Nick Coston
Thirteen years inside the pipelines that carry a performance from one language into another. Five more putting generative models into those same pipelines, for the studios and broadcasters who own the content.
Thirty-two productions across dubbing, subtitling, scripting and audio description, 2016 to 2025.
I. Production pipelines
Before I sold any of this, I ran it.
Audio Producer & Client Lead / Deluxe
Ran Amazon Prime's English dubbing account end to end: casting and talent, studio scheduling, rights, delivery. Forecast and bid against $80M+ in production budget, and was the standing commercial contact for Amazon, Disney and Netflix. Built the automated invoicing and payment system the dubbing talent were paid through.
Localization Engineer / Netflix
Built internal tooling that automated scripting inputs, box timing and shot detection, cutting subtitle and dub turnaround by 80%. Led the rollout across production, which meant teaching the pipeline to people who had done it by hand for years.
Scripting Editor & Audio Description Writer / Deluxe
Lead editor for Amazon Prime, including every Hindi original. Rewrote the company's proprietary localization software so it would render Japanese and Hindi correctly. Wrote audio description for Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Warner Bros. and NBCUniversal titles.
II. Generative AI, in production
Not demos.
Lead, Media & Entertainment / Centific
I take an AI dubbing and localization platform to market with studios, agencies and broadcasters. It is listed on AWS Marketplace, and I positioned it in AWS's demo at the AWS booth at IBC 2026. The platform is built on ElevenLabs voice models, so I have spent the past year putting them in front of rights holders and answering the consent, talent and legal questions that decide whether a deployment ships or stalls. Separately, I originated the company's media data business: consent-chain speech sourced through the localization providers who hold the talent agreements, which our CEO adopted as the strategy for the vertical.
Sales & Business Development / Camb.ai
First commercial hire in North America for a real-time AI dubbing product across 140+ languages. Designed and ran the custom localization builds for live sport and global events, and landed the first paid pilots with the Kansas City Chiefs and MLS from cold outreach and sat with each of them through the work, and scoped a 12-language live test for WWE.
III. Built by hand
What I make when nobody asks me to.
Aroma, an ad in two originals
A 35-second spot for a bedside alarm that wakes you with a smell, made for ElevenCreative's The Search. Jingle, sound, product and picture all generated; English and Spanish made at the same time with the same hook and different smells. Not a dub.
The Victors, community platform rebuild
A Michigan message board that had run continuously since 1995 lost its host and died. I rebuilt it in six days by directing an AI coding agent. Python, SQLite, plain HTML, $7 a month. I kept the 1998 look the members wanted and added photo uploads, polls, live scoreboards and two custom games. It has been live and busy ever since, and now has 395 members, more than the old board had at its peak. I am not a developer. Two years ago this would not have been possible for me.
The write-up includes the rebuild timeline and the incident log: the real production failures and what I did about each one.
Show Prep, a podcast's week built by an agent
The weekly prep for my Michigan football show, turned into a system. An agent writes the talk track, the deck and the card graphics from a pack of sourced facts, and a set of tests checks that it never invents a number, ignores planted instructions and flags anything shaky before we record.
Motor Lion City, the trailer
A 45-second trailer for my Singapore feature script, made in English and Spanish at the same time, entirely in ElevenLabs: picture, voices, score, sound and lip sync. Both languages are the original.
The Man Who Saved Detroit, a localization study
A second scene from the same script, carried from English into neutral Latin American Spanish. Here the wit lives in how two men address each other, and Spanish can carry that in the grammar: tú to belittle, usted to turn cold. English master, untouched default dub and my adaptation, side by side.
Taxi to The Fragrance, a localization study
One scene from my Singapore feature script, built entirely in ElevenLabs and carried from English into Mandarin. Its comedy runs on American English against Singlish, which a straight dub erases. The page plays the English master, the untouched default dub and my adapted Mandarin side by side, with every call I made in between.
IV. Story
The part that came first.
Cupid: Under the Gold Knife / Excavation Pictures
A 118-page graphic novel I wrote and published independently through Excavation Pictures, the company I co-founded with Joey Costa. Joaquin Gear drew the interiors. Glenn Fabry, the cover artist on Preacher, painted the cover. We printed it, carried it to Ace Comic Con New York, Phoenix, Washington DC and Miami, and sold out our inventory hand to hand at the table. It reached Amazon's top 25 for graphic novel thrillers.
Citizen Skyland: Cupid Volume II
A 100-page sequel, with cover art by Adam Brown. Funded on Kickstarter at $48,085 from 85 backers, then printed and shipped. Backers voted on story beats while the book was being written, so the campaign doubled as the writers' room. A share of it went to K9s for Warriors.
Michigan Weekly / Blue by 90 network
Co-host of a weekly Michigan football show, second season. Recorded and published on a fixed weekly cadence. An hour of talk that has to be shaped, not just captured.
Analyst / FilmNation Entertainment
Read and covered features for acquisition; ten of the scripts I championed were greenlit, together taking roughly $300M at the box office.
M.F.A., Dramatic Writing / NYU Tisch
Written at Tisch's Singapore campus, where I lived for three years. Feature scripts include Motor Lion City and Cineribus. Earlier work archived at nccoston.com.
Every job I have had sits on the same seam: a performance made once, in one language, must now exist everywhere and in every voice.