How AI Is Shaping Cinematography

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The video generation process that used to require a crew of five or six people is now happening in thirty minutes on a smartphone. Not because people are getting particularly skilled in the art, but because AI tools guide us through every step now. 

A solo creator can now produce at least a 100 professional-quality videos per month using AI video generation tools (Clippie AI, 2025). Those numbers are not even an exaggeration. With the adoption of improving tools like Sora 2 and Adobe's unlimited Firefly, it is very much a possibility. Ten years ago, a single cinematographer might produce that much footage in a good year. Now a person with a laptop and a description can do it in a month.

This is way more significant than the photoshop revolution or the CGI revolution, simply because of the speed and the accessibility. When digital photography replaced film cameras, you still needed a photographer. When CGI replaced practical effects, you still needed effects artists. But when AI generates video from text, you just need someone who can write a good description and make creative decisions about what the AI output should look like. You need a director, in a sense. Or at least someone playing the role of a director.

The accessibility will lead to directing becoming a skill that many more people practice at once. But traditional film production has always been structured around scarcity. A cinematographer charges thousands of dollars a day because it is a rare skill set. There are a limited number of them, their skills take years to develop, and you need their expertise on set. But if AI can generate cinematography, everything from lighting, to composition, to camera movement, then you don't need the person anymore. You need the person who knows how to tell the AI what kind of cinematography you want.

It’s not the same though. A cinematographer understands light, physics, and emotions in a way that is completely different. They make decisions on the fly based on what they're seeing in front of them. An AI prompt engineer understands language and creative direction. They make decisions based on what the AI is capable of generating. These are related skills, but they're not the same. Some cinematographers will transition into one role or the other. Many won't.

Disney and Amazon have been running pilots with AI video generation for the better part of the year. They're not using AI to replace human creativity entirely. They're using it to compress the phases of production that don't require much creativity. Pre-visualization used to take weeks with storyboard artists. Now it takes hours with AI. Color correction used to require dedicated colorists. Now it's an automated process (Numalis, 2023). Editing used to mean hours of grunt work. Now it's a matter of pointing an AI tool at your footage and telling it what you want.

The transition to AI, however, is messy. Solo creators might be producing over a 100 videos a month, but many of them are low quality. They hit the vibe they were going for, but they lack the craft and nuance that comes from someone who has spent years learning how to make compelling visual work. There's an intermediate period happening right now where quantity is exploding but quality is uneven. That will probably sort itself out in time. The tools will get better and people will learn what prompts work. We will be able to distinguish between AI-generated content that's functional and AI-generated content that's actually good.