“Ounces make pounds. And pounds make things heavy.”

It’s advice Christopher (James Le Gros) gives his daughter Sam (Lily Collias) as they’re packing for a weekend hiking trip with his friend Matt (Danny McCarthy). Figuring out what to take with you and what to leave behind is sage wisdom for backpacking and, as it turns out, for being a rising college freshman feeling the push-pull of growing up.

Good One uses its small cast to explore big coming-of-age themes like chosen family vs. family of origin, gender and generational differences, and what we owe the ones we love/d. As Sam ping-pongs between her father’s churlish worldview and Matt’s weaponized incompetence, we see her become a young woman against the stunning Catskills backdrop.

The film is contemplative and lingering, which belies the actual speed in which it all came together. Actor-producer Diana Irvine says the cast and crew had 12 days to shoot, and they lost quite a few of those days thanks to unexpected rainstorms, lightning, and the orange smoke that engulfed the Northeast in June. (Irvine appears at the beginning of the film as Sam’s stepmother Casey).

“It was so full on,” Irvine says. “We were all wearing so many hats during production. As soon as we wrapped, [our editor] Graham Mason started editing the movie. We were reviewing footage as soon as we could on Dropbox.”

Two things helped with getting the film made so quickly. First, close friends and bicoastal collaborators India Donaldson (director), Wilson Cameron (producer), Mason, and Irvine had developed a shorthand from working together so closely.

“We were at monitor constantly: Graham was talking to India and Wilson about the shots before they were set up,” Irvine explains. “They already had in their mind a sense of how everything was going to cut together.”

And secondly, everyone was on Dropbox, where they could communicate and see early cuts of the film and “interim changes to things like score, temporary music, credits, etc.”

“It was integral for the team,” Irvine says. “We’re scattered between New York and LA, so we were very rarely all in the room together. Dropbox was how we would, in essence, review the film.”

We asked Irvine to give a masterclass of sorts on how to produce a movie as quickly as she did. And here’s what she had to say.

On the best advice she got in college…

My teachers always told me to make friends with people in the film department and acting department and to really take those relationships seriously: Because in our 30s, 40s, and 50s, we would look around, and those would be some of the same people making interesting work.

And they always said “Make your own work,” which I found, at the time, a bit frustrating because I just wanted to get hired. But I've come to learn that they were right (laughs). My teachers were right. You really do have to make opportunities for yourself.

On making a space for yourself as an indie creator…

I think a lot of people can get trapped: Having a project that is smaller in scale, but then they're told by folks in the industry: “Oh, you really need a big name” or “You really need X amount of money to make a film that looks good.”

The only way that I've ever been able to make things is by saying, “I wish I could do it that way. I can't for whatever reason. So I'm just gonna get people I know, love, and trust together, and we're gonna figure out an alternative way through.”

Industry people are always saying, “This is what the market wants, and this is what we're looking for.” And it's good to take that in. But I think at a certain point, if it's not happening for you, if you can't raise whatever people say you need, you just got to go do it with what you can get. If your story is compelling, and your filmmaking is strong, someone will take notice. And then maybe your next one will be that $1 million, $2 million film with someone who has a recognizable name or face.

On creative problem solving…

We're an independent feature. We got things done with the help of a lot of incredible people doing us favors at every turn. We were never able to raise more than what we needed at each stage, unfortunately, so we were really building the plane as we were flying it.

It’s hard to ask for favors, but we really built relationships with people in this community. All you can do is be immensely grateful and be really honest about what you can afford, why you can only afford so much, and then give what you can back.

We shot at a hotel in upstate New York. We could only give them a certain amount of money for the day, but we took some beautiful photos and said, “At the end, we'll give you some materials so that if you want to have other shoots, you can show them, ‘Look how beautiful our hotel looks on screen!’” You know, give them sort of something extra in return so that they're benefiting to an extent as well.

On building a small-but-mighty team…

Our team was an interesting combination of folks who had done many independent films before and then some people who it was their first or second time in the particular position they were in. That was kind of a beautiful combination because there was so much goodwill and hope. In a movie like this, you’re problem solving constantly, so having people who are coming at things freshly… They might have a solution that you haven’t thought of before because they’re thinking so purely about it.

And everyone was learning no matter how much experience we have. We’ve never done it in this way in this place at this time with these people before. That spirit of openness to learn while doing was consistent across the board.

It was an intimate group. We were all staying together. It was a hugely bonding experience. I think that was a big key to our success: Everyone who was there really wanted to be there. And James [Le Gros] kept saying that we were punching above our weight as a production. I think for any crew, that is the spirit you have to have. You have to be like the David in “David and Goliath” to break through.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Sometimes when you’re trying to get work done, distractions come at you out of nowhere. Like, when you’re filming a scene while your nonagenarian hero’s flying down the sidewalk on a mobility scooter, then an active crime scene unfolds right beside you.

What kind of Deep Focus playlist gets you back in the zone after that?

Let’s ask Josh Margolin, writer/director of the new Sundance film Thelma. Because apparently, that was just one of the memorable days on the set with 94-year-old Academy Award nominee June Squibb (doing her own stunts), as well as film icons Parker Posey, Malcolm McDowell, and the late Richard Roundtree in his final film.

We spoke with Margolin and producer Zoë Worth to find out how they came up with the unique premise of this action-comedy, kept the cast safe when real-life drama spilled into the frame, and used Dropbox to stay organized despite all the unexpected obstacles. 

I heard this story was inspired by a phone scam that’s so pervasive, it happened to my family, too. How did you manage to turn something so rattling into something entertaining?
Margolin: My grandma got one of these calls, I guess they call it the grandparent scam. Somebody was pretending to be me, saying I'd been in a car accident. She'd gotten a few before, but I guess the guy on the phone sounded enough like me that she just went with it. 

She got very panicked and called my parents. Then it just spiraled to the point where my parents were calling my partner Chloe and telling her I was in jail. She was like, “No, he's here next to me, asleep.” So luckily, we solved the case before money exchanged hands, but it definitely was rattling. My grandma's always been a strong, stable, stalwart presence in my life, someone I've been very close to ever since I was young. Seeing her get duped felt unnerving. 

Somehow my brain went quickly to: What if she had sent the money, then had to set out on her own to get it back? I've always loved action movies and the Mission: Impossible franchise. The movie’s definitely a comedy and very fun, but I wanted to use the tools of that genre to explore what I love and admire about my grandma—her strength and tenacity.

I'd love to hear about your casting process. Did you have June in mind as you were writing?
Margolin: June was always who I pictured; I just love her. She reminds me of my grandma and just always felt like who it had to be. A friend of ours had done a movie with her recently so we were able to get the script to her in the early days and she jumped in. From that moment on, it felt like, “Okay, now the thing can grow,” because she felt like the beating heart of it.

When you're ready to turn the seed of an idea into a script, who do you share ideas with first?
Margolin: When I first mentioned this idea to my life and frequent writing partner Chloe, she very quickly said, “You need to write that next.” I trust her implicitly, so that gave me a little extra confirmation. We also have this community we’ve been fostering, a writer’s group we do every Thursday called Rock and Roll Universe, with Chloe, my producers Zoë and Chris, and our friend Sam. We bring ideas there—scripts in early stages—and get eyes on them from our trusted pals.

Worth: It's a group of people who’ve known each other for a long time. The idea behind it was to have a safe place to bring work, but also an accountability practice because sometimes you won't finish a draft if it's not for a job. When Josh brought in his first draft of Thelma, it was amazing right out the gate. 

Were you working remotely as you were developing the production? 
Worth: This was at the height of COVID. We did a lot of our cast read through on Zoom. A lot of prep was done on Dropbox. 

Margolin: It was a great tool, especially at the moment we were needing it most. We were very cognizant of COVID throughout the whole thing because our leads are older. We wanted to make sure we kept everybody safe, so we got into a remote flow for as long as we could. 

So great to hear that Dropbox helped you keep going.
Worth: It did. We use it all the time, especially for building our production file, whether it was sharing images for approval in the production design process or in collating agreements, keeping track of the legal. It definitely was a home base. A lot of my vital information is stored in our production Dropbox.

What was your most memorable day on the shoot? 
Worth: Well, there's one that comes to mind. The crime scene.

Margolin: Yeah, there was definitely one day where it felt like everything was working against us. We were filming late at night on Halloween. I was in a witch's hat that Richard Roundtree did not think was working for me. (laughs) But I still decided to keep it on. We were shooting a scene in front of little P.O. box-type place in the Valley. And there was what turned out to be an active crime scene right beside us. 

Worth: Really right beside us!

Margolin: Searchlights, ‘copters...

Worth: We were like, “Are we safe?” Then the cops roll up and tell me and Chris and the assistant director Justin, “You're good. Except if the SWAT team comes, we're gonna have to shut you down.”

Margolin: We're like, “Maybe we'll do the scene without any dialogue?” We went through all these kinds of backups while this thing was getting increasingly chaotic. Fortunately, right at the end of the day, it cleared. We had this very limited window. We decided we're going to try to grab the team. Richard and June both locked in the scene beautifully and nailed it. We only ended up doing one take of that. We've been describing it as sort of a buzzer beater moment for them, which was really a nice cap to an otherwise chaotic day.

Worth: Was there anything else? I feel like there might be another fun one? 

Margolin: June on the scooter is always a trip. She just got more and more confident on the thing and more and more excited about using it. We were very scared at the beginning. Because the thing could go like 30 miles an hour. We had to put a limiter on it. We were like, “This is unwieldy. We need to rethink this. Maybe we lean on the stunt double?”

Before long, with the guidance of our stunt team, June just started doing more and more of that work herself. I do think she was probably happiest on that scooter. Whenever she was driving that thing, she just lit up.

I love how you described staying focused during those unexpected moments of chaos. Do you have any tips for carving out windows of focused time during your workday?
Margolin: There’s this great place called Fancy Film in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. I had this little room and just tried to keep it very minimal. I had some snacks, my monitor, my laptop, and a candle. And that was it. There was something about being in a space where I had a little bit less access to other distractions that I found focusing and calming. 

I never usually work out of an office. I'm often working from home, and even in doing that, I've tried to take a similar kind of ethos—creating a space that’s separate from where I am the rest of the day, anything that can give me a little bit of a pocket or a cocoon. And also not being too hard on myself for checking my phone and because I feel like that's just gonna happen. That's okay.

Zoe, as a producer, do you deal with a lot of interruptions in your workday?
Worth: I've noticed that when I'm trying to do a legitimately creative task, it's hard for me to change over between writing and producing. If I'm writing, I need to do that before I do anything else. I wake up early and get some of that done. But same would go for other tasks like reading a draft from Josh or another filmmaker. Deeper, focused, creative work that has to do with story I do first to open the day. 

I can't get too amped or have conversations with the outside world while I need to complete a truly deep thinking part of the artistic process. It's another reason why we have this writing group as well. Creating systems that are outside of jobs is another way for me to focus. Otherwise, it's really easy in the creative arts to let the horse drive you. 

What would you like the audience to feel after seeing Thelma?
Margolin: I hope that the journey of the movie is warm, inviting, and relatable, and feels like it touches on a lot of parts of life—the highs, the lows, all mixed up into one.

Thelma premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival on January 18 in-person and premieres January 25 online. For details, visit festival.sundance.org

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Late R&B legend Luther Vandross—still known mononymously to his fans—was always a bit of an inscrutable figure. His voice, that voice, is undeniable. The way he could modulate his velvety tenor to make a single word vibrate with unfathomable longing and desire? Don’t get me started!

But during his time in the spotlight, the public turned Luther into a mirror reflecting back cultural anxieties about sexuality (was he gay or straight?) and race (was he “just” an R&B artist or could he crossover into pop success?). Then there was the constant chatter about his weight: Fans would add Big or Little to his name depending on the size of his bedazzled suits.

Now we finally have a fuller picture of the man. Dawn Porter’s documentary Luther: Never Too Much uses a deft mix of archival footage of and interviews with Luther and his closest friends and contemporaries to highlight the joy he experienced as an ardent student of R&B and soul.

What struck me the most weren’t the things about Luther that I didn’t know—like how he arranged David Bowie’s Young Americans album or that he self-funded his own career through jingles. It was how personal Porter’s storytelling was, as if Luther were guiding the entire process. Porter and her team sifted through hundreds of hours of video, and many gigs worth of documents, sketches, photos, and ephemera in Dropbox to get that effect, she says.

“My process is to show, not tell—so I need a lot of material to show the things that I think are actually true,” Porter explains. “Starting to break things down and organize them is the building block. That's the first part of the movie. It's not actually the visuals.”

But once that groundwork is done, the final product sings. Porter spoke to us about her process and how her team whittled down hours of material to create a loving portrait.

You had 80 hours of performance clips, 150 hours of archival footage, and 2,200 stills. When you have so much material, what do you with it?
Well, we definitely put it on the Dropbox. It’s kind of standard for us now.

Nobody makes a movie alone. There’s a big team and everybody’s important. Everyone in our team is in different places, so it’s really important for us all to be able to access the information simultaneously. Our assistant editor is the person who watches every single second of everything. She weeds out the obviously-not-good stuff. But if we don’t have that repository, you don’t get to see the little gems because the only way you find those is tediously going through everything.

How do you organize all those files to tell Luther’s story as seamlessly and personally as you do?
You know, there’s a different approach when the person isn’t here. Because it’s even more important to try and get into their head and voice, and not have other people shape their story in a way that isn’t authentic.

The first thing I do is I figure out themes. And for Luther, they were the things that people don’t focus on so much: He’s a songwriter, he’s a composer, he’s a leader, he’s an artist. Then we make little mini scenes. What are all the things about songwriting? What were the early days like? What do we have?

It’s really just watching as much of that archive—even stuff I knew I wouldn’t use. You watch all of it to swim in his life. Then I’m thinking, Okay, how do I layer on what he was seeing as a child? That’s why we start with the Apollo and the girls doing double dutch in Harlem. Like, that’s what he would see. And if you notice, it’s from a child’s vantage point. It’s not from far away. You see the people grocery shopping, and they’re laughing. I just imagined him on errands with a parent because you want to know, what was he drawing from? Who helped form him? I’m looking to hopefully show you without saying, “Of course he’s this, because these are all the things that helped make him.”

What kind of folder systems did you create to organize all those images as you were structuring the story?
Our folders would have some scenes. Then folders of pictures, images, lyrics, lists he would make, sketches he drew, and some of his handwritten notes. We have one full of album covers.

What Dropbox does is it allows you to take a morass of information and separate it out into something much more manageable. When I look at the directory of topics, I don’t forget. Oh, we gotta go back to those album covers. Then that becomes a reminder for when I’m working with a graphics person and we can share things really easily.

Even the process of labeling helps your mind start to organize and think, Okay, these are all the components. How do I put these together?

What are some of the things you learned about Luther in this process?
What I appreciated from making this film was Luther’s intelligence, his kindness, his joy, and his friendship, so we put a lot of him being silly in. But I want to focus on the fact that he was the composer and a songwriter and a leader—he wasn’t an artist that they plucked out and put in front of a microphone and said, “Sing this.”

When I look at Luther sketching costumes, him hiring a designer and seamstress to make them and paying for it out of pocket… When I hear him saying to his audience, “We will not play with your ticket money,” I hear Beyoncé. I hear her saying, I appreciate you audience. This is not for me, this is for you. I'm going to give you a show.

And that’s what he did. He gave so much joy to people by being himself. He was like, I’m gonna give you a show, for all those little boys and girls who are at home like he was, watching artists and dreaming. He was going to be that for them. Luther was paying it forward. And I love that about him. I feel like I know him. I can’t believe I have not actually had a conversation with him because I talked to him all the time. (laughs)

You know, I always thought of him as being such an isolated, sad person. But to see him be joyful and to hear that he was loved... I think it’s really beautiful. So I won’t weep for Luther anymore.
It’s so funny that you say that because I’m saying, “Yeah, it’s a really joyful movie.” And interviewers are like, “He died at 54 of complications from a stroke. He never had the love.” And yeah, there’s that. But he had so much.

There’s a part where he says, “I am happier than I have ever been. But I’d like to be the happiest.” So it was that duality that you’re talking about: He knew what he had, and he knew what he still wanted. And you know, it is so sad that he never had that. But he had quite a lot. And he gave quite a lot.

So I don’t weep for him. I weep for us that we don’t have him because I would love to see what he would have done in the next 20, 30 years, what kind of artist he would have evolved into. And I think he would have found that great love. He’s too great a person not to.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

When film composer and multi-instrumentalist William Ryan Fritch got the call to work on the new Sundance documentary, The Battle for Laikipia, he remembers his first reaction. 20 to 24 cues in two and a half weeks. Wow. But after watching the film, it was a no-brainer. “I’ll figure out the how,” he said.

Co-directed by Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi, The Battle for Laikipia follows the story of Indigenous pastoralists—farmers who breed and care for animals in the wildlife conservation haven of Laikipia, Kenya—as they struggle to overcome conflicts with landowners and the impact of colonialism. 

“It's just take-your-breath away, raw, arresting humanity, done so exquisitely well,” says Fritch. 

Fritch says his admiration for the film’s crew made it an easy decision to join the sprint to finish the production in time for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

“I knew they were extraordinarily thoughtful, ethical documentarians,” says Fritch. “I had worked with Daphne Matziaraki on her Academy Award-nominated short 4.1 Miles. She's a rare and special talent. Her directing partner, Peter Murimi and the editor, Sam Soko have made some of my favorite documentaries of the last couple of years.”

Here’s how Fritch pulled out all the stops to meet the deadline—while using Dropbox Replay to make his review process as fast and efficient as possible. 

How do you go about finding the right sounds to convey the tone of a film like this? 
The instrumentation for this is largely based around string ensemble and harp. I played the kora and other string instruments that aren’t necessarily native to Kenya, but I knew I could modify in a way that felt like it was its own kind of language for the Samburu tribe. It left space. It wasn't trying to emulate Samburu music, but it could have this sound of conflict.

I was totally taken by the film, so I was cranking out about five cues a day. No time to do spec for virtual instruments. It was like, the microphones are rolling, tape is rolling, and everything has to be my best shot. They were like, “We love this. Let's go!” 

Could you describe how you used Dropbox Replay to incorporate feedback from the crew when you were working so far apart? 
It’s an 11-hour time zone difference between Nairobi and where we are in California. So I'm starting my day as they're ending their day. Daphne was in Greece. Peter was in London. The editor was in Nairobi. I needed a way where they could all have a chance to review the music and the timeline. 

I would post the video in Replay, process all of the comments, mark and tag the feedback. Then I’d be looking at it and taking notes as we're going from fine cut to rough cut. I'm adjusting it, like, “This music is a little too thick. It's covering up the VO here. This might move.” 

I have to think of this film in these digestible pieces, but I also might be getting feedback from something I did three or four days ago while I'm still having to write a significant amount of music. So using Replay is not like reading a list or flitting down a Google Sheet. I have the picture up on one of my screens. 

How do you stay organized when you’re getting feedback while you’re still composing?
The fact that they were going off what I gave them through Dropbox, they could tell me, “Hey, 30 seconds into this clip, it's this.” That could be so confusing if they gave me a cut that didn't have timecode embedded. With Replay, I can just be like, “These are the videos. Let's make the note where it is in these particular exports.” I’ll be able to go and address that in the music. It just kept me from losing my focus.

When I got the full score together, I was able to just export a whole run of it. It’s easy to get lost when I'm focusing so hard on *this* five minutes that I forget how it ties into the whole film. But a beautiful thing about clearing this cache in Replay was that, I've resolved these things. I can export larger chunks. Now we're gauging how pieces are working. Then by the end, where we got to the final mix, we were just talking the finer details of “I wouldn't mind hearing this theme again” because we're digesting it as a bigger piece.

What was the advantage of using Replay compared to other tools you’ve tried?
With Replay, I was controlling the media that was being reviewed. Then as I clear it and offer a new pass of it, I can just get feedback from the filmmakers respectively. Just bang, bang, bang: resolved! What do you all think? It was so much more native, because that's where I'm housing my files anyway and how I'm getting it to the filmmakers. This wasn't an option for me even a couple of months ago.

This development means that I can simply share the link with someone. They don't have to be a member of Dropbox to be able to view this or give notes. I found it really liberating that I could take advantage of that very specific and accurate note annotation for files that I'm uploading. And it was in my native Dropbox desktop. I'm just exporting that straight from Logic and mixing it. I don't have to be thinking about: Did I share the files? Did someone else export it and sync it up to their account for film team stuff? It was empowering for me, as someone who's worked with Dropbox for years, that there was suddenly a tool that I could use to review feedback seamlessly in my workflow. I really enjoyed that. 

Is this the fastest you’ve ever had to turn around a film score? 
No, but this was the most gracefully handled by the film team. They're all pros. They're also really generous collaborators in the fact that I think they knew there was a lot to be gained and that things could be a lot better than the temp music they were using. So I feel like I walked into such a loving, deeply supportive, creative environment. I've been in situations where it's been a similar timeline, but not with this kind of support. The whole time I was doing it. I was excited to try and make it better. And when you have that urgency, you shut off some of the the overanalysis paralysis. But I turned in the last files, then I got pneumonia. So it took its pound of flesh, but there was a lot of joy and motivation to just keep going, keep giving until you've emptied the reserves. 

What motivates you to work through night to finish scores for festival films like this one?
75% of all my work is with journalists and documentarians. I think one of the reasons I keep coming back to it is that filmmakers spend years of their lives making a film. The profound sense of responsibility they feel to the film’s subjects, to shepherd and to tell this story with integrity, love, and circumspection—it's so profoundly humbling. I'm with a film for two and a half weeks, but it's at the end, where these filmmakers and producers have just given everything. It's new to me, so it's my job to be a catalyst of enthusiasm and energy. 

What do you hope audiences feel when they hear your score while watching the film?
The musical language that we landed on is close to my heart because I love acoustic sounds and organic instrumentation. I'm building the structure off of environmental sounds. So I just want the resounding feeling that the music empathetically and appropriately serves the plight of the human beings going through this battle for resources. I'm hoping it serves this profoundly impactful story. 

The Battle for Laikipia premieres at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival on January 21 in-person and January 25 online. For details, visit festival.sundance.org

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

For Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, the couple featured in the new Sundance documentary, Skywalkers: A Love Story, the biggest risk of falling in love isn't just breaking your heart.

As daredevil rooftoppers—urban explorers who covertly climb the world’s tallest structures, creating breathtaking, death-defying imagery—they constantly put their lives in each other’s hands. Gravity isn’t their only adversary. Adding to the suspense, they also frequently evade security guards. First-person footage follows their heist as it happens, making it feel like you’re along for the ride.

We spoke with Emmy-winning filmmaker Jeff Zimbalist and co-director/producer Maria Bukhonina to learn how they navigated the obstacles involved in bringing this story to the screen—and how Dropbox helped keep their intercontinental collaborators on the same page throughout the production.

What made you decide this story was worth risking your life to capture?
Zimbalist: Every film is a risk of our life in one way or another, this one a little more perhaps more literal. I was an amateur rooftopper, an urban explorer from my teens through my 20s. When I learned there were others around the world trespassing onto the roofs of the highest buildings, doing stunts and photography, I started tracking the rise of this movement.

I was looking for a story I thought could support a feature length doc. I found Ivan and Angela and knew they were the story. The concept of using the life or death stakes of trusting someone else on a rooftop was an incredible metaphor for the trust we need to develop in romantic relationships. 

We first filmed in 2017. Then Maria moved to Russia and ultimately to Asia to live with the Skywalkers. Six years later, here we are, with a story that took twists and turns I don't think any of us saw coming, climaxing in a real-life heist, a ninja mission with incredibly high stakes during the World Cup final last year. We do embrace the heist genre, but our North Star throughout the process was that this is a love story. We want to reach an audience outside of extreme sports and urban landscape fanatics and really touch on something universal. 

How did you first hear about Angela and Ivan? 
Zimbalist: I started following rooftoppers on social media, even before Instagram. Angela really exploded after she did her first China trip with Ivan in 2017. She got hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram in one day. That was where I started to be curious about their story. There have been glimpses of other females doing this activity, but Angela really has become the first female of rooftopping. I had worked with Maria on a Netflix series called Heist. Maria grew up in Russia, so I thought she'd be a perfect partner on this. We started collaborating right before we got the financing for the project. And Maria dove in headfirst. For years, she lived and breathed this story.

Maria, had you been interested in rooftopping before this?
Bukhonina: Rooftopping was never my specific interest, but I think what's interesting is that they’re a couple in this sport. Our female character is a strong lead and the main protagonist, which you don't really see a lot in high-risk activities. The fact that they happen to be Russian and this a big international production for an American audience was interesting. I've done a lot of films with American characters for American audiences, but I haven't seen a lot of films here that are not political, but about somebody who happens to be Russian. 

Compared to your previous docs like Momentum Generation, how much of your time was spent observing and researching versus interviewing?
Zimbalist: I would say this is a cinéma vérité film, first and foremost. Maria, how many hours of original footage did we shoot?

Bukhonina:  I think roughly 200 hours of original footage. 

Zimbalist: We did something like 80 days of production shoots. For the majority of the screen time, our cameras embedded with our characters, trying to bring the audience into that immersive experience. The first 25 minutes does lean a lot on archival. It tracks the rise of the phenomena and shows some of the other famous and daring rooftoppers. Then we fill in the gaps of our arc where our cameras weren't with footage that Ivan and Angela shot over the beginning years of their relationship. 

As you were capturing the story, were there any unexpected twists that shifted your direction?
Zimbalist: Yeah, many. Certain things happened along the way that we were sure were going to be a part of the film, but because so much happened, they didn't even end up in the film. So that's sort of a vérité filmmakers dream, that the story advances before your eyes and you have a lot to work with on the plot side.

We really wanted this to reach a wide audience, as did the two lead characters, Ivan and Angela. So the more activity during the time we were filming, the better. We were all on the same page. They're very active anyway—traveling the world, taking on enormous risks, and facing their fears. So we were pretty confident this would develop fast. 

We were embedded with them pretty much full time. Their relationship took every twist and turn you can imagine—doubting each other, not wanting to continue with the mission, one of them taking lead and being the encourager and the cheerleader, while the other one’s bailing, then flipping that and vice versa. And they were financially strapped during that time because their social media had been blocked. They lost their sponsors and some followers when the war broke out.

So the stakes were really high. And it was the craziest climb they've ever done. So we were lucky to have a lot of material to work with. And even luckier that they made it out, that they're okay and weren't arrested.

How did you use Dropbox in the making of the film?
Zimbalist: We've always used Dropbox on archival and all our projects, really. It’s primarily helpful in the remote workflow for post. Being able to have our archival producer go get full-res from a variety of vendors, have it organized, and available for quick upload and download—to anybody who's working on the project from story producers, to editors, producers and myself—has always been a primary part of the process. The ability to share with that kind of speed is really helpful.

What would you like the audience to feel after seeing Skywalkers? 
Zimbalist: I mean, I'm gonna wax poetic on this one. For many years now, I’ve made a lot of antihero projects, series and docs, where the messages of the story are often to be cautious around other humans, that we live in trying times full of deceit and betrayal and abandonment. And while I'm really proud of the complexity that those stories exist in, the more narratives the world hears reinforcing those fears, the less we're likely to lean into and open up to others. 

I think what the world needs more than anything are these leaps of faith where we unite across our differences and come together with our cultural and class counterparts. So I hope Skywalkers encourages us to trust others again, and especially when it feels like the riskiest thing to do. What we need most is to come together. I think ultimately, overcoming the fear of trusting others is at the heart of this movie.

Bukhonina: I think awe is a good word. I’d like people to walk away with inspiration to follow their dreams and be ambitious. Because they’re nothing if not super ambitious about their artistic vision and what they want to achieve. I think that's inspirational for all of us.

Skywalkers: A Love Story premieres at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival January 18 in-person and January 25 online. For details, visit festival.sundance.org

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

In some movies, the quest for immortality is about escaping death. But the new Sundance documentary Love Machina is a different take. For Dr. Martine and Bina Rothblatt, the couple at the heart of the film, it’s about prolonging love. 

“There's an energy when Martine and Bina walk in a room. You feel it… and it's kind of electric,” says Peter Sillen, director and producer of Love Machina. “With this film, it's interesting to see people who are very cognizant of their relationship as stronger together than apart and how that forges and solidifies their resolve to accomplish great things.” 

Like digital immortality: The documentary focuses on their journey to build Bina48, an AI humanoid robot based on an extensive “mindfile” of human Bina’s memories and thought patterns.

“Martine said the idea of just being born and living and dying is going to be thought of as really old school one day,” says Sillen, “People are going to be around in different iterations for a long time after they're gone.”

We spoke with Sillen to learn how he captured the evolution of their extraordinary story and how Dropbox helped him organize his workflow from start to finish.

How did you first hear about Martine and Bina’s plan to create an AI mind clone? 
I was visiting my older child who was living in Berlin one summer. Producer Brendan Doyle and I got an email about this possible shoot a friend of ours wanted to do about an AI going to a college class. It was kind of fascinating. I started digging a little deeper and realized there was a little bit more to this story. I thought, sometimes you just have to trust your gut and go with it. 

We shot sporadically during this class called “The Philosophy of Love.” It was a great entry point to the story for us because it summarized so much of what the project is about—this incredible love and how they were using technology to continue that love into the future, infinitely. We just got hooked. 

After hearing about the concept, did you wonder what it would be like to have your own digital doppelgänger? 
I'm a little bit more analog, but it does pique your curiosity. It's definitely a little weird. But Martine and Bina are futurists. They're looking 20, 30, 40 years down the road. They're not looking at today. But when you couple their futurism with the positivity they bring, it's an interesting mix. 

I think it's something that's missing in the conversation right now. There's a lot of doom and gloom about all the bad things that can happen. A big part of this film is trying to spark conversation about what needs to happen in the space of AI and how do we create guardrails? How do we make this a positive technology for humanity?

Martine wrote a book called Virtually Human in 2014. At the end of it, there’s the sense that all of this technology is really just a mirror to ourselves. The film tries to embrace that humanistic viewpoint, keeping as a North Star this idea: Together, we can build something that is beneficial to humanity.

How did you approach capturing that perspective in an authentic way? 
I come from a camera background, so I really love going out and shooting. I’m kind of a camera geek. So I like to just grab a camera and start shooting, and whatever draws me, draws me in. Early on, Martine was very into the fact that we were making a film about Bina48, but she didn't want to be involved directly. She gave us her blessing and said, “You can use anything of me out there in the world, but I just don't want to participate right now.”

So we respected that and started building this archive of her speaking engagements at all these different conferences. We were amazed that we were able to create a film with just that material, but it was a one-dimensional portrait. Once we had that, though, we were able to show Martine that we were trying to go a little deeper and do something more about their true vision. Once we got Martine involved, we were able to crack the code on the film and start to shape it in a way that we really felt good about.

How did you put together the right team of collaborators for this project?
This is a truly independent film. It's not like some big seven-figure budget where you can just throw money at problems. We really had to be resourceful, organized, and communicative. So we put together a small, scrappy, but mighty team. Everybody's come together and done amazing work, from Brendan Doyle, my producing partner, to Conor McBride, Ben Mercer, and Steffie Van Rhee. With COVID, a lot of people were working remote. Conor is from Ireland, Ben is from England. Steffie’s from Amsterdam. At different times, different team members are overseas, back and forth, so we really had to be organized. 

How did Dropbox help you all stay organized as you were collaborating remotely?
We've got two folders set up that are pretty massive. The production one, then the post production one. It's our catch-all for everything, really. We can all get on it. It's both a working day-to-day kind of set up, and also a repository for everything we need down the road. There are folders that I don't go into at all on certain days, for weeks or months. Then all of a sudden, I know exactly where it is. On the day that I need to go there, it's there.

What do you hope audiences will feel when they see Love Machina? 
I hope that people come out inspired to have conversations about what positive can come out of technology and AI. I also hope people realize how important it is to be a part of that conversation—not just the immediate conversation, but the bigger conversation of representation in AI and making sure it's a beneficial technology.

Love Machina premieres at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival January 19 in-person and January 25 online. For details, visit festival.sundance.org

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

For three decades, a team at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) has been collecting tens of thousands of hours of video data and building an annotation reference system to sift through it all. 

“It's a wealth of information, but nobody outside of our firewalls can access it—at least not yet,” says Dr. Kakani Katija, leader of the Bioinspiration Lab at MBARI, which develops novel instruments and techniques for studying deep sea life. 

Like a lot of knowledge workers, scientists can become siloed, missing out on potentially useful findings discovered just outside their field of focus. So how might they break through barriers to ensure everyone who could benefit from the data has access to it? That’s the question Katija and her team are trying to answer. 

In search of breakthrough ways to collect, analyze, and share data, they’ve been developing technologies that combine artificial intelligence and robotic underwater vehicles. With help of tools like EyeRIS—which uses lightfield imaging to capture 3D video in deep, dark ocean water—they’re revealing views that have never been possible until now. 

Last July, the Bioinspiration Lab launched FathomNet, an open-source image database designed to make MBARI’s data more broadly available to scientists worldwide. Here’s a glimpse into how Katija and her team plan to spark curiosity, encourage participation, even gamify parts of the project—all in service of saving the oceans. 

What drew you to your role at the Bioinspiration Lab?
My background is in aerospace engineering. I thought that might be the easiest pathway to becoming an astronaut someday. I was always enamored by ‌this idea of discovering new life and exploring new places. But space isn't the only place where that's happening. The ocean is full of life that we know nothing about. In some cases, that life is unknown to science. 

That's part of why I do a lot of technology development. What are the observational gaps? How do we fill them? What are ‌the needs of the marine science community that we can address ‌through technology? MBARI is kind of a perfect fit for that, because the whole institution is heavily involved in the development of new technologies or approaches to understanding the ocean.

When did you first become interested in exploring the use of ML and AI for ocean exploration?
For me, it's been over five years. But from an organizational standpoint, we've spent 30 years collecting visual data and having people process that data manually. MBARI is already sitting on this massive data resource. How do we leverage it to help solve much broader problems, not just our own? We wouldn't have had this starting point if it weren’t for the foresight of our founder, David Packard, who said we need to make sure we've built a video annotation reference system that allows us to search this data. 

My longish term goal is to create autonomous vehicles that can go out and search for new life. Being able to distinguish between known life and unknown life requires new algorithms we don't currently have. So we need to create libraries around what is the life we know, then make it easier to have human experts in the loop telling us when we don't know something. 

You’ve mentioned how there’s been a paradigm shift in your field driven by robotics. Could you walk us through the evolution of technology in ocean exploration?
Ocean exploration has predominantly been done by big organizations that have access ‌to the ocean. It's astonishing to me that an entire continent like Australia doesn't have a research-class, remotely operated vehicle on their shores. That means the outcomes have been somewhat restrictive. 

We've only achieved biological monitoring of maybe 7% of the ocean surface collectively. So we’re having to rethink how we complete distributed observations and avenues for people who might not be at these large ocean institutions but have the right to participate in this process. That's why we’re moving from research-class vessels and remotely operated vehicles to looking at autonomous systems that could be deployed anywhere. 

But also, we’re thinking more holistically around, how do you get the data? Our group took a look at how we were doing things and how we want to move forward. We've pivoted a bit to thinking more about how we improve access. There's this focus on data analysis and data pipelines, but also, how do we get what we do on these big, remotely operated vehicles onto autonomous systems that can scale better. We need to make sure tools that we spend a lot of time developing actually get used and adopted by the broader community. 

Why are you passionate about bringing diverse scientific communities together?
The problems we’re trying to address in the ocean are so massive that no individual group or institution will be able to solve them. Figuring out ways to collaborate effectively with groups is really important. This is part of why FathomNet exists. A lot of different groups are collecting a lot of data to answer their particular science question. But that science question might be really stove-piped and focused. 

The thing about visual data is that there's a plethora of uses for that information. Like, you might be a fish biologist collecting data on understanding fish distributions. But you're also collecting information on the habitat. There are other types of animals like corals or sponges that could be captured in the same visual data. If you don't make that data more accessible, you're not able to fully extract the information from it. In the beginning, it's very expensive and difficult to collect visual data in the ocean. But once you collect it, there's also a lot of value, and not only the science that comes out of it, but also how it could be shared and used by other people. 

With FathomNet, we tried to build an ecosystem around visual data sharing, particularly visual data that’s been labeled so it can be used by marine scientists, taxonomists who are curious about animal distributions or new species, but also computer scientists and data scientists—people who know algorithms. How do we make it easier to spark new collaborations between the ocean science community and computer science community? The goal of FathomNet is to enable these disparate groups that have real challenges to work together and solve them.

What’s your process for collaborating with other researchers and scientists? 
It's always a work in progress. For instance, FathomNet is one project. The list of core collaborators includes people in the for-profit space, the nonprofit space, academia, and governments. It's challenging to have these different groups and perspectives work together on any project. The number one thing I try to understand at the outset is, what is the motivation for this group? What is it they need to be successful? Once we all understand that, the process of coming up with solutions is a little easier. 

Then, we also take an honest look at the knowledge base of the current team and ask what’s missing. FathomNet was the first approach. Then we realized, that's great, but it's not really engaging. How do I engage enthusiasts who want to help with the data processing pipeline fathom—people who don't have computer science backgrounds or know how to set up machine learning pipelines? How can they use FathomNet for their use case? 

That's why we started to create this Ocean Vision AI program where FathomNet is one of the products. We're building a portal where people can upload their own visual data, link it in with ML Processing pipelines and have an end-to-end solution for their analysis needs. The last thing we're creating is FathomVerse. It's a video game that people can play on their phone to help contribute to improving the artificial intelligence that we use to observe life in the ocean.

How did you build a team with the AI expertise necessary to create FathomNet?
Our original team didn't have expertise in human-AI interactions. How do you best collaborate with artificial intelligence systems? We didn't have expertise in engagement. Most of us are scientists. We write papers. We dabble in science communication, but we don't know about building community. How do you come up with the right message? What is really engaging? 

Like with video games—there's a science behind how you build a game to be engaging and change player behavior towards a particular outcome. Sometimes those are profit driven, but in our case, it's data driven. We quickly figured out we needed different perspectives. It takes a lot of time, building those relationships, building trust, and getting to know people in these various communities. But there's this level of comfort with just not knowing, being okay with that lack of knowledge, and reaching out to people who are experts in that field.

How did you come up with the idea to add elements of gamification?
The game, FathomVerse will hopefully launch in April 2024. None of us have done this, but we know there are certain things that really resonate with people. The search for life, the search for connection is powerful. So we're hoping that will be helpful in giving people some way to interact and participate, as opposed to just watching YouTube videos. Like, here's a way you can actually get involved.

I thought a lot about science communication around the ocean versus, like, space exploration. And sadly, in most environmental programming, it's all doom and gloom—and for good reason. This situation is pretty dire. But that, unfortunately, isn't inspiring. So can we create a call to action that's not only inspiring, but also a real way for people to contribute to better understanding our our ocean and helping us monitor the ocean as it changes because of our activities?

Looking ahead, what are the next repetitive tasks you'd like to automate?
The annotation pipeline is a tough one. It's a long problem. But our group is really focused on, how do we get these algorithms running on vehicles in real time? We could be deploying vehicles to achieve a persistent presence, but if you're collecting an infinite amount of visual data, what do you do with this information? Can we convert it on the fly into names of animals and counts of animals? Can we do real-time monitoring? 

The ocean is a challenge because of water. It's communication-constrained. If we're pushing data off of our vehicles that are words or counts as opposed to actual images and video, that would be a huge improvement in our capabilities. So how do we take remotely operated vehicles that require a human in a loop to fully operate but do the same thing in a more automated fashion on an autonomous system that only needs human input when it's absolutely required? 

What part of your job do you enjoy so much, you don’t want it to be automated? 
Going offshore. Whenever I talk to people about the future of ocean exploration, I don't think autonomous systems are going to completely replace these remote systems. I think we need a big toolbox. These autonomous systems will allow us to survey an area much more quickly. But at the end of the day, we need eyes on things. We need to manipulate those things. These autonomous systems won't be able to to do that. But going offshore and seeing something in a completely new light is something I think automation will never replace.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This week, Stade Français Paris announced that it will be using Dropbox, Dropbox Sign, and Dropbox Replay solutions to accelerate its digital transformation and optimize its content creation workflows.

“Dropbox is proud to partner with Stade Français Paris, one of the oldest and most decorated Rugby clubs in France” said David Keogh, Dropbox Regional Sales Director. “We put trust and innovation at the forefront of our company and we’re excited to see Dropbox Sign being used for new contracts and Dropbox Replay deployed to support Les Soldats Roses developing engaging fan content.”

“We needed a secure solution that would enable our teams to collaborate on large files, review and approve content seamlessly, and manage contracts as well as other legal documents,” says Thomas Lombard, CEO of Stade Français Paris. “Dropbox provides us with this solution, so we can meet deadlines in a fast-paced industry. We are delighted with this partnership, which allows us to combine our shared values around teamwork and innovation.”

Stade Français Paris noted that Dropbox will help them review and approve social content quickly so they can share news with fans in near real-time. They also plan to use Dropbox Sign to manage internal and external partner contracts, including service providers, hospitality, and sponsorships. Their marketing and communications teams says Dropbox Replay will help them review and approve video content to connect more efficiently so they can engage with fans and deepen their relationship with the club.

“We're delighted to have helped bring Stade Français Paris and Dropbox together, and look forward to supporting them in their joint activations,” says Laurent Moretti, CEO of SPORTFIVE.

To learn more about Stade Français Paris, visit stade.fr or their social networks @SFParisRugby.

About Stade Français Paris
The club was born in May 1883 from the merger of the rugby sections of two Parisian omnisports clubs, Stade Français and CASG, with both teams competing in the French Groupe B Championship. Stade Français was founded in 1883 by students from the Latin Quarter, at the café "Le Procope". On March 20, 1892, Stade Français players played Racing in the first French Championship final on the Bagatelle grounds. Refereed by Pierre de Coubertin, this first final, narrowly lost (4-3), preceded the club's first three titles (1893, 1894, 1895). With many international players in its ranks, Stade Français went on to win a total of eight national titles between 1893 and 1908, playing a major role in the introduction and spread of the sport. CASG, founded in 1903 and winner of the Challenge de l'Essor in 1993, has had many international players in its ranks at almost every period. Bernard Laporte (French Champion with Bègles-Bordeaux in 1991) took over the reins of the professional squad in May 1995, building up a group of experienced and determined players. The 1995-96 season was the most successful since he took over. Today, Stade

Français Paris boasts fourteen French Championship titles and one European Championship, making it the most successful French club after Stade Toulousain.

About Dropbox
Dropbox is one place to keep life organized and keep work moving. With more than 700 million registered users across 180 countries, we're on a mission to design a more enlightened way of working. Dropbox is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. For more information on our mission and products , visit dropbox.com.

About SPORTFIVE
SPORTFIVE is an international sports marketing agency providing customer-focused solutions based on trust and transparency, in-depth industry experience and a global network, innovation, digital and data intelligence. SPORTFIVE strategically and creatively connects brands,

rights owners, media platforms and fans to create and activate partnerships in sport. While creating long-term value and growth for all, SPORTFIVE often leads the sports industry into the future with its innovative digital solutions, aiming to be the most progressive and respected

partner in sport. SPORTFIVE operates through a network of over 1,200 connected local experts based in 15 countries around the world, present in soccer, Olympics, rugby, golf, esport, motorsports, handball, tennis, American soccer, basketball, ice hockey, multi-sport events and many more.

In the vast rural areas of the U.S., where about one in every five Americans lives, the landscape varies widely—from Alabama's farmlands to the winding valleys of West Virginia, all the way out to Nevada's high desert. But all these diverse areas share a common healthcare crisis. People in rural America are more likely to die from heart disease, cancer, and other major illnesses than those in cities. And it's getting tougher to find care, with 191 rural hospitals having closed since 2005.

The problems are many and varied: not enough doctors, scarce special medical services, hospitals struggling with money, and other big-picture challenges. It’s not a one-size-fits-all problem. "The issues in Pikeville, Kentucky, for example, differ markedly just from those over in Mingo County, West Virginia,” says Dr. Phillip Polakoff, a Consulting Professor at Stanford and founder of A Healthier We, a non-profit dedicated to addressing issues in rural health. 

While there's no easy fix for the complex set of challenges in rural healthcare, AI is emerging as a potential change agent. Consider the AI advancements in medicine that have broken news in the last year: AI's newfound ability to grade neuroblastoma marks a major step forward in pediatric cancer care. In a recent study, an AI model, accessible via a phone app, outperformed clinicians in diagnosing pediatric ear infections. And AI's skill in analyzing eye scans is setting the stage for early Parkinson’s disease detection—years, potentially, before symptoms show up. Most of these AI advances focus on remote care and diagnosis. For underserved areas with limited access to specialists, innovations like these could be a lifeline. Beyond that, there's the possibility of AI potentially reducing "work about work" for doctors, creating patient narratives from a complex web of records.  

Polakoff is optimistic on AI—but cautiously so. “There are definite upsides to AI: from cleaning up electronic records to more personalized care to earlier diagnoses. But we’re going to need approaches that meld technological advancements with the most important thing: human touch.”

Here are five ways AI might make healthier outcomes possible across the rural US: 

1. Helping electronic health records deliver on their promise.  
Despite the switch from paper charts to electronic health records that accelerated beginning in 2009, U.S. healthcare providers often struggle with disorganized systems. (Who hasn’t been in an exam room, retelling their medical history to a doctor, while wondering why it isn’t already on the screen in front of them?) Dr. Ilana Yurkiewicz, a Stanford oncologist, delves into these challenges in her 2023 book, 'Fragmented: A Doctor's Quest to Piece Together American Health Care,' where she describes how doctors navigate through scattered electronic data to piece together a patient’s history.

AI offers a solution by making it easier to process vast amounts of data and identify relevant information, aiming to create a more coherent narrative from fragmented records. Yurkiewicz — another cautious skeptic—says that in a best case scenario, AI’s capacity for intelligent data analysis and organization could “clean up the messes of old tech,” enhancing how doctors access and interpret information for better decision-making.

That’s just the purpose of initiatives like MedKnowts at MIT and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. By simplifying electronic health record interfaces and efficiently and automatically presenting relevant patient information, AI-enabled systems could minimize the time clinicians spend navigating through complex data.

Developed for widescale use, the advancements could be transformative. “Especially in settings where there are shortages, you want to make sure that the doctor is working at the top of their license,” says Yurkiewicz. “You don’t want a doctor’s time bogged down in clerical tasks that technology can and should do.”

2. More targeted and effective cancer screening. 
We’ve written about the potential of AI to analyze genetic data for better cancer treatment decisions. But AI is also showing promise in early disease detection and targeted testing. This approach could be crucial where resources are scarce.

Dr. Adam Yala, an Assistant Professor in Computational Precision Health at UC Berkeley and UCSF, explains the shift in strategy: “Cancer screening is more than just reading an image; it's about getting the right image at the right time. Right now, we tend to recommend the same screenings for everyone, like mammograms for all women past a certain age, regardless of individual risks. This can lead to late detections or unnecessary stress and procedures.”

Dr. Yala advocates for the use of AI to create tailored testing schedules, adapting to each individual’s risk factors. AI’s detailed analysis of medical images could significantly improve the accuracy of cancer risk predictions. In places with limited resources, like fewer MRI machines or specialists, AI's efficiency in screenings could mean more effective use of what's available. As Dr. Yala puts it, “The more limited the resources, the more crucial and impactful this kind of prioritization becomes.” 

3. Improving EMS outcomes.

Calling an ambulance in rural America can be a fraught experience. People in rural areas wait nearly twice as long for ambulances compared to those in urban areas; sometimes up to an hour or more. These delays are critical; even a single minute can increase the risk of fatalities.

But in the future, AI-driven systems could optimize EMS dispatch and routing, ensuring faster responses over rural distances. By analyzing emergency call patterns, AI could predict when and where ambulances are needed most, allowing for smarter deployment of resources.

AI's role in triaging emergency calls is already showing promise. Systems like Corti analyze speech to help dispatchers quickly identify urgent situations, such as heart attacks. AI is also improving triage by efficiently processing data faster than dispatchers can. Technologies like RapidSOS are linking data from smart devices directly to emergency teams. And new technologies are under development to assess car crash severity in real time, a crucial advancement for rural areas where timely response is even more critical.    

4. Broadening access to mental health care.

Mental health is a huge concern across the country, but especially in rural America: 7.7 million nonmetropolitan adults reported a mental illness in 2022, and 5.7% had serious thoughts of suicide. But the access-to-care gap is much wider outside of cities. In rural areas, there’s a shortage of mental health professionals, affordability issues, and a prevalent stigma associated with seeking mental health care in small communities.

AI offers a novel approach to bridging this gap. AI-powered chatbots could provide remote mental health support, crucial in areas where in-person services are scarce. These AI tools can offer immediate assistance, conduct preliminary assessments, and provide ongoing support. Though the space is moving quickly, concerns remain about biases in AI training models, potentially leading to misinterpretations in delicate mental health situations. 

AI is also at the forefront of a trend with remote patient monitoring—the use of devices that can track indicators linked to mental health conditions like sleep patterns, activity levels, and heart rates. Those insights could help a doctor understand the severity of symptoms for conditions like depression and bipolar disorder, even if they’re located hours away.  

5. Enabling sophisticated remote monitoring and more complex procedures. 

It’s likely that you took part in the telehealth boom during the pandemic. For many of us, it was the first time we took a video visit with a doctor. With the surge in AI’s capabilities, telehealth could encompass applications that go far beyond remote consultations. Take, for example, AI-enabled neural stimulators, which offer promising treatments for conditions like Parkinson’s Disease. The devices allow for remote management and adjustments, particularly helpful when a patient lives far away from their specialist. “It’s one of the developments in AI that I’m most excited about,” says Polakoff.

Surgery in rural areas could change, too. Technologies like the DaVinci surgical system—which increasingly relies on AI to predict complications and optimize techniques—could further enable complex surgical procedures to be performed in hospitals that lack specialized surgeons. Operations that were once confined to well-equipped urban centers would continue to become more broadly accessible to rural hospitals, bridging the gap. 

“AI, if it’s used judiciously and effectively, has a place in rural health sooner rather than later,” says Polakoff. “But it’s going to take funding, of course, and smart leadership—at both the top and the bottom.” 

Any writer will tell you that, when it comes to writing, only part of the process is actually spent writing. 

First, you have to arrange your desk. The chair should be comfortable, the temperature just right. You should also put on a pot of coffee or tea, and—oh, have snacks at the ready in case hunger strikes. Come to think of it, when was the last time you checked the mail? Once you’ve done that, it only makes sense you spend just a few more minutes of scrolling on TikTok and Instagram to clear your head. Then you’ll be ready to write. Probably. 

This is a joke—but only in part. Eventually, you really do have to get down to the work of writing and push all of those distractions aside. But sometimes those very distractions are what actually help create the conditions to do good work.

For many years, I was a full-time freelancer, and I loved the flexibility I had around how and when and where I worked. On some days, I might start writing before the sun comes up. On others, I wouldn’t find my groove until everyone had gone to sleep. I could go shopping in the morning—first one at the mall, right there with the seniors—or see a midday movie with a friend. The details don’t matter. What does matter is that the work always got done, even if it wasn’t always between the hours of 9 and 5. 

That ethos extended to household chores. I could set a stew up for a mid-morning simmer, or throw in a load of late-afternoon socks. I had a monthly 1:1 with my cats, where the primary deliverable was a freshly cleaned litter box. Writer’s block was the perfect excuse to water the plants.

It was tempting—and still is!—to think of tasks like cooking and laundry as impediments to good work. They can be time consuming and take you out of the flow. They require just enough concentration and coordination to make multitasking difficult, if not impossible. But hear me out: What if personal activities like these are actually part of the work? Aren’t productivity and procrastination merely two sides of the same coin?

Understandably, not everyone thinks about this the way I do. In a Dropbox-sponsored study, Economist Impact surveyed knowledge workers about sources of distraction and how they found focus. Of all the knowledge workers surveyed, just 16% said that personal tasks—such as cleaning or chores—helped them recharge or regain focus during the workday. In fact, household chores were the most frequently cited distraction among knowledge workers worldwide. 

I won’t argue with the fact that chores may not be the most effective or enjoyable way to recharge. But if I wanted to do something pleasurable, I’d take a walk—or a nap! It’s precisely because they’re a distraction from the task at hand that I’ve come to appreciate sprinkling them throughout my day.

After a few hours spent sitting at my desk—staring at a screen, nudging my mouse around—there’s something refreshing about physical, manual, IRL work. Whether it’s lifting, chopping, hauling, or sweeping, chores are almost guaranteed to scrub any workday woes from my mind. It’s like changing a channel or flipping a switch; working with my hands gives my working brain a rest.

Other times, however, the mere thought of a looming chore can be more of an impediment to doing good work than if I were to just get it out of the way. My least productive days are often the ones where I work a traditional 9-to-5—the days when I can feel all the responsibilities looming, waiting for me, at the end of the day. The earlier I can cross those chores off my list, the easier I find it to focus, and the better I inevitably feel.

When I feel good about myself and the space in which I work, it’s easier for the work itself to be good, too. For me, that often means a fridge full of food and a well-arranged desk, but it might look different for you.

I get it; it’s easy to feel guilty doing something that isn’t your job when you think you’re supposed to be working. But one of the best parts about working from home—and models like Virtual First—is that we can leave the of the rigidity of the office behind. Knowledge workers who work flexible hours at home are more likely to report improvements in focus time, quality of work, and well-being, Economist Impact found. Of course you’re going to think of chores as a distraction if your conception of work is limited to the hours between 9 and 5.

As a writer, I’ve learned that just because I’m not writing, it doesn’t mean I’m not working. Even when it feels like I’m procrastinating, unproductive, or hopelessly distracted, I try to remind myself that my brain is still thinking, problem solving, and working out ideas behind the scenes. Just as writing is more than what ends up on the page, a job is more than the hours you spend at your desk.

Sure, washing a wool sweater may not directly contribute to your quarterly. Chopping onions for a nice stew won’t get you anywhere closer to writing that email or finishing those slides. Cleaning the grout of your shower tiles is hardly a good justification for a raise. But that’s exactly the point. Sometimes, finding focus means looking where you’d least expect—like the bowl of a toilet, brush in hand, waiting for inspiration to strike.