IS AI A BETTER DOP THAN ME?

It seems to have an experienced understanding of light and composition and an imagination that makes me think we should rather call this thing Artificial Imagination. Not hard when you consider it’s standing on the shoulders of all the learnings of the worlds’ greatest photographers, artists and technicians from the last 100 years or so. There seems to be no bound to it’s out-of-the-box thinking and lighting budget. I could never have imagined some of the beautiful scopes it produces. Come with a clear vision of what you want however, and this is where we start to butt heads. Despite all the inputs to describe a perfect scene, you’re still left at the mercy of this Artificial Imagination. Sometimes it’s better than anything I could’ve done – but where I battle, at least at this stage, is with continuity.

Now this is a good point because it will come into play as we’re exposed to AI’s video capabilities. I’m sure this is already a huge consideration within the developers of AI for video because otherwise, how will you make a complete scene, let alone a story, if each frame is subject to it’s own interpretive imaginings. How will you make a TVC when the main talent is suddenly from a different region or in another outfit? My thought is that it will learn from all the resources it’s getting – ChatGPT already knows how to generate a decent script so surely it will tell Sora how to break a scene down, block a scene and visually tell a story. Get that right, and the spotlight falls on: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR “THE SHOOT”?

For a while now, we’ve taken the approach of having fewer yet more highly qualified personal on our shoots to better the on-set experience for all involved as well as being budget friendly for our clients – essentially doing more with less while being able to scale in a top-heavy direction to improve production quality. What this has allowed us to do is have fast moving shoots packing more value for the client into fewer shoot days while maintaining a highly professional product. This is really the result of the mood over the past few years, which is, lower budgets with tighter timelines (typically the antithesis of creativity and production value), and has allowed us to be competitive by drawing on our experience in the film and commercial industries. AI video promises to take this to the extreme with high production value coming at the cost of a few dollars and an enlightened prompt. Fly the equipment trucks – skip the location recces, the weeks of meticulous planning, ideation and expensive shoot days. This could even mean that clients will begin to feel they can do it themselves, replacing all the crew and even the creatives!

I think we still have a ways to go before all this happens, AI has a way to go before it can match the camera but rest unassured that it will happen – it has to – it’s a question of economics, not creativity. It will be interesting how we as consumers react to being advertised at with AI generated images. I question the sincerity of it knowing that it’s all fake, but then, isn’t advertising all fake already? Will we even trust AI generated content? But that is another whole topic on it’s own.

Sure, the democratisation on the film industry has it’s benefits, certainly not to the people working in it but rather to those small businesses trying to get quality marketing material out there, but what happens to all those people when you bypass an entire industry? The people who will truly benefit have probably never worked in production ever!

Ultimately, film (and I mean filmed content in general) is meant to make you feel something – often something you’re not even aware of feeling and it’s these things that make Director’s and DOP’s so valuable because they intuitively (and painstakingly) know how to generate that through what is essentially an artform. So is AI a better DOP than me? How much value we place on these commercial artists once we become familiar with AI generated content will ultimately be the answer to that.