Mockumentary Winner 2025: Matt Zien on Time-Traveling Through 300,000 Years with AI

What did AI enable you to do in your film that would have been impossible—or unimaginable—without it? 

Matt Zien: Typing “Neolithic man sprinting through a blizzard to reach someone he loves” and seeing that desperation flicker to life meant I could finally feel pre-history, not just annotate it. AI let me roam 300,000 years in a single evening.

Did your vision for the film change once you started working with AI tools? If so, how?

Matt Zien: Not so much “changed” as unlocked. For years the idea felt too vast—how do you film 300,000 years of pre-history without a Marvel-sized budget and a decade of post? The first time SORA rendered that Neolithic runner who opens the reel—frost on his beard, panic in his breath — I realized the impossible was suddenly shootable. AI didn’t steer me off my original course; it proved the course was actually navigable. 

The First Humans by Matt Zien

How did AI shape the emotional tone or atmosphere of your film? Was that an intentional choice or a surprise outcome? 

Matt Zien: A lot of the surprises were sort of like gifts I didn’t ask for. The hallucinations became part of the fabric of the mystery. Instead of scrubbing those “mistakes,” I kept some of them, treating them as a sort of “improv” — not entirely unlike what you get in the field when shooting a doc. 

Were there any limitations with current AI tools that you had to creatively work around?

Matt Zien: Tons. Continuity, prompt adherence, and general fidelity have come so far since I made THE FIRST HUMANS. This is one of the most exciting and difficult parts of telling stories in AI — your newest work becomes a relic in months, not years.  

If you could re-do one part of your film with next-gen AI capabilities what would you revisit—and why?

Matt Zien: I think now I can do so many things I couldn’t even a couple a months ago. I would really much more exhaustively explore the creation of language with proper lip sync. I’d capture a coordinated mammoth hunt by an early tribe over minutes, not seconds. Thinking about it now makes me want to dive back in!

What does winning the MetaMorph AI Film Award mean to you especially at this moment in the evolution of storytelling technology?

Matt Zien: Recognition from the talented people at MetaMorph is incredibly meaningful. Working in an art form that is so greatly misunderstood is difficult, and its festivals like this that keep us going.