What Is AI Filmmaking? A Plain-Language Guide

AI filmmaking is making a film by directing generative AI models instead of operating a camera. You describe each shot or start it from a picture, a model produces the footage, and you cut, score and finish it yourself. In AIGE that means a saved character, still frames, short clips and an editor on the Canvas.

What counts as AI filmmaking

In this guide the term covers any film where generative AI makes some or all of the images, footage or sound. One prompt that returns one short clip is a clip, not a film. Filmmaking starts when you plan a run of shots and keep the story, the cast and the look steady from one to the next.

It also isn't the same as AI-assisted editing. Tools that tidy footage you shot, like automatic captions, help a film along without generating any of it.

AIGE's shot-by-shot price list sits on the AI film page.

How a film gets made, in the order it happens

1. Write the shots. In the Canvas video editor, Storyboard mode takes one line per shot and turns each line into a clip, in order. One press makes up to eight, all with the same model, length and look. Each shot is charged when it starts. If your balance runs out the run stops, and shots that never started are never charged.

2. Make stills first. A still is cheaper than a clip: a 1K image is 8 credits, and a 5-second Kling V3 Pro clip without sound is 56 credits. Get the frame right, then animate it. If the same person appears in several shots, save them as a character so the face carries across stills and clips.

3. Animate from a picture. The model treats your image as the first frame and the prompt only has to describe motion. Some models also take an end picture, so the clip travels from one frame to the other.

4. Join the shots. Extend continues a clip from its last frame. Between two shots makes a new shot that starts where one clip ends and lands on the first frame of the next.

5. Add sound. In the studio's video panel, Kling V3 has an Audio switch that makes sound with the clip: a 5-second Pro clip with sound is 84 credits. In the editor's Audio tab you can also add your own music or sound files and record your own voice across the cut. There is no stock library.

6. Cut and export. Trim and order the clips on the timeline, then export. The file is an MP4 where your browser can record one (Chrome and Safari) and WebM otherwise, at 720p or 1080p. Export plays in real time, so a 30-second cut takes about 30 seconds.

Four words you will meet

• Shot: one continuous clip, usually from one camera position.

• Start frame: the still a clip begins on. The image-to-video entry in the glossary explains why it matters.

• Take: another version of the same shot. Regenerating a shot gives you a new one to compare.

• Bridge: a generated shot that links two clips you already have.

For a worked example from first idea to export, how to make an AI short film follows one project through. Image to video covers the animate step on its own.

What it can't do yet

A character in AIGE can't speak a scripted line, because there is no lip-sync and no voice generation. If your film has dialogue, plan it as lines you record yourself or sound you bring.

Shots are short, so a film is built from many of them cut together. Check each new shot against the one before it: a saved character holds the face well, but small details can still drift between shots.

Honest note: This page quotes no cost for a whole film, because the total depends on how many shots you make and how many retakes you need. The studio shows the price before every run, and that figure is the one charged.

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