Generative Artist — Image & Video (Contract)

POWERSHiFTER; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

POWERSHiFTER seeks a production-focused AI image/video specialist to translate directed concepts into locked-keyframe shots with emphasis on consistency and workflow automation. You will drive batch generation, lip-sync passes, and provenance tracking, delivering editorial-ready material that matches the director's intent within budget and schedule in a fast-moving studio environment.

You will collaborate across departments, manage seeds and prompts, and maintain strict versioning and file

Qualifications

• Ability to translate director notes and references into shots that read as the same film.
• Strong fluency with current image and video models and fast adoption of new ones.
• Maintain character and set continuity across shots to protect budgets.

Responsibilities

• Generate image and video shots to QA'd keyframes, style tokens, and reference sheets.
• HOld continuity of characters, sets, props, wardrobe, lighting and lens language.
• Run batch generation and triage contact sheets down to selects.
• Produce AI voice and lip-sync passes, including alternate lines when needed.
• Log every take with prompt, seed, model, version and parameters.
• Deliver editorial-ready material to spec with correct codec, frame rate and naming.

Skills

Direction interpretation

Model fluency

Consistency under pressure

LLM prompting

Claude production infra

Automation scripting

Cost and throughput literacy

Tools

Claude

MCP servers

ComfyUI

Node graphs

Job description

The role

You generate finished shots — stills and motion — to a locked spec. Directors set intent and deliver first-pass keyframes. You take those keys and produce the volume: variants, coverage, alternates, the shots that fill the cut. Editors assemble. You do not edit.

This is a craft role with a production spine. The studio runs on locked references and dated sign-offs, and you generate against what is locked, never against a script or a vibe.

What you'll do

• Generate image and video shots to QA'd keyframes, style tokens, and reference sheets — matching an existing look rather than inventing one
• Hold continuity: characters, sets, props, wardrobe, lighting and lens language consistent across a shot, a sequence, and an episode
• Run batch generation and triage contact sheets down to selects
• Produce AI voice and lip-sync passes, including alternate line handling when a read fights the model
• Log every take with prompt, seed, model, version and parameters — provenance is mandatory, not optional
• Flag feasibility before spend: what fights the model, what costs 3x, what should be composited or shot instead
• Deliver editorial-ready material to spec — correct codec, frame rate, resolution, colour space and file naming
• Escalate a shot that will not land inside its time box instead of grinding on it

What you must be good at

Interpreting direction. You can take a keyframe, a reference, and three sentences from a director and return something that reads as the same film. Taking a note without defending the first attempt is the job.

Model fluency across the field. Deep working knowledge of current image and video models and a demonstrated history of picking up new ones fast. We do not care which tools you list today — the stack turns over every quarter. We care that you know which model to reach for and why, and that you were fluent in a model that did not exist twelve months ago.

Consistency under pressure. Character and set persistence across shots is the hardest problem in this pipeline and the one that destroys budgets. Reference sheets, seeds, character references, image-to-image chains, control conditioning — you should have opinions about all of it.

LLM prompting as a working tool. Prompt construction, prompt libraries, structured prompt data, using an LLM to expand and vary shot prompts at scale.

Claude as production infrastructure. This is not a bonus skill here — it is how the studio runs. You should be working in Claude daily and be able to

• Use and extend our existing Claude Skills — the shot-list, prompting and estimating skills the pipeline already depends on
• Author a new Skill when a repeatable task shows up twice: write the instructions, structure the reference files, test it, hand it to the team
• Connect and operate MCP servers to wire Claude into the tools you use — generation platforms, asset storage, project tracking — and know the difference between a tool a model can call and a prompt that describes one
• Judge when an agentic workflow genuinely beats doing it by hand, and say so when it doesn't

You do not need to be an engineer. You do need to be someone who automates their own job rather than repeating it.

AI voice and sync. Voice generation, cloning within licensed bounds, lip-sync tooling, and the judgment to know when a line needs to be re-written rather than re-synced.

Post-generation craft. Upscaling, interpolation, grain and noise matching, colour continuity across takes, plate cleanup. Enough compositing sense to know when a shot should be fixed in comp instead of regenerated.

Cost and throughput literacy. You know roughly what a shot costs in credits and time before you queue it, and you make the regen-vs-comp-vs-escalate call yourself.

Also required

• Rigorous file hygiene and versioning. Every asset traceable to its recipe.
• Working knowledge of commercial rights and model terms — what can ship in a paid client campaign, what carries training-data risk, what needs disclosure. Familiarity with C2PA and EU AI Act transparency obligations is an advantage.
• Studio accounts only. No client material in personal or consumer-tier accounts, no client data used for training.
• Async discipline. Consolidated updates, clear contact sheets, no silent absorption of risk.
• Overlap with Pacific Time for review windows.

Not this role

Editorial and final cut. Motion graphics, titles and supers. Sound design and mix. Colour grade. Client communication. Creative direction of the piece itself.

Nice to have

• Local pipeline experience (ComfyUI, node graphs, local GPU) alongside hosted tools
• Scripting for batch and API work
• Having built your own MCP server, agent workflow, or automation for a creative pipeline
• Traditional production, VFX, animation or photography background
• 3D or previs literacy for blocking and camera intent

How we hire

1. Reel and contact sheets. We want a hero reel and the unpolished sheet behind one sequence — twenty takes, including the failures, and how you got from the first to the last.
2. If you are shortlisted, a paid test of 2–3 hours is required. Real brief: match a supplied keyframe, hold one character across four shots, deliver one lip-synced line, and run one part of it through a Claude Skill we supply. Scored on match accuracy, consistency, spend, delivery hygiene, and how you used the tooling.
3. Conversation with the Director and Producer.

Terms

• Contract, project-based, booked in blocks
• Day rate or per-shot rate — state your preference and your number
• Studio covers all compute and licences
• NDA and full IP assignment on all delivered work
• Kill fee and revision policy defined per project at booking