How to Document AI Use on Your Film Production: A Practical Checklist

The studios, insurers, and courts are starting to ask. Here's the record you should already be keeping.

Every production now touches AI somewhere — a cleanup pass, a generated background, a voice tweak, a script polish. Most productions document none of it. That's fine until someone asks. And someone always asks: the distributor doing chain-of-title, the insurer writing E&O, the attorney clearing the film.

Here's the practical checklist. For every AI touch on your production, record:

1. What tool, exactly

Not "AI" — the product name and version. "Runway Gen-4, March 2026 build" beats "some AI video thing" in every room that matters.

2. What it touched

Shot numbers, scene numbers, timecodes. "AI-assisted sky replacement, Episode 3, shots 114–131." Vague doesn't survive diligence.

3. What went in

The source material the tool worked from — your own footage, licensed plates, production audio. This is where most productions get sloppy, and it's the first thing a rights-holder's attorney asks about.

4. Who approved it

A name, a date, a sign-off. The director, the producer, whoever had authority. "We all kind of agreed" isn't a record.

5. What rights apply

The tool's terms of service on commercial use, any talent consent covering the performance, union considerations. Screenshot the TOS the week you used it — terms change.

6. The human's contribution

What did a person actually do? Directed, edited, selected, rejected, refined? This is the part that matters most and gets documented least. The question isn't whether AI was involved — it's what the human made.

Keep it in one place, from day one of production. A spreadsheet works. A dedicated tool works better. What doesn't work is reconstructing it six months later from memory when the distributor's attorney emails.

The productions that treat this as paperwork will hate it. The ones that treat it as part of the job — like call sheets and continuity logs — will wonder why everyone else is scrambling.

Can you show your work?