At Camerimage, AI filmmaking debate moves from theory to the set

AI is already changing how some film scenes are made, and cinematographers at the 2026 Camerimage festival are arguing over what that means for their craft and jobs. The sharpest example is “greybox” filmmaking, where AI adds production design and lighting after actors have been filmed against a neutral background.

Watch Desk analysis

What happened

The festival in Toruń, Poland, has devoted this year’s edition to AI’s hopes and threats. Its opening ceremony featured a humanoid robot taking the stage before festival director Marek Żydowicz, setting a suitably unsubtle tone for the discussions that followed.

The IndieWire report describes a programme giving advocates and critics room to argue. One practical flashpoint is greybox production: cinematographer Bartosz Nalazek said a recent major television series used the technique for 40 per cent of its scenes. He described the work as technically easier but said moving so much image-making into post-production left him feeling “brain-dead”.

Why it matters

Greyboxing can sidestep production problems such as weather and difficult locations. But if crews are asked to shoot deliberately neutral images so those choices can be made later with AI, the cinematographer’s creative role may shift from shaping light and composition on set to advising on decisions made in post.

That is a more concrete argument than “AI will change everything”. The question is which parts of the work move, who gets to make the creative decisions, and whether the people whose jobs are changing still find the work worth doing.

Our read

This is not a simple contest between artists and a magic prompt box. The report notes that AI-assisted productions still employ traditional film workers, even as some cinematographers describe smaller crews and less creative control. Both things can be true, inconveniently.

The useful test is not whether a production uses AI, but what it changes on set: the crew’s size, the cinematographer’s authority and the quality of the final image. A festival full of people who understand the craft is a good place to ask those questions without pretending the answers are settled.

What to watch

• Whether greybox techniques spread beyond the productions already using them.
• How cinematographers’ responsibilities change between set and post-production.
• Whether filmmakers can show that the workflow improves production without hollowing out creative roles.

Discussion spark: If AI moves lighting and production design from the set into post-production, is that a useful new cinematography workflow or a loss of the cinematographer’s creative control?

Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.