{"id":681012,"date":"2026-11-11T01:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T01:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/681012\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T01:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T01:16:08","slug":"even-martin-scorsese-uses-ai-for-storyboards-can-the-art-survive-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/681012\/","title":{"rendered":"Even Martin Scorsese uses AI for storyboards. Can the art survive? | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

A film industry dominated by AI is a dystopian prospect: stories and dialogue generated by large language models, populated by reincarnated screen icons<\/a> and uncanny humanoids<\/a>. That is in the future, but the real-world impact of AI is already directly affecting jobs behind the scenes, as Hollywood\u2019s biggest film-makers begin to adopt the technology. James Cameron \u2013 long an advocate for emerging technologies in film-making \u2013 is on the board of a gen AI firm<\/a>, citing his interest in how AI will intersect with CGI; Steven Soderbergh used Meta-powered tech to create animations for his recent documentary about John Lennon<\/a>; even Christopher Nolan, while dismissing the idea that AI will replace humans as \u201cnonsense\u201d, conceded that it will create some useful \u201cimaging tools\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meticulous \u2026 Saul Bass\u2019 storyboard for the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Psycho Photograph: TCD\/Prod.DB\/Alamy<\/p>\n

The current canary in the coalmine however is the storyboard artist, whose work gen AI appears to have directly in its sights. Storyboard artists are the illustrators who draw the panels of images with notes and diagrams that map out scenes before they are filmed. Storyboards are used to work out how a film will look, and as a blueprint to communicate a director\u2019s vision to cast and crew, and are one of the first steps in bringing a script off the page. Now they appear on the verge of replacement by programmes that use text prompts to create illustrations instead. Even an old-school diehard like Martin Scorsese has got on board; in June he announced a partnership with an AI firm<\/a> whose text-to-image model he used in the storyboarding process for his next movie.<\/p>\n

Usually, storyboards are made together by a director, an artist and other crew members responsible for the film\u2019s visual storytelling, such as cinematographers, editors, production designers, stunt co-ordinators and more. \u201cI find it very fulfilling to make art in such a collaborative way,\u201d says Alex Clark<\/a>, a British storyboard artist whose recent films include Bong Joon Ho\u2019s sci-fi comedy Mickey 17<\/a>, adventure romance The Gorge<\/a> and Louis Leterrier\u2019s recent thriller The Last House<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s about people sitting down to discuss each other\u2019s ideas. You might act things out, make sound effects, read dialogue. You develop a creative relationship with one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Storyboard illustration by Max Douy for Alejandro Jodorowsky\u2019s unproduced adaptation of Dune Photograph: Zhe Ji\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

For Clark, the process of creating a storyboard is just as important as the finished product. \u201cA common misconception is that storyboarding is about making nice drawings. But it\u2019s more than that \u2013 it\u2019s about relating to how the director is thinking, and conceiving the most appropriate ways to tell the story of a scene,\u201d he says. Dune director Denis Villeneuve<\/a> articulated this relationship when describing his frequent collaborator, artist Sam Hudecki, as \u201can extension of my brain\u201d. For Villeneuve, storyboarding is \u201ca new way of writing\u201d: writing a screenplay might provide the words, but storyboarding is the first step in creating the \u201ccinematic language of the movie\u201d. He views it as \u201ca way to dream\u201d as the film begins to come to life on the page.<\/p>\n

Clark says that there is a balance that must be struck between \u201ccapturing the essence\u201d of a scene and figuring out how the shots are going to work once the cameras are rolling. \u201cThe act of how you mark the page \u2013 to convey forms, tones, compositions, blocking and so on \u2013 forces you to thoroughly think about how all these different details will affect the scene. It gives you a rigorous understanding of how the scene is going to work.\u201d Clark\u2019s work reflects the fact that storyboarding is one step in an ongoing collaboration that continues through pre-production, shooting on set and beyond. \u201cSometimes I try to scale the drawings back, when it feels appropriate to leave space for others to build on it \u2013 whether it\u2019s an actor\u2019s performance, the way the set is decorated, lighting setup or subtle movement of the camera. I like finding space for happy accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n

For researchers and film enthusiasts, storyboard art offers a glimpse into the journey that lies behind a film, including fascinating changes in direction like this. \u201cStoryboard art shows us the evolution of the creative vision,\u201d says Ferdinando Cocco, a lecturer in film at Abertay university in Dundee. He points to Disney\u2019s 1991 film Beauty and the Beast as an example: when it was first being worked on in the late 1980s, the storyboards had a rococo-inspired aesthetic<\/a>, contemporary to the fairytale\u2019s origins, styling Gaston as a bewigged 18th-century French aristocrat rather than the swollen, strong-jawed hunter who exemplified more modern ideals of masculinity.<\/p>\n

Walt Disney (right) listens to an unidentified animator talk through the storyboards for the film Sleeping Beauty (released in 1959). Photograph: Gene Lester\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

As a film-making technique, the storyboard was first used regularly by Disney animators in the 1930s and and it plays a key role in their production process (as evidenced by displays of concept and storyboard art<\/a>, and the side-by-side videos Disney posts online<\/a>. (Disney also announced a $1bn investment<\/a> into OpenAI\u2019s video tool Sora last year.)<\/p>\n

Storyboards were swiftly adopted by live-action productions, dating at least back to Gone With the Wind<\/a> (1939). Since then, many film-makers have left behind storyboards that are beautiful and evocative images in themselves. Alfred Hitchcock created meticulously detailed storyboards, which spawned some of the genre\u2019s most recognisable images: such as the shower scene in Psycho<\/a> sketched beforehand by his frequent collaborator Saul Bass, the graphic designer behind many classic posters of the era. And before that, Hitchcock had worked with Salvador Dal\u00ed on surreal designs<\/a> for the dream sequence in his 1945 film Spellbound.<\/p>\n

Other directors, including Akira Kurosawa<\/a> and Ridley Scott<\/a> \u2013 whose storyboards are known as \u201cRidleygrams\u201d \u2013 draw their own. Some of Bong\u2019s self-drawn sketches are currently on display at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles<\/a>, and his panels for Parasite have been published as a graphic novel<\/a>. \u201cWhenever I go to set without storyboards, I feel like I\u2019m standing in the middle of Grand Central Terminal wearing only my underwear,\u201d Bong writes in the book\u2019s preface \u2013 however he does encourage the reader to see the differences between the storyboards and the film as \u201cexciting moments of fear and spontaneity\u201d.<\/p>\n

Setting the tone \u2026 Alfred Hitchcock drawing storyboard sketches for Saboteur surrounded by concept artwork in his office at Universal Studios in 1942. Photograph: Masheter Movie Archive\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Fan interest in behind-the-scenes material has created a market for storyboard books, while last year an exhibition devoted to storyboard art held in Milan<\/a> displayed panels from films made by arthouse auteurs such as Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini, to artists Isaac Julien and Carrie Mae Weems, to Hollywood royalty \u2013 including Scorsese.<\/p>\n

Creating engaging images is not without a practical function either, as storyboards are often pinned up on set to give the crew a sense of what will be shot that day. \u201cI feel a responsibility to produce work that inspires and captivates everyone about what they\u2019re making,\u201d Clark says. \u201cIf the level of artistry and attention is evident at this stage, I believe it can set the tone on set, of valuing the craft involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

All hope is not yet lost. Cocco has observed a return to analogue practices and suggests that AI can be used in a way that fosters rather than dilutes the creative process. \u201cPerhaps the difficulty that AI purportedly overcomes was the whole point from the start,\u201d Cocco says. \u201cHaving to communicate with others forces an expansion of the artistic vision in ways that cannot be pre-empted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clark meanwhile predicts that, as AI usage in the industry increases, people will come to have a greater appreciation for films with a human touch. \u201cUltimately, I think most successful films make you feel something as a human being. One advantage of hand-drawn storyboards is that you have a direct sense of that human authenticity right there on the page.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A film industry dominated by AI is a dystopian prospect: stories and dialogue generated by large language models,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-681012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}