One of my favorite senitments at the moment is that ‘Hollywood is in trouble’ due to AI, with the suggestion being that AI video generators are soon going to enable a new wave of film creation, that will eventually see all kinds of regular folk building their own cinematic empires, because they can generate Hollywood level animation, or similar, with AI tools.

And definitely, AI tools are improving. Each week, there seems to be a new advance in AI video generation, and yes, at some stage, it does seem entirely feasible that you’ll be able to put together a competent, film-length project based on your idea.

But that’s the thing. Creation itself is only a part of the filmmaking journey, and it’s the writing part, in putting together a narrative that resonates with a wide audience, creating characters that work, scenes that pop, ideas that mesh, that’s not easy. And AI cannot, and will not be able to replicate that.

For example, you’ve likely seen those Pixar-style videos generated by AI tools, with people re-posting them saying things like ‘it’s so over’.

But do you know how long it takes the Pixar team to put together a story for one of their films?

Pixar generally has a team of 10 or more writers, some of the best, most experienced minds in the business, who spend several years on story development before it even gets to the storyboard/production phase.

Pixar, like all Disney projects, uses the Hero’s Journey model as its guiding light, which is a formula extrapolated from ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ monomyth structure, and is based on storytelling approaches that have been developed all throughout human existence.

And again, it takes years for them to develop these stories, using the collective experience of a team of storytellers, in order to come up with a narrative that will hit all the emotional pay-offs to maximize resonance.

AI can’t do that for you, and while AI tools may be able to help you refine a script or idea, or even streamline the conversion of your concept into actual screenplay structure, they won’t be able to polish a poor idea to the point where it’ll become a hit.

As such, even if AI tools are able to fully generate the physical elements of movie, very, very few of the ideas that get churned through these tools are actually going to gain any significant audience.

Of course, some will, and there’s no doubt that AI tools will expand opportunities for creators, by giving more people more ways to showcase their ideas in different formats. But even within that, the same rules of creation will apply, which also means that very, very few projects are going to succeed.

If you want to create resonant stories, you’re better off learning about The Hero’s Journey, and applying that to your concepts, than you would be hoping that AI tools will be able to iron out the problems with your ideas.

Most story ideas are not good, most people who think they have a cool concept for a film haven’t done the research into how to create, and it shows in the final product. I mean, even a lot of films that do make it through to production aren’t that great, and they’ve been checked and okayed by a heap of people.

So while AI tools may give you a practical means to bring your ideas to life, they won’t cover for a lack of storytelling knowledge and/or skill.

You should read this book to learn more about The Hero’s Journey in action.