A bit of captain obvious talk for today, but still: The same idea can be executed on wildly different budgets. It all depends on the means. Any shot can be blown up into Hollywood-level insanity: a massive crew, talent, RED cameras, global VFX teams, months of production, and budgets with six zeros. Or you can communicate the exact same idea for next to nothing.
Even before AI, I had this example in mind: You need: “a helicopter explodes.”
Option 1: We shoot a real helicopter, use pyrotechnics, multiple cameras, full VFX, comp, post — the whole grown-up production pipeline.
Option 2: Black screen → helicopter sound → explosion sound → title card: “the helicopter is gone.” Either way, the task is solved.
And with AI today, it gets even more interesting — sometimes you can get for pennies what used to cost the price of a central-city apartment.
So when someone asks me to “estimate”, I always pause a bit, because every project is really a decision: how exactly do you want to solve the problem.
More time and more money usually does promise better results. But a curious mind will always find a way to express the same idea just as vividly, without spending the world. And importantly, this isn’t a “generate” button. It’s still a choice — about how you think before you make something.
