AI as an assistant

AI makes things faster, but you should not outsource your entire thinking to it. As a filmmaker and the director of Kathaharu, I have found AI tools to help with the project management and polishing aspects of the project. But as I said, AI can make mistakes, and you must be able to know its limitations before using it.

That out of the way, some of my biggest life-saving fixes have come from AI-tech. A lot of the conversation seems to be about generative AI, but the tools that really help creatives are the ones that simplify mundane tasks and free up time for brainstorming, ideation, and collaboration. I must stress that we need to adopt the tools that fix previously ‘unfixable’ things, but not remove the creativity from the process as a whole.

Faster research and planning

We work a lot with non-fiction material, and in such videos, research is a big part of things. ChatGPT and Claude have been excellent research assistants for this. For storyboarding, I do prefer sketching by hand, but lately—storybirdie has my attention. I have been tinkering with it for short films and ads, and its ability to do fast storyboarding really impresses me.

Production management

We have a lot of stock and samples from our years of work, so we still rely on that library for mood boarding and reference images. But a very underrated AI save came recently when we got Claude to create a database management system for our library. We are still experimenting with it, but those administrative and system design aspects really free up our time to focus on the story and what to ‘shoot’. Another save has come from AI transcription tools like Sonix—transcribing hours of interviews can be daunting, but these tools truly free us up from busywork.

Post-production saves

I believe AI is a saviour in post-production, but not in the way it’s been positioned. AI tools really allow us to fix previously unfixable errors. Did the microphone pick up too much noise? Clean it up on the Adobe podcast. Is your shot out of focus? Sharpen with Topaz AI. You need a higher-resolution photo or video—upscaling is with Topaz. You just need a few more seconds of footage—use Adobe Firefly to generate them. These interventions were not possible before, and you had to live with the errors. Now, there are ways to save your videos while maintaining our editorial control and elevating the final product.

Human emphasis

I love AI-powered solutions that keep humans in the centre. As a creative professional, I feel there is a push to replace humans in the creative process, which totally misses the point of creating. But at the same time, the creative industry often finds itself at the forefront of technological disruption. The way to go is to use AI technology that reduces hurdles and friction that eat into the time we spend ideating and polishing our work. Keep humans in the centre while the tool gets better at streamlining our process.