AI is the newest engine in the visual effects pipeline, transforming how scenes are rendered without altering the creative process behind them. From script to storyboard to edit, every artistic decision remains human-made. The technology steps in only after those choices are locked, speeding up production while keeping storytelling firmly in human control.
Adam Ballachey, Creative Director at Nadador Films, is a director and content strategist whose work spans feature documentaries and branded films. With Emmy and Peabody Award-winning credits and a Cannes Lions win, he brings a grounded perspective on where AI truly belongs in the filmmaking process. For Ballachey, the industry's obsession with the technology itself is obscuring the one thing that has always mattered most: the story.
For documentary filmmakers, AI is opening new ways to visualize stories that exist only in sound. Ballachey sees it as a chance to create what he calls "backwards-looking recreations" that bring history and memory to life, capturing moments too distant or dangerous to film. Speaking about his upcoming project We Talk to Anyone, which follows a diplomat who meets with non-state actors such as the Taliban and Boko Haram, he explains:
"I have raw audio narrative of this incredible character telling the story. The challenge for the filmmakers is, how are we going to make this into a compelling world? I used to pay a thousand dollars a second for quality animation, and you had to find someone with deep technical mastery and a good aesthetic. Now the opportunity is to take those same storytelling instincts and use AI to build something that feels alive," Ballachey says.
- From avatar to Avatar: Ballachey believes AI doesn’t replace human artistry but heightens its importance. The process of building a film with AI, he says, mirrors traditional animation and relies on the same hard-earned preparation and visual literacy. "Anyone can animate a funny little avatar for a fifteen second slop video, but if you’re using AI as a serious storytelling tool, the traditional skills of setting up a project are what truly inform the quality of what you get. It’s like any program, garbage in, garbage out. The stronger your creative foundation, the more the technology can actually work in service of the story," Ballachey explains.
Ballachey warns against chasing photorealism in AI-generated work, which he says risks pushing a film into uncanny valley territory and breaking audience trust. He believes the real artistry lies in choosing a style that serves the story. For his diplomat film, he is opting for a distinct, stylized aesthetic that makes no attempt to appear real, embracing a visual language that feels intentionally designed rather than imitated.
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The kiss of death: "Even when AI is trying to be perfectly indistinguishable from live action video, it just has a weirdness. That weirdness is the kiss of death, especially in nonfiction storytelling. You have to be careful with audiences because you can repel them if they feel like they’re being tricked or manipulated," says Ballachey. The pursuit of flawless realism in AI-generated film often backfires, creating an unease that breaks the spell of the story.
The expertise that once took entire teams years to master is now baked into the model. All of that expertise has been vacuumed up as intellectual property that they’re stealing. Artists used to spend months perfecting the surface of water or the texture of light, and now those same results can be generated in seconds through a few lines of direction.Adam Ballachey - Creative Director | Nadador FilmsHe calls the tech-focused debate around AI a distraction that pulls attention away from a filmmaker’s true mission, which is to serve the human purpose of the work. His conviction is rooted in industry history, as he compares today’s hype to past technological shifts that always proved secondary to the art itself.
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Same old story: "AI is the least interesting part of filmmaking. It’s like talking about what kind of tripod you used. The film is about character, it’s about actors, and as much as people in the AI industry want to make it all about AI, that’s not what the story is about. It’s a visual effects tool," Ballachey explains. "We’ve seen this before with every new technology. There was the same debate over film versus digital, with purists insisting you weren’t a real filmmaker if you didn’t shoot on 35mm, but it was always about the story."
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Borrowed brilliance: AI’s convenience comes at a quiet cost as years of painstaking visual effects mastery are absorbed into the data that powers the tools replacing it. "The expertise that once took entire teams years to master is now baked into the model. All of that expertise has been vacuumed up as intellectual property that they’re stealing. Artists used to spend months perfecting the surface of water or the texture of light, and now those same results can be generated in seconds through a few lines of direction," Ballachey says.
Ballachey’s framework offers a clear way to understand projects like Critterz, the OpenAI-backed animated feature now generating industry buzz. He suspects the "all AI" headlines obscure what is, in reality, a deeply human process. From script to storyboard to edit each creative stage still depends on human judgment, taste, and storytelling instincts. AI may handle rendering and compositing, but the imagination that shapes every shot remains firmly human.
"A lot of work goes into going from print to board to animatic. That’s what really builds the world. The question to ask isn’t whether AI made the movie, but how far up the pipeline it was used," he concludes.