Generative AI for Video: The Fire and the Frame

By Michael Cunniff, Creative Director & Owner, TheSuperAgency.com | @dukesallday

Generative AI in video is everywhere right now. Programs like Sora, Runway, and countless others allow anyone to generate moving images, mimic styles, and create visuals that can look astonishingly real. People are using them to churn out content for social media, advertising, even music videos, often in the pursuit of clicks, likes, and speed.

It is dazzling, it is overwhelming, and it can feel like the future is happening faster than our own attention can keep up. Do you agree? But here’s the truth: while AI can generate visuals, it cannot replace the human eye, the human heartbeat, or the messy, beautiful act of witnessing life.

It cannot feel sunlight hitting a wet street, the nervous energy before a moment that changes everything, or the fleeting intimacy of a laugh shared between strangers.

Fire alone dazzles. Fire shared, carried, and directed, sustains.

Generative AI in video is like discovering fire for the first time.

It is mesmerizing, intimidating, and transformative. Everyone wants to touch it, wave their hands through it, maybe even worship it. But fire alone does not warm or feed us.

It is what we choose to do with it that matters, how we use it, how we carry it, and what we let it illuminate.

AI today can make pixels dance across the screen, can mimic lighting, motion, even emotion. But can it feel the pause, the nuance, the human heartbeat?

Can it feel sunlight hitting a street corner in Miami, the hum of a wet city after rain, the awkward intimacy of a stranger laughing beside you?

Not Yet.

That is the magic the human behind the lens brings, the messy, imperfect, fleeting moments that algorithms cannot predict or replicate.

There is always a pendulum swing between spectacle and substance.

Early CGI thrilled audiences in the 90s, but it did not make films or stories great. Directors like Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Spielberg, Scorsese, and Wong Kar-wai found emotion in the frame, tension in a pause, and story in a gesture.

Kubrick’s work reminds us that technology can astonish, but it is the human questions, the wonder, the fear, the discovery, that give the story its soul.

In 1927, Hollywood released The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length film with synchronized audio, ushering in the golden age of cinema dominated by major studios like MGM and Warner Brothers.

The introduction of the blockbuster with films like Jaws in 1975 and Star Wars in 1977 brought spectacle to a new level.

Today, streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon continue to transform the way viewers consume movies. Along with new age film houses embracing Ai. Even Ai Film Festivals have begun to take over with all of the buzz and excitement of, well, Real Film Festivals?

History reminds us that technology alone does not make culture. 2001: A Space Odyssey shows that even the most mind-bending visuals are only as profound as the human questions they explore.

Music videos, iconic YouTube moments, festival crowds, spontaneous street performances, all endure not because of spectacle, but because someone chose to witness them, to frame them, to live them.

That is creation.

That is courage.

And yet, here we are, at a crossroads. Generative AI will grow, it will astonish, it will challenge us. But the fire, the act of seeing, feeling, and creating, is still ours.

The lens, the camera, the phone they are tools.

But the choice to use them meaningfully, to step outside and witness the world, remains human. That act cannot be automated.

Generative AI is powerful, but it is still a tool. The human experience. The lived, felt, seen, captured experience is irreplaceable. And there is hope, always, for those willing to pick up a camera, step into life, and carry the fire themselves.

I wonder, and I leave these questions for you to wrestle with.

Where is your fire?

What fleeting, unrepeatable moments are you willing to stumble over, sweat for, and truly witness?

What stories do you feel compelled to capture, not because they are algorithmically pleasing, but because they are alive, because they are real?

How do you honor the messy, fleeting, imperfect truths of life when technology tempts us with shortcuts and spectacle?

Will you step into the frame?

Will you chase the pause, the nuance, the heartbeat, and let it guide the story you are compelled to tell?

Because at the end of the day, creativity is still an act of courage. And the questions we choose to answer, and the moments we choose to capture, will define not just the stories we tell, but the life we live.

If you are ready to create REAL content that impacts others, helps brands connect, or explores stories that matter, I am in a full studio every day and ready to collaborate. Follow me on Instagram @dukesallday, subscribe to stay connected, and if you want to bring me on your podcast or project, reach out. Let’s step into the frame together and tell stories that matter.

-Michael