John Polacek is a staff software engineer at VEG and an independent filmmaker. His web-development projects span responsive design, animation and agent-assisted software; his feature Deviant explores an artificial clone through generated footage.[1][4]
Start with Deviant, a feature-length sci-fi thriller about AI, made with AI →
GitHub 
X Career
Polacek began as a Flash animator at an advertising agency, learned ActionScript and later moved into HTML5 and responsive web design. His open-source projects include Scrollorama, BigVideo and Responsivator. He describes joining a startup as its first full-time developer and working through its acquisition, followed by staff engineering and occasional engineering-management work at GiveSmart, Community Brands and VEG.[2]
Contributions
Deviant began as a screenplay. Polacek built character and set references in Midjourney and Nano Banana, generated shots with Google Veo and later Seedance 2.5, then edited in iMovie with ElevenLabs audio. Its 84-minute rough cut exposes practical limits of generated filmmaking: maintaining voices and characters, composing a coherent scene, and keeping a consistent appearance when the underlying tools change. The film and screenplay let viewers compare the intended story with the produced artifact.[4]
Tools, writing & talks
Writing, research & talks
Start here
Deviant, a feature-length sci-fi thriller about AI, made with AIdeviantmovie.comA complete science-fiction rough cut, with screenplay and production notes.
Watch the trailer, then compare a scene with the downloadable screenplay and production notes. The complete rough cut is free; no coding or generation tools are needed to watch it.
Writer and director[4]Original source