Documentary already has a process for handling materials it didn't shoot and can't fully trust. 

The public argument over generative AI in filmmaking runs between two extremes: this technology will hollow out the craft, or resistance is nostalgia and the future belongs to whoever prompts fastest. Productions live in the space between, one approval at a time.

I produce and shoot nonfiction. I've also run production departments, which means years of turning creative intentions into schedules, budgets, and decisions someone can defend later.

From that seat the useful questions are narrow: what task is the tool doing, who approved it, and would the audience feel misled if they knew?

The legal ground is moving

At the Produced By conference in June, a panel on AI's legal terms and conditions included a slide I keep thinking about. As AI gets integrated into ordinary tools, the question that matters is moving from "was AI used?" to "how much human creativity was involved?"

"Was AI used" stopped being a useful question the moment these features landed inside edit systems; on a 2026 production the answer is always yes. What a producer has to demonstrate is substantial human authorship over the work.

The same panel walked through a catch-22 most coverage misses: use a raw AI output untouched and you may keep the vendor's indemnity, but you likely lose copyright, because there's no human authorship to protect. Shape the output and you may gain copyright while the indemnity falls away.

Neither path is without risk. What you can do is know which risk you're carrying, on which elements, in writing, before delivery. That's chain of title work, and it belongs in prep.

Nonfiction carries a different contract

In scripted work the audience expects illusion. Nobody feels betrayed learning the set was a volume stage.

A documentary is a claim: this happened. The Archival Producers Alliance's best practices quote G. Roy Levin's definition of the genre, an "inherent obligation to reality." Everything we make trades on the audience's willingness to believe what we show them.

So the disclosure question in nonfiction runs past what's legally required. The test I'd put first is the one the Produced By panel listed last: would the public feel misled by this use? If the answer is yes, the tool is wrong for that task.

Where the tools help

I'm optimistic about these tools in documentary hands. But optimism about "AI" in the abstract is worthless to a production; so is dread. The evaluation has to come task by task, because the same technology that saves a finishing budget on one project can poison the whole film on another. Here's a breakdown of the key areas where generative AI is showing up, and how to handle each.

Restoration and cleanup of degraded archival is a clear win. The APA's guidelines deliberately set aside retouching, restoration, and up-rezing as minor alterations; their concern is generation of new material, and alterations that change meaning such as from photo to video. This kind of use will require the same discernment and sensitivity to factual basis we've always practiced with "re-enactments," now heightened to include consideration of the format as well as the content.

Post tools for relighting, mix and color assistance, and object removal extend what a lean finishing budget can hold. Some of that used to require a facility, now it may be only a talented artist with AI-assisted software. AI transcription, logging, and translation already changed doc post, and nobody mourned, though we did learn those outputs need human QC and cleanup; quality varies between vendors and inputs. The lesson from these cases is that it takes skilled humans to drive and review and iterate; the tools just make it faster and cheaper.

For independent producers the highest-return use might be development: creating visuals for a pitch before you can afford to shoot it. But be careful to label and track these elements if they end up in the same edit as the project itself.

Archival gaps are the most tempting case, but there is a dangerous trap: the fix can reinforce the bias that created the gap. Historically, who got recorded tracked money and race, and who got preserved tracked the same, and most physical archives have never been digitized. The models are trained on that skewed record, so a generated image of the past may inherit the biases that caused the lack of original archival material.

The APA's case study on Zac Manuel's The Instrument makes this concrete. Manuel set out to recreate the singing voice of his grandfather, a Black tenor in New Orleans whom nobody ever recorded. The voice companies couldn't rebuild it from six minutes of deposition audio, and an early sample came back with a British accent instead of his grandfather's Southern Creole. Manuel's answer was to put the attempt in the film itself: the process, its limits, and its biases play out on screen, where the audience can see exactly what the machine is doing. He made the disclosure part of the story itself.

My recommendations: no synthetic material presented as documentary record. No synthetic subjects. No voice or likeness without documented consent and disclosure. That's where I draw a line, whatever the tools learn to do next.

Treat it like archival

The APA was founded on these challenges of use and disclosure. Archival producers came together in 2023, worried about "fake archival" creeping into films, and wrote the field's first real standards: cue sheets for every GenAI element, modeled on the deliverables we already produce for music and archival. Cue sheets can track prompts, software versions, reference materials and their copyright status, and of course, timecode stamps. The APA toolkit includes tracker templates, crediting suggestions, and workflow tips by production phase. I intend to run with all this and help make it standard.

What I'd add from the production-management side: the system only works if it's staffed and scheduled.

The APA suggests one person own the tracker, and I agree. On most shows that's the archival producer, an assistant editor, or a post supervisor brought on early. But owning the log and owning the decisions are different jobs. A generative choice can surface anywhere on a production: an editor reaching for generative extend to save a shot, the art department mocking up a period image, a director wanting a scene visualized that nobody filmed. Each of those calls already has a natural home on the org chart. Creative weight sits with the director, the editor, the art department. Feasibility, cost, and risk sit with the producer, line producer, and post supervisor. The archival producer bridges the two, because provenance is already their whole job.

Existing roles can manage all of it. The work, in prep, is defining which role holds which level of responsibility, and who is ultimately accountable for AI use and its disclosure.

And two reviews need real slots on the calendar. Legal review needs budget and time, so rights and approvals get settled well before picture lock and finishing stays on schedule. The ethical call is a separate decision, and it belongs to the filmmakers: would the audience feel misled, and how will we tell them? Counsel can flag that question. Only the filmmakers can answer it.

Either way, choices that never make it onto a calendar stay theoretical, and the default may become non-disclosure by neglect.

We've written playbooks under uncertainty before

Producers went through a forced shift with no playbook recently. When COVID hit, the company where I ran production stopped shooting, as everyone else did, due to the stay-at-home orders. We were mid-production on two Netflix documentary series, and with their support, we soon resumed working, first in post: building workflows for remote editorial, then remote color, without dropping finishing standards.

Getting back into physical production was harder. Our first project to shoot during COVID was Two Distant Strangers, built around close-contact fighting and intimate scenes, activity SAG-AFTRA generally prohibited under the early return-to-work rules. We got permission by developing a safety plan built on 6-hour turnaround PCR tests: talent tested the night before those scenes and cleared before heading to set in the morning. The plan worked, no one got sick, and the film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short.

Through the first year of COVID the guidance changed frequently, and we adjusted our plans to reflect every iteration.

That's the skill using AI in production will demand: living policy, revised as the world evolves, specific enough that a crew can follow it and a studio partner can sign off on it.

The norms are being written now

Standards for generative work in nonfiction are being set right now, by people who care to shape them: the APA working groups, the guild panels, the productions willing to document their process so the next crew doesn't start from zero. Opinions, for and against, won't settle it. Producers comparing notes on specifics will.

The most useful thing a working producer can do this year is boring: track your uses and write down your reasoning. While we can't broadly share our cue sheets due to NDAs, the template travels fine, and so does a summary of the big decisions once a show is released.

Done right, this technology puts visual storytelling within reach of projects that could never afford finishing or didn't have natural archives. That's a future with more diverse documentary stories and an audience that shows up because of trust in the storytelling. Worth the paperwork.

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SHOWTIME Sports Documentary Films presents BOYS IN BLUE, a searing four-part docuseries from Emmy®-winning filmmaker Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, Lone Survivor) spotlighting the North Polars high school football team – who are coached and mentored by members of the Minneapolis Police Department – as the players come of age in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd.

The North Polars are coached and mentored by members of the Minneapolis Police Department and together they navigate the rising tensions between law enforcement and the community while the clock ticks toward a public referendum that will determine the fate of the force and the livelihood of the Polars’ coaching staff.

Now Streaming on Showtime and Paramount Plus

Part of Paramount's Content for Change Initiative

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“What Agnes Saw” – a short film created as part of the IOC’s Stronger Together campaign – won a Sports EMMY award for Outstanding Public Service Announcement.

Featuring the oldest-living Olympic champion, 101-year-old Agnes Keleti, and Sky Brown, the youngest Olympian representing Team GB and the Olympic debut of skateboarding, “What Agnes Saw” was showcased at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 (2021).

The inspiring film sees the changing world through Agnes’ eyes – highlighting all that she has seen during her time in the Olympic spotlight. Juxtaposing the wisdom of age with the passion of youth, it shines a light on the hope and inspiration that occur when the world comes together for the Olympic Games, to offer a message of solidarity and remind us that we are stronger together than the darkness will ever be.

The film was directed by Academy Award-winning Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe and produced by Olympic Channel Services and Oscar-, Emmy- and Gold Lion-winning studio Dirty Robber.

Executive Producers: Chris Uettwiller, Jasper Tomlinson

Head of Production: Andrew K. Sachs 

Line Producer: Katie White

Field Producer (Europe): Maria Bukhonina

Director of Photography (Los Angeles): Jessica Young

Director of Photography (Budapest): Mátyás Erdély

Edited by Sean Horvath, Brett Nicoletti, and Colin Lupe

VFX by Apparatus Effects

Colorist: Arnold Ramm

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HEIST is a Netflix Original documentary series that features real heist stories told by the people who pulled them off and the law enforcement officers who brought them down.

A heist is an intricate crime that’s bad enough to be illegal, but sweet enough to make you wish you’d done it yourself. HEIST is an ultra premium documentary series about those crimes. Six episodes, three stories. Each heist story is told in two parts from the perspective of the people who pulled them off and the law enforcement who brought them down. It’s true crime flipped on its head. Charming + energetic. Cat + mouse. Raw + intimate. And very very fun.

• Sex Magick Money Murder – A 21-year-old woman steals millions in Vegas casino cash.
• The Money Plane – An aspiring father swipes a fortune from the Miami airport… and uses TV shows to learn how to get away with it.
• The Bourbon King – A Kentucky dad is accused of one of the biggest bourbon burglaries in history.

Now streaming on Netflix

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Two Distant Strangers won the Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Live Action short film at the 93rd Academy Awards (2021).

In Two Distant Strangers, cartoonist Carter James’ repeated attempts to get home to his dog are thwarted by a recurring deadly encounter that forces him to re-live the same awful day over and over again. Now streaming on Netflix.

Posters

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We Are the Champions is a Netflix Original documentary series executive produced and narrated by The Office alum Rainn Wilson.

We Are the Champions explores the quirkiest, most charming, and oddly inspirational competitions you never knew existed. Each episode follows a unique competition, providing a window into a world of determined, passionate, and incredibly skilled competitors who put it all on the line to become heroes in their own extraordinary worlds.

Anthology episodes explore cheese rolling, fantasy hairstyling, yo-yo, dog dancing, frog jumping, and chili eating. 

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"Why We Fight" Season 2 follows acclaimed MMA fighter Cat Zingano on a global journey to discover why cultures across the world feel compelled to fight. From Executive Producer Ronda Rousey, an immersive, gritty documentary series that dives into the worlds of fighters across the globe, joining them as they train and prepare for the fights in which the stakes are high, and the dangers are real.

Streaming on ESPN+

Created and Executive Produced by Matt Ogens

Executive Produced by Martin Desmond Roe, Chris Uettwiller, Ronda Rousey, Tom Brady, and Gotham Chopra.

Co-Executive Producer: Matt Roe

Executive in Charge of Production: Andrew K. Sachs

Series Producer: Mamta Trivedi

Line Producer: Melissa Narvaez

Production Company: Dirty Robber

Full Credits on IMDB

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An exclusive documentary series delving deep into the personal life of hip-hop superstar Wiz Khalifa. Over the course of five episodes, Wiz gets candid about the different phases of his career and, more recently, how life has changed for him since the birth of his son, Sebastian.

Streaming now on Apple Music

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Nominated for a Sports EMMY for Outstanding Editing (Long Form)

Nominated for NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary (Television)

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Emmy-Nominated for Outstanding Serialized Sports Documentary

"Why We Fight" is a 8-part documentary series that follows the charismatic young prizefighter Zachary "Kid Yamaka" Wohlman on a global journey to confront his demons and discover why his fellow warriors across the world feel compelled to fight. From Executive Producer Ronda Rousey, an immersive, gritty documentary series that dives into the worlds of fighters across the globe, joining them as they train and prepare for the fights in which the stakes are high, and the dangers are real.

Streaming on ESPN+

Created and Executive Produced by Matt Ogens

Executive Produced by Matt Ogens, Adam Feinstein, Martin Desmond Roe, Chris Uettwiller, Victor Buhler, Ronda Rousey, Tom Brady, and Gotham Chopra.

Executive in Charge of Production: Andrew K. Sachs

Line Producer: Jacob Mosler

Production Company: Dirty Robber

Full Credits on IMDB

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