Reframe is a poignant 5 minute short film made with AI tools by live-action cinematographer and DP Hiroki Shioya. "With REFRAME, I tried to approach AI filmmaking in almost the same way I would approach a live-action film — thinking carefully about framing, lenses, light, blocking, performance, and the rhythm between shots. The film took about three weeks to make, including a lot of testing, generation, editing, sound work, and color finishing. And no, making the AI actors feel realistic was definitely not easy! One of the hardest parts was getting very subtle human behavior — small things like eye movement, the timing of a reaction, breathing, and slight changes in expression can make a huge difference between something feeling human and something feeling obviously AI-generated. Character consistency was also a challenge. I'm happy with how the protagonist worked in this film overall, but it's definitely one of the areas I want to push much further in my next project."

Used ethically, AI can open doors for indie film creators.... (archive link) The low-costs of AI film production allowed the creation of Dreams of Violet, a docudrama based upon the January massacre in Iran. It was the first fully AI-generated film to premiere in the Tribeca Festival. For Reframe, Shioya used Cinema Studio 4.0. An advanced generation platform that allows 30+ camera movements, 4 camera types and 5 optically modeled lenses with adjustable aperture and focus. It comes with 50 color palettes. It generates shots that are up to 30-seconds long. Editing, color, sound design, subtitles, and final finishing were completed in post-production. Here is Shioya's Project Page for Reframe, showing all 523 shots that went into making this film.