What I Got Wrong About AI Video Production (And What Changed Everything)

When I started using AI for commercial production I assumed the hardest part would be the technology. Learning the tools, figuring out the workflows, getting consistent output.

I was wrong about that.

The hardest part was my own expectations. After 15 years in traditional production I had a very specific idea of what "good" looked like. And AI output didn't fit that. Not because it was worse necessarily — it was different. And my instinct for a long time was to fight it. To keep trying to make AI footage look like it came off a RED camera.

The shift happened when I stopped doing that and started asking what AI can do that traditional production actually can't. You can change the entire world of a shot with a sentence. You can explore creative directions that would be financially impossible on a real set. You can iterate on a concept in minutes instead of weeks.

I'm still figuring a lot of this out honestly. But I stopped trying to force AI into the old framework and started paying attention to what the new framework might actually be. And that changed everything about how the work comes out.