Q: How Do You Write a script for an AI-animated Film?
A. Writing a script for an AI animated film starts with deciding how you’ll approach it. One way is structured — the story comes first, followed by the prompts. Another is discovery-driven — you begin with a single image or vibe, let AI generate unexpected moments, and then collect and refine them. The raw clips are logged, shaped into an outline, expanded into a script, and finally matched with expressions or gestures to build dialogue and narrative flow.
Two Creative Paths with AI Short Films 🎥
Sometimes, frustration is the best teacher.
I've been futzing with a really short animation in an effort to make it substantial enough to enter into PJ Way's upcoming film festival.
“French Bistro Frustration” started with a single, gorgeous café scene and no clear story. I started with an image of a woman with a great expression. Instead of adding characters or scene changes, I let it give me animated expressions — a sharp glance, a smile that hinted at a secret, a face that looked like it was about to speak.
As I sifted, refined and even married two images , I was thinking how this is method was different than the way I've worked in the past.
It's sorta a "go with the flow" way of creating.
I wasn’t fighting the AI. I was collaborating with it.
In an effort to clarify the difference in my mind, I started writing.
Which way do you work?
The Blueprint Method 🏗️
•Structured. Planned. Script-first.
•You know the story from the start, and AI follows your lead.
•Every prompt is engineered to align with your vision.
•Think architectural plans for a film: you design, AI executes.
The Serendipity Method ✨💡
•Exploratory. Adaptive. Discovery-driven.
•You start with a spark — one image, one vibe — and let AI throw its surprises at you.
•Instead of resisting, you collect them, like a director scavenging gems from chance encounters.
•This is where “happy accidents” become the backbone of the story.
•Here’s the twist: I don’t just save the pretty clips. I catalog them with ChatGPT.
Gigi (my ChatGPT's nickname) and I then worked together to:
🎥 Log what happens in each clip (gestures, movements, lengths)
📝 Turn those notes into a story outline
📖 Shape the outline into a script
🎬 Match expressions that look like speech with phrases that fit, almost like lip-readers building dialogue
That catalog becomes the film’s spine. It transforms my "discovery" session into story, and story into a finished short.
The French Bistro short was born out of allowing my AI platforms a little extra freedom, which gave me a method I now use to push AI animation further.
I'll say it again for the folks in the back of the room...
AI isn’t just a tool.
It’s a collaborator.
And when you let it surprise you,
then shape those surprises with structure,
and you'll end up in places you could never have imagined
(good and sometimes not so good)
with images/animated clips that seem impossible to make.
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