Learn AI filmmaking as authorship, not automation, online with LABASAD — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design
LABASAD’s Online Master in Cinematic & Audiovisual AI is a 12-month online programme in AI filmmaking. It teaches the whole of it from start to finish, with 17 courses across five modules, running from early ideation and pre-production through to character creation, world-building, motion, editing and sound to final delivery. A limited offering of 25 places is up for grabs in the November 2026 cohort, which is taught in English by a team of seasoned professionals. It’s suitable as much for designers and creatives with an eye on new skillsets, such as narrative and motion work, as it is for filmmakers interested in learning new tools and processes.
“One of the biggest shifts is the ability to iterate with technology that used to require extensive resources to see a first draft,” explains the programme’s director, Fred Grinstein. “Filmmaking and video used to be less accessible to different brand and design teams at different stages of the process.” Moving image is now within reach of work that would once have stopped at a static image, first as previsualisation and increasingly as the finished thing. “This is definitionally one of the biggest paradigm shifts in visual media in recent and long memory,” he adds.
A good deal of what the filmmaking discipline asks for is already familiar to a designer. Grinstein’s case is that a grounding in composition, visual hierarchy and cinematic language turns into an advantage the moment it meets tools that can iterate: “Having a command of those instincts becomes superpowered when you can now apply those to prompts and workflows to design worlds, to design experiences and to design narrative moments,” he notes, and he puts people arriving mid-career from another discipline in the same bracket. “I think brand and design people, by definition, are world builders,” he tells us. “The way that they imagine solutions for their clients is one of the biggest parts of our class: a world-building module.” The programme also covers building workflows around the image and video tools, which is where the client work sits: high volumes of personalisation, localisation and variation, a lot of it in short-form video.
The stated goal is directing AI systems while keeping authorship, voice and creative intention, taught through structured critique and project-based learning rather than tool tuition. Grinstein does not argue with the automation. “It’s true that much of the external-facing impression of this technology is how automated it all is, and it’s hard to ignore that that is true,” he explains. “The way we approach this programme is that, alongside a lot of that automated power, we seek out every corner of the process where intention and authorship aren’t just possible but are the point.” Taste, point of view and narrative instinct are what the course treats as the student’s own, and the aim, he adds, is to “treat the technology as a partner rather than as an agent.” The first module carries a course in industry impact, legal frameworks and ethics, addressing questions such as copyright and data training.
The five modules follow the order the work does: Pre-Production, Character Creation, World Building, Visual Storytelling, and Post-Production & Final Project. “The complete iteration process, the idea that you can imagine something and see it in a short amount of time, is the new superpower entering design studios, film development processes and all creative industries. It isn’t just an enhancement of old processes. It’s something that actually creates an entirely new creative process, and you need to experience that soup to nuts to then really understand how you can apply it back to your work,” Grinstein details.
Classes run on LABASAD’s Online / Onlive model: live and weekly with working industry professionals, and recorded so a student can take them in their own time. The named experts are film director, producer and AI cinema educator Elettra Fiumi; writer, producer and AI creative Fred Graver; and 3D generalist and AI specialist Gilbert Okiya. Grinstein is a working practitioner too, teaching Cinematic AI at USC and Chapman University and advising broadcasters on AI integration. “There is no textbook because the technology is shipping on a near-weekly basis. Having professionals that live inside that cycle and can introduce new mindsets and new fluencies is, for the foreseeable future, a requirement for people immersing themselves in terms of developing those skills, not just the creative skills,” he notes.
The programme ends on the Master’s Final Project, which Grinstein coordinates, and the track towards it is built around completed work – finished projects, spec ads and short films a student can show. He encourages each exercise to carry what a student arrived with and where they want to go next. “Without the guidance of this course, students would be mostly limited to the very scattered learnings that are available on the internet,” he tells us. “Our goal is to put them in a sequence and a logic that gives them fluency and mastery in how to remain abreast of the changes.” The career paths LABASAD names run from film and media production and creative technology studios to advertising and branded content, independent cinematic authorship and the AI-media roles now appearing.
“In a lot of ways, the cinematic AI story is one of democratisation,” Grinstein adds. He has watched architects and cybersecurity professionals take it up, “people that never thought of themselves as filmmakers.” Applicants need a creative background and familiarity with design tools, and submit a CV and portfolio, with no previous university degree required. Students finish with a proprietary LABASAD Master’s degree.