You know, I was thinking about the old triangle. You’ve probably heard it. Cheap, quick, or good. Pick two.
Want it cheap and quick? It won’t be good. Want it good and cheap? It won’t be quick. Want it good and quick? It won’t be cheap.
This has been gospel in every creative industry for decades. Filmmakers, designers, contractors, anyone who makes things for a living has drawn this triangle on a napkin at least once. I’ve drawn it myself, probably in a Whataburger.
Here’s the problem. AI is breaking the triangle.
I use AI tools every day now. Not to replace what I do (nobody’s sending a chatbot to sit across from your 92-year-old grandfather and ask him about the war), but for the stuff that used to eat hours. Research. Transcription. First-pass edits on written content. Organizing 40 hours of interview footage into a usable structure.
That work used to be slow and expensive. Now it’s fast and cheap. And it’s genuinely good. Not perfect. But good enough that the old triangle doesn’t hold the way it used to.
So what’s the new constraint?
I think the triangle has shifted. The new three sides are: taste, trust, and presence. AI can produce output. It can’t produce judgment. It can’t sit in a room and feel the moment someone’s voice cracks when they talk about their mother. It can’t decide that the “mistake” in a shot is actually the best frame in the film.
Taste is knowing what to keep. Trust is earned over time, face to face. Presence is showing up. None of those are automatable.
The cheap/quick/good triangle served us well. But the game changed. The new triangle is harder, and you still only get to pick two.
Heritage Films produces personal documentary films across the United States.