There are two trends shaping the future of filmmaking: audiences are encountering stories across an expanding range of platforms, and with that, questions around authenticity are getting harder to ignore.
For filmmakers, the challenge is not simply to keep pace with new technology or adapt stories to shorter attention spans. It is to consider what makes a story worth watching in the first place, particularly when the distinction between human-created and AI-generated content is becoming less obvious.
In a September 2025 survey, Pew Research Center found that 76 percent of Americans considered it extremely or very important to distinguish AI-generated images, videos, and text from human-created material. Yet 53 percent expressed little or no confidence in their ability to make that distinction.
Meanwhile, Nielsen reported that streaming accounted for 44.8 percent of U.S. television viewing in May 2025, surpassing broadcast and cable combined for the first time.
Create Connection
Technology can make it easier to produce images, assemble footage, and distribute content. But it cannot automatically create the trust that allows an audience to connect with another person's experience. That connection often begins long before the editing process, with how a filmmaker approaches the person whose story is being told.
My experience in filmmaking has taught me that the quality of a documentary depends as much on how a story emerges as on how it is presented.
The first responsibility is to make hosts and interviewees comfortable enough to speak honestly.
Cameras, lighting equipment, and microphones can make even confident individuals self-conscious. An interview that feels like an interrogation can produce guarded answers and rehearsed statements. I try to reduce those pressures. Keeping questions short, choosing a setting that reflects the interviewee's life, restricting crew from their eye line, and allowing a conversation to develop naturally can help people feel more at ease.
That requires accepting an element of unpredictability. An interviewee may answer a question differently than expected, or take a moment to find the right words. Those moments are not obstacles to a compelling story. They may be the very moments that make it worth telling.
Audiences recognize a real person.
Hold Attention
Editing inevitably involves decisions about what to include, what to remove, and how to arrange events so that an audience can follow them. A filmmaker must create a coherent narrative from material that may have been recorded over hours or days. But coherence does not have to mean removing every hesitation, pause, or imperfect sentence.
Sometimes, the moment before an answer tells the audience something the answer itself cannot. A person searching for words may be confronting a difficult memory. Retaining those moments can give viewers a better understanding of the person speaking, rather than simply delivering information as efficiently as possible.
The question is whether an edit strengthens the story while respecting the experience being represented, or whether it changes that experience to make the story more convenient. That distinction becomes especially relevant as video consumption shifts across streaming services, social platforms, and shorter digital formats.
The growth of streaming, including the increasing role of YouTube, has expanded the ways audiences discover and consume stories. Filmmakers must consider how to hold attention when viewers have more choices and can move between formats with little effort.
But shorter does not have to mean shallower. A concise story can still communicate complexity, provided its creator understands what deserves emphasis and what context an audience needs. They are the means through which an authentic experience becomes understandable to someone who was not there.
Embrace Innovation, Retain Craft
As AI-generated content becomes more sophisticated, audiences increasingly want clarity about how the material they watch was created.
The Pew Research Center findings do not establish that audiences will reject AI-generated stories, nor do they tell us which production methods viewers prefer. They do, however, highlight a gap between the importance people place on distinguishing human-created content and their confidence in doing so.
Ultimately, the question is not whether filmmakers should embrace new tools or adapt to changing viewing habits. Both are realities of the industry. The more important question is which parts of the craft should remain constant as those changes accelerate.
For me, the answer begins with the people on screen. Their experiences should not be reduced to perfectly timed sound bites, their emotions should not be edited out simply because they interrupt the pace, and their words should not be reshaped merely to fit a predetermined narrative.
What a meaningful film can offer is a closer understanding of how another person sees the world, what they have experienced, and what others might learn from it. That requires more than technical proficiency or an efficient editing process. It requires patience, judgment, and respect for the person whose story is being told.
As filmmaking evolves, creators must make deliberate choices about how they use new technologies, edit personal experiences, and adapt stories for changing formats. They should prioritize transparency, preserve the humanity of the people they film, and resist the temptation to sacrifice nuance for speed or attention. By doing so, filmmakers can create work that resonates beyond the screen and gives audiences something worth carrying with them.
The challenge for the industry is to embrace innovation without losing sight of its responsibility to the people behind every story. Filmmakers who protect that balance will be better positioned to earn audience trust, not just capture audience attention.
Scott Galloway is a filmmaker and the founder of Susie Films, a film and television production company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The views expressed in this article are the author's own.