I directed an 8-minute short film where AI did the script, footage sourcing, edit, VFX and sound mix. Here's the pipeline and what I learned

: voice direction tags, ducking under narration and a mastered mix make a bigger difference than any single visual effect.

• I also rendered a second version with all the stock footage replaced by AI video generated locally (MiniMax H3 on an RTX 4090, 123 clips, about 2 hours of GPU time). It looked good, but the real footage won.