AI v Human / Chalk & Cheese

The Adventures of Chalk & Cheese

If a machine can make a movie, what does it mean for the people who’ve spent a lifetime learning how?

That’s the uncomfortable question creative professionals are now facing, as AI transforms from curiosity to multi-billion-dollar disruptor — reshaping workflows, job descriptions, and the very definition of authorship.

Filmmakers are being told they’re on the brink of redundancy, as a new breed of AI “creatives” seemingly conjure up anything imaginable with little more than a carefully crafted prompt.

So should we be worried about our jobs? Are the past 20+ years of learning the tools, working with hundreds of cast, crew, clients and creatives... all for nothing?

Am I even writing this blog, or did I cheat and get ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to do it for me? These are the questions not only facing filmmakers but creative practitioners across the globe.

So what do you do? Bury your head in the sand and hope that when you look up, life resembles 2015? Or do you update your job title to “AI Director” and start prompting AI to write prompts for other AIs that generate scripts and images to create AI-generated videos for your AI-built website?

As with most things in life, I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

If you’ve rolled up your sleeves and dived into this new world, you’ve probably discovered that while AI can be extremely impressive in some areas, it can also be deeply frustrating. At the end of the day, AI is just an elaborate stack of processors, memory, storage and network interfaces — designed to identify patterns, re-shape them, and present them back to you.

In short: AI is “book-wise,” while humans are “street-wise.” AI is like someone who’s read every book on how to ride a bike but has never actually gotten on one. Humans may not have read the manual, but we’ve ridden through traffic, in the rain, and figured out shortcuts.

Which brings me to the heart of this post.

Earlier this month, we decided to take an old idea we had for a short-form animation series, write a script (yes, this part was human-made), and go through the process of using AI tools — combined with our filmmaking know-how — to bring that script to life.

We recorded our own voices, performing the characters, edited the dialogue, and then replaced the voices with AI versions that better suited each character. We used AI to generate the character images and environments, and then created storyboards for each shot. After that, we used various AI tools to animate the characters by combining the visuals and audio — essentially generating our "rushes."

From there, we edited the video like any other project: graded, sound designed, and exported.

Chalk Character Design

Cheese Character Design

The whole process took two people, two days. But it wasn’t without its challenges.

The scene was simple: two characters in one room, with traditional locked-off coverage. The first major hurdle was maintaining consistent character appearances. Simple character designs helped, but thanks to the nature of AI, just getting the same-looking character across multiple shots wasn’t as straightforward as you’d hope.

Even harder? Getting AI to generate different angles of the same room. Our scene was set in a kitchen, so “book-smart” AI decided that every angle should show a fridge — because kitchens have fridges, right?

After lots of trial and error (and a bit of Photoshop), we finally had our boards. That’s when the biggest challenge kicked in: video generation.

We used a mix of AI video tools depending on the shot, but for dialogue, Hedra was our tool of choice. The major issue? No matter where the character was placed in frame — or how much we prompted — they always looked camera left. This worked for Cheese, but not for Chalk.

The workaround? We flipped every Chalk shot before generating the video. That made him look camera left during generation. Then, in the edit, we flipped the final shot back — and just like that, he’s looking camera right.

Getting a good performance from both characters in the wide shot at the same time was basically impossible. But, as we’ve done hundreds of times in traditional edits, we combined multiple takes and composited them together.

So what did we learn — and would we do it again?

We learned exactly what we expected: AI is just another tool. It offers impressive speed and scale, but also has some fundamental flaws.

Like most tools, when used in moderation — and guided by a creative person or team — it can absolutely enhance the process. AI gets you most of the way there, but the gap between “ok” and “great” is still very human. That last 10% — the part that involves taste, instinct, and specificity — is where AI still struggles most.

So, without further ado, please enjoy:

Chalk & Cheese — The Mug Dilemma.