🎙️This week on How I AI: How Emmy Award–winning filmmakers use AI to automate the tedious parts of documentaries

Your weekly listens from How I AI, part of the Lenny’s Podcast Network

Hey friends 👋,

Here’s a weekly recap of new podcast episodes across Lenny’s Podcast Network:

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Every Monday, host Claire Vo shares a 30- to 45-minute episode with a new guest demoing a practical, impactful way they’ve learned to use AI in their work or life. No pontificating—just specific and actionable advice.

“Nobody wanted to do this work”: How Emmy Award–winning filmmakers use AI to automate the tedious parts of documentaries

Brought to you by:
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Guest: Tim McAleer, producer for Ken Burns’s Florentine Films

Biggest takeaways:

1. Custom AI tools don’t need a large market to be valuable. Tim built hyper-specific tools for his team’s unique workflows, noting that while the “total addressable market” might be tiny, the impact on their production process has been enormous.

2. Different AI models excel at different tasks. Tim uses Claude for coding, OpenAI for image analysis, Whisper for audio transcription, and CLIP for embeddings—demonstrating how a thoughtful multi-model approach delivers better results than relying on a single system.

3. Embedded metadata is the secret weapon. Rather than just generating descriptions, Tim’s system extracts existing metadata from archival sources (like Library of Congress annotations) and uses that as ground truth to guide the AI, preventing hallucinations and ensuring accuracy.

▶️ Listen now on YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

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More shows coming soon. . . 👀
If you’re enjoying these episodes, reply and let me know what you’d love to learn more about: AI workflows, hiring, growth, product strategy—anything.

Catch you next week,
Lenny

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