Integrating GenAI in Filmmaking: From Co-Creativity to Distributed Creativity

TL;DR

This paper examines how Generative AI fundamentally transforms filmmaking by reshaping roles, workflows, and aesthetics, emphasizing its role as a mediator in distributed creative processes rather than just an assistive tool.

Contribution

It offers a sociomaterial, historical analysis of GenAI in filmmaking, introducing an analytical taxonomy and reframing AI as a mediator that enables new aesthetic possibilities.

Findings

GenAI reconfigures professional roles and workflows.

Technological innovations have historically influenced filmmaking practices.

AI acts as a mediator, blurring traditional boundaries in filmmaking aesthetics.

Abstract

The integration of Generative AI (GenAI) into audio-visual production is often presented as a radical break from past traditions. However, through a sociomaterial and historical lens, this paper argues that GenAI represents a new development in the long-standing negotiation between creative labor and technological possibilities. Moving beyond the limiting framework of human-machine co-creativity, we adopt an STS-based approach to investigate creativity in the making within the Filmmaking industry. We analyze Filmmaking as a distributed process where agency is shared across diverse human experts and non-human actors, showing how technological innovations have historically reconfigured Filmmaking practices long before the advent of AI. The article introduces an analytical taxonomy of GenAI techniques to illustrate how these technologies do not merely "assist" but can actively reconfigure professional roles, production temporalities, and film aesthetics. By linking sociomaterial configurations to aesthetic outcomes, this reframing suggests that AI technologies in Filmmaking should be seen as mediators that could enable new aesthetic possibilities by blurring the boundaries of traditional filmmaking workflows.