The first time I fed real documentary footage into Runway Gen-3, the result was a hallucinated landscape that bore no resemblance to the source material. That failure taught me the most important lesson of AI-augmented filmmaking: generative tools are not automatic. They demand the same creative rigor as a camera.
My pipeline now begins where it always has -- with the real camera. I shoot on RED or Sony, capturing the core narrative footage with practical lighting, real locations, and human subjects. The AI enters the workflow only in post-production, and only where it can genuinely extend what the camera captured rather than replace it.
The integration points are specific. I use Midjourney for concept art during pre-production, generating visual references that communicate ideas to the team faster than mood boards ever did. During post, ComfyUI handles targeted tasks: extending skies, generating period-accurate environmental details for historical documentaries, and creating transition frames between shots that would otherwise require expensive reshoots.
Runway Gen-3 is reserved for the most ambitious sequences -- moments where the documentary narrative needs to visualize something that no longer exists or was never photographed. A medieval fortress as it appeared in the 15th century, reconstructed from archaeological data and AI interpolation. The key is maintaining visual consistency with the surrounding real footage.
The workflow is not about replacing human judgment. It is about having a new set of tools that, when guided by a clear creative vision, can achieve results that would be impossible with traditional methods alone. Every AI-generated frame in my work passes through the same editorial scrutiny as every camera-shot frame.
The danger zone is temptation. AI makes it trivially easy to add visual spectacle, and spectacle without narrative purpose is the fastest way to lose an audience's trust. In documentary work especially, every visual choice carries an implicit promise of truthfulness. I never use AI to fabricate events or mislead -- only to enhance, extend, and illuminate.
