How to create a cinematic film with AI

We created a historical film with AI technology that passed 400,000 views, moved thousands of people and introduced them to a Jewish historical figure almost nobody had heard of.

The figure is Doña Gracia Nasi, and the secret behind the film is simple: a truly cinematic film does not start with the first shot. It starts in the library, with one medal and a map.

When we were asked to bring to life the story of the woman who turned a 16th-century trading empire into a rescue network for the Jews of Europe, we faced one big problem: almost no visual record of her survives. There is no oil painting, no detailed description of her face, and not a single city from her world that looks today the way it looked then.

The result is a docudrama of about six minutes, without a single filmed frame. The title of this post is a question we are asked a lot, so we will answer it through this project: not which button to press, but how to think like a film production when the camera is AI technology.

What is the difference between a cinematic film and moving pictures?

Most historical content made with AI today is still images, lightly animated, with narration on top. It can be beautiful, but it is not a film. We chose the docudrama genre: narration is the spine of the story, and on screen there are acted scenes, with real movement, dialogue and a heroine the viewer follows from childhood to the end.

That decision sets everything else. Once there are acted scenes, every detail has to hold: the faces, the clothes, the street, the light. So the real work starts long before the first shot.

Where do you start a historical film?

With research. The foundation was the academic biography by historian Marianna Birnbaum, The Long Journey of Gracia Mendes, alongside the Israeli Ministry of Education booklet marking 500 years since her birth, studies of the rescue network in Antwerp, and primary sources such as the dedication of the Ferrara Bible of 1553, dedicated to her in her lifetime. Where sources contradicted each other, the academic research overruled Wikipedia and lectures.

Every event in the story was tagged: verified, likely or open. An open event does not reach the screen, even when it is a wonderful story.

How do you build a face for a woman with no surviving portrait?

One object survived: a medal by the Italian artist Pastorino, considered the only profile made in her lifetime. We built her face from it. Her clothing and jewellery came from Renaissance portraits of women of the same rank and the same years.

From there the character went through eight ages, from a five-year-old girl to a woman of 59. The face stayed the same face; only age and clothing changed. And the clothing tells a story of its own: a small cross in childhood, a Catholic coif at her wedding, black Flemish velvet with a half-hidden cross in Antwerp, an Italian pearl net with a bare throat and no cross, and purple Ottoman headgear in Constantinople. The viewer sees her identity change without anyone saying it out loud.

How do you keep the character the same character for the whole film?

This is the test most AI-made films fail today. A character who looks a little different in every shot breaks the viewer's trust. In our work every recurring character has a locked identity: face, build and costume, kept exactly the same in every shot they appear in. That holds for Doña Gracia, her husband Francisco, his brother Diogo, her mother and her sister Brianda.

And the human eye stays in the loop. In the first version the twelve-year-old looked sixteen, so she was given a bare head and a braid, like an unmarried girl in the Iberian Peninsula. The 25-year-old widow looked as if she came from the 19th century, and was rebuilt in a Portuguese cut of the 1530s. No system will catch details like these for you.

How do you rebuild a city that no longer exists?

Doña Gracia's Lisbon barely exists. Most of the city was destroyed in the 1755 earthquake. We rebuilt the houses, streets and clothing from paintings and manuscripts of the period, such as the Saint Vincent Panels in the National Museum in Lisbon, the Book of Hours of King Manuel and drawings of fortresses from the same years. Along the way we found that in Lisbon around 1500 persecutor and persecuted dressed exactly alike. There was no outward sign at all, and that is exactly the mask the film is about.

For the other stations we worked from the real places. The counting room in Antwerp was built from a photo of the real house of the Mendes family. The gate of Topkapi Palace in Constantinople was built from a photo of the gate itself, and Sultan Suleiman from a historical engraving: the turban, the plume, the lynx fur and the crimson kaftan. The composition of Tiberias came from a 19th-century engraving, and its light from a photo of the Sea of Galilee.

Why did we build a map before the first shot?

Because a historical film is first of all a story of place and time. We built an interactive map of her life's route, with the real borders of 16th-century Europe: from Lisbon, through Antwerp, Venice and Ferrara, to Constantinople and Tiberias. The map was a production tool. It decided where and when every scene takes place.

It has two kinds of lines. A solid line marks a place she actually was, and a dashed line marks a place her power reached without her. Tiberias and Ancona are dashed, because she never reached them, and that distinction shaped the directing directly. We were careful with names too: there is no "Belgium", there are the Habsburg Low Countries, as they were called then. You can open the map and explore it on the film's page on our site.

How do you show emotion without showing everything?

The hardest scene in the film is Ancona, 1556: 24 Jews were burned at the stake, and she answered with a boycott of the port, a boycott that eventually collapsed. It is the only time she lost. She was not there, she was in Constantinople, so the camera is not in the square either. We see only silhouettes behind the fire, with no faces. She is small in the frame and the fire is huge, and there is a planned moment of complete silence on her face when the news arrives.

What came out in the end?

A finished film, with characters that stay identical from the first shot to the last. A complete film at cinema quality that moves its audience and brings to life a historical figure almost nobody knew. You can watch the full film, along with the interactive map, on our cinematic films page.

The lesson for any film: with AI technology we can build worlds that have no record at all, but it does not replace what makes them believable. Research, real references, consistency and directing are still the work of people. The difference is that today you can do that work without a set, without a crew of hundreds and without a Hollywood budget.

FAQ

Can you make a historical film with AI when no image of the person exists?
Yes. You build the character from whatever survives, such as a medal, an engraving or a written description, and complete the costume from period portraits. In our film about Doña Gracia the face was built from the only medal made in her lifetime.

How do you know the film is historically accurate?
Every fact is checked against scholarly sources, and an event that was not verified does not reach the screen. Several well-known claims were cut from this script, such as the legend about the Western Wall, because they did not hold up against the sources.

Do the characters really stay identical for the whole film?
Yes. Every recurring character has a locked identity of face, build and costume, kept in every shot, even as the character ages. Doña Gracia appears in the film at eight different ages, with the same face.

Who is a cinematic film like this for?
Organizations, museums, schools, families and brands with a true story to tell, especially a story with no filmed record, or one that would cost millions to film.

Good luck,
TodoAI

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