About

Working out what AI changes
about filmmaking, and what it doesn’t.

CutToAi builds tools, research, and training for filmmaking in the age of AI. It exists because the questions arriving in film studios and film schools right now are being answered mostly by people selling something, and mostly without evidence.

What CutToAi is

A practice, published

We make free instruments for filmmakers and film educators, document what we learn using them, and teach the result. The tools are not the business model — they are the evidence. Each one came out of a real production or teaching problem, and each one carries a written statement of what it cannot do.

The through-line is a single question: where does a tool extend craft, and where does it quietly substitute for it? That question does not have a general answer. It has a different answer in every department, on every project, and the work is learning to tell the difference.

How we work

Evidence before opinion

Nothing is claimed here that has not been tried. Every tool ships with its failure modes attached, the changelog records what did not work as readily as what did, and no vendor pays to appear anywhere on this site.

This is slower than having opinions. It is also the only version of this work worth doing: the field is saturated with confident claims and short on documented practice.

What drives the work

Operating principles

These predate CutToAi. They came out of thirty years of production and eight years of teaching, and they decide what we will and will not build.

The industry–education interface

Film education works when it is genuinely porous to industry practice, and fails when it either ignores the industry or capitulates to it. Holding that line is a design problem, not a partnership problem.

Decolonising the curriculum

The critical tradition students inherit determines what they can imagine making. Broadening it is not a diversity exercise bolted onto a syllabus; it is a question of whether the curriculum is intellectually adequate.

Longitudinal learning

Skills accumulate across a degree, not within a module. Assessment that cannot see across time cannot see development, which is most of what a film education is for.

Widening participation

Access is a curriculum-design challenge, not a supplementary programme layered on top of existing provision. Four years running technical training for young people from underrepresented backgrounds settled that question.

Practice as research

Making is a legitimate way of knowing. The tools on this site are research outputs as much as they are utilities, and they are published in that spirit — provisional, dated, and open to being wrong.

Ethics as craft, not compliance

The ethical questions raised by generative tools are not a separate module. They live inside ordinary production decisions: what gets synthesised, what gets disclosed, whose consent was obtained, and what a viewer is entitled to assume.

Who is behind this

Mostafa Nagy, founder

Thirty years of broadcast filmmaking, then eight years teaching it. I lead BA (Hons) Digital Film Practice at MetFilm School, research the reform of film education at Bournemouth University, and co-produce documentary work — most recently 40 Years of Silence, currently in post-production.

I started CutToAi because I kept being asked the same question by colleagues and students, in slightly different words: is this thing going to replace what I do? The honest answer required actually testing it, repeatedly, in real conditions. That testing became the tools, and the tools became this.

I am not neutral about craft. I think most of what matters in filmmaking is judgment under constraint, and I have yet to see a tool that supplies it. I am also not a sceptic: several of these tools have changed how I work. Both things are true, which is why the limits get written down.

Selected filmmaking

Credits

Documentary work, selected. Practice-based research outputs as well as films.

40 Years of Silence

Co-producer. Feature documentary, in post-production. Read the case study.

Ali and His Miracle Sheep

Co-producer. Best Film, UK Competition, Sheffield Doc/Fest 2021. A REF-eligible practice-based research output.

Shooting the Homeless

Director. Official Selection, Barnes Film Festival 2021.

River Dog

Editor. Doc/Player Selection, Sheffield Doc/Fest 2019.

The BeeKeeper

Editor. Commendation, WOFFF 2018.

Higher education

Academic roles

Course Leader, BA (Hons) Digital Film Practice

MetFilm School, BIMM University, London. July 2024–present. Programme design, curriculum review, quality assurance, assessment design, and staff development.

Film Programme Director

University for the Creative Arts, Farnham. January 2022–June 2024. Led the film portfolio through significant curriculum review, QAA compliance, external examiner relations, and REF context for practice-based outputs.

Senior Lecturer, Television Production & Broadcast Technology

Ravensbourne University London. September 2018–December 2021. Module leadership, assessment, and programme development.

Lead Technical Trainer & Director

MAMA Youth Project. June 2016–May 2019. Designed and delivered broadcast technical training for young people from underrepresented backgrounds.

Technical Director

London Breeze Film Festival. Technical infrastructure, screening logistics, and delivery across festival events. Ongoing.

Trained, taught, and certified with