The True Line Cut
From Life as Cinema: Essays in AI Film Theory, Volume 3 of the New Machine Cinema
AI lets cinema behave like sumi-e and jazz: a single, unbroken gesture where the film records the artist’s decisions in real time. I call this the True Line Cut—not a rough cut, but a performance cut whose value is the risk of finality. The mistake isn’t corrected; it becomes the unbroken press of a line on a page, forming a complete drawing.
In classical Japanese brush painting, the artist takes up the brush, dips it in ink, and then executes the entire painting in one unbroken gesture. There is no sketch, no erasure, or second draft. The line is true because it records not only the image, but the state of the artist in an unbroken moment: hesitation, confidence, accident, rhythm all become a part of the process.
Gil Evans compared this to his iconic work with Miles Davis on the album Kind of Blue: improvisational jazz actualized into its own subset artform. A meticulously planned work made over years might surpass this in artistic heights, but the subset still surpasses the planned work through its own authentic grammar. Its truth comes from the fact that it is immediate, unedited, lived in real time, not preferable to a fully detailed work, but defining its artform no different than the planned work defines its own artform.
As it stands, no parallel exists in cinema. Until now.
Because of the speed at which we work it is now possible to capture a film in real time, an entire new possibility emerges. An artform that materializes on screen directly as the artist is thinking it capturing spontaneity, capturing a pure artistic process never before seen.
I came to this essay by accident during the production of my new film My Boyfriend is a Superhero!? The inklings began when I decided on a jazz soundtrack for the film, taking a deep dive into the history of jazz and jazz theory. The idea of a one-and-done, spontaneous, improvisatory work that operates at a different standard than formal cinema seemed, conceptually appealing enough to decide on this for the music of an AI film.
I went ahead and spearheaded a jazz soundtrack directly inspired by the 60s titans, Miles Davis, Sun Ra, Don Cherry. But I did not at the time realize the parallel went beyond appreciation and homage.
The concept really came home as directly applicable, as often does in life, through a mistake. In beginning the shoot for Superhero!? I could not decide on the character model for Abigail.
I had one model, then another, then a third. Each one locked into the film where at the time I was certain she was the proper Abigail, wasting precious days on the wrong Abigail.
Forcing me to make a decision as to who is the real Abigail? Whoever that I chose, I would have to regenerate the other one.
In the building blocks of a new artform, every mistake potentially becomes iconic.
This mistake of three Abigails quickly became a moment of significance. One, this can only happen during a preposterously quick AI shoot. A traditional film, after all, will have ironed out character models months in advance—too much money is at stake to make it on the fly.
Such a mistake in tradfilm could cost tens of millions of dollars to undo. While an AI production happens so quickly that you realize you’re on the wrong track days later. It is trivial to reverse course.
I recalled abstract expressionist painting. Jackson Pollock, when asked what are you painting? Responds he is “painting the painting”, as in, he is painting his own process, the rawest and most authentic expression of his creative mind. The creative lightning itself. Which in turn reflected cogently, the chaos, the symbology of the 20th century nuclear age.
Therein I realized artistic forms evolve with society around it, culture does not happen in a vacuum, it scales with technology and economics. And now, a film can do the same. A film can capture its own process, in doing so, cogently represents the symbology of the 21st century, the age of AI.
This Fall, alongside the four versions of Superhero–two Abigails and two soundtracks–I will be releasing a fifth cut, inaugurating the True Line Cut.
It is the pencil on the page that never lifted. It is the real time cut. The film decides on its coherence as it goes. It will be the fine line rough cut with the most authentic process. This cut represents my process in motion. It will be rougher, glitchier, unfinished but it brings an entirely new idea, of the True Line Cut.
As it came about by accident, it is not even a full expression of the True Line cinema, but a beta reading.
Simply, you will see my indecision deciding on Abigail’s character model in real time, and this becomes a part of the actual film.
Looking back, there were shades of this in my work leading up to this. My experimental AI videos, Machine Mind, Hooroo Play and the surreal imagery in my video essays, all represent the philosophy behind the True Line Cut.
None of those videos were planned. All of them were placed down with no refinement, and immediately locked into the picture forever, whatever I came up with in the moment. They were spontaneous, fast, and sealed, the pencil pressed the page, and only lifted once the drawing was complete.
This in effect led to severe criticisms that AI lacks in the refinement of craft. I had an inkling they were missing the point, but could not fully articulate it until now.
True Line solves multiple problems at once:
- It directly answers the authenticity critique of AI art by making the human decision-making process visible and irreversible
- It establishes a new aesthetic category that isn’t trying to compete with traditional polish but creates its own standards
- It leverages what’s unique about AI (speed, low cost per iteration) rather than trying to hide those qualities
In introducing this method, we may explore further reaches.
What will be the new demanded grammar of a True Line film? It would need to bring a balance of narrative coherence with constant novelty and spontaneity. It won’t need to be one hundred percent improvised but the artist must exist in real time lending decisions like an action painting that materialize in locked in form, immediately.
The standards might be lower in coherence, but they will also be preferable, because they are more authentic, restoring authorship in cinema beyond algorithms and commercial considerations.
And when it’s done, it’s locked. No going back, same as a baseball team can’t rewind the innings.
Perhaps when it’s finished, there will be two cuts: the True Line Cut, the first pass untouched, and the Fine Line Cut, the second pass with some refinement.
A formal exercise emerges. Like Miles Davis bringing in vague sketches improvising with his team—whatever they perform, there it goes on tape. He may come in with a plan, but viewers of True Line may not be interested in artistic plans. The best artists in True Line will simply end up with Kind of Blue.
True Line (v1.0)
- 24-72h timebox
- No retroactive replacements
- Published time-stamped audit
- Failure is allowed and final
I bring these rules merely to argue the case; formal rules may not be needed. An authentic True Line may take six months, and how wonderful to imagine the far reaches of a multi-hour film laid down with one brushstroke.
When experiencing the possibilities, one may not wish it any other way.
For now, I present Superhero!? as the beta, the True Line (v0.1). I envision a True Line (v1.0) feature, and consider Dungeons & Dragons. Let’s say that I would sit down with an LLM, it functions as Dungeon Master and I am player. I use my writing skills to react to situations as it unfolds the world around me. Whatever we came with is the feature. No going back.
The back and forth becomes the rhythm and musicality of two creative minds in tension.
A third AI can monitor the discussion to ensure it remains in the bounds. Though spontaneity defines True Line, rules enforce spontaneity.
If rules do emerge, it would be as sports. Foundationally: a single forward pass. No revisions. Beyond this, it’s hard to predict.
Perhaps it will finalize video in real time, or the director can use agents after the fact to fill in the audio and video, or he can manually go in with AI tools and produce the film himself.
The visual and auditory expression of True Line might be after the fact. We may watch the raw creative process with excitement, and the visual, cinema components are an afterthought, but the excitement happened in the moment without the visuals, mind-to-mind.
As it’s laying down the film itself in the trail behind the race, a buzz travels at what has just happened. People line up to see the film on screen.
What emerges is a new, auditable mode: performance cinema, that standard films cannot offer: presence, risk, and indexical authorship.
Maybe the effort fails spectacularly. But like master improvisation in music, it seldom does. Also like music, everyone can pick up an instrument and play.
There are shades of precedent: 24 hour film exercises. Even a trad film’s rough cut workprint solidifies the early stage of a process. Role-playing cinema except with an audit.
But unlike a workprint—a provisional assembly meant to be revised—the True Line Cut is a performance master.
A workprint is instrumental and private, a stepping-stone that points beyond itself to a different film; the True Line is public and terminal, the film that records its own becoming.
It’s made under declared constraints (single forward pass, time-boxed window, no retroactive replacements), and those constraints become the meter of the piece, as tempo is to jazz.
Perhaps the exercise becomes the most perfect possible film improvised from a blank slate.
Perhaps the most wild, experimental one.
Or the best experience outright, encapsulating the entire ethos, tension, and relief of its era, like splatter paintings in the 20th century.
If masterpieces emerge, they emerge from the first draft. And like jazz, the great examples of the artform might be viewed by laymen completely out of context, scratching their heads saying, what’s the big deal? I can do that.
They will claim that further drafts can refine this work into perfection, it is irresponsible to leave it as one single draft. I would counter, a tennis player can stop between sets for days and recover before continuing the match, performing every shot at full stamina. But no. People want the match. They want to see the sport in real time. So with cinema.
The film in real time carries further weight than a film without limits. The excitement is palpable. If it’s not in real time, why bother? Anyone can achieve greatness with infinite time and infinite means. But what does it mean to achieve greatness in one single True Line, in one brush-stroke, in one painting on the very first draft?
This is a craft artists might spend a lifetime mastering.
It returns to my Abigails. I considered the question–what if I never replaced her at all and the film stands exactly as it will be. What if I push My Boyfriend is a Superhero!? and she, in Bunuel fashion, randomly changes?
Would anyone care, notice, or claim it was a lesser film with such a fundamental betrayal of cinematic grammar?
It was said of jazz before formalized into a serious, important artform, this is not real music, much as critics of AI films state, the continuity, grammar, syntax, and visuals are not real cinema.
The True Line Cut encapsulates the ultimate response to this in one single phrase, it is a feature, not a bug.
Still, I was not ready to take that leap and present the True Line as the definitive cut. The film is already baked in its conceptual purpose: Choose your Protagonist. Two Abigails, the audience chooses. Therefore I offer the True Line Cut as a conceptual alternative.
There you are recording the purest talent of an artistic mind. The director becomes Hamlet on the stage, except instead of playing one character, they are performing the entire ensemble, every song and every cut.
