Will New Tech be the End of Filmmaking as We Know it?

I’ve preferred drawing my storyboards by hand and creating physical paper edits for documentary projects, even though I know there are digital tools out there that could help me. I still like to shoot on film if it feels right for a project, despite the fact that I can achieve the filmic look quite easily using digital plugins.

My reluctance to new tech is perhaps akin to the concerns artists had when photography was introduced fearing it would mark the end of painting. And with the rise of Artificial Intelligence, like many I guess I’m worried that new tech could bring an end to filmmaking as we know it.

A couple of months ago however, when an opportunity came up for me to direct a music video for Alice Russell, I decided it was time to challenge myself, and explore a range of emerging technologies, including virtual production. The brief was to transform Alice’s latest single, ‘Gravity‘, into an abstract visual piece. I toyed with a few ideas, but the title and lyrics of the song, combined with the possibilities of virtual production, offered the perfect opportunity to set the video in outer space.

Despite being an abstract piece, it still needed a story. The song describes the monumental shift you feel when you fall in love—losing control and feeling weightless. After much discussion with the team, I decided on a simple story that metaphorically represents falling in love: Alice is on a red, deserted planet as the universe around her crumbles, eventually free-falling in deep space.

First up, I used generative AI to help create a striking mood board to bring my big ideas to life. Although I’ve been sceptical about generative AI due to concerns over copyright and potential harmful biases, I couldn’t ignore its usefulness. MidJourney, for instance, was fantastic for communicating my vision for Gravity. Instead of sifting through thousands of images to create a mood board, I could now generate impressive and relevant visuals with simple prompts. While phrasing the prompts for optimal results is still hit-or-miss, overall, MidJourney did make this part of the process much more efficient.

I went on to collaborate with Tilt’s own Unreal Engine expert, Dan, to craft bespoke virtual environments for the project—Unreal Engine is a powerful real-time 3D creation tool primarily used in gaming. While generative AI and Unreal Engine offer impressive capabilities, many filmmakers would agree with me that their visual outputs can sometimes lack that tactile, cinematic quality of traditional or on-location filmmaking. I was concerned that our video might end up looking overly digital, so it was essential to invest time in building and refining the virtual environment. We experimented with particles, lighting and post-process effects within Unreal to create a more organic look. The extensive finessing and testing allowed me to design the environment exactly as I had envisioned, making the process an absolute dream!

Traditional film production often involves extensive location scouting, travel, and on-site shooting. Virtual production reduces the need for physical locations, cutting travel and logistics costs and accelerating the production timeline. Shooting multiple scenes in various locations within a virtual production studio not only saves time and budget but is also more environmentally friendly. With Gravity, for example, virtual production spared us from building intricate sets and…venturing off planet Earth! Virtual production also helps with an actor’s performance; Alice’s natural reactions to the floating rocks on the LED volumes made her performance more authentic, as opposed to responding to a blank green screen wall.

As you can imagine, filming on a virtual production stage can be quite a complex process. To replicate a Mars-like planet, we dressed the studio with sand and fake rocks. The biggest challenge was matching the physical staging to the virtual environments beyond. Luckily, the experts at Racquet Studios were able to make real-time adjustments—blending the line between stage and screen, changing the juxtapositions of digital features, triggering particle systems, and adding or removing boulders where required.

My push to embrace new technology hasn’t been relegated to this project alone. For a recent ad shoot, I had the opportunity to try out the strange-looking DJI Ronin 4D camera. It is essentially a 4-axis gimbal stabilisation system with an attached built-in full-frame cinema camera designed to achieve super-smooth camera motion. The ad involved numerous shots with ambitious camera movements, and the Ronin 4D allowed us to move quickly on the day without wasting precious time in setting up complex grip systems within the super tight production schedule. I was also impressed by the Ronin 4D’s LiDAR focus assistance. It provided fast autofocus that kept the actor automatically in frame and sharp, avoiding the need for a follow focus operator and their associated kit.

Arri Alexa anytime soon, it’s a game-changer for projects with smaller crews and tight deadlines. It’s no surprise that this camera is also making its mark in larger productions, such as Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War‘, where it was used as a B-Cam. In an interview Garland explained that he chose the Ronin 4D not only for efficiency on set but also to achieve ‘a dreamlike or lyrical quality in his footage. So, like my decision to use virtual production for Gravity, the Ronin 4D wasn’t chosen for its novelty or as a gimmick, but because it was the right tool to tell the story. For similar reasons, ‘The Midnight Sky‘ used virtual production to recreate the Arctic wilderness, while The Matrix Resurrections utilised it for an almost impossible chase scene in the bustling city of San Francisco.

Emerging technologies like virtual production, ever-improving AI video generators such as Runway’s Gen-3, and compact high-resolution cameras will undoubtedly be integral to filmmaking’s future. However, I don’t believe they will replace traditional techniques; instead, I see them as an addition to the filmmaker’s toolkit.

Perhaps the end of filmmaking as we know it isn’t a bad thing after all. New tools are unquestionably transforming the industry, but they don’t change our core storytelling skills and creative instincts. It’s our creativity that breathes life into the films we make, and it’s our understanding of narrative and visual storytelling that turns a series of moving images into something meaningful.

This makes me think, once again, about the painters who were concerned about the impact of photography on their craft. Those who embraced the future actually found themselves liberated. With photography creating lifelike images, there was no longer the need to replicate reality in paintings, allowing for the emergence of new kinds of art that continue to evolve to this day.

As filmmakers, I think we can follow in the steps of those artists – understanding and being respectful of where we’ve come from, while embracing new technology and learning new skills that may allow us to create completely new forms of art altogether.

So the next time I am confronted with new technology, I hope I remember to see it as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Watch our music video ‘Gravity’ for Alice Russell out now!

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