DK Media Studio

09/09/2026

Watched Apple's whole "Surprise and Shine" event today so you don't have to. Short version: almost nothing here was a real surprise, it had all leaked already, colors, chips, the works.

Except one thing. The foldable phone everyone was calling "iPhone Ultra" for months actually launched as the iPhone Duo. Small detail, but I think it's the smartest call Apple made all day, at $2,000 a phone, "Duo" goes down a lot easier than "Ultra."

Wrote up my honest take on all five big announcements, including the one thing that might actually get me to spend money this year. Link's in the post.

The only real surprise all day was a name.

09/09/2026

New logo new hat.

09/08/2026

I wrote an article about AI slop and opened it with three sentences of AI slop, on purpose, then almost let it stand without noticing what I'd done.

Tapestry, testament, landscape, an em-dash from a guy with a strict no-em-dash rule, a closing "in conclusion" that said absolutely nothing. I read it back and nodded like it was good.

That's really what the piece is about. Not a lecture on spotting bad AI writing, more an honest account of still getting fooled by it myself sometimes, six months into actively hunting for it. What helps: asking my tools directly if they see slop, turning every catch into a written rule, and still reading every single word before anything goes out, because the rules catch most of it, not all of it.

How I catch AI slop in my own writing, why I still miss it sometimes, and why the fix has to be mine to actually work.

08/25/2026

I set out to rebuild my whole website from scratch this month. A day in, I looked at what I'd built, a generic dark-gradient hero block that could've come from any template site, and just laughed at myself. Put the computer to sleep and called it trash.

Slept on it. The next morning I realized the new logo and color system I'd built were genuinely good, I just didn't need to tear the whole house down to use them. So I kept the good bones of my current site and repainted instead.

Two days total start to finish, versus the week-plus it took me to do a full rebuild back in December. New logo, new colors, cleaner code, same site underneath. Sometimes the studs are fine and the problem really is just the paint.

Check out the new look: dankmediastudio.com

Read about this project: https://dankildahl.substack.com/p/sometimes-a-fresh-coat-of-paint-beats?r=nrtuo

I planned to gut the house. Two days and one bad hero block later, I painted it instead and liked the result more than the week-long rebuild before it.

08/11/2026

Ever get your best ideas mid-run, or in the shower, or blasting music too loud in the car? That's where every one of my articles actually starts, and it has nothing to do with AI.

I've been calling my process Vibe Writing. Turns out I'm not the first, but that just makes me trust the idea more. The part people get wrong: I write 70-80% of every article myself before AI ever touches it. I've actually had people accuse me of "AI slop" while pointing at a sentence that was word for word mine.

Full breakdown of my actual 4-step process: https://dankildahl.substack.com/p/i-write-in-the-shower-claude-cleans?r=nrtuo

08/08/2026

Weird thing I noticed this week, and I promise I'm not just complaining into the void here, though it's a solid backup plan if this post flops.

I've been building native Mac apps in SwiftUI for a while now, and I just wrapped a full website rebuild for the studio too. I had this whole theory going in that the native app work would eat more AI tokens, more code, more structure, more places for things to quietly go sideways. Turns out I was completely wrong. The website rebuild burned through way more tokens than any of the app work has, and it wasn't even a close race.

I don't know whether to be impressed or offended. Anyone else run into this? Curious if it's just my workflow being weird, or if web work is genuinely more token-hungry than native app development these days.

Check out the new site:
https://www.dankmediastudio.com

08/08/2026

Just gave the DKMS website a fresh coat of paint.

New logo, new color palette, real production photography on the homepage, an actual video showcase instead of links out to YouTube, and every service page rewritten from scratch.

Funny story: I actually started with a full rebuild and scrapped it halfway through, the first pass just wasn't feeling the love. Went back to the existing site and updated it properly instead. Same care, better result, a fraction of the time.

Check it out: dankmediastudio.com

08/06/2026

There's a shot you can't get from the ground, the venue from above, the full sweep of the crowd, the building itself as part of the story. That's where aerial footage comes in.

It's not an add-on service, it's part of the same production as everything else DKMS shoots, same multi-cam ground coverage, same audio, same edit. FAA Part 107 certified, so it's handled properly and within the rules every time.

If your next production could use an aerial opening or an establishing shot that actually adds something, reach out.

dankmediastudio.com

08/05/2026

Fall season is right around the corner for choirs and performing arts groups, and if you're still looking for a videographer, let's have a conversation.

Multi-cam recording, precision audio, and 25+ years of experience with live performance, not just plugging in a camera and hoping for the best. Whether it's a full choir concert or a musical production, we bring the setup that actually fits how these shows work.

If you want your fall concerts and shows captured the way they deserve, reach out.

dankmediastudio.com