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AI Is Coming to Film Production

By SmartSlate Team · 2026-09-30

The Question Isn't Whether We Use It. It's What We Let It Do.

I don't want AI writing my screenplay. I don't want it directing my actors, deciding how a scene should play or choosing the performance that makes the final cut. Those are the parts of filmmaking I love, even when they make me crazy. But if I can upload a script and have software help me break it down instead of spending hours doing it manually, catch something I missed in a schedule or save me from entering the same information over and over again, I'm all for it. I think that's part of what's getting lost in the conversation about AI in our industry. We're talking about all of it as if it's the same thing, and it isn't.

I've been making films long enough to remember when a lot of the technology we take for granted today was new. I remember writing before Final Draft, and I remember editing before everything was digital. The industry went from physically cutting film to moving a scene in seconds, and today we shoot digitally, edit digitally, color digitally and use software throughout pre-production and production. Technology didn't take the creativity out of filmmaking. It changed how we got the work done, and in many cases gave us more time and more options to do it better.

AI feels different, however, because some of it can actually create, and that's where I think we need to pay attention. The industry is already wrestling with this. The WGA negotiated protections around AI-generated material, including that writers can't be required to use AI. SAG-AFTRA has fought for protections involving digital replicas, consent and compensation, and the U.S. Copyright Office continues to put human authorship at the center of copyright protection. These aren't theoretical issues anymore. We're talking about who created the work, who owns it, whether someone's image or performance can be recreated without them and whether technology is being used to help someone do their job or eliminate the person who was doing it. There is a big difference between the two.

I'm a screenwriter, and I don't want software writing a scene for me because writing the scene is the work. I may stare at that scene for two hours, decide I hate everything about it, delete half of it and eventually realize the problem was one line of dialogue on page 37. Any writer reading this knows exactly what I'm talking about. I don't want a computer to save me from that because sometimes getting it wrong for two hours is how I finally figure out what's right. That's part of writing, and as frustrating as it can be, I don't want to give that part away. Producing, however, comes with a whole different collection of work that I'm more than happy to get some help with.

There are creative decisions everywhere in producing, but there is also a ridiculous amount of information to manage. Once I've broken down a script and identified my characters, props and locations, I don't see any artistic value in typing all of that information into another program and then entering some of it again somewhere else. The information already exists, so why shouldn't the software be able to use it? If it can carry that information forward, catch something I missed or save me from doing the same task two or three times, please do. That isn't taking a creative decision away from me. It's giving me more time to make the decisions that actually need me. The same thing happens with scheduling. You can spend hours putting together a shooting schedule that makes perfect sense, and then an actor suddenly can't work Tuesday, so you move those scenes to Thursday. Except one of those scenes is at a location you only have Wednesday, another actor isn't available Thursday morning and moving the exterior means you're no longer shooting it at the time of day the director wanted. You fix one problem and create four more, and now you're moving strips, checking cast availability, looking at locations again and trying to figure out what else you just screwed up. We've all been there. If software can show me those conflicts faster, I want it.

The creative -- the human -- needs to remainhands-on in the process. What I don't want is software deciding what the solution I need should be, because the most efficient answer on paper isn't always the best answer for the movie. Let's say the software looks at the schedule and tells me that moving three scenes could save an entire production day. That's useful information, especially on an independent film where one production day can mean a significant amount of money. But what if shooting those scenes in that order isn't what the director wants because of where the actor is emotionally in the story? What if the software identifies an expensive scene and suggests eliminating it, but that scene happens to be the heart of the movie? That's where the line starts getting a little less obvious. I still want the information. Tell me moving those scenes could save a day, tell me which scene is costing more than I realized and show me the problem before I've got a crew standing around while we try to solve it. Give me every option you can find because there may be one I haven't considered. That's incredibly useful, and it can make a producer's job a lot easier. But there is a difference between giving me information and making the decision for me. I'm a filmmaker and I still want to be making that decision.

That's part of the thinking behind SmartSlate.Studio. We didn't build it because we thought filmmakers needed software telling them how to make movies. We built it because there's an enormous amount of information moving around during pre-production, and script breakdowns, tagging, stripboards, shooting schedules, preliminary budgets, shot lists and call sheets aren't separate little worlds. They're connected, and a change in one place can affect something somewhere else. I'd rather spend my time thinking through what that change means than entering the same information again. That's the kind of work I want technology helping me with.

We're already seeing this kind of technology become part of software filmmakers use every day. Adobe has added tools to Premiere Pro that can search footage based on what's actually in the clips and translate captions, and Avid has incorporated AI-assisted transcription. These aren't things most filmmakers are going to spend much time debating if they work and make the job easier. Five years from now, we may not even think about whether some of the software we're using has AI somewhere under the hood. Do you think about every calculation your editing software is making while you're cutting a scene? Of course not. You care whether it works and whether it helps you do your job. That's our thoughtful process when we created our own production software. We wanted a tool to help us with the entire production process so we had more time to make sure the vision and creativity was in line.

Technology has had a place in filmmaking for decades, and I don't see that changing. What I don't want to lose along the way is the human part of making a movie. I want the writer who suddenly realizes the scene works better without the dialogue, the actor who gives you something you weren't expecting, the director who changes a shot because of something they see on set and the producer who figures out how to make something work when, on paper, it probably shouldn't. Those aren't inefficiencies we need to fix. That's filmmaking. So give me better software, save me from repetitive work, catch what I missed and show me the problem before it becomes an expensive one. Give me more time to think, create and make better decisions, because that's what I really want technology to give us. Let the software do the work it does best, and leave the filmmaking to the filmmakers.

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About the Author

Sherri Carlson is a filmmaker, producer, screenwriter and entrepreneur with years of experience in independent film. She is also co-founder of SmartSlate.Studio, production software built by filmmakers for filmmakers.

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