The 3 places people actually get stuck making AI short films (not the tools)
The 3 places people actually get stuck making AI short films (not the tools)
I teach AI filmmaking in Korea and I've watched a few hundred people try to finish their first short. Almost nobody fails because they picked the wrong generator. They fail at the same three points.
- Skipping the character sheet
This is the big one. People go straight from idea to video generation, and by scene 4 the protagonist has a different face and a different jacket. Then they try to fix it with prompt tweaks, which mostly doesn't work.
Build the character sheet first — multiple angles, consistent wardrobe, consistent lighting reference — before you generate a single shot. It feels like a detour. It isn't.
- Wildly underestimating assembly time
Everyone budgets time for generation. Almost nobody budgets time for sorting through 40 clips to find the 12 that cut together. In my experience assembly takes roughly twice as long as generation for a 90-second piece.
If you're planning a one-day sprint, give the edit at least half your total time.
- Never submitting
This one's psychological. People finish a film, watch it, decide it's "not quite there," and it dies in a folder. Meanwhile the films winning at AI festivals are often rougher than what's sitting on your drive.
Make a FilmFreeway account before you finish the film. Removes the decision point.
On length: aim for 90 seconds to 3 minutes. Fewer scenes means consistency is easier to maintain, and jurors watch short pieces all the way through. A lot of the award winners at AI festivals live in that range.
Happy to answer questions about any of this — pipeline, tools, festival submission process, whatever.