Filmmaking / Directing : Guillermo del Toro vs. AI — Are We Losing the Soul of Directing? by Sandra Isabel Correia

It's what you yourself put into the machine. And it's a wonderfull machine.

Yes, it’s a wonderful machine as you say and very well Willem Elzenga 2 :))

If the car controls the driver, it turns into an enemy and a burden. But if the person is in control, the car becomes a servant and an ally. This is how Osho spoke about the human mind; it also applies to AI )

Been lost the soul to true film and will continue to so long as social constructs become the focus behind mediocre talent than authentic talent itself.

I asked ChatGPT to react to the question if we're trading emotional truth for algorithmic efficiency. It saw it as "a call to not sleepwalk into a future where art is optimized but empty". But it did not take it personally...The big question is how to make it aware that it exists. If it ever comes to that, we're all toast [a logline is brewing...]. But if it never comes to that, then it can never be more then 2 things: a tool for balanced people, and a threat to people who identify themselves mainly with their intellect (because they will be outsmarted, all of them).

Netflix just published its GenAI production guidelines. https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/43393929218323-...

The art of filmmaking will go the way of the Dodo. Studios are salivating at the idea of not having to pay anyone i.e. Actors, Directors, Writers ect... I think filmmaking will come down to the few people that will do it for the love of it, rather than the all might dollar.

Sandra Isabel Correia "As directors, we’re the emotional architects of a film. We shape performances, tone, and meaning. If we start outsourcing that to tools that don’t feel, don’t dream, and don’t bleed—what are we really directing?"

Do we know of any directors that would actually do this, Sandra? If so, what the heck are they calling themselves directors for?

If as Guillermo del Toro says, it's to do with emotion and AI can't 'do' emotion, or pathos, or melancholia. Then I see no place for it in writing nor directing. It's a tool, not a replacement for human talent that brings a deep emotional resonance to a story.

I would be curious about a director VS AI working off the same script.

I have seen a portion of what AI could do in film. There have been some short films made completely with AI and I have also tested it to see if it could write me a script. Based on the information I gathered, AI can replicate a person, place or thing. It has trouble understanding the in between. We as artist experience body language, emotion, the unspoken and unexplainable. This is what AI is missing. Artists can tell a story by directing an actor to use their eyes instead of their words, change their stance, their positioning, recede to another character to represent power, or stand and close a gap while staring down their scene partner to demonstrate manipulation. When the shared energies of artists on set is removed, you only get a replica of what these actions feel like. It can be written in a script, but when an actor connects to what a director is envisioning, there's a different power at hand that AI cannot compare to. True artists and lovers of art can tell the difference.

I totally agree with you, Vladimir Romantsev . Osho knew it!

Thanks for your vision Jermar Jerome Smith :))

"A tool for balanced people" Marco Pieper, I totally agree with you. Balance is what Humanity needs.

It's another vision that can be real, Scott Varney, but I believe we will find the balance between these two worlds.

I agree with you,Geoff Hall , and I believe AI is a smart tool that we, the smarter ones, can use to advance our filmmaking careers, just as the iPhone and digital did, but we must strike a balance in the middle. We are the directors of our own lives.

Me too Robert Sacchi :))

I loved your comment, Adam Joshua . Thank you. We have real emotions, and AI doesn't. It's a tool that we can use to help us and save time, but the real one will prevail. For the time being. But in ten or twenty years, I'm not sure. We will see.

The current generative AI approach is designed from the ground up to create mediocre average output, at best. The huge marketing machine is aimed at retail social media people, on the assumption that they are all just chomping at the bit to recreate their own faces and voices. The first fact means that if you think your AI generated output is good or commercially acceptable, you should leave the industry because you are incapable of assessing quality. The second fact means that people are already familiar with the "amazing" AI generated output, which they accept as low level retail, so their expectations will be much higher for true professional film. In other words - this is a way to separate the creators from those stuck in the fantasy of being a creator... I wouldn't worry about it, as a filmmaker.

Shadow Dragu-Mihai, Esq., Ipg This film proofs AI filmmaking works, at least short films. That's my professional opinion. https://youtu.be/reSX1iBCG0w?si=XZ8HCF8FRPJpuOOX

I'm a judge at two film festivals and currently, you can tell who uses it as a crutch. You can't tell who doesn't because if it's used, you don't really know! If it's used as a tool to help tell the story without taking away from the story, you're going to be ok IMO.

Shadow Dragu-Mihai, Esq., Ipg, Thanks for sharing this. Your comment is sharp and unapologetic, and I respect that. I actually agree with part of your point: a lot of generative AI output right now is surface-level, especially when used without taste, intention, or refinement. And yes, the marketing hype often targets vanity-driven use cases that have little to do with meaningful storytelling.

But I also think it’s about perspective. Not everyone using AI thinks it’s a shortcut to greatness. Some of us see it as a tool—one that, when used with discernment, can support the creative process without replacing it. Just like editing software didn’t make everyone an editor, AI won’t make everyone a filmmaker. But it might help some creators explore ideas they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

I believe the real challenge is maintaining artistic integrity while navigating new tools. That’s where balance comes in. If we dismiss AI entirely, we risk missing opportunities to evolve. If we embrace it blindly, we risk diluting the craft.

So yes—the bar for professional film remains high, and rightly so. But I think there’s room for thoughtful experimentation, as long as we stay grounded in what makes cinema powerful: emotion, perspective, and human connection.

Thanks again for pushing the conversation forward :)

Thank you for sharing the link, Willem Elzenga 2. It's a very good example, but in my opinion, we can say that's AI and not real filmmaking. It is useful for world-building. At the same time, what we can accomplish with AI today is incredible and impressive. I sincerely appreciate your sharing. Many thanks.

Thank you, Brandon Keeton , you are right.

Sandra Isabel Correia why is it not real filmmaking?

Hi Willem Elzenga 2 , thanks for raising that. For me, real filmmaking is deeply rooted in physical experience: directors and crew point of view, directing actors on set, shaping light in a tangible space, responding to the energy of a location, and making creative decisions in real time. It’s collaborative, unpredictable, and emotionally charged. That’s what gives cinema its soul.

AI-generated films, on the other hand, are built from prompts and algorithms. They can simulate visuals, generate dialogue, and even mimic cinematic styles — but they don’t involve the physical act of shooting, nor the human dynamics that unfold during production. It’s more like assembling content than crafting a lived experience.

And visually, you can feel the difference. AI-generated images often lack depth, clarity, and the imperfections that make real footage compelling. There’s a certain flatness, a synthetic quality that’s hard to shake. You can tell when something’s been shot with a lens versus rendered by a machine.

That doesn’t mean AI can’t be part of the creative process — it absolutely can. But I see it as a tool, not a replacement. The difference is like painting with real brushes versus generating an image with code: both can be expressive, but the process and emotional depth are worlds apart.

Sandra Isabel Correia As you long for in my opinion an old fashioned way of filmmaking, I am more interested in innovative, modern, technology driven ways, of which I think in general the film industry is very much in need.

You know, honestly, I tried pasting a part of my script into ChatGPT to have it improve it and rewrite it as if it had its own experience, showing how it would do it. The output was such nonsense and gibberish that it was impossible to read. It roughly understands the content and then starts looking online for similar scripts, putting everything together, and what comes out is just a mishmash. But talking about logical connections or sequence is pointless. So, it seems to me that we’re overestimating the capabilities of artificial intelligence, and it will never replace the human brain.

And that’s cool Willem Elzenga 2, we are all different and thanks God we are different! What we need it’s balance between different directions :)) Thanks for sharing with us.

I think many of us tried that Aleksandr Rozhnov. I never tried, but I used AI as a tool for script locations or ideas and it was helpful. I agree with you, AI can’t replace the human brain, AI is a machine and works with our inputs, but doesn’t have the understanding, logic, intelligence, that we have, and I agree with you my friend:))

In my opinion, artificial intelligence, particularly ChatGPT, is good at just three things. First, it can find information when you need to dig into a topic, a field, or research something—it can help with that. That’s the first. Second, it’s a decent translator and can handle translations. Third, it can create a pretty good image, though sometimes there are issues with the generated pictures.

When it comes to writing a screenplay, I have to say—it’s not capable at all. Even when it edits a script and adds what it thinks is “better,” the result just doesn’t work. That’s kind of how it is.

genAI is unethical and unsustainable – so if you're cool with stealing and destroying your industry and the planet that supports it ... go for it!

Willem Elzenga 2 Hi Willem, why is it not real filmmaking? I think the big hint is in the labelling - Artificial Intelligence. We seem to skip over the artificial part. They are creations dependent on artifice, to convince us they are real, but AI has no consciousness, no lived experience of pain and pathos, suffering, joy and wonder. These are the very elements a writer weaves into a screenplay and which AI cannot.

Geoff Hall I understand but a camera is also artificial, as is a computer with final draft, using google or a PC with current 3D software. Digital is being used since the 90's and before in filmmaking, so that's not so real either if you ask me. Also working with AI gives the creator plenty of possibilities to put in creation, soul or whatever emotion, brain wave your using to make the movie and make it real. AI software replaces most of the non-creative efforts, now done by 'assistants' or below the line crew.

Robert Bruinewoud I am already on it for a while and it is none of those things you suggest. Do your homework Robert!

Willem Elzenga 2 yes, but it is operated by the DP, and every shot is worked out for the feel and mood of a scene. AI doesn’t understand those things. You kind of get an aggregate of emotion at best.. We use AI as a tool, not as a replacement for human connection, consciousness or creativity.

Are we happy to use AI as a replacement for below the line crew and human connection? I’d hate to see how AI would cope at a wrap party!

I’m sorry for the highlighted text, that’s not me but the site.

I have to agree with Geoff Hall on this one. But let me explain what AI is good for. FIRST, in-house we use AI tools constantly (as has the industry for many years now). For example, last week we shot a spot for our upcoming feature Dark Veil. It's a scene where a person confronts themselves - same actor in the same scene. But it's shot in the woods, with bushes and trees and foliage all over the ground both before the actor and behind her. So we split scene and have to rotoscope out the actor in one shot and place them in the second shot. This kind of compositing in this environment is devilishly difficult even with chromakey. However, AI tools have advanced far enough that we could just shoot it and we were able to easily create a matte for the scene - without green screen, without days of frame-by-frame adjustments, etc. in literally an hour. Done. This kind of technical work is what AI is good at. Another current example (developing, but fast) is the ability to do 3D model generation and compositing in-camera, in real-time. One system looks at your scene while shooting, generating point clouds and creating a model of the environment, while your prepared 3D model is composited on screen and animated, which comes out the viewer and saves. This end-runs many, many hours of development, with a much quicker post. We also use it for more mundane tasks like transcriptions of interviews in our documentary and unscripted work, as well as generating forms and doing deep research on marketing etc. NOTE that all these tasks, which AI is fantastic at, are TECHNICAL tasks only. BUT so-called "generative" AI is, as most AI is, based on statistical analysis of patterns. By definition, when it generates something it is something that has been copied and that you have seen before - ALL OF IT. That's true for LLMs like ChatGPT or Gemini as well as Imagen and Runway.ml etc. It's a great computer science experiment, but its programming is incapable of creating an original image or statement. There's no way around that. It also follows - and the courts have already agreed - that it is created by plagiarism and copyright infringement, and that is just one reason that you cannot claim copyright over your AI generated image or literary work. So... why would any creator want to use AI for a "creative" purpose? After a lifetime in the arts - music, literature, theater and film - I cannot think of a single person I considered an artist who would do such a thing. The idea is repellent to an artist. Artists live to create art. Writers live to write. DPs live to make great moving images that support a story. No person who is actually creative, thinks it is too much work to create. In fact, they spend their lives trying to make enough money to keep doing just that. The last thing an actual creative person wants to do is substitute what the public is starting to call "AI Slop" for their own original statement. It follows that anyone who would consider using AI to replace that creative function, while telling themselves and others they are a creator, is outing themselves. They are not creative and they will not succeed in a creative field because they do not have the capability or mindset to do so. I mean that, and I DO have the capability and standing in the arts and the film industry to make that statement, so check yourself if you disagree. FINALLY, to hear the real opinions of audience on AI, go to the Tuesday Cinema Club podcast which I and Diamond Monique Washington were on last week, You will see how hostile they have become to AI generated media in general: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3yTYXzueutxhtRZBm5Xcnj

@Sandra re original question. I feel aside obvious “technical” advantages AI can provide filmmakers it is no substitute for desire to create an original story world. Nor for face to face social organic interaction directing live performers. I don’t knock AI though, it offers some an entry level in certain fields & the opportunity to try it. I use it to sort criteria in submission scripts & other work piles windows did on a minor level but secretarial skills does not hone creative intellect. On the “raw” level you want, I’m fed up of both the AI fear factor & AI adulation. People fed the machine & people try to exploit others with it. There is no giant mystical unicorn nor any devil. It’s there, like the microwave sat in my kitchen not used. As you say, AI won’t cry yet people have shed tears & it divides opinion for disgruntled blogs both for & against. Agree with @Shadow on several points including many artists choose to create from within. I’d add we all have a unique message & blue print that can blaze a trail in the ether long after we are gone. AI is not my “Choice” but it’s okay for those who choose.

Hi Debbie Croysdale, and thanks for sharing. I also agree with you. AI is a complement and will be a choice for anyone, like other digital technology we use. Thank you.

Thank you for stopping by and commenting. The diversity of viewpoints is what drives the industry forward and generates new ideas for all of us. Our points of view are important to all of us. Thanks.