I'm Eric Hsiao. A decade spent cutting film for brands like Google, Anthropic, Figma, and The North Face. Now I make generative film and AI-native products too. HARD8 is my bet that the hard way still pays.
When anyone can generate anything, the hard part isn't making more. It's knowing what to keep. Editors got here early.
What changed
The editor's job is deciding what stays. Hundreds of takes come in, maybe twenty make the cut, and the film is made of everything you said no to.
That judgment used to live downstream. The shoot happened, then the footage came to me. Generative tools flip it: the person who decides what to keep now gets to make. Direct the shot instead of receiving it, design the world instead of inheriting it, start at the idea instead of the handoff. Building an app runs the same loop: generate wide, judge hard, keep the one that's right. Same eye, moved upstream.
Why the name
In craps, a hard 8 is eight rolled the hard way: two fours, one exact combination. Worse odds, honest work, better payout. That's my bet.
For me, it has a second meaning: in Chinese, four (四) sounds like death (死) and eight (八) like fortune (發). A hard 8 is alchemy: double death into gold.
Anyone can roll an eight. The hard 8 is a choice.
Capabilities
Film & post
- Editorial / offline edit
- Post-production supervision
- Direction
- Motion & finishing
- Brand film & campaign content
AI & product
- AI-native product design
- Generative video & imagery
- Full-stack app builds (solo)
- Creative systems & automation
Brands I’ve cut for
Google · Anthropic · Adobe · Figma · LinkedIn · Canva · The North Face · Specialized · Zoox · LG
Co-founder & creative director, Desmond Studio, 2016 to 2025