AI Made My Movie Cheaper … And That’s the Problem
For our latest feature film ForeFans, I ended up creating three original songs. That wasn’t part of the original plan, but as the film evolved, I found I needed very specific songs and lyrics for certain scenes to tie into Isla’s (the lead character) journey. After searching in vain on the usual sites I use to discover unknown gems like Soundcloud and music-related Facebook groups, it became clear I would need to create the songs from scratch.
Final Destiny, the anime created for the film, needed an original theme song.
Two of these songs –The Final Destiny Theme and Blame – were true collaborations. The former is a theme song for an anime Isla loves. I licensed music I liked from Envato Elements and with the blessing of the composer I wrote lyrics to the beat of the music. My American friend Lindsey Ricker, an actress and vocalist who speaks fluent Japanese, contributed Japanese lyrics and recorded her performance of the song in a studio in LA.
Blame on the other hand is a moody rock / metal number Isla vibes with on a cam show during a low point in her emotional journey. Creating this song was more difficult as I needed it to be a specific length, crescendo and decrescendo at very certain points to match my edit, and with lyrics that captured what Isla was feeling in the scene.
Luckily, LUMIC Studio, a musician and music producer in Poland came forward to take on the challenge. He wrote and created the music, sent through drafts, tweaked the tempo or messed with the structure or added and subtracted instrumentation according to my notes, until in the end I had exactly what I wanted. I would then write the lyrics again, and after several drafts of that, I put a call out for singers to perform the song. Many sent in auditions but in the end it was a talented vocalist from Kazakhstan named Julia Nem who stood out above the rest. She recorded several takes of her performance, responded to feedback, recorded more takes, and finally LUMIC Studio mixed and mastered the whole song.
It was a long process – from concept to completion The Final Destiny Theme took over a month while Blame took three months to create – but it was rewarding and creatively energizing. We were building something together, piece by piece, and the end result carried all of that effort inside it. These songs feel alive because they were made by people, each with their own opinions and instincts and artistry.
It also cost money. A lot of it. Indie money, sure, but when you're pulling from your own savings the cost of a single song starts to feel monumental. Studio time, production fees, vocalists, mixing – it adds up. And that’s fine when the return matches the effort, but we all know it rarely does. These days, you can (and do) pour thousands into a film and release it only to earn pennies on streaming platforms. The math almost never works. And the weight of that reality starts creeping into every creative decision you make.
By the time I got to the third song, Simp, I had nothing left. No money. No time. No mental space for another long musical journey. I needed to edit a teaser for the quickly approaching European Film Market for Sarah to take and show sales agents on the floor. I needed a song for the teaser, and after trying the songs I had already licensed for the film and feeling none captured the vibe I wanted, I wondered what was the quickest and easiest (and cheapest) way to get a song I might like.
The answer was AI. I had read about experiments filmmakers had done with AI music in Facebook group chats so it was on my radar. Specifically, a platform called Suno. I signed up, wrote some quick lyrics about the themes of the film, chose a genre, a mood, some instrumentation, hit “Create” and Suno spat out a song in minutes. It wasn’t good. But a few tweaks to the prompts, a few more tries, a little bit of editing, and soon I had something I liked. It took under an hour and cost nothing beyond the $10 subscription fee. It wasn’t perfect – nowhere near close to the quality of Blame in particular – but it was sufficient. For the first little teaser released on Youtube, it worked. I had a song in the style I wanted with the lyrics I wanted that was mine to use as I saw fit without any strings attached. No particular skill and virtually no money required.
And if I didn’t tell you this was AI, would you know. Listen:
Maybe, as an artist, as a trained musician or producer or composer, you might. But would the average consumer? For me, it doesn’t sound any different to some of the deliberate low-fi and independent tracks I have chosen to license for the raw and gritty mood of ForeFans as a whole.
This moment feels like a shift. Because while Simp doesn’t hold the same emotional weight as the other two songs, it also didn’t require the same efforts, resources, and sacrifices. It was produced to maximize speed and efficiency, a finished product in the space of an hour that felt strangely hollow, even though something got done. And that’s the danger. AI isn’t just capable – it’s too capable.
And this is where things get uncomfortable. Because I know what it means when something like this becomes easy. Composers are in danger. So are colourists, captioners, voice actors, sound designers, even editors, my bread and butter for many years. So much of what used to be specialized, deeply human work is now being automated – quickly, efficiently, and at a fraction of the cost. And let’s be honest: most of the industry won’t hesitate to cut corners if the end result is “good enough.” There are already tools that auto-caption, auto-grade, auto-compose, and AI voice actors that can mimic human nuance frighteningly well. And all of it is getting better every month.
Mombomb, the controversial AI film accepted into Slamdance.
People are already using AI to make entire films. When Slamdance announced it had accepted an AI-generated short called Mombomb into its 2025 lineup, it sparked a wave of frustration from the indie film community. A lot of filmmakers who had poured real time, money, and emotion into their work felt betrayed. It wasn’t just about AI being involved; it was about a festival meant to champion underdogs giving a highly competitive slot to something made by a machine. And it doesn’t help that Mombomb as a film looks like low quality hot garbage, a selection made for pure novelty. If I submitted to Slamdance, I would be pissed too.
Then there's the controversy over Oscar-winner The Brutalist. The filmmakers used AI to tweak the Hungarian dialogue spoken by Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones. However, they weren’t replacing performances or generating voices from scratch; they were fine-tuning vowels so it would sound more natural to native speakers. The editor, a native Hungarian himself, even lent his own voice to train the AI, and the goal was clarity and authenticity, not automation.
But the backlash came anyway. People were quick to assume it was a slippery slope, that even a little AI was too much, that it tainted the integrity of the work. In this case, I don’t feel the outrage really matched what The Brutalist did but that’s where we’re headed: tools that are barely visible but stir up big debates. The fear is valid, especially for people whose jobs are on the line.
And I feel guilty too.
I used to want to be a novelist but I switched to filmmaking because I love collaboration. I love the unexpected spark that comes from working with other artists, bringing ideas to life, telling stories, creating together.
But I also know that every time I use AI instead, I’m contributing to the problem. I’m feeding the beast. Yet with every film, the pressure to keep costs down grows. The returns shrink. The margin for risk disappears. AI starts to feel less like an optional shortcut and more like the only viable option if you want to get your project across the finish line without taking on yet more debt or asking your crew to work for free again.
It’s hard not to be cynical. I don’t believe studios or corporations will prioritize artists over cost-efficiency. They never have. And while there’s backlash against AI right now, it won’t last. There’s always backlash in the beginning. People complained when non-linear editing replaced cutting film by hand. They were outraged when digital cameras took over 35mm. There were protests when autotune entered music, and groans when stock footage libraries exploded, making camera ops redundant in certain shoots. But over time, every new tech becomes the norm. The resistance fades. And people adapt, or they get left behind.
What scares me is that this time AI isn’t just a new tool – it’s a replacement. It does the work without needing sleep or credit or royalties. It’s not just changing the process, it’s erasing the artist. And while we, as filmmakers and creatives can argue about whether what AI creates is art or just a patchwork of stolen ideas, most audiences won’t care. If it looks good, sounds decent, and doesn’t feel obviously robotic, they’ll watch. The difference between a $10 AI song or a several thousand dollar original track won’t matter to most people scrolling on a streaming platform.
Still, I want to believe there’s something left. I want to believe that human-made work will start to carry its own kind of value. That people will begin to seek it out, not just for its polish, but for its flaws and fingerprints. That the knowledge something was crafted by a person, not a prompt, will be something audiences appreciate in the same way we now value vinyl or handmade furniture or physical books. But we’re not there yet. And a whole lot of damage will come before we get there.
Written by Ivan Malekin
References
1. The Brutalist’s AI Controversy, Explained2. Slamdance Film Festival accepted an AI-generated short. Watch the trailer and judge for yourself