The freelancers replacing the staff they cut are the ones actually paying for it.
Film and TV production employment is down 30% since late 2022. Disney's cut jobs across Pixar, National Geographic, and ESPN twice this year alone. The pitch every time: AI lets us do more with less. Here's the part that doesn't make the press release,
Gear Used to Be a One-Time Cost
Freelancers have always paid for their own gear, that's not new. What's new: AI tools becoming another line on that same bill, except it's not a camera you buy once. It's a subscription you carry every month, on every job, just to stay competitive for work that used to come with a staff seat and a company license.
Even OpenAI Couldn't Make It Work
OpenAI shut down its own video tool, Sora, this year (after Disney's own billion-dollar pledge to partner on it fell apart) because the compute cost $15 million a day against $2 million in total revenue. If the company building the tool couldn't make the economics work at their own scale, that's worth knowing.
Who's Actually Carrying the Risk
The freelancer carrying that subscription cost on a client budget that assumes "AI makes it cheap now" is absorbing risk nobody's actually pricing in.
Not Talking From the Outside
I've been setting up shots by myself lately that I'd have had a full crew for five years ago, I'm not talking about this from the outside.
My Honest Take
The question isn't whether AI tools are useful, some genuinely are. It's whether the "savings" studios are claiming from cutting staff are real savings, or costs that just moved onto the person with the least leverage to say no.
Has a Client Ever Told You "AI Makes It Cheap Now"?
Studios are cutting staff and calling it AI savings, the freelancers replacing them are the ones actually paying for the AI.