MADE BY CREATORS · LIVE ON VEYRMADE BY CREATORS · LIVE ON VEYRPoster image: Artlist
The Arc is a complete five-part science-fiction adventure created without live-action filming. Its small production team used AI to build elaborate historical worlds, spending approximately $38,000 in generation credits while directing, designing and refining the story through a traditional filmmaking process.
In a near-future America, decorated veteran Isaac Ward is on death row. His son is dying, and a mysterious government program offers him one chance to save the boy: survive a series of deadly historical simulations.
Ward becomes prisoner FIVE, fighting through the battlefields of 17th-century Japan and the frozen frontier of 1876 Montana.
Director Darin Stewart and executive producer Simone Ferretti developed The Arc with Artlist, the creative platform behind the production. Happy Monday Labs handled production, with postproduction by Kids Don't Know.
The filmmakers delivered their first episode in approximately three and a half weeks and completed all five over three and a half months. The finished series premiered privately in London in August and is now available to watch free on Artlist TV.
A new production breakdown reveals how much work went into creating those worlds.
The most revealing detail is not simply that five episodes were created with $38,000 in AI credits. It is how carefully those credits were spent.
Stewart's team designed specific rooms, selected paintings and sculptures, researched historical settings and refined shots until they served the story. One elaborate dining room was inspired by the glowing floors of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
For filmmakers working without traditional studio resources, the ability to stage a battle in historical Japan or move a scene to the American frontier opens creative possibilities that would otherwise require substantial location budgets.
The $38,000 figure covers AI generation credits, not the entire production cost. The filmmakers also paid their human crew, whose work remained central to the finished series.
Stewart and his team developed the characters and story, then used Claude to organize spoken scene ideas into scripts they could revise.
ShotDeck and Figma helped establish references and art direction. Nano Banana Pro and GPT Image 2 generated imagery for characters, locations and scenes.
Seedance and Kling produced the moving footage. Individual shots could require eight to ten generations, with lower-resolution tests used before committing to expensive final renders.
Inconsistent AI-generated voices created a three-day setback. The team repaired the workflow scene by scene, while human editors and postproduction artists finished the episodes.
“The level of detail is the same level of detail that we would do if we were physically on set.”
Darin Stewart, speaking to Business Insider
The Arc is interesting because it gives viewers an actual series to watch and creators a concrete production process to study.
The historical environments, action sequences and recurring characters are impressive ambitions for a small team. But behind every finished shot were decisions about performance, composition, pacing and storytelling.
AI made these worlds possible without building physical sets. Stewart and his collaborators still had to make them worth watching.
Claude supported script organization and research; Nano Banana Pro and GPT Image 2 generated images; Seedance and Kling generated footage. Human crew directed, edited and finished the episodes.
