The Big Red Magic Button Myth & AI Training

This article was published for Content London in December 2025. Please also subscribe to Charismatic.ai's more frequent postings on our main website :)

AI is still seen as a big red magic button you can press to get a movie. But as any AI filmmaker will tell you, that is not the case despite what the venture capital folks would have you believe.

To get to grips with how AI is going to impact creative production, it is important to understand what these new production tools can and cannot do.

Over the course of the last ten years producing AI-powered thrillers for Sky, animated projects for Dreamworks and AI storytelling infrastructure, we have learned the intricate details of how to harness AI to create new creative and commercial opportunities. Today we’re pleased to announce the launch of a series of courses and two (soon to be three) accompanying books that share this knowledge, starting with a free module on the latest release of Google’s NanoBanana.

But let’s go back a step.

What we see from speaking with AI filmmakers around the world is that there is creative intervention needed at every step of the way to be able to reach the level of quality and nuance that audiences expect. Yes, dramatic cinematic shots can be generated in minutes - but are they the right shots? And can AI video create a genuine connection with audiences - making it look real does not make for a watchable story?

In producing our recent three short films Aguila, Carnival and Red/Blue, not only did we need to put in creative effort to achieve the creative vision, we *wanted* to. We wanted to get the AI video systems to generate character performances that delivered emotion, consistent character behavior, and the strength of character to support the narrative. AI can do a lot of this, but the finer touches need to be human.

For example, one of the current Achilles heels that people ask us about is character and general video consistency. The recent (and second) AI Coca-Cola had a string of inconsistencies such as different number of wheels on the truck between scenes. We see characters changing how they look between scenes. The size, shape and props in a location change between shots. All of these are like armageddon for a continuity editor. We focused on this early on this year with our team at Charismatic.ai, and by April had solved the problem and have been refining ever since. There is a module in the CineProLab course specifically dedicated to consistency.

That said, it is important not to understate the most transformational impact that AI will have across the entire creative production process. Whereas technologies for cameras impacted shoot day, VFX and editing impacted post-production, Ai is like a firework in every single process, from idea to story structuring (do this in 10 minutes), previsualisation and piloting (do this in a day), virtual set design and production (90% reduction in time and cost), to localisation and distribution (reformat and translate in real time). This acceleration, coupled with the accessibility and affordability of the Ai tools set the stage for a fundamental reset in the way we think about the majority of production possibilities. We can get further into the creative idea faster, more economically and arguably in a way which is truer to the writer’s vision unencumbered by matters like scale of a set, expansive action sequences, VFX or previously impossible camera angles. The idea of ‘fixing in post’ now shifts to ‘fixing in pre’.

To make sure producers and creators are at the forefront of this new wave, we have organised workshops with industry and government to work out the best policy, ethical and commercial structures. We have run practical workshops and sessions with diverse creators with our partners at Channel 4 and Curated Films reaching over 200 individuals and studios, and recruited a professional digital ethicist to ‘consequence scan’ our work as we built Charismatic.ai. The questions about ethics, copyright, skills and creativity are always front of mind, which is why we felt so strongly that CineProLab should be built by filmmakers, for filmmakers. We do not want tech value systems imposed onto creative sectors.

At Content London we will be running three free rapid-fire half-hour workshops on: Storytelling with AI, Video Production with AI, and Reaching Audiences with AI. These will show the state-of-the-art of generative AI for commercial and creative businesses, and share our secrets of how to produce the best on-screen quality by choreographing the best new production tools for your goals.

For more information head to the Content London website or www.CineProLabs.com

This post first appeared on Charismatic's Substack.