AI Demos are the new storyboards

AI demos are the new storyboards.

Call them prototypes if you must, but I think they make much more sense to think of as storyboards and pre-viz videos of a film. The combination of script and storyboard allows everyone in the production to understand what’s going to be made. What shots need to be captured or created, interiors or locations, crew, actors, visual effects, etc. That shot breakdown is one of the big tasks of pre-production.

The storyboard allows everyone to understand the goal of what they’re planning to make. It’s a boundary object artefact that everyone can collectively rally around and use for collaboration. That’s super useful compared to misalignment due to concepting the idea in three different forms (text, designs, code). Film and TV obviously iterate through text, visuals and moving image, but it’s also much more mature as a craft and it is a singular, linear piece of work, not something with multiple paths.

The key thing is that everybody knows the storyboard isn’t the final movie.