Google’s AI-powered Flow won’t make filmmaking great again

Making filmmaking great again

I’m nowhere near a fan of the ‘idea’ President Trump thought up a few weeks ago in his attempts to try and bring filmmaking back to California by introducing 100% tariffs on foreign films.

It’s a destructive idea that won’t help the Hollywood film industry because it won’t cure its ails – namely that it’s expensive to make films in California compared to other places in the world. And considering that Hollywood studios are global enterprises and have a hand in those ‘foreign’ films that people would watch, it’s as if the tariffs are working as a tax.

But AI won’t redress the issue. In the last fifteen to twenty years, filmmakers have struggled to create the visions they want because they can’t find the funds. But this doesn’t disguise the issue that many ‘adventurous’ or ‘challenging’ films aren’t seen, not because they’re not good, but because audiences aren’t attracted to them.

AI may make films less expensive to make, but that doesn’t equal good. It’s still down to the filmmaker to make a film that compels an audience to come see it. It doesn’t matter if your film uses AI or not – if it sucks, no one will be excited to see it.

It also won’t help the state of California that instead of using film sets, actors, crew who arrange the lighting, design, decorate the sets and create clothes, it’s all done on a computer.

More than anything, AI will affect the local economies. It won’t make new jobs, and it won’t save them either. Investment in people and economies is what’s needed, and I can’t see how Google’s Flow/Veo 3 AI tools will help in that matter.

Filmmaking is about people, not the technology

I’m a big film fan and one of the sound bites I keep hearing about is filmmakers turning to AI so they can get ahead of the technology and control it – that technology drives innovation.

Let’s just say that I don’t quite agree with that sentiment.

People drive innovation; technology allows it to happen, but it’s not the reason for it. I’m sure 3D was a great idea when Hitchcock was messing about with it in the 1950s, but it’s cumbersome to use, and it hasn’t caught on. I think 8K resolution content is great, but not many seem interested in it.

New technology is always arriving and the response to it, in most cases, is mostly a shrug.

Google says that its AI technology is an “enabler”, which will help “a new wave of filmmakers more easily tell their stories”. I’m sure that’ll make sense of you’re creating a film in your home, but filmmaking is a community, it’s not a solitary pursuit.

A film needs many people or many talents to come together to create something – whether that’s good or bad is immaterial. You learn so much by committing words to paper and turning that into something you can see and feel on set.

AI-powered films will be able to create convincing depictions of the world, but I also feel there won’t be any room for accidents – things that you don’t expect that would happen on a film set. There’ll be no room for improvisation because that’s not something AI can do – it’ll only do what it’s told.

So I’m rather hoping that Google’s AI Flow/Veo 3 joins the long list of devices and services in the Google Cemetery. AI can be useful, but it won’t make the same discoveries or mistakes as a human, and that’s part of what makes film a magic trick.