Nicholas Carlton and James Lawler.
Filmmakers Nicholas Carlton and James Lawler have launched Melbourne-based Gobstopper, an AI creative studio making brand campaigns and original IP.
Gobstopper offers AI motion and stills production, along with hybrid work extending or scaling live shoots with generative tools.
The studio sells monthly subscriptions offering a set volume of finished creative at a fixed cost, alongside standard brief-by-brief production.
"The internet is awash with AI slop," Carlton said. "AI gives you infinite choices. What's scarce is the judgement to make the right ones — aka taste."
Alongside client work, Gobstopper is developing its own slate of original IP.
Carlton was previously a director at production company Airbag, with clients including Ford, Hyundai, TAC and Hungry Jack's, and directed on the SBS drama Hungry Ghosts and Foxtel's Wentworth.
He also created the 2008 web series OzGirl, and has won an ADG Award, a Webby and a Good Design Award.
He most recently worked in tech as founder of Spoony, a VC-backed social platform, and spent the past six months building Parallax, an AI filmmaking platform now being folded into Gobstopper's production tooling.
Lawler was one of Australia's was an in-demand music video director, working with The Amity Affliction and The Getaway Plan, before becoming creative director of production company Visual Domain. His short film Pleasures of the Damned screened at St Kilda Film Festival last year.
Carlton and Lawler have worked together for 15 years.
"Jimmy's one of my best mates and the person whose taste I trust most in the world," Carlton said. "He introduced me to AI filmmaking last year and saw its potential for real creative work early."
Lawler said AI had opened up ideas nobody would have dared brief before.
"I've watched hundreds of briefs die between what a client could imagine and what a shoot could deliver," Lawler said. "AI doesn't just save those briefs. It's opened up ideas nobody would have dared brief in the first place."
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