I’m like most everybody else I know, thinking about how AI is changing how we work and what that means for those of us working in the film & TV industry.
This will go badly if producers treat AI as a cost-cutting mechanism, strip jobs from production, and call it progress.
As an industry professional working in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island, and as someone who has spent years working on union and non-union sets, I care deeply about the crew and creatives. This is my honest attempt to look at where we actually are, what it means for people like us, and what it requires from the people making production decisions.
The Ground We’re Already Standing On
We need to talk about where this industry actually is right now, because the disruption did not start with generative AI. It started before it.
BC’s total film and television production volume between April 2023 and March 2024 was $2.4 billion. That was a 27% decrease from $3.3 billion the year prior. Canada’s total production volume for that same period fell 18.5% year over year. Statistics Canada reported that BC saw the largest provincial decline: operating revenue fell $725 million, a 17% drop to $3.5 billion in 2023. The province responded in 2025 by raising the Production Services Tax Credit from 28% to 36% and bumping the domestic credit from 35% to 40%. That was a direct attempt to stay competitive with other jurisdictions.
IATSE Local 891 is the largest IATSE local in Canada, representing over 9,000 film and TV professionals across BC and the Yukon. It was already navigating this landscape when AI entered the mainstream conversation.
Crew and creatives who were already stretched thin from two years of strikes, budget pullbacks, and production slowdowns now face a technology transition on top of it.
What AI Is Actually Doing in Production
The conversations about AI in film tend to focus on image generation and deepfakes. But, the more pervasive, and arguably more consequential shift, is happening in the parts of production that happen before anything show up on screen.
Script breakdowns that used to take two days now take hours. Budget modelling with AI tools compresses pre-production timelines by an estimated 30–40%. Contract summaries, clearance research, scheduling, and location management are increasingly handled by tools that cost a fraction of what those paid crew positions did.
At SXSW 2026, Amazon MGM Studios described AI as operating like cruise control: it helps you stay in the lane and maintain speed, but the human still needs their hands on the wheel. The question is: who gets to drive, and who gets displaced when fewer drivers are needed.
In post-production, the shift is even faster. AI tools now handle colour grading assistance, sound design, dialogue clean-up, ADR workflow, dubbing, and localization. This work previously required specialized departments. At the same time, AI lowers the cost of producing polished films and shows, which could allow more micro-studios and independent filmmakers to create professional-quality content. What does that mean for the people currently doing that specialized work?
The Numbers Are Uncomfortable
204,000 entertainment industry positions are projected to be impacted by generative AI by 2026. A third of survey respondents in the animation sector predict that over 20% of entertainment jobs (that’s roughly 118,500 positions) will be eliminated outright. In Los Angeles County alone, 41,000 film and television jobs have disappeared over the past three years. That’s about a quarter of its entertainment workforce.
The roles most immediately at risk are the entry-level and mid-tier technical positions: 3D modelling, compositing, sound design, concept art, script coverage, and production coordination. These are the roles that teach you how everything works. When AI absorbs them, we are not just losing jobs. We are closing the on-ramp.
36% of animation workers already believe AI will significantly reduce the number of junior-level hires. I don’t think AI will replace directors or lead actors, but it will eliminate the path that made directors and lead actors possible.
For BC specifically, these pressures land on a workforce that was already down. The industry employs roughly 88,000 people across the province. When production volume drops 27% in a single year and then AI begins absorbing the production coordination, post-production, and administrative roles that keep those 88,000 people working, we see very real, visible impacts.
What IATSE 891 Is Actually Saying
IATSE 891’s position on AI is more nuanced than either the “ban it” or “embrace it” camps represent.
“There isn’t a rejection of technology/AI by Motion Picture Unions and workers. Quite the opposite,” wrote the union’s business representative Crystal Braunwarth. “We leverage technology so that it is human-centred, ensuring we and our work is applied in the most efficient, safe, innovative and creative ways possible.”
The union held an AI Learning and Engagement Symposium in March 2026. It was a day of education and conversation about AI’s role in the BC industry. That is the response of an organization that understands the technology is arriving and wants its members equipped to work within it, not be displaced by it.
The WGC’s Pacific-Western region has taken a harder line, nearly moving to strike action partly over AI concerns. The gap between those two positions is revealing. Writers are protecting something that AI can directly imitate: text. Crew are protecting the human component of a set.
The Volume Problem and the Vertical Platform Question
Here is the complicating factor that rarely makes it into the job-loss conversation: demand for content is not shrinking. It is exploding.
The vertical drama market alone is projected to generate between $20 and $30 billion annually by 2030. ReelShort generated $130 million in in-app revenue in a single quarter of 2025. Holywater, the platform behind MyDrama, has committed to releasing between 120 and 200 series per year, backed by a $22 million funding round and a partnership with Fox Entertainment. These platforms are not slowing down. They need content at a volume the traditional production pipeline was never designed to supply.
The economics of vertical production are informative: typical budgets run between $150,000 and $300,000 for a full series, shot in eight to ten days. Holywater’s average budget for a one-hour vertical series is often below $250,000. At that budget level, AI is part of what makes production viable.
So here’s the next line of questioning: if AI makes production cheaper, and cheaper production means more productions, does that mean more jobs overall? Or does it mean the same number of jobs, at lower rates, distributed across more productions with smaller crews?
The honest answer is: it depends entirely on the producers making the decisions.
AI savings don’t usually trickle down to crew. Gains captured at the studio or platform level do not flow downward unless producers make them flow downward. The technology is neutral. Our decisions are not.
What Ethical Implementation Actually Requires
This is where the conversation has to be concrete.
On the performer side, SAG-AFTRA has led the most significant regulatory work. Their 2023 agreement and following negotiations defined consent requirements for digital replicas and AI-modified performances. The core principle is that you cannot use an actor’s likeness, voice, or performance data to generate new material without their informed consent and compensation.
For BC specifically, UBCP/ACTRA’s SAG-AFTRA-aligned agreements mean performers in this province have some contractual protection. But most crew members on most productions (particularly at the indie and vertical levels) are working without equivalent protections. That is where producer decisions matter the most.
AI tools are here, they work, and they will keep getting better. Will the savings they generate bring better rates for the crew who show up on set, in more shoot days instead of fewer, in training that helps people grow into the roles that AI is creating? Or will they just eliminate the crew roles altogether?
There is a new role emerging that barely exists as a formal position yet: the AI environment artist. This is someone who generates digital backgrounds, composites filmed performance against AI-generated environments, and handles the colour and light matching that makes the seam invisible. On a small production, one skilled person can cover all three functions. This is the kind of role that is genuinely new, genuinely learnable, and it’s in demand. It is not going to replace a gaffer or a production designer. It sits alongside them.
The honest version of AI-assisted production does not shrink the crew. It changes what some of them do.
What I Believe
I am not opposed to AI as a production tool. I use it. I am building toward a production model that integrates it deliberately.
What I am opposed to is the version of this transition where efficiency gains go straight to platform margins and the people who actually make things see their rates drop and their entry points disappear. That version is a choice, not an inevitability.
The producers and line producers in this industry have more control over how this goes than they acknowledge. The technology does not determine whether the savings get shared. We do.
BC’s film industry has already taken serious hits. The 27% production volume decline in a single year, a province scrambling to raise tax credits to stay competitive, 88,000 workers whose livelihoods depend on productions being greenlit. AI lands in the midst of that landscape. That influences the moral weight of how we implement it.
AI makes it possible to greenlight productions that would not have been greenlit before. This means more stories, more series, more shoots, and more people working. AI also makes it possible to produce the same number of shows with smaller crews at lower rates, fewer people work, and the ones who do are paid less.
I know which version I am building toward.
The entry point is narrowing. Producers who care about this industry’s long-term health need to be honest about that and act accordingly, through contracts, through training investment, and through hiring decisions that keep the on-ramp open even as the road changes shape. I believe that is the only version worth building.
