A.I. Tools For Documentary Filmmakers

From Pre-Production to Post-Production and beyond!

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing  the way documentary filmmakers create and tell their stories.

In fact, it's impacting pretty much every stage of the documentary process from idea development to production to post-production and beyond! 

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Utilizing AI for Documentary Production

Thanks to the D-Word for hosting this terrific webinar on AI for documentary production. 

A.I. Tools for Documentary Filmmakers

Here are 15+ ideas and examples of how documentary filmmakers are using A.I. technology in their filmmaking projects:

1. Film Titles & Loglines: OpenAI's ChatGPT, Claude and other AI chatbots can generate potential film titles based on the theme, subject, or a brief description of the documentary.

2. Image Generation, Animation & Digital Art: Impressive tools such as DALL-E, Kaiber and Midjourney create stunning visuals within seconds.

3. Idea Development & Research: ChatGPT, Claude and other AI chatbots help filmmakers brainstorm and refine their documentary ideas by generating new angles, themes, or perspectives; generate interview questions; condense complex academic papers and much more.

4. Storyboarding: For filmmakers shooting recreations as part of their documentary, AI tools like MidJourney and Krock.io can quickly and easily generate detailed and dynamic storyboards with just a few clicks.

5. Scripts, Production Schedules & Shot Lists: Use ChatGPT or Claude to generate scripts, story outlines and shot lists. Then copy/paste that text into your AI video editor to create storyboards, animation, and even an entire short film!

6. Narration & Character Voices: Filmmakers can use AI-generated voices to provide professional-sounding narration for documentaries, offering various accents, languages, and vocal styles. Use tools such as voice.ai or murf.ai to generate human-sounding voice overs. 

7. Color Grading and Video Clean-Up: Significantly beautify and improve your footage through color grading, image stabilization, matching colors from multiple cameras, background removal and so much more! Options include Runway, ColourLab.ai and Fylm.ai.

8. Sound Design & Audio Editing: AI tools can be used to enhance audio quality, removing background noise, improving/clean up poor audio and improve speech clarity in interviews or on-location recordings. Lots of choices for this one including Veed.io and Runway or find it already baked into your video editing software program including DaVinci Resolve Studio and Adobe Premiere Pro.

See Best AI Tool For Video Editors 

🤯How is this even possible? #gen1 research @runwayml #aiart #aivideo #videotovideo pic.twitter.com/DHpq1LNjUR

— Don Allen Stevenson III (@DonAllenIII) February 16, 2023

9. Voice cloning: AI tools such as respeecher, IIElevenLabs and Play.ht can be used to clone voices from existing audio recordings, providing filmmakers with the ability to recreate the voices of historical figures or to replicate the voice of a narrator for consistency throughout a project.

10. AI Transcription, Subtitles, translation: Tools include Blanc, Descript and EditingTools.io or check for these features inside your video editing software program (Resolve, Premiere, etc).

11. Create Music from Text: Generate music or sound effects from a single text prompt describing genre, mood, abstract phrase, etc using tools like SUNO, udio, beatoven.ai, riffusion, mubert and AIVA. (Perhaps the most impressive AI music generator is Google's MusicLM which is currently in the testing phase.)

12. Grant proposals & Pitch Decks: Quickly generate descriptive text with ChatGPT for your fundraising and promotional materials including synopsis, treatment, crew bios and more! Generate a pitch deck in seconds with Gamma.

13. Marketing Materials: ChatGPT can generate attention-grabbing marketing copy for a documentary, including taglines and promotional text for a website, crowdfunding campaigns and social media posts.

14. Press Releases: In addition to marketing materials, filmmakers can utilize ChatGPT to generate professional press releases to communicate news and updates about their projects to journalists and media outlets.

15. Film Discussion Guides: ChatGPT can help filmmakers create engaging discussion guides to accompany their documentaries, promoting critical thinking and conversation among viewers.

Adobe Firefly Trailer (Here's What's Coming)

Do you work in Adobe Premiere? Here's what's coming soon... 

Additional A.I. Resources For Documentary Filmmakers

There's An A.I. For That -- Need a task done? Use this search tool to scrape the web and find the right A.I. app or tool for the job.

Text To Video - An exploding array of choices. Try tools like InVideo or wave.video

Boost Your Documentary Productions with AI - 4-Part On-Demand Class with Sundance award-winning documentary filmmaker Philip Shane.

Best Practices for Use of GenAI in Documentaries - a special guide by the Archival Producers Alliance.

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A.I. For Documentary Filmmakers

How are YOU using AI in your documentary productions? Did we miss anything? Please share below...

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Documentary Resources

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