HYBRID AI AND CAMERA FILMS
Real footage for the truth, generated shots for the impossible.
Hybrid gets sold as a gimmick and it is not one. It is a budget decision taken at treatment stage: which shots have to be real because a person, a product or a place is the whole point, and which ones are expensive for no good reason — the aerial, the set extension, the crane move a stairwell cannot fit, the pickup shot nobody managed to get on the day.
The seam is planned before the shoot, never rescued after it. If a shot is going to be extended or replaced, the plate is filmed for it: locked tripod, a clean pass without talent, grey and white reference in frame, lens and camera height written down. I direct the shoot against that list. The generated shots I build and run myself, on pipelines I wrote.
Then the honest limits, because they decide whether this works. Generated shots stay short and function as cutaways, two to five seconds, since continuity drifts past that. Faces and hands of your real people do not get replaced. Everything meets inside one grade so the film reads as a single piece rather than two. If nothing needs a real lens, this is the wrong page.
WHAT I DO
- Shot-level build sheet — every shot marked CAMERA, AI, or CAMERA EXTENDED at treatment stage, with the cost and risk of each next to it
- Plate specification — exactly what the camera must capture for a shot to be extendable: lock-offs, clean passes, reference cards, logged lens and height
- On-set direction against that sheet, so the plates come back usable instead of nearly usable
- Generated shots produced on AI media pipelines I built and run myself — environments, extensions, scale, inserts and pickups
- Unified grade direction — one look across camera and generated material, reviewed shot by shot with the colourist
- A written shot ledger at delivery, naming which frames are generated, so you always know what you can and cannot claim publicly
HOW I WORK
- 01
SPLIT
Every shot in the treatment gets assigned to camera, to AI, or to camera-plus-extension, with its cost attached.
- 02
PLATES
The shoot is directed to deliver the plates the generated shots need, with lens, height and reference logged on set.
- 03
GENERATE
I build the generated shots myself on my own pipelines, matched to the plate’s lens, light and movement.
- 04
UNIFY
One grade and one sound pass across both halves, then the ledger of which frames are generated.
BEST FOR
- Films needing a scale, location or camera move the budget cannot physically reach
- Real-camera shoots that came back missing shots and cannot be reassembled
- Brands whose people and product must be genuinely real but whose world can be built
- Campaigns that need many environment variants from a single shoot day
NOT THIS
- Not a fully generated film — if nothing needs a real lens, AI Commercial Production does the whole thing faster and cheaper
- Not frame-by-frame compositing or rotoscoping — I direct and review that work; heavy VFX cleanup goes to a specialist, it is not done at my keyboard
- Not face replacement or a synthetic likeness of a real person — I will not direct a deepfake of anyone, living or dead
THE PROOF
Published case studies from cinematic production work. Each one names the client and shows what was delivered.
STRAIGHT ANSWERS
REST OF CINEMATIC PRODUCTION
MAKE A
WISH.
Tell me what you're building. I'll tell you how loud it can get.
- /01
YOU WRITE
Tell me what you're building and what's in the way. Two lines is enough.
- /02
WE TALK
A 30-minute call, booked within 7 days. Real questions, no pitch theatre.
- /03
YOU GET A PLAN
Scope, timeline and an honest number, usually within a week.