Lowell Meyer’s Visual Rebellion: Finding the Soul of an AI Documentary Through Imperfection

With artificial intelligence dominating conversations across tech, culture, and the creative industries, visualizing the topic on screen presents a unique challenge for filmmakers.

For cinematographer Lowell Meyer, the solution on The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist began with a simple guiding principle developed alongside directors Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell: create a __ film that AI itself couldn’t make.

That philosophy shaped the documentary’s visual language from the start, embracing imperfections, mixed media formats, and even visible filmmaking equipment in the frame to highlight the human fingerprints behind the images. Rather than pursuing pristine, algorithmic-looking visuals, Meyer leaned into texture, personality, and subtle variations between interviews.

All choices that reinforce the film’s larger conversation about technology and the value of human creativity. Meyer talks about this and much more in the conversation below.

Details on where you can watch The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist __on Focus' website.

Let's dive into the interview.

• YouTubewww.youtube.com

---

No Film School: What were the earliest conversations you had with the director about the visual language of The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist? How did those discussions shape the cinematography from the start?

Lowell Meyer: I met Daniel about two weeks before we started filming. I’d known the other director, Charlie Tyrell, for many years, and we’d been trying to work together, so the timing just worked out perfectly. I also knew Daniel through his wife, Caroline, who’s a great filmmaker, and through mutual friends from college. Everything came together very quickly, but I remember thinking, “I’m surrounded by people I know and love—this is going to be great.”

Our first real conversation happened when Daniel and I went to a camera rental house a couple of days before filming. We also had a roundtable meeting at the Daniels’ production offices. The core idea was that we wanted to make a movie AI could not have made—something with human fingerprints, error, and personality all over it.

That meant embracing multiple mediums. There’s animation, Daniel’s drawings, and other tactile elements throughout the film. On the cinematography side, we wanted tools that felt practical for a documentary but still carried a sense of human influence.

We chose the Sony FX6, which is very documentary-friendly, and paired it with ARRI Signature Prime lenses. They’re modern, sharp, and render color beautifully. Rather than using vintage lenses that add character automatically, I wanted lenses that clearly showcased people’s faces—their details, their imperfections, their humanity. We then used diffusion filters to soften things slightly while maintaining that clarity.

We also knew the interviews would form the backbone of the film. We wanted visual consistency, but we didn’t want every interview to look identical. So we kept the same lighting tools and general setup but introduced subtle variations—moving objects, shifting elements in the frame, or changing the composition slightly.

Another important choice was letting the audience see parts of the set. We didn’t want the interviews to feel like they existed in a perfect, disembodied space. Seeing C-stands or equipment in frame reinforces the idea that humans made this film—someone physically set up those lights and stands. That was important to us.

The film also incorporates multiple formats—8mm film, VHS, and digital. Sometimes it’s just a few frames mixed into home footage. You might see Daniel operating a camera on set and then suddenly transition into real 8mm footage from his family archives. All of it was meant to feel organic and textural, highlighting the history of human-made image-making technologies.

Credit: Focus

NFS: AI is a complex topic. What strategies did you use to visually represent ideas that aren’t inherently cinematic?

LM: Much of my role centered on filming the interviews. With interviews, there aren’t strict rules—you can light them in countless ways depending on the mood you want to create.

Because AI is often discussed in extremes—either incredibly beneficial or deeply destructive—I wanted the lighting to reflect that duality. We placed a bright white LED source on one side of the subject and a large black negative fill on the other, essentially sandwiching them between light and darkness. The person sits visually in the middle of those two poles, which felt conceptually aligned with the conversation around AI.

Another priority was ensuring Daniel felt connected to the interview subjects. Sometimes he was physically present, sometimes on a video feed from another city, and sometimes just behind the camera. I made sure he shared similar lighting, so it still felt like a real conversation happening in the same space.

Beyond interviews, we occasionally staged simple recreations—like filming Daniel interacting with an image generator for the first time. Sometimes, the most effective way to visualize something abstract was simply to capture him actually using the tools.

NFS: How much of the film relied on observational documentary shooting versus controlled setups?

LM: The film isn’t really vérité in the traditional sense. From the beginning, the concept was more structured. We joked that it was like “An Inconvenient Truth for our generation,” but if it were made by the Daniels.

Because the film is largely about explaining AI—how it works, who builds it, and what it means—much of it consists of interviews and conversations. The challenge was presenting those talking heads in the most visually engaging way possible.

The observational elements mostly come from Daniel himself. A lot of personal footage—his iPhone videos, family recordings, honeymoon clips, and old projects—appears throughout the film. In a way, Daniel supplied the verité side of the documentary through the archive of his own life.

Credit: Lowell Meyer

NFS: What camera and lenses did you ultimately choose, and why were they right for the project?

LM: We shot primarily on the Sony FX6. Even though the film is backed by Focus Features, we had to record hundreds of hours of footage across dozens of shoots over two years. We needed a camera that was affordable, reliable, and capable of recording long interviews without constantly swapping batteries or cards.

Some of my usual choices, like the ARRI Alexa, just wouldn’t have been practical for this kind of production.

The FX6’s full-frame sensor was also helpful because we were often shooting in extremely small spaces. Our first interviews took place in the Daniels’ office, which was basically a converted living room—about nine by thirteen feet. We had to make that tiny room feel like a larger interview space, so the shallow depth of field from the full-frame sensor helped separate the subjects from the background.

For lenses, we used ARRI Signature Primes—mostly 35mm and 40mm for the A-camera and a 95mm for the B-camera. I operated a C-camera with Angénieux EZ zooms, which let me reframe during long interviews. Sometimes I’d be on the subject, sometimes on Daniel, and sometimes moving between them. Because interviews could run two hours without a break, the lighter FX6 made handheld operation manageable.

The combination gave us clear, expressive images with beautiful skin tones while still feeling grounded and human.

Credit: Lowell Meyer

NFS: What was your philosophy for the interview setups? Were you aiming for visual consistency or tailoring the look to each subject?

LM: The mantra was that every interview should feel like it belongs in the same movie—but they didn’t have to be identical.

There’s natural variation when you’re filming in different cities and locations. Sometimes we were on a small stage, sometimes a larger one. Rather than fight that variability, we embraced it.

We maintained a consistent toolkit—same cameras, lenses, and general lighting approach—but allowed subtle differences. Maybe the subject sits six inches closer to the backdrop, or a piece of equipment appears in the background. We even moved gear intentionally between interviews—adding a bounce board here, removing a flag there.

Those small differences create visual fingerprints for each interview. They reflect the idea that human work isn’t perfectly uniform. We didn’t want the film to look like something generated by an algorithm where everything is perfectly symmetrical.

NFS: What did this project teach you about shooting documentaries in an era where both technology and the subject matter evolve so quickly?

LM : It reinforced how much I love documentary filmmaking. It’s a privilege to be invited into conversations with real people who are full of stories, ideas, and lived experience worth recording.

There’s also an immediacy to documentary that feels similar to live events or sports—you have one moment to capture something real, and you have to trust your instincts. That just comes with this tremendous feeling of focus when you finally roll the camera. In a scenario that is faked, where multiple takes are an expectation or a given, that just doesn't carry the same amount of presence and excitement that you feel when you know you only have one chance to capture this moment for real.

In this case, because the topic of AI is so far-reaching and consequential, the interviews themselves could be quite emotionally heavy. I remember during our first weekend of filming, when we were interviewing the founders of the Center of Humane Technology, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, the crew and I listened as they proceeded to share some very intense illustrations of the worst-case scenarios for AI risk. After we cut to reload the cameras, my crew and I let out a collective breath of overwhelm: we couldn't believe what we'd just heard. And by the end of the day, we were having group conversations with Tristan and Aza about the implications of what they were saying.

Thankfully, they were very good at talking us off of our existential ledges, but the point was that we needed to process this information together, and we all felt comfortable breaking that crew/interviewee barrier and making space for each other and for the conversation. That kind of honest exchange is something I really love about documentary filmmaking. You're all just real people trying to help one another, very often at the end of the day.

Lowell MeyerCredit: Lowell Meyer

NFS: For cinematographers interested in documentary storytelling around technology or science, what practical advice would you give?

LM: Follow the subjects you’re genuinely curious about and collaborate with people who share that curiosity.

Documentaries are iterative—you learn as you go. Be open to the process evolving and let your creative approach evolve with it.

Shoot as much as you can, stay curious, and look for creative ways into the story without distracting from the subject itself. Ideally, your images should be both enlightening and entertaining.