SYNOPSIS:

Ben walks the lake at Mueller with David Liu—director, editor, producer, composer, and until 2024, an AI engineer. Fifteen-plus years in hardware, software, product design and machine learning, and then generative AI showed up and he decided he didn’t want his name on where it was going. So he went looking for the one medium the technology can’t enter without destroying it… documentary filmmaking.

Here’s the crazy part - he never wanted to be a filmmaker. He wanted to score films. A friend pointed out that nobody can stop you from composing your own movie, which meant he now had to go find a story worth telling. Enter Covid, four Austin restaurants and one pandemic. Seventeen shooting days spread across four years. Four years of grant pitches where everyone told him TO BE SEEN was impossible: four subjects, non-linear, no way.

He shot it with almost no lighting, no rehearsals, and a rule about never overstaying his welcome, because the second take is where the artifice creeps in. Fiore Tedesco of L’Oca d’Oro handed him the title in the first sit-down, “you don’t need a restaurant to eat, you need a restaurant to be seen.” Plus a three-hour interview that became the spine of the film. Then the assembly came back all talking heads, and he sat stuck for a full year, thinking he had made a huge mistake.

What unstuck him was filming  chefs mushroom-hunting in the Pacific Northwest. That short—HIDDEN STORIES–FORAGED AND FOUND—went to DOC NYC, two hundred people went dead silent, and he had his formula.

Plus: cashing out the retirement account to finish, and finding out at the premiere— sitting next to chefs who had never seen a frame—that the thing is actually good.

DISCUSSION LINKS

TO BE SEEN (2026) | HIDDEN STORIES–FORAGED AND FOUND (2024) | VALLEY UPRISING (2014) | FREE SOLO (2018) | CHEF’S TABLE (2015) | FIRE OF LOVE (2022) | THE FIRE WITHIN: A REQUIEM FOR KATIA AND MAURICE KRAFFT (2024)

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Sync, sync—and a thesis: “my job is to discover the answers”
00:22 Your job as an artist is to pose the question
00:40 Fifteen, twenty years of engineering, and a pretty big gamble
01:00 Riley, cue the music — David Liu, ladies and gentlemen
01:30 Toasty and muggy: Mueller, the lake, and the ducks
02:00 To Be Seen, four Austin restaurants, and the AFS Cinema premiere
02:40 The Bullock on the 13th, Austin Public on the 14th
03:00 L’Oca d’Oro, Foreign & Domestic, LeRoy and Lewis, Pho Craft
03:30 “I never tried to get into filmmaking”
03:55 A terrible idea: just make your own film and score it
04:20 A calling card for a production company that didn’t exist yet
05:00 Failing at pop songs, accidentally good at scoring to picture
05:45 Play every instrument badly — that’s a composer
06:40 Hoping for narrative, and what the industry decided instead
07:15 Hardware to software to product design to AI
08:00 2018, and a career that started taking off
08:30 The gut says hedge: what if it goes wrong?
09:00 Looking for the most opposite thing, and finding documentary
09:40 Use AI in a doc and it’s no longer a doc
10:20 What he didn’t like about where doc was going
10:40 Too lit, too rehearsed, too formulaic
11:00 Chasing celebrity, crime, cults — the three Cs
11:20 Four years of grant pitches: “you’re breaking all the rules”
11:45 No lighting, high verite, nothing rehearsed
11:55 Seventeen shooting days over four years
12:10 Don’t overstay your welcome — the guttural first reaction
12:50 Quitting in 2024, and watching how people were using it
13:20 Conference talks, reputation, and a better use of storytelling
14:00 Deep fakes, meme manipulation, and the removal of autonomy
14:40 “I got into this for curing cancer and weather predictions”
15:00 Teach it to desalinate water, not to make our paintings
15:45 If it’s automatable and nobody likes doing it — perfect
16:20 Cost, displacement, and who’s to blame when it goes wrong
17:30 “We can save money by removing jobs.” You’re looking at it wrong
18:30 The layoffs start, and the writing was on the wall in early ’23
19:00 Reading the 10-Ks: something ain’t mathing
19:40 The better question — what would I regret not doing?
20:40 Burning the entire retirement account
20:55 Films will probably outlast every tech company
21:45 “Everybody says I’m wrong. What if I just try?”
22:00 Herzog, and the two volcano docs about the same subject
22:45 Stopping at the water — L’Oca d’Oro is right over there
23:00 The lockdown steps where he started writing music again
23:30 Fifteen years since he’d touched it. It’s not great, but it’s there
24:00 How do you shoot a documentary? YouTube
24:15 Cashing out in 2023, and never planning to direct this
24:50 Late ’22: an LLC, some gear, and the pieces of a company
26:00 Product design, problem-solving, and “everybody says it’s impossible”
26:35 What a restaurant symbolizes for a community
27:20 Non-linear time, the thing they said would never work
28:00 He thought it was a 30-minute episode
28:15 First interview you’re wrong, second you’re on a bigger story
29:00 If I don’t tell it, this gets lost to time
29:30 An introvert asks why he even goes to a restaurant
29:50 Fiore’s line: you need a restaurant to be seen
30:10 COVID takes the thing away — the existential test
31:00 Snowpocalypse, Valentine’s Day, and what we’ve chosen to forget
32:40 Processing the collective trauma, and a worldwide audience
33:00 The real subject: how we, the patrons, changed
33:20 Less patient, less personal, more hyperindividual
33:50 Why nobody wants to go to a theater anymore
34:00 Thaison Nguyen of Pho Craft saw the insularity coming
35:45 Fine dining chefs, a precarious moment, and the ask
36:20 Authenticity goes both ways
36:50 No rehearsing, no fabricated emotional places
37:45 The interview style changes halfway through the film
38:00 Sitting down in 2020, standing in their space by 2022
38:30 An assembly of pure talking heads, and a full year stuck
39:00 A trip across the country, and matsutake in the snow
39:50 Accidentally handheld, the entire time
40:00 Mic’d under the vent hood in the loudest place possible
40:20 Hidden Stories–Foraged and Found goes to DOC NYC
40:40 Two hundred people, dead silent. That’s the formula
41:10 And then the last two subjects said yes
42:00 Standing in front of L’Oca d’Oro
42:45 “Oh — you did that to make it through?”
42:50 Fiore Tedesco, and philosophy through restaurant ownership
43:50 A three-hour interview becomes the spine of the film
44:20 It’s not what’s on the plate, it’s what’s not on the plate
44:30 One restaurant wins a Michelin star. One goes out of business
45:00 Chef’s Table, Bourdain, and the lens nobody else has used
45:30 Adam Orman, and a calling card for the working class
45:40 Brain drain: the institutional knowledge that walked out
46:30 The worst thing you can do — not showing them until the premiere
47:20 Restaurants play music, and restaurants are loud
47:40 Ninety percent of the sync audio, stripped
47:50 Rebuilding the entire kitchen with Soundcrafter, mixed in Atmos
48:40 Did you make the film you set out to make?
48:50 “If it’s not good, I’ll go back to tech.” It’s good
49:00 Now the distribution rules are being rewritten
49:50 Self-distributing, and selling the partnership instead of the film
50:10 Supper club screenings, and making it an event
50:30 The restaurants showed up, and got to be the heroes
50:55 Lightning round
51:00 The gateway drug was climbing films
51:15 Valley Uprising, Sender Films, and actually climbing in Yosemite
52:00 Chef’s Table, Alinea, and eating at the restaurant afterward
52:50 Herzog, Ken Burns, and the rungs of documentary
53:40 You never hear his voice — but the editing changes
54:00 The Pho Craft reveal: the painting is in his apartment
55:20 Not everything lasts, and it still can be beautiful
56:00 Advice: do it, and don’t follow the rules
56:30 Pathfinding, and why “nobody knows” is the right place to be
57:30 Documentary got too safe
58:00 What he can’t stop thinking about: the new normal
58:30 No income, and an industry eating itself alive
59:00 Attention spans, plasticity, and how we adapt
59:50 Asking all the right questions
1:00:00 tobeseenfilm.com, @tobeseenfilm, and Narriforgemes
21:07 Scoring his own films for an 18-piece orchestra
21:48 The cold email from Brett Morgen
22:22 Last Hijack, Tommy Pallotta, and a Vimeo upload that went viral
24:00 Brett Morgen’s animated docs: The Kid Stays in the Picture, Chicago 10
25:06 Four months, sixty oil paintings, and a house of cards
27:17 The edge of psychosis (yes, that’s the name of the episode)
27:40 Courtney Love, Frances Bean, and the test screening that turned it
28:31 The sequence everyone remembers
29:20 The cassette tape actually called Montage of Heck
30:08 Cutting to black after MTV Unplugged
31:17 Where each of us was the day Cobain died
32:07 Emotional truth, and animating what he didn’t quite say
34:27 Waltz with Bashir, and real footage landing like a hammer
36:08 Animation admits it’s a point of view from frame one
37:24 Danse Macabre, and what Annecy actually is
38:32 Eleven years, Shostakovich’s Tenth, and the resurrection of fascism
40:34 Seventy-nine oil paintings, four countries, eighty people
43:24 What the AI actually did — a shader trained on his own paintings
44:24 Four million views, and then “AI slop”
45:35 Meanwhile, Netflix admits AI in 300 productions
46:10 The protest: stickers, walkouts, and booing before the film starts
47:14 “Thank you and fuck you”
47:44 Isaac Gale’s private model, and where the line actually is
48:42 Stable Diffusion, scraped data, and who should be paying
50:28 Generative AI versus AI tools
51:31 “I fucking hate it. I should get a medal.”
52:07 His mother’s review
52:57 The Google Drive synopsis that took an intern’s job
54:03 Students, entry-level jobs, and protesting the rain
56:15 Water, electricity, and the cost nobody solved
56:34 Animation is an opportunity to dream — not a way to cover bald spots
57:18 Lightning round: Pink Floyd The Wall, stoned at fifteen
58:35 Fantasia, Goya’s war drawings, and Keith’s Bergman project
59:01 Dream collaborator: Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy, and PTA
59:56 Sasha Pieterse, Boogie Nights, and learning from audio commentaries
61:06 Widen your horizon: a rich life that isn’t about money
62:32 Go watch Danse Macabre, and review it honestly
63:18 Plato’s cave, the Sandman, and “geez, I’m the caveman”