This Penn senior builds businesses to find the line between technology and creativity.
Nick Harty (W ’27) contains multitudes. His interests span industries, but the fascinating part is not their breadth, it’s their depth. Ask him a question about startups, and you’ll have a comprehensive conversation about generative artificial intelligence. Ask him for his hometown, you’ll come away with a more nuanced perspective of what it means to be “from” a place. Now, he spends his time behind the camera, crafting worlds for other people to peer into. Every fact he reveals about himself has layers of truths underneath it, only to be discovered by those with the privilege to peel them back. Or those who read this article.
Field(s) ofStudy:Marketing, minors in Cinema & Media Studies and Electrical Engineering
Activities:Penn Appétit, Wharton Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club, Wharton Undergraduate Media and Entertainment Club, Venture Labs, Kinoki Senior Society
You’re on a very unique academic path. Walk me through your academic journey.
My minor in electrical engineering used to be a major. I actually started as an electrical engineering major, because I love building systems and figuring things out. Electrical engineering is the one part of engineering you can’t figure out from above. I think everyone wants to be Tony Stark, too. That scene in the basement is just awesome. I added an uncoordinated Wharton degree, and then dropped engineering after I realized it’s not that easy, and I didn’t love E&M as much as I thought. I added the marketing degree after working for a startup, and I thought it would be more useful to understand the business side a little bit more. I hadn’t taken any marketing classes yet, but as soon as I took “Art and Business,” I was like “Shit, this is a real industry. I’m never doing engineering again.” What I love about entrepreneurship is understanding the person on the other end, creating a product around their needs. That’s exactly what the better half of marketing is. Even in filmmaking, there’s a hint of that, right? You’re never building something directly for the audience, but to some degree, you’re trying to meet the moment with the writing. I love the work behind appearances.
What films have you made in the past, and what’s your current project?
Our first film was a quasi rom-com we made our sophomore year. It’s about these two students who come from two different worlds and become very good friends through the professor who implements this non-tech policy, but that forces them to reconnect, and they teach him a little something, too. Very Good Will Hunting–esque. Our second one was us trying to recreate that magic our junior year. We wanted to break the mold of a student project, so we shifted a little bit. It’s about a blue suit passed on through generations and the different boys that wear that suit. I can’t say we necessarily pulled off that story, but it looks very good.
I love watching rom-coms. I love watching sci-fi. I think both are so underserved in this current market right now, and that’s where our current project came from. It’s about these two people who were trapped on a spaceship. They’re in love already. They’ve given up because they only have eight days to live. They’re stranded, and one day, one of them wakes up and completely forgets everything.
The other one is completely pissed. But, the great thing is that her forgetting everything actually frees her mind open to figuring out the answer to how to get out of their situation. Because she’s no longer bogged down with, “Oh my God, we have eight days to live, and also I’m in love with this person.” We’re finishing the development process for that.
What does your startup Storiara do?
Storiara is an AI agent that takes a script and helps break down an entire budget for the initial portion of the film. It breaks down the script into scenes, analyzes each scene, and then comes up with really, really solid line items. Think characters, cast, extras, props, wardrobe items, vehicles and animals, stunts, music and FFX. You’re going to have to account for all of those necessary line items and build a budget around that. That’s usually weeks and weeks of work that somebody has to go through and highlight, and we crunch it down to 20 minutes. We’re not replacing someone’s job. We’re just making it like a whole lot easier because it literally is usually just one person creating that budget.
How did Storiara come to be?
Storiara came to be when my friend Charlie and I were at Penn in Cannes. The Cannes Film Festival is a wild experience — you watch 22 to 30 movies. But also, if you’re in film tech at all, you go there and present. That year, it was a bunch of AI garbage. We were listening to all that, and as an engineer, I thought, “Okay, is there any part of AI that we could actually use to help us in the physical production space without taking away from our creativity?” It turns out an large language model can break down a script and create an initial budget better than I thought. Charlie was really impressed by it, so I looped him and our friend Spencer into the mix. Over time, we built the system into something pretty good. We started showing it to some people at New York University and University of California, Los Angeles, and they kept coming back to it. Like they were using it in the filmmaking process, and that just mesmerized me. We started using it in our own films, and then people started coming back to us and were like, “Okay, how much does this cost?” And we realized, “Whoa, we might have a business here.” Charlie, Spencer, and I founded the company somewhere in July of 2025, and it’s just been uphill ever since. There’s a lot of studios right now that are really interested in investing in AI, which I think is dumb, but it’s really good for us because it means they’ll be willing to spend money on stuff that will actually help creators’ projects get made. People who are very against using AI also love our platform, which I find really funny because it’s still an LLM.
What is the Ora Blu Club?
It’s less of a professional thing. That’s the studio I created to make my group’s films seem more professional. When I say I created it, I set up a website for it; it’s not an LLC or anything. It’s very much my own little brand. Ora Blue means “the blue hour,” which is my favorite hour to shoot photography. The blue hour is that weird period between dusk and when it starts to get dark, where the sky turns deep blue. Up in New York, where my parents live now, it’s very prominent. It’s like a very deep, big, ocean blue.
How do you see these various projects shaping your future?
Storiara is a cool exercise to get us started in the industry. Our whole thesis with this is to our customers, we are in it for the long haul. But, as young lads trying to make a way in the industry, this is our way to meet people. So many people are interested in technology right now. We’ve been able to have some cool talks with some people that we really should not be in the room with. Those relationships are important because Hollywood is a very small town. You’re going to meet everyone quickly. You have to worry about what they’re going to think about you, if they’re going to give you recommendations. Storiara is planting those seeds early so that in ten years we can do something great, and that will be more on the creative side. I’ve always seen myself more as a director and a producer. I want to help get movies made. When I see a good idea, I want to have the leverage to go after it and make a film around it. But I also want to write and develop, which is what producers ultimately do. They come up with a really good idea, they hire writers out, and then they evaluate that story and pitch it to studios. And I really, really enjoy that process. You need a mix of that creative and business side, and that’s what I can see myself doing for the long term. The reason I don’t like directing as much is because it’s so hard. You have to say things to actors that might not make any sense to anybody else, and get them to give a performance in an unconventional way.
To an extent, you are working to automate part of a creative process, but you stand very firmly against the use of generative AI in artistic fields. Where do you draw the line?
My thesis has changed on this. I think we started Storiara to figure out our line. I used to believe there might be part of the generative AI process that could bring down the budgets for a lot of smaller filmmakers and help them compete at the studio level. The more that I understand about the industry, the more that I realize that’s just stupid. They can compete now. I think AI in the generator capacity is a lazy cognitive offloading that’s going to erupt in your face. My capacity for AI is shrinking as the days go on, and our platform sits at the bottom of that. I don’t believe it should be made and used in any generative capacity, especially when making creative materials. They apparently used it on a Spider–Man–like comic release book. How insulting is that for the fans of the film?
I ask a lot of people this question: “If the Gemini logo showed up right before you’re about to watch a movie, would you be excited about that movie anymore?” Creatives will never be punished for spending more time on something. But, why should I bother to read or watch something that nobody bothered to write or to make? If you’re a teaching assistant and you know a student AI-generated a paper, do you really want to read that paper? No, it sucks. I think films are the exact same way. I get completely bummed out when I realize AI made any portion of a film in a way that like VFX and stuff doesn’t. We consume content because we know other people made it, and there was like thousands of hours into it, and it deserves our respect. It sits on a pedestal. Once you use AI to make something, it’s not only lazy, but it removes it from that pedestal, and so it just becomes like everything else sloppy on the internet. It’s what separates a tweet from a book.
Finally, I asked you to pick a significant location for this interview, and you chose Clark Park. Why?
Clark Park is the best. I applied to Penn at the very last moment; I didn’t even know what Penn was. I felt so strange coming here, and I was not as pro–Penn as I should have been. I moved a lot around as a kid, and this was just another move to me. It was frustrating, but Philadelphia helped me ease into Penn. Clark Park was the epitome of that. I thought Philadelphia was boring, but then I started going to Clark Park on Saturdays, and I started to see so much of the West African influence here in Philadelphia. When you get here, everyone has a very weird whitewashed perception of what Philadelphia is. They talk a lot about Kensington, and then you get this idea that Philadelphia is just a bunch of druggies. It’s not: it’s freaking awesome. Clark Park is a great place for me to come quiet down. I love coming here on Saturdays and chilling by myself, eating an apple cider donut.
What’s your least favorite movie?The Social Network. It’s great, but it’s been turned into this glorification of Mark Zuckerberg and startup culture.
If you were a fictional character, who would you be?Marty McFly from Back to the Future
Your creative process in 3 words:Sporadic, problematic, mistakes
First movie you made: My little brother and I fighting with homemade lightsabers on my front lawn.
Where do you feel most at home?Los Angeles
There are two types of people at Penn… dreamers and doers.
And you are… a little bit of both. I think everyone is.
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