Jacopo Zanetti aka Jaiostudios

Photography, engineering, then film

Jacopo Zanetti lives and works in Milan^[1]. He studied photography first, then enrolled in mechanical engineering, and left university to make films^[1]. His site calls him a filmmaker and visual designer, and he signs his films Jaiostudios, after his nickname, Jaio, which the credits of What's the Job? put in brackets after his name^[9][4].

I decided to drop out to follow my dream: to make films.

Jacopo Zanetti^[1]

Alongside his own films, competition entries and client work, he makes visual projects for UVI, an Italian startup that builds solutions for orchestras and classical concerts^[1].

A horror short and a twin planet

His YouTube channel starts in October 2025 with The Nymph Within The Tree, a two-minute AI horror short^[10]. A month later, on 19 November 2025, he posted The Twin Earth, a four-minute animated fable^[5]. A scientist travels by rocket from a red, smoke-choked Earth to an identical planet where people are simply happier, comes home to tell everyone what he saw, and the world unites in hate^[8][5].

The look is the point. Home is flat, grainy red and black, with crowds and city silhouettes printed like a propaganda poster; the twin is a cool, flowered blue^[5][8]. He made the frames in Midjourney, generated every clip in Kling, upscaled the whole film to 4K in Topaz, voiced it with ElevenLabs and edited and graded it in DaVinci Resolve^[8].

Its laurels, on his own thumbnail, read Top 11 Finalist at the Chroma Awards 2025 in three places: Film: Science Fiction & Fantasy, the Kling AI award and the ElevenLabs award^[5]. It was also a finalist at the Bionic Awards, and on 10 March 2026 it closed AI LIVE Episode 112, the last film in the show's Bionic Awards finalists roundup^[8][13]. It travelled further on Instagram than on YouTube: ElevenLabs posted it as a collaboration in February 2026, crediting it with first place in Film: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, and that reel has passed 22,500 views, more than seven times its YouTube count^[14][5]. UnHuman Shorts also lists it as a winner, for Narrative Consequence^[17].

I just love this aesthetic and this Midjourney feel to it. It feels so different to other things that we've watched.

Chris Branch, AI LIVE Ep 112^[13]

On 27 June 2026 he posted a one-minute spec ad made for Runway's Big Ad Contest, which he titled Award-winning AI ad; the placement is his own description^[11].

Two months in an office nobody leaves

What's the Job? took two months of non-stop work, Jacopo said in the AI LIVE chat^[7]. Its own description calls it a surreal comedy fable "about a world that keeps you waiting for a role, until you realize you're the one who has to pick it"^[4].

A man is told it is his lucky day: he has a prestigious position. When he asks what the job is, he is told "everything this job requires"^[4]. Next morning he crosses an empty field with his briefcase to a concrete monolith, presses a buzzer and goes in. The front desk sends him to HR, in the smoking room up the back stairs; HR turns out to be an old man smoking under a tree in a misty forest, who tells him that no one leaves this place^[4]. From there he is passed to the Department of Assignments on the sixth floor, the head of operations, the office of records, the Supervisor of Affairs and finally the CEO, who has no time for him^[4]. So he takes a sledgehammer from a display case and breaks through the wall into a golden field^[4].

He framed it 4:3, like an old office photograph, and graded each world differently: warm amber offices, a cold blue forest, sunset gold for the way out^[4]. He edited, coloured and sound-designed it in DaVinci Resolve, with music from Musicbed and Epidemic Sound^[4].

This film is essentially about choice.

Jacopo Zanetti, Kazinform^[1]

He told Kazinform he used classic offices because they are what people associate with everyday work, and that people often try to steer others down paths that do not lead where they need to go^[1].

Best Visual in Astana

The first Astana AI Film Festival ran from 1 to 3 October 2026 as part of AI Month in Kazakhstan's capital and billed itself as the world's largest festival of AI-made films^[1]. It drew 8,067 entries from 125 countries, and 25 films made the final^[1]. The jury included Audrey Azoulay, former Director-General of UNESCO, and the prize fund was $2 million, half of it in prizes^[2].

On 3 October What's the Job? won Best Visual, one of five open-competition category awards worth $50,000 each^[1][2][3]. The grand prix went to the Latvian filmmaker Nikolay Shestak for The First Honest Day, and Best Direction to another Italian, Jacopo Reale, for The Fracture, a different filmmaker with the same first name^[1][2].

I feel like I am living in a dream, some kind of fever dream.

Jacopo Zanetti, on winning Best Visual^[1]

Sixteen straight 1s

The film went up on YouTube on 27 October 2026, the day of AI LIVE Episode 136^[4][7]. Marco Magario had suggested it, and Jacopo sent it to Chris Branch during the show, so the hosts watched all ten minutes cold, with Jacopo in the chat^[7][12]. The chat reached for Wes Anderson, Stalker and Terry Gilliam; the sound was low because of an export problem; and the film topped the night's vote with 16 straight 1s, ahead of Afro Futcha's The Rent Collector on 12^[7].

As far as 10 minute pieces of content go, I think that's the best one I've seen all year.

Chris Branch, AI LIVE Ep 136^[12]

Four days after upload, it had passed 10,000 views on YouTube, more than his other three films put together^[4][6]. His own Instagram reel of it passed 4,000 views in the same four days, and the festival had announced the award to its 27,000 Instagram followers^[15][16].