Video With AI

Generative video taught as production work rather than a demo reel. Why clips are a few seconds long and what that does to your shot list, why image-to-video is the professional default, how to direct a camera move instead of describing a mood, what consistency across shots actually costs, the consent and labelling line on faces and voices, and how to price an afternoon of generating before you start.

1. 1Nobody is hiding the long version from you8 minClip length is a memory-and-attention limit, not a product tier, so plan in shots and cut before the drift rather than trying to generate through it.
2. 2The still frame is where the decisions belong9 minEvery decision you can make in a still costs a hundredth of what it costs to make in a clip, so fix the frame before you ever spend on motion.
3. 3Cinematic, 8k, epic gets you the average of everything9 minName the shot size, one camera move, the subject's verb and what stays still — mood adjectives return the average of everything captioned that way.
4. 4The ranking will be wrong by the time you read this8 minBenchmark models on one hard shot from your own list, because public rankings measure which clip looks nicer, not whether it did what you asked.
5. 5A cut breaks on the light before it breaks on the face10 minIdentity holds because the first frame holds it, and a cut breaks on mismatched light and wardrobe long before it breaks on the face.
6. 6Lip-sync is easy; the permission is not10 minPermission to film is not permission to synthesise, and the only label that survives a screenshot is the one burned into the frame.
7. 7The generator makes footage; the editor makes the video10 minTrim the settle and the drift, unify everything with one grade and one grain pass, and put real sound underneath — that is most of the difference between footage and output.
8. 8An afternoon of curiosity can cost more than a day of work9 minPrice your work in shots with a fixed number of included attempts, because the cost driver is generations thrown away, not hours spent.
9. 9Six things it cannot do, and the reason for each10 minEach failure has a mechanism — no simulation, no symbols, no persistent objects, no reference for your specific thing — and the mechanism tells you whether to wait for a better model or change the shot.
10. 10Where this is already the right tool8 minGenerative video is already the right tool for b-roll, impossible shots, pre-visualisation and short-form, and still the wrong tool wherever a specific person or object has to stay itself.