Company facts

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The startup CYBERFILM.AI CORPORATION (known as CyberFilm®) was founded in 2021 by brothers Russell and Andrew Palmer of Toronto, Canada.

Russell Palmer (President & CEO) was inspired a few years ago when he saw his first GPT-3 demo and got access to the playground, to see what stories AI could write and what it would tell us about it and humanity. He has worked for the last 15+ years as a Product Manager from Seattle to Silicon Valley, at Microsoft, Samsung, JPMorgan Chase's AI Lab at Stanford Research Park (Palo Alto), and the pioneering AI start-up Viv Labs with the founders of Siri.

Andrew Palmer (Chief Story Officer) is an Author, Screenwriter, and award-winning Director/Producer. He founded Synapz Productions Entertainment Company to create, develop and produce Canadian entertainment content. Andrew has worked as an Assistant Director (AD) for the last 15 years on movie and television sets in Toronto and Vancouver (including hit shows "Suits" and "The Boys"), and is a member of the CMPA, DGC, and WGC.

CyberFilm® makes software products for content creators and filmmakers, like the app Saga (WriteOnSaga.com). Their expertise is in both Filmmaking and in Artificial Intelligence, particularly Generative AI. 

Saga empowers filmmakers to bring stories to life with a structured, end-to-end AI-powered workflow. Start by ideating your concept—logline, themes, characters or archetypes—then develop the structure using customizable templates (40‑beat film, 25‑beat TV, or your own). Once the outline is solid, Saga helps you draft a screenplay with industry-standard formatting, smart suggestions, and contextual scene generation. From there, you can automatically convert your script into visual storyboards and AI-driven previz animations powered by models like OpenAI's GPT‑4o, Google's Imagen 4, Black Forest Labs FLUX 1.1, Luma Ray-2, and soon KlingAI 2.0—helping creators visualize up to hundreds of shots per month. Upcoming additions include longer animatics and synthetic video generation, and new languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese, Hindi, and Mandarin).

The CyberFilm® headquarters is in San Francisco, with a satellite office in Toronto, and remote employees in Montreal.

CyberFilm® was bootstrapped from 2021-22 and later secured a Friends & Family round, which included participation from Shed Capital Inc. (Canada). The company also received an angel investment from Jason Calacanis, the founder of LAUNCH and host This Week in Startups and the famous All‑In Podcast, and lead investor behind LAUNCH Fund 4.

Other notable CyberFilm® investors and advisors include Canadian filmmaker Alex Jordan (DGC) and Dr. Mike Zyda, Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at USC’s Viterbi School.

"Generative AI-powered tools for the next generation of filmmakers - to creative more of their best work, faster."

Our mission is to democratize big-budget Hollywood filmmaking by empowering passionate creators to deliver blockbuster-quality stories on affordable budgets. Hollywood spending has surged, sidelining original voices in favor of franchise-driven content and placing traditional roles out of reach. We believe generative AI can bridge this gap—expanding access to tools, fostering creative diversity, creating new roles in the industry, and increasing both the quality and quantity of films made.

The Palmer brothers nurtured their passion for filmmaking from an early age—first by dubbing cartoons onto VHS, then by recreating scenes as a way to pass the time. Their homemade shorts evolved into dozens of videos produced during summer camps and family get-togethers. Over time, this early experimentation laid the foundation for more ambitious storytelling techniques and led directly to the development of Saga

As children, our co-founders Russell and Andrew were obsessed with movies - so much their parents hardly needed a babysitter (they could just put on a VHS tape of Ghostbusters or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) to captivate our attention rewatching for hours. After playing the tapes so often the brothers literally burned up them up in the VCR. With no tape left the Palmer brothers would act out the scenes for fun - after realizing they had them all memorized. With some skills learned making these homie movies, and after a few school plays, the boys had short stints as child actors for the CBC, and landing a few paid gigs including Sears advertisements. They also made home movies using the family video camera, and productions skills at Computer Camp programs (perfecting stop-motion and claymation using their favorite toys). This blossomed into dozens of videos filmed through future summer camps and programs in High School, making a number of short films and learning tools of the trade like editing, blocking, and other industry skills. 

While both later studied Computer Science & Engineering at University, the brothers differed in their paths when Russell moved to Silicon Valley to work as a Product Manager building Artificial Intelligence, and Andrew went back to Film School (majoring in Creative Writing) to pursue a career in the film industry, working his way up on Hollywood production sets from Toronto to Vancouver now as an AD (Assistant Director), having worked on hit shows like "Suits" and "The Boys". 

In the summer of 2021 while taking a Stanford course on AI Product Management, Russell received an A+ on his course paper for "how AI could disrupt an industry" (writing about the Hollywood film industry) with insights from Andrew on the varying tasks and roles. They wrote notably wrote about how AI could improve and grow the film industry (while noting harmful things to watch out for and push back against, especially in terms of ethics and job replacement). His professor at Stanford serial entrepreneur Dr. Ronjon Nag encouraged them to start a company, having a timely and original idea, as well as Founder-Product Fit. After researching the startup idea through Y Combinator "Startup School" they built a working prototype, performed customer interviews, and were ready to incorporate their startup CyberFilm in the Fall of 2021, launching the Saga app to the public soon after.