If you’re a video creator, photographer, or any kind of visual storyteller, you probably have terabytes of unused footage and forgotten photos tucked away somewhere. B‑roll that never made it into a final cut, unfinished projects filling your archives, b, beautiful, authentic shots from family outings or wedding reels no one’s ever seen. And maybe other moments you captured just because they felt interesting at the time, thinking: This is great! I’ll figure out what to do with it later.
Today’s AI tools make it easy to repurpose video content, turning it into something truly extraordinary — be it a reel about memory, a filmed family chronicle, or just about anything else you can imagine based on those inspiring visuals you’ve saved. It’s your chance to turn raw footage into a story, or to take fragments you’ve collected and, with the help of AI tools, create something completely new and unforgettable.
Creator-led stories in an overloaded world
In our restless era, we’re constantly chasing after something new. Every platform demands something fresh. Every trend asks you to keep up. But not every story worth telling has to come from something completely new. Sometimes it’s worth slowing down to really look at the treasures you’ve saved and haven’t yet brought into the light.
Repurposing your own archive is more than just efficient. It’s a way to craft stories that cut through the noise and invite your audience to pause, reflect, and engage. In a space crowded with constant updates, there’s a lot of value in rethinking and reimagining what you already have. Audiences instinctively sense authenticity — and there’s nothing more authentic than the unused footage in your collection.
How creators are doing it
Okay, so what to do with old pictures, and how to repurpose video content? That’s where today’s AI tools come in! They can turn what’s going on in the creator’s mind into an actual film.
Using image to video, you can make old photo stills come alive. Using AI video narration, you can create a voiceover for your family videos. You can capture stills from those videos to create new, in-between scenes that will elevate disparate fragments into a flowing narrative.
The possibilities are simply endless. All you really need to do is imagine how your material could look in a film and then make it real by using the appropriate AI tool for video creators. Around the world, creators are already showing what’s possible.
Denis Shiryaev
Denis Shiryaev is a filmmaker and digital artist who has gained recognition for his thorough restorations of historic footage using AI. His short ‘A Trip Through New York City in 1911’ takes archival street scenes and turns them into a high‑resolution, lifelike experience with the help of AI upscaling and frame interpolation. It’s a powerful example of how creators can bridge the gap between eras and make the past resonate with modern audiences by adapting footage to the contemporary look and feel.
Particle 6
The team at Particle 6, an award-winning London video production company, used AI to craft cinematic scenes from very little source material. They inserted a journalist into iconic stunt sequences. They made it all happen with just three photos, a voice recording, and generative AI techniques. The project shows how old, seemingly static material can be transformed into something entirely new and cinematic, opening up creative possibilities far beyond its original context.
Sam Lawton
Sam Lawton’s short film ‘Expanded Childhood’ takes yet another perspective, using AI not just as a creative aid but as a way to question memory and authenticity. He blends real family images with AI‑generated interpretations to explore how technology can both preserve and distort our personal stories. His work stands as a thoughtful reflection on what it means to revisit the past and who gets to shape it.
Even the simplest examples show how AI tools can boost your creative power. In one shared reel on Reddit, a user animated a portrait of their grandmother using AI to add subtle movement and expression. AI tools aren’t just for ambitious projects. They can also turn photos into living moments and make quiet, personal stories come to life in ways that feel deeply human and memorable.
Toronto‑based creator Chris Hau is also exploring what’s possible as part of a new campaign for the Artlist $100K fund competition. His idea is to visit the village where his grandfather grew up and recreate scenes he once described from memory, pairing them with AI. He envisions tracking down old locations, interviewing people who still remember, and using AI to bring old photos of the town to life. The idea is to create a short film about legacy, memory, and how the stories we hold onto define our future.
More ways to make your work pay off
Sometimes what you’ve saved isn’t just creatively meaningful, it can also be valuable in ways you hadn’t considered. One creator, Peter Hollens, discovered that his unused session footage, collecting digital dust in his archive, could actually earn him money. By licensing it to an AI training company, he turned hours of forgotten material into a passive income stream of over $13,000.
It’s a reminder that nothing you create is ever truly wasted. Even the scraps and outtakes you thought you’d never use can find a second life, whether as part of a story or even as a tangible asset that pays off later. Your archive isn’t just a backup folder. It’s a resource full of creative and practical potential, waiting for you to put it to work.
How you can turn archived material into something amazing
Let’s say you find a handful of archival photos of your hometown decades before you were born: Storefronts, streets, and neighborhoods that no longer exist. You’ve heard stories about what life was like back then.
Step-by-step guide to turning the material you found into a film with Artlist
Before you know it, a handful of photos and memories have become a poetic film essay connecting past and present!
How to repurpose content for your videos:
Start by enhancing and animating the original photos with image to video, bringing them to life and placing them into cinematic scenes that feel real and expressive.Â
Add more images by creating new visuals of imagined everyday life with text to image, and refine them into a cohesive, polished look with image to image.
Write a narration that ties the city’s history to your own experience growing up there, recording it yourself or generating a studio-quality AI voiceover, adding subtle emotion with voice effects if you want.Â
Bring it all together, arranging the images, animations, and voiceover into a short film with help from an AI assistant for faster editing and experimenting with Artboards to find the perfect style.
Your turn to tell the story
The stories you want to tell might already be waiting for you. They might be in the files you’ve saved or in the moments you’ve held onto without knowing why. Surely there’s material there that deserves another look.
AI gives you the tools to shape those pieces into something your audience can connect with right now. You don’t need to wait for the perfect new shot or the next big idea. You just need to start.
Take a moment to explore your archive. See what sparks your imagination. Then test it out for yourself with the Artlist AI image and video generator and turn those forgotten fragments into something finished — a story only you can tell. And when you do, share your results with us!
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