Radu Zlatianu’s Post

From live-action script to 100% AI-generated film. Proud to share our second Above The Line spot for Loop Earplugs, a key piece in their new campaign of humorous, relatable films. The Challenge: Translate a nuanced, low-light script into a fully AI-driven workflow. AI tools are built for bright, clean portraits—not the moody, complex realism of a nighttime scene. The Solution: 1. We pushed the tech beyond its limits. 2. Used Google's Imagen 3 for character concepts. 3. When the tool failed to create the low-light mood, we pivoted. We manually rebuilt and relit every scene in Flux Kontext, iterating hundreds of frames to achieve the right depth, contrast, and atmosphere. This was a true test of artistry, proving that AI production is as much about patience and vision as it is about technology. The result is a film that captures the human vignette. Big thanks to Hannah Yerbury at Marshall Street Editors for her precision and patience in the final cut, and to Vince Buyssens, Naomi Visser, Luke Crisell, and the teams at Loop and Untold Fable for the close collaboration. We're just getting started. Proud to show another real-world use case. Credits Client: Loop Earplugs Creative Direction: Luke Crisell Art Direction: Katy Roughton Production: Naomi Visser AI Production: Henyō Digital AI Director: Aaron Vergult Executive Producer: Zakaria Barkan Production Partner: Untold Fable — Ben Londesbrough Editing: Marshall Street Editors — Hannah Yerbury Color & Sound: Untold Fable Special thanks to everyone at Loop — Rob Weston, Rachel Kaplan, Gijs Koch, Karo Van den Brande, Francesca Ali Mirza, and Mitch Mues

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐀𝐠𝐞: 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐖𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐨𝐫 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐬? The camera is no longer the bottleneck. The editing software is becoming instantaneous. Soon, the biggest hurdle won’t be budget or technology; 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚—and whether we’re brave enough to trust it. AI is not just a tool; it's a paradigm shift. In the age of instantaneous image generation and script-drafting algorithms, the film industry is facing an identity crisis. Are we embracing innovation, or outsourcing our soul? The fear is real: Will the next great Indian epic be written by a human or a heuristic model? Will the jugaad (innovative, sometimes makeshift solution) spirit of independent filmmaking be replaced by a cold, efficient algorithm? 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤: AI won't replace the Storyteller; it will only replace the Technician who resists the tool. 1. 𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐚 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐏: The value shifts entirely to the unique vision, the cultural specificity, the unquantifiable human element—the masala that only life experience provides. 2. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐂𝐮𝐭: Leadership now means mastering the prompt, curating the AI output, and steering the emotional journey, not just managing a call sheet. 3. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐄𝐝𝐢𝐭: The industry's future lies in setting the ground rules for sustainability and fair compensation in a world of synthetic content. The changing landscape means the barrier to making a visually competent film drops, but the bar for making a meaningful film rises exponentially. 𝑰𝒕'𝒔 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒑 𝒅𝒆𝒃𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒇 𝑨𝑰 𝒊𝒔 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒉𝒖𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒊𝒕. How are you future-proofing your human touch in this automated era? Read our take on 𝐅𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐚 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝: https://lnkd.in/dmtEgifS #AIinFilmmaking #FutureOfCinema #Innovation #Screenwriting #Storytellers #CreativeEconomy #cinetwork #aifilmmaking #aifilms #Aishorts #aivsfilmmaking #storytelling

ACT3ai.com fits into AI Filmmaking by making the fastest way to create videos. Short Definition: "Full solution for Storyteller. Automates production" Long Definition: 1) Story teller writes what happens in script. Character X says Y. Action Z. Describe set/location in a few sentences. 2) Full workflows: Sets are separate in the product. AI builds first pass. Filmmaker upgrades. Same with Digital Actors & casting & characters. Same with Items (relic in story) and Creatures (talking animals). The goal is the story teller does the least work. In the workflow UI that is most normal to screenwriters and industry. Can import Final Draft scripts. Works with uploading legacy scripts. AI automates everything when provided a script. Then human filmmaker "upgrades" from there. That is my approach with http:// ACT3ai.com.

🎥 Dreamwalker – My First AI Short Film Written, directed and performed by myself – Hossein Abdollahi No camera. No real location. Just imagination and Ai. “Dreamwalker” is my first short film — created entirely through dreams, visual storytelling, and artificial intelligence. In this project, I wanted to explore how far AI can go in helping us turn imagination into cinematic reality. Instead of following the usual AI trend, I focused deeply on details, atmosphere, and emotional storytelling — to make it feel like a real film, not just another generated clip. The entire world of this film — every shot, light, texture, and emotion — was carefully crafted to create a dreamlike yet believable visual journey. It’s a reflection of how human creativity and artificial intelligence can merge to produce something poetic, surreal, and cinematic. This short film means a lot to me because it represents a new way of filmmaking — one where imagination becomes the main camera, and dreams build the scenes. I hope you enjoy the film and feel the story behind it. If you like it, please like, comment, share, and subscribe — your support means the world to me and helps me make even better and more powerful videos in the future. Tell me what you think about the concept — would you like to see more AI-based short films like this? Music & Sound Design: [free pixbay sounds] 🎨 Visuals: Created with AI tools (whisk + veo3 and grok imagine) 🎬 Directed & Edited by: Hossein Abdollahi 📍 Location: Created entirely in virtual environments

Notes on creating an AI trailer that saved us $20k+: 🛠️ Main tools we used were Nexus (our own tool) for brainstorming and storyboarding, followed by VEO3 & FAL (Kling). - Landing jokes on paper vs. landing jokes in video is like night and day. 80% of iterations were trying to get the beat of the joke to land. We wanted dry, deadpan comedy. In hindsight, it was a very difficult way to approach this. - You own the creative vision now in a much deeper way, exposing where agencies really bring value. - Filmmaking and visual storytelling knowledge matters: beats, scene transitions, pacing. AI can't compensate for not knowing this. - High action equals high risk for warping and requires manual work in post. - Custom filmmaking language for prompt engineering matters; specificity versus vagueness. - Know AI content filters before you start. Toilet scenes wouldn't generate even if completely innocuous. We worked around this with tight framing and focusing on trouser legs. - Keep scenes concise. Longer concepts corrupt more, even within an 8-second limit. - Oh yeah, and AI does strange things. Why would someone drinking through a straw tip their head back to drink?! Sometimes you just accept it and move on. It's true what they say: 300 to 400 iterations to get 15 usable clips.

Really wish people would stop making really bad analogies and bingo card buzzword posts. It's embarrassing even by 2023 levels. The terms 'slop' or 'hallucinations' are used by machine learning engineers, not just random AI critics. Machine learning engineers do not make bad analogies and rewrites of history. They talk about the technology on its own terms, acknowledge the limits, talk about the bugs and slop almost daily, and admit that deep learning on public data is contentious.

The current discourse dismissing AI-generated content as "slop" reveals either a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology or a complete absence of engagement with it. This binary is telling: you've either wielded the tool improperly, or you haven't wielded it at all. AI is not the enemy of craft—it is an instrument. A pencil in the hands of a master draughtsman yields Michelangelo; in the hands of a novice, it yields a doodle. The tool does not determine the outcome; the talent does. AI, when directed by genuine artistic vision, produces precisely what that vision demands. But let us pause for necessary perspective: AI is an infant technology. It hasn't even begun to crawl. This conversation—this moral panic about authenticity and artistic integrity—will age like a debate about the legitimacy of the printing press. In two years, five years, a decade, these arguments will seem as quaint as concerns about the fax machine replacing personal correspondence. I speak not as a technologist enamored with novelty, but as an award-winning director with international recognition across multiple disciplines—directing, photography, editing, visual effects. My reputation rests on pushing the boundaries of what's possible in visual storytelling. And from this vantage point, I've witnessed something the gatekeepers seem reluctant to acknowledge: The film industry has been producing slop for decades. I have seen mountains of expensively produced mediocrity created by individuals standing on industry pedestals—work that wastes obscene budgets while delivering creative bankruptcy. These self-appointed guardians of "authenticity" would have us believe that pointing a camera and sitting beside a Nuke operator, burning through client money to make the fabricated look photorealistic, is somehow more "real" than using AI tools? This is the land of fathers protecting their territory—the anxiety of obsolescence dressed up as aesthetic principle. The irony is exquisite: an industry built on illusion, on making the impossible appear real, now clutches its pearls when the tools of illusion evolve. What is cinema if not the art of beautiful lies? What is VFX if not the craft of convincing fabrication? The question has never been about the tool. It's always been about the vision behind it.

This post articulates many points I find myself repeating about AI, and many I hadn't considered. Worth a quick read.

AI Generated Prop and Set Design AI has sparked a lot of debates in the world. Some view it as a threat to originality and artistry, while others, like myself, see it as an exciting new tool, one that, when used thoughtfully, can expand the possibilities of storytelling and visual design. As a filmmaker, I view AI not as a replacement for creativity, but as an addition to my artistic toolbox. Just like a camera, editing software, or a lighting rig, AI is a resource whose value depends entirely on how it’s used. When handled with purpose and imagination, it can help bring ambitious ideas to life—especially in the realm of prop and set design. One of the ways I’ve incorporated AI into my filmmaking process is by using it to enhance scenes that would otherwise be limited by budget constraints. For instance, imagine needing a detailed hospital setting for a short film but lacking the funds to rent medical props or dress an entire set. With AI, that limitation disappears. Inspired by traditional visual effects (VFX) techniques, I begin by shooting my scenes while leaving enough space in the frame for digital enhancements. Afterward, I take a still frame from the footage and upload it to Google’s Gemini, where I provide clear, specific instructions. For example, my prompt for the scene below was, “Add picture frames in the background of the character as if in an office.” Once the AI generates the image, I drop it on top of my footage in and mask out everything except the new elements I want to include. The result? A seamless, visually enriched scene created at virtually no extra cost. The process does require some pre planning. It’s important to avoid movement in the parts of the frame where you plan to insert AI-generated elements, as this minimizes the masking work later on. However, for those willing to take on the task, even better!. With a bit of patience and technical skill, AI can become a powerful collaborator—one that helps turn imaginative concepts into cinematic reality. In the end, the magic of filmmaking has always come from creativity, innovation, and the courage to experiment. AI simply gives us one more way to make that magic happen. 🪄