion graphics and editing. About ten working days of art direction was typical for the scope and budget.

  • Campaign totals. The 60M figure is cumulative across platforms while Mike was Creative Director at Control AI. The 32M figure refers to the cross-platform performance of Your Identity Isn’t Yours. That campaign had significant paid media by design, roughly half of its impressions, and it produced outcomes including more than 3,000 letters to UK MPs and coverage on ITV News. We can share per-platform analytics that separate paid and organic performance on request.

  • Collaboration with Max Tegmark. Mike collaborated on a deepfake demo at Davos in January 2024. Coverage: https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/01/18/davos-elite-worry-about-deepfakes-and-disinformation

  • Apollo Research. A three-week engagement, one week of pre-production and two weeks to deliver a motion-graphics explainer of their scheming research. The video is on Apollo Research’s YouTube channel.

  • Commercials. Starbucks was a B2B spot with Pyramid Productions for franchisees, so it is not publicly hosted. Mike can provide the production contract. Pale Waves was a lyric video for She’s My Religion that ran on socials; a short snippet is on Mike’s Instagram. Mandarin Oriental was an early social commission, example: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CHNy_ocnTPT/

  • Long form directing. This unfortunately was a hallucination by an AI model we used to edit the Manifund project copy. While Mike has been directing Making God since March 2024, he has not directed any other documentaries before this one. We will endeavour to not make that mistake again!

Governance

We keep a detailed cost ledger with receipts and reconcile monthly. We work with legal counsel on releases, music, archival, and E and O insurance. Donated funds are ring-fenced to production and post costs. Investor funds flow through the SPV that holds the IP, with standard recoupment and reporting. We clear music and archival on worldwide, all media, in perpetuity terms, bind E and O prior to delivery, and maintain signed releases and a full chain of title.

If anything here needs further detail, Mike is happy to share a more granular cost breakdown and, when legal and licensing allow, private screeners of selected scenes. @michaeltrazzi

michaeltrazzi avatar

Michaël Rubens Trazzi

about 1 month ago

[retracted]

michaeltrazzi avatar

Michaël Rubens Trazzi

about 1 month ago

[retracted]

donated $10
Lucas avatar

Haochen Tang

about 1 month ago

Can't wait to see your film on Netflix and beyond! Here is a small suggestion: If you put the names of everyone who donates on this page at the end of your film, it would be lovely to see so many people have donated.

donated $20
🐹

about 2 months ago

Very exciting to see the guests they were able to secure. Would love to see this on Netflix!

donated $20
🍇

about 2 months ago

excited to see this project