Blog

Notes on filmmaking and AI production.

Tools, workflows, rights, and creative control.

European Union black and white label reading AI Generated

Latest / AI Production Systems / 20 July 2026 / 9 min read

The EU AI Act Turns AI Labelling Into a Production Workflow

The EU's Article 50 transparency rules apply from 2 August 2026. For creative teams, the practical job is not to stamp every AI-assisted asset. It is to classify the work, preserve provenance, make the right disclosure visible, and prove the final derivative passed review.

Battle reenactment from Netflix documentary The American Experiment with period soldiers firing muskets at night

AI Production Systems / 17 July 2026 / 8 min read

GenAI Creative Technology Signals: July 17, 2026

This week's useful signals show GenAI moving from experiments into operating systems: Netflix is counting it across titles and advertising, generative video is entering work software, agent instructions are becoming build artifacts, automated attackers are raising the security baseline, and media catalogues are becoming conversational.

Dollar Shave Club Revolutionary Deals video thumbnail showing a framed patriotic scene with the words A Revolution of Our Own

AI Production Systems / 15 July 2026 / 9 min read

Dollar Shave Club's AI Ad Changes the In-House Production Model

Dollar Shave Club's July campaign is a useful production case because the tools are not the headline. A brand leader wrote the brief, a small internal team reached a first cut in days, and the decision to hire an agency moved from default workflow to a question of specialist craft.

ARRI Signature comparison with a woman shown at zoom focal lengths from 45 mm to 510 mm and a man shown at prime focal lengths from 12 mm to 280 mm

AI Cinematography / 14 July 2026 / 9 min read

AI Video Lens Prompts Need More Than a Focal Length

A 35 mm prompt can suggest a look, but it cannot prove field of view, camera distance, focus fall-off, or perspective. The useful workflow turns lens choice into visible relationships and reviews them before the model moves.

Official Sora 2 generated Viking scene from OpenAI showing warriors running through fog

AI Production Systems / 13 July 2026 / 9 min read

AI Video Workflows Need an Exit Plan

Sora is closing, Veo endpoints are turning over, and Runway Dev is selling one-line model swaps. The buyer lesson is bigger than API convenience: prompts, references, shot intent, approvals, and test cases have to survive the provider.

Google illustration for AI transparency in ads showing a search interface and an AI disclosure panel

AI Production Systems / 10 July 2026 / 9 min read

GenAI Creative Technology Signals: July 10, 2026

This week's signals are less about one dazzling demo and more about operating pressure: AI-labelled ads, agentic model tiers, live voice interfaces, low-latency image/video APIs, and the marketing workflow discipline needed to turn generative output into commercial learning.

Official Tilly Norwood portfolio still showing the AI character standing on a pink flamingo float above clouds

Commercial AI Safety / 8 July 2026 / 8 min read

Tilly Norwood Turns the AI Actor Debate Into a Production Problem

Particle6's plan to build Misaligned around Tilly Norwood matters less because a synthetic performer has been given a feature. It matters because the case forces producers to treat AI characters as rights, labor, disclosure, continuity, and audience-development objects from the first brief.

Adobe Firefly Generate Video interface showing camera settings, motion controls, first and last frames, and a generated moon clip

AI Cinematography / 7 July 2026 / 8 min read

Motion Reference Is a Camera Rehearsal, Not a Prompt Shortcut

Adobe Firefly's motion reference control is useful because it moves AI video direction away from vague camera words and toward rehearsable movement. Cinematographers should treat it like a camera test: define the blocking, choose the move, measure the failure, and only then decide whether the generated shot deserves to continue.

Content Credentials official flow graphic showing how a provenance signal travels with media

Commercial AI Safety / 6 July 2026 / 8 min read

AI Provenance Is Now a Review Workflow, Not a Label

OpenAI's move to pair C2PA Content Credentials with SynthID is a useful signal for creative teams: provenance cannot live at export only. It has to be part of the brief, review trail, client approval, and final delivery pack.

Vertical Haus Motion Canvas workspace for The Calling La Santa Furia showing character references, generated images, Seedance video nodes, and launch assets

AI Production Systems / 4 July 2026 / 7 min read

The Calling: La Santa Furia and the Image Canvas as a Pilot Machine

The useful lesson from our micro-drama pilot is not that AI replaces production. It is that an in-house image canvas, wired into Seedance 2.0, can turn a story world into a testable pilot, poster, cutdown, and launch system before a team commits to a full live-action route.

Google Flow official planning slide showing cinematic prompt and production preparation

AI Production Systems / 3 July 2026 / 8 min read

The AI Production Workflow Stack for Small Film Teams

AI video only becomes useful when it sits inside a production system: script intent, references, shot logic, rights notes, review loops, exports, and analytics. The model is one engine. The workflow is the product.

Adobe Firefly Video Model interface image from Adobe's official Firefly Video Model announcement

Commercial AI Safety / 3 July 2026 / 7 min read

Commercially Safe AI Video Is a Production Standard, Not a Badge

Clients do not only need AI video that looks good. They need usage rights, review trails, brand safety, provenance, disclosure, and a workflow that can survive legal, platform, and stakeholder scrutiny.

Runway Academy thumbnail for Gen-4.5 image-to-video training

AI Production Systems / 3 July 2026 / 8 min read

Synthetic Character Continuity Is a Production Problem

AI video models are getting better at keeping people and worlds consistent, but character continuity is not only a face-matching problem. It is a production discipline: design, wardrobe, blocking, performance, edit logic, and approval.

OpenAI Sora guide image of a woman looking over a city skyline

AI Cinematography / 3 July 2026 / 7 min read

AI Video Prompting Works Better When You Use Shot Language

The strongest AI video prompts do not pile up camera brands and style words. They describe point of view, blocking, light, lens behaviour, movement, emotional distance, and the job the shot has to do in the edit.

Google Flow official desktop video poster showing an AI filmmaking interface

AI Cinematography / 3 July 2026 / 8 min read

AI Previsualization for Cinematographers: The Useful Version

AI previsualization is useful when it helps a cinematographer test story logic, light, blocking, location pressure, and impossible shots before a production commits. It is dangerous when it pretends a generated clip is the production plan.

Runway AI Festival 2026 event venue image for the Tokyo edition

AI Filmmaking Industry / 2 July 2026 / 11 min read

Why AI Film Festivals Are Becoming Workflow Festivals

AI film festivals are not just screening prompt-made shorts anymore. They are becoming public tests of workflow: continuity, disclosure, tool literacy, production control, and whether a generated image can survive as part of a finished piece of cinema.

Google Flow and Veo official thumbnail showing an AI filmmaking scene

AI Cinematography / 2 July 2026 / 12 min read

AI Video Tools for Cinematographers: What Helps and What Gets in the Way

AI video tools are becoming useful, but not in the lazy way the marketing often implies. For cinematographers, the value is in reference building, look development, coverage thinking, impossible pitch material, and workflow acceleration. The danger is mistaking output for judgement.

Still from Dreams of Violets showing figures in a night-time urban alley

AI Filmmaking Industry / 12 June 2026 / 12 min read

AI Filmmaking Still Has a Set Problem

This week's AI film news makes the same point from three directions: Tribeca put a fully AI-generated feature in front of an audience, Runway turned AI film into a festival circuit, and iQIYI is selling AI as production infrastructure. The gap is no longer whether AI can make shots. It is whether it understands what a set is for.

Crowd gathered outside Stage 15 during AI On The Lot in Los Angeles

Commercial AI Safety / 8 June 2026 / 12 min read

The New AI Question Is Control, Not Whether It Was Used

The weekend's filmmaking, advertising, and commercial AI news all pointed in the same direction: the useful argument is no longer whether AI touched the work. It is who controlled the tool, who signs off the craft, what gets disclosed, and whether the result actually holds up in public.

Black and white Martin Scorsese arms-raised meme image adapted with the words Absolute AI

AI Filmmaking Industry / 4 June 2026 / 13 min read

Scorsese, AI Storyboards, and the Difference Between a Tool and an Author

I keep coming back to the same uncomfortable line: Martin Scorsese using FLUX to visualise storyboards is a tool story, but the reaction to it is a labour story. When the people who define cinema normalise AI, the pressure is felt first by the people with the least control over the budget.

Golden light across Epsom Downs Racecourse

AI Production Systems / 3 June 2026 / 13 min read

The Camera Is Not the Campaign

A personal note on moving from being hired as a cinematographer for one part of the job to building Vertical Haus, where the responsibility includes the offer, the spend, the edits, the landing page, the data, and all the unglamorous work that actually makes an online campaign succeed.

Animation studio desk with storyboards and AI-assisted production monitors at night

AI Filmmaking Industry / 1 June 2026 / 11 min read

Amazon Just Made AI Animation Impossible to Ignore

Prime Video's first GenAI animation slate is not just a tech story. It is a rights story, a labour story, a taste story, and a very public trust test for everyone selling AI as creative infrastructure.

Diego Luna, Felicity Jones, and Gareth Edwards at the Rogue One Japan premiere red carpet

AI Filmmaking Industry / 31 May 2026 / 9 min read

Gareth Edwards Is Right: AI Belongs in the Filmmaking Toolkit

The interesting AI film argument is not whether a model can make a shot. It is how directors, cinematographers, studios, cinemas, and online entertainment platforms use it to expand what can be imagined, tested, built, and experienced.

Audience at the Cannes AI for Talent Summit during Marché du Film

AI Filmmaking Industry / 26 May 2026 / 10 min read

Cannes Became the AI Film Industry Stress Test

The 2026 Cannes conversation was not really about whether AI can make images. It was about authorship, rights, workflow, taste, and who gets to stay in the room.

Nirvana In Utero vinyl record photographed as part of the Vinylvana Studio creative outlet

AI Filmmaking Industry / 25 May 2026 / 16 min read

Creativity After the Call Sheet Goes Quiet

A long note on being creative for a living, what happens when the paid work dries up, and why the healthiest creative outlet might be the one nobody commissioned.

Mike Staniforth personal site shown as a cinematic interactive portfolio hero

AI Production Systems / 21 May 2026 / 7 min read

Building a Personal Site That Behaves Like the Work

A note on the new mikestaniforth.com: cinematic scroll, signal-distorted portraits, AI systems proof, light and dark modes, and the small details that make a portfolio feel authored.

Google I/O 2026 social card with event branding

AI Production Systems / 20 May 2026 / 6 min read

The Eye-Catching Announcements at Google I/O 2026

I/O 2026 looked less like a product event and more like Google moving Gemini into every surface it owns, from Chrome to cars to glasses.

Vertical Haus AI systems poster with connected systems lines

AI Production Systems / 19 May 2026 / 7 min read

What I Built at Vertical Haus and Why This Site Exists

A launch note on moving from cinematography into AI-first production systems, the Vertical Haus stack, and the new personal website connecting both sides of the work.