AI "Drift" in Film Design
AI lets us not think about the small stuff. Sadly, that also means the visual grammar of filmmaking.
I saw an intriguing comment on Facebook about "AI Drift", i.e., whether there is a gradual erosion of human skills as people offload thinking to AI:
I am definitely noticing AI drift, but in a way most are probably not aware:
Here's my comment as full text:
Perhaps a weird thing for others, but as a filmmaker, I'm noticing more reliance on AI doing the thinking for their film design. If you didn't go to film school, you won't have had the key lesson about eyelines.
There is a quiet visual grammar to films that we only notice when it goes wrong, especially where subjects are in the scene and when they talk to, and look at, each other. Person A is on the left looking right—so person B (on the right) should look left. Makes sense, right? Things get complicated when Person A crosses the room... and suddenly both people are looking in the same direction. (This is especially noticeable in a big theatre, btw.)
Maybe this doesn't bug others as much as it does me, but fixing eyelines (a/k/a "not crossing the sagittal plane" as they taught us in film school) is just saying "ain't" in formal writing. Sure, "ain't" gets the idea across, but it's non-standard, not what people are used to and, as such, is an unnecessary "bump" that readers will be distracted by.
This is only one example, but there are many many others, like placing characters in a location, when to use certain closeup shots, establishing shots, etc. Much of this is meticulously planned out—and re-checked—by writers, pre-vis storyboards, directors on the day of shooting, and finally editors. AI has (unfortunately) removed all of that institutional knowledge from the workflow, and the end result is hard for me to watch.