We’ve been in the video production services business for over twenty-five years, and in that time, we’ve seen a lot of change.
We saw the end of VHS tapes and the rise and fall of DVDs. We saw iPhones making award-winning movies and short-form videos exploding on the internet.
At each point of this evolution, we’ve embraced the possibilities that new tools have brought to the creative process, and today, we stand at the cusp of what some people are calling the biggest technological revolution since the internet: AI.
As a full service video production company in DC, we’ve been touched by AI in numerous ways within the creative process. We’ve dabbled and experimented with AI editing, image generation, and animation, because – like most people in our industry – we’ve been curious about the technology. While we’ve appreciated it as a useful tool for brainstorming, the bottom line is, nothing compares to human creativity.
In this blog, we cover our personal experiences with AI and our team’s insights on the matter.
AI in Video Production: Where It’s Showing Up
Let’s start by talking about what AI is useful for and its limitations.
AI in Scriptwriting
The Writer’s Guild of America says writers can choose to use AI with the company’s consent. But generative AI is nowhere close to spawning a blockbuster or anything near it.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are based on colossal amounts of data gathered from pre-existing material. The algorithm decodes your request and combines what it knows to come up with the most probable answer to your question. It doesn’t “generate” scripts and screenplays so much as “re-aggregates” them.
It can make associations that may not have occurred to the writer and act as a digital brainstorming partner. It can generate plot points and character arcs or identify where the story may falter in continuity. For example, a single prompt can produce a plot that’s suspiciously reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, an amazing sci-fi epic. But Interstellar is more than just a story about the human race facing extinction. (A number of sci-fi movies are.)
When you peel away the tropes, worldbuilding, and special effects, you find that it’s really a story about the transcendent nature of love.
AI has never been in love. It has never experienced the struggle to survive, or yearned for a parent who has passed away. It has never had to wrestle with the torment of sacrificing something dear to it for the greater good.
AI can come up with a three-act story structure, but it can never stabilize a worthwhile story.
If you want your message to be remembered, your storytelling needs to carry emotive substance. That’s something only a human writer can do.
AI in Image and Video Manipulation
AI video editing tools can save artists hours of fiddling with layers and gradients on software like After Effects and Premiere Pro. These tools can automatically identify and cut out swathes of unusable footage and shortlist great takes. For straightforward formats, AI can make quick and snappy edits that you can finetune later. Color corrections and image expansions are just a click away.
We’ve often used AI to create images if we are unable to find exact pictures of what we have in mind. AI tools have helped us to visualize scenes and shots while we’re still brainstorming on the storyboard.
But it has some glaring flaws too. When creating or manipulating images, AI can sometimes produce amateurish and unrealistic visuals.
For instance, recently, a client wanted to shoot a video that showed the passage of time in the background of one of their scenes. Since we didn’t have that exact footage, we decided to use a series of images showing children growing up with AI. While it worked well in this instance – for a soft, distant background visual – a professional eye would be able to tell that the faces were slightly distorted. So while AI can be helpful for certain tasks (like this one), it often struggles to deliver the level of quality needed for detailed or complex visuals.
AI in Voiceover Work
We’ll admit, AI-generated voices have become remarkably lifelike. We’ve used it while recording scratch voiceovers—temporary tracks used to time animations and fine-tune pacing.
We’ve used the platform to feed in our script, pick a male or female voice, and speed up or slow the verbal pace according to our requirements. It’s a quick and versatile tool for preliminary testing, but we never use it to replace a human voice. The subtleties in human speech—such as changes in tone, pitch, emphasis, and vocal quality—communicate subtext that current AI-generated voices struggle to reproduce accurately.
AI voices are tireless and multilingual — an immense advantage in a global market, but they can only recite the words. They can’t truly perform them with the emotional impact a voice artist can.
Our Approach: Balancing AI with Human Input
Video production is a collaborative art, a coming together of humans, their quirks, life-experiences, and talents. It’s the unique mix of people, clients included, that can take a project from ordinary to memorable, and expand our prefixed ideas of what’s possible.
It’s this exhilarating synergy that draws us to this line of work. “Passion” is putting it lightly. For us, the creative process is sacred and a pursuit we hold dear.
AI Should Only be Used as a Starting Point
While we’ve embraced the efficiencies AI’s technology has brought to our video production services, we will always refrain from using AI to replace, rather than accompany, human effort in any meaningful way.
We strictly use AI tools as a creative starting point or to take away the more tedious parts of our process so we’re free to focus our energies on the fun part: the creative work.
AI is a means to an end, but not the end in itself. Without the vision and flair that human touch brings to a video project, we get a homogenized, disappointing final product that nobody enjoys watching or creating.
Transparency First
As a video production company in Washington DC, our clients include government agencies, tech, nonprofits and educational institutions — and while they do care about efficiency, emotional resonance is a top priority. As such, most are tentative about using AI in creative projects. However, some clients might choose to use AI because it can be a more expedient and economical option that allows them to remain within their desired budgets.
Rock Creek’s stance is to prioritize driving our operations entirely with our highly capable and talented team members. We only use AI when it makes sense for the project and when our clients are aware of and on board with it.
Hire Rock Creek’s Video Production Services in Washington DC
AI is a powerful tool, but it’s not the future of creativity. At Rock Creek Productions, we use AI to enhance, not replace the production process. Originality, sensitivity, and inventiveness are irreplaceable, and they’ll always be at the core of what we do.
As AI continues to evolve, we’ll keep exploring how to use it to improve efficiency without sacrificing quality. But no matter how advanced AI becomes, humans will always be the heart of our work.
We’d love to work with you to create something original, engaging, and uniquely yours. Learn more about our video production services here or contact our team to talk about your next video project!
