Hooroo Jackson

One Person, One Film

(Essay from “The New Machine Cinema: Foundational Essays in AI Film Theory”)

One Person, One Film: The Case for Pure AI Cinema

“One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.” – Stanley Kubrick

As the field of AI filmmaking shifts toward integrated toolsets with a deeper emphasis on motion capture, we must recognize two distinct artforms: traditional cinema and the new machine cinema. While this distinction will inevitably dissolve as the forms merge, there are many nuances that must be ironed out.

Let me first acknowledge the undeniable excitement of integrative AI filmmaking. The practicality of an integrative workflow is clear not in one way, but in every way; speaking not of the benefits of the tool but in AI filmmaking itself.

However there is nothing in integrative approaches that AI cannot ultimately solve itself. Not only is there no shame in a pure generative AI workflow, but it improves upon integration in crucial ways. 

People often cite Spielberg’s Jurassic Park as the model for introducing new technology—strategic integration. However, we’re actually having two discussions at once:

If AI were merely another tool, we could frame it in terms of Jurassic Park. But it’s far bigger. The milestone that matters isn’t integration. I reject speaking in terms of mass entertainment franchises entirely. The real achievement will be who utilizes machine cinema in wholly unthought ways—who, like Georges Méliès, advances it into magic. 

Because to have magic, we first have to acknowledge that magic has been granted to us—a realization that is still in progress.

The truth is: audiences care only about the final film. 

I believe we have a duty to explore the full extent of the machine cinema artform without half-measures. We stand at a fork in the road, and the essential question is: What can one person accomplish with nothing but AI tools?

The filmmaker becomes the new novelist.

Integrated AI cinema is a different sport entirely from generative AI cinema, a prospect I imagine will become culturally exciting when people realize the implications.

Directorial intent only vanishes when there’s no human in the pipeline at all, and even that gives way to producer’s intent, or writer’s intent.

We’re nowhere near automated films where you input a logline, approve some options, and out comes a movie.

Calling them automated films is stealing the ground we staked from underfoot.

No. It must be one person, one film.

The core benefit of machine filmmaking is the direct pipeline between imagination and reality.

Kubrick noted that editing is the only craft unique to cinema: the director must be active in every decision.

My argument is that integration is a slow creep to my vision in Window Seat that has been realized at the outset. Integrative half-measures might enable baby steps, might earn respect from audiences and institutions, but pure AI is the only viable endpoint. This has been my goal from the start.

But it is the one category I stake as most important: one person, one film. Like the 100-meter dash in the Olympics – the purest test of human speed, it’s those 10 seconds on the track that capture the world’s imagination.

Similarly, while AI cinema will branch into countless forms – hybrid productions, mocap integration, team collaborations, studio departments – the pure sprint of solo AI filmmaking warrants its own category.

If methodology mattered in life, if trials and suffering carried inherent value, we’d all be patron saints. The distinctions suggest parallel paths requiring formal categorization. But perhaps that too is temporary—perhaps “one person, one film” is so philosophically it that anything else is just a waste of time. 

ABOUT: Hooroo Jackson is the director of the first fully AI feature film ever made, Window Seat (2023) and the first AI animated feature film ever made, DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict (2024). His book of essays, The New Machine Cinema: Foundational Essays in AI Film Theory is the first theoretical framework built around the new medium of AI cinema.