By Chris Baker, Director of New Business at Park Village
Originally published in Shots magazine
There’s something odd about having the same conversation over and over again. Like we’re stuck inside a bad video game that just needs an IT guy to blow into the cartridge. I’ve been avoiding writing anything on this topic for a while, but it’s time to speak up. Buckle up – it’s time to talk about the great, lumbering silicon god that’s rolling a joint out of your job title and lighting it with the last copy of Sight & Sound. Yes, we’re talking about AI.
Not the charming, helpful AI that recommends insurance or writes emails when you can’t be bothered. No. I’m talking about the big, scary kind – the one that eats storyboards for breakfast and pees out perfectly colour-graded trailers by lunch.
The panic is in their eyes
The conversation around AI has been hovering over the creative industries like a vulture for years. It was easy to ignore if you just kept your head down and pretended that ‘real cinema’ was still something people did on Friday nights. But then AI got teeth. And when Google unveiled its generative video and audio tools, a collective panic set in.
What was once a low hum of anxiety turned into a sweaty kind of fear. People still pretend to be calm, posting philosophical musings on LinkedIn like they’re floating above it all. But it’s just a mask.
You can see it in their eyes. That nervous twitch when someone says ‘prompt engineer’ with a straight face. And all those calm, collected LinkedIn pros? They wrote those posts with ChatGPT while dripping sweat onto their keyboards.
The myth of inevitability
There’s a phrase circling around AI like a turd in a luxury toilet: ‘AI will only get better.’
It sounds comforting – like when someone tells you the sun will explode someday, just not for a few billion years. But every time I hear it, I get the same feeling I get when someone says, ‘Trust me, bro.’
Sure, AI will improve. But when? And how far? It still looks terrible to these old eyes. And this human heart isn’t buying it. Humans are experts at detecting lies. We know when something feels off – when a smile has one too many teeth.
Like a good editor feels the cut in their bones, we don’t just watch stories – we live them. And deep down, we know when something was born from sweat and struggle, and when it was spat out by a digital hallucination.
The bubble-gum slot machine
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not anti-tech. I love it. I love its potential. But let’s be honest: most of what comes out of AI platforms today is gamified noise.
Generative video? It’s a slot machine. A monkey with a spray can at a white wedding. Yes, someone’s going to get painted – but who, and why?
Type a prompt, pull the lever, get your dopamine hit. You’ll feel like Kubrick – for half a second. You’ll feel like you made something. But you didn’t. You just poked a sleeping god and asked it to dream for you.
And here’s the kicker: the more AI floods the market with hallucinated content garbage, the more valuable real human creativity becomes.
The return to the real
When the internet becomes a pixelated landfill of unearned images and soulless stories, people will start craving authenticity. Imperfection. The human touch. A story that cost someone something to tell.
Imagine how many times you’d vomit watching an AI-generated version of Wallace & Gromit. There aren’t enough mops.
The reaction to generative video won’t just be legal regulation and deep fake detection tools. It will be a renaissance of sweat-drenched, craft-based storytelling. A brutal, loud return to the craft.
Because real creation – in any format – is not just about visuals. It’s about risk.
And AI carries none. That’s why it has no real value. That’s where you have the upper hand. Humans invest time, money, reputation… in pursuit of something true, something moving, something meaningful.
In conclusion… or something like it
Yes, the AI video revolution is here. And yes, it’s fascinating. And yes, it will replace a whole chunk of the content swamp – explainer videos, 3D product renders, dystopian mushroom shorts on YouTube…
But film? Real film? Art? The kind that touches you, disturbs you, inspires you? That’s still a human game.
Prompts aren’t enough. Because when everything becomes smooth and effortless, we’ll long for stories born of blood, risk, and glorious madness. For the mistakes that become unforgettable moments. For the collaboration of many minds.
So if you’re a filmmaker, a writer, a storyteller – if you’re sitting in front of a groaning laptop and a half-finished cup of coffee – now is the time to double down.
Learn the tools, sure. But don’t bow to them. Don’t become the monkey dancing around the monolith.
Be the monolith.
