Private · For Spike Lee“AI has no music. No soul.”
— the line you put in Highest 2 Lowest. You've also called it a shortcut — “you're cheating yourself.”
You're right. The soul was never in the tool. It's in the people — the DP who lights it, the editor who finds the rhythm, the writer who bleeds on the page, the composer who scores the ache. PROPEL exists for one reason: to make sure the people who bring the soul own the result. Not the studio. Not the model. The makers.
The danger was never the machine.
It's the same danger it's always been: the people who make the work don't own it, can't prove they made it, and get written out of the credits and the money. AI just poured gasoline on a fire that was already burning.
A handshake and a group chat. When the money shows up, so do the arguments about who did what.
Talented people paid a flat rate — or nothing — while the upside walks out the door.
Share your idea to get hired, and watch it get made without you. No paper, no recourse.
An ownership layer for the people who actually make it.
A network where filmmakers attach a real team — director, DP, editor, writer, composer, VFX — for points and credit, not a day rate. Every contribution is recorded as it happens. Who made what, and who's owed what, is provable — not promised.
From a locked idea to provable credit — and where AI fits.
No blockchain jargon, no theatre. Five steps take a project from a confidential pitch to a public credit roll that holds up.
A filmmaker posts a project behind a mutual NDA/NCA, signed in about 30 seconds and identity-verified (Persona). Nothing is public; the idea is protected before the first conversation.
Director, DP, editor, writer, composer, VFX come aboard for agreed points and credit. The terms are written as a real split and chain-of-title record — not a handshake in a group chat.
As people work, each contribution is logged and time-stamped into an immutable record (the ContribLog). Who made what, and who's owed what, becomes provable — not remembered differently by each person later.
Finished frames carry cryptographic content credentials (C2PA), so the record of authorship follows the file out into the world — even after it leaves the platform.
The NDA/NCA lifts, credit and splits resolve to the public record, and every person can point to exactly what they made and what they're owed.
The tools are new. The craft is the person.
PROPEL is built for a generation using AI as a tool inside their craft — writing with it, building scenes with it, stretching what a small team can make — the way earlier filmmakers reached for a new camera or a cutting room. Whether a scene is filmed or generated, a person is still the author. Tools like Runway and Sora keep changing fast; what stays constant is that PROPEL makes sure that person owns the work and gets the credit.
Filmmakers who use AI inside their craft — drafting, building scenes, extending VFX and motion — alongside everything they already shoot. The tool serves the vision; the vision, and the ownership, stay theirs.
The platform uses AI to match collaborators, structure the confidential deal, and sort each contribution into the ContribLog — the operational weight that used to kill collaborations. The craft stays entirely human.
AI surfaces and records; people decide. It never assigns a credit or sets a split on its own. That's the guarantee: the tools change, the ownership stays with the makers.
“40 Acres and a Mule” was never just a company name.
It's a claim about what's owed to the people who did the work. That is the entire idea behind PROPEL. Nobody in film has spent a career making that argument louder than you.
Forty years of getting it made on your terms when the industry said it couldn't be done — and owning it after.
Artistic Director at NYU Tisch. You already spend your life handing the tools to the people coming up.
From Fort Greene to the Oscar stage, ownership has been the through-line. PROPEL is that principle, in code.
Your name, when you believe in it. Your standard, baked into the product. And when you're ready — an introduction or two to the people who move this industry.
Not your day job. Not your films. A cause you've already been fighting for your whole career — with real infrastructure behind it for the first time.
Warren & Spike Lee — New York.
We crossed paths days ago, while I was building this. I took it as a sign.
The operator building PROPEL.
I'm Warren Velázquez. For 13+ years I've taken complex launches from signed deal to public go-live — running design programs and creative operations for Google, GE Healthcare, Dow Jones and Fortune 500 brands. I was Director of Creative Operations at a $50M+ a16z-backed startup, where I built a 3D, motion and design team from zero and shipped launches alongside working artists.
PROPEL isn't a deck I dreamed up. I built it — and three other products — solo, self-taught in AI, on nights and weekends. It started because friends in the AI-film community kept hitting the same wall: no trusted way to co-create and get credit for the work. I saw the problem, so I built the fix. I don't just run the pipeline — I notice where the work is going, and I ship.
You said you were scared of what this could do to the world.
Build the thing that answers it.
One conversation. If it's not for you, you'll have lost thirty minutes. If it is — you'll have helped set the terms for how a whole generation gets to own their work.
Let's talkWarren Velazquez, Founder · pr.wvelazquez@gmail.com