Making a short AI film with tools from Google, Runway, ElevenLabs, and Midjourney shows the tech has improved but it takes tedious work to get scene consistency
We tried to direct an AI film with Veo and Runway. The tools are magic. The process is madness. — Click for Sound
Context & Ripple Effects
AI video has progressed from early experiments such as a 12-minute DALL-E-era film toward tools positioned for faster, lower-cost production. Related coverage has also emphasized that Hollywood sees the technology as a creative tool rather than a wholesale replacement for creators despite its expanding production potential.
This hands-on test identifies the remaining bottleneck: individual tools may produce striking material, but assembling them into a visually coherent sequence still demands substantial direction and iteration.
First-order effects
- Creators using Google, Runway, Midjourney, Veo, and ElevenLabs can produce higher-quality short-film assets, but must absorb the manual work of maintaining characters and scenes across shots.
- The practical value of these tools shifts from one-click filmmaking to accelerating discrete production tasks while human creators coordinate the final result.
Second-order effects
- Vendors face pressure to compete on continuity, controllability, and cross-tool workflow—not just the quality of a single generated clip.
- For small production teams, labor saved in asset creation can be partly offset by iteration and integration work, making the relevant measure the cost per usable sequence rather than the cost per generation.
Third-order effects
- If consistency improves, AI filmmaking could move from isolated clips and demonstrations into repeatable production workflows; if it does not, human post-production and direction remain the limiting layer.
- The market is likely to reward tools that fit together around a creator's workflow, rather than treating text-to-video generation as a standalone endpoint.
The trend: Generative video is evolving from impressive single-shot output toward workflow-native production systems where continuity and control determine commercial usefulness.