What happens when you combine cinematic tradition with the latest generative AI tools? At Franklin University Switzerland, students explored this question first-hand during the Summer Session through an innovative course titled AI & Cinema Practice: Crafting the Future of Film, led by journalist and award-winning filmmaker Elettra Fiumi.
This hands-on course is part of Franklin's broader commitment to the Future of Learning, a university-wide initiative focused on personalizing education through cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence.
Reimagining the Creative Process Throughout the course, students were immersed in a fast-paced, iterative creative journey that brought storytelling, visual design, sound, and AI generation tools together in unprecedented ways. From scripting dialogue with ChatGPT to animating storyboards with Runway and generating voice-overs with ElevenLabs, students embraced a full-cycle filmmaking experience powered by AI.
The Course at a Glance:
- Conceptualization & Scripting: Ideation using ChatGPT and NotebookLM to shape concept, narrative structure and develop scenes
- Worldbuilding: Crafting moodboards and storyboards, designing character lookbooks, and organizing creative flows with tools like FilmVibes, Midjourney, Flora and Leonardo
- Visual Production: Scene generation and cinematic composition with Runway, Kling, and Sora
- Sound Design: Voice generation, lipsync, soundtracks, and audio editing with Suno, ElevenLabs and Hedra
- Final Delivery: Students produced and premiered original AI short films, alongside promotional materials such as pitch decks, articles, posters and teaser trailers
From AI Tools to Human Stories
Despite the tech-driven focus, the course kept creativity and storytelling at its heart. While students learned how to use AI tools, they were reflecting on the ethical, cultural, and creative implications of those tools. Each short film became a reflection of the student’s imagination, global identity, and evolving relationship with technology.
Why It Matters This course exemplifies how Franklin is redefining liberal arts education: not by replacing traditional methods, but by integrating them with emerging technologies to help students become adaptable, thoughtful creators while helping them find and develop their voice.
Coming Soon Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing select student projects from this course across our digital channels — from AI-generated scripts and moodboards to final films. Stay tuned as we showcase how our students are helping shape the future of storytelling, one prompt at a time.
Interested in joining our next AI-powered course? Contact us at applynow@fus.edu.