In 2016, I hosted a week-long writing seminar in Japan. One of the participants was a 74-year-old screenwriter who had written 51 Yakuza films. One of his scripts had even been bought by Quentin Tarantino and became the basis for Kill Bill [2003].
At the end of the week, I asked him what makes a good story. He smiled and, through a translator, said:
“Elliot-san, your body is 75% water. A good story forces your body fluid out of an appropriate pore.”
I’ve never forgotten that. Tears from sorrow, sweat from fear, laughter shaking your lungs — great stories are not just intellectual, they’re physical. Which raises today’s pressing question: if storytelling is about moving bodies, can artificial intelligence — a machine with no body — ever do the same?
Huzley’s Warning Becomes Reality
Aldous Huxley foresaw this in 1931 with a break out novel: Brave New World. He called it “The Feelies” — a cinema that didn’t just show stories but engineered emotions. What sounded like satire now feels prophetic.
AI can already analyse scripts, track biometric data from wearable devices, and test which lines or images most often make us laugh or cry. Streaming platforms already optimise thumbnails or trailers to increase engagement. Add generative AI — capable of rewriting dialogue, altering music, or even deepfaking performances — and you have a machine that doesn’t just tell a story, but optimises emotion.
The Theme Park of Feeling
Imagine cinema as a theme park:
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Screen A for fear — horror tailored to your personal phobias.
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Screen B for love — sweet or bittersweet romance, based on your preferences.
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Screen C for sorrow — a perfectly calibrated weepie, tied to your playlists or memories.
Instead of one story for many people, it’s emotion on demand, engineered just for you. In Orwell’s nightmare, this was control. In Silicon Valley’s dream, it’s entertainment.
But is it still cinema — or just manipulation?
The Paradox
Here’s the paradox: AI doesn’t feel. It doesn’t cry at Bambi’s mother or laugh at Chaplin’s pratfalls. It only predicts what you will feel, based on patterns.
That might be enough for marketing. But the greatest films come from lived contradictions — storytellers wrestling with their own heartbreak, mortality, or joy. My Japanese colleague wrote stories born of his life and culture, then saw one of them transformed into Tarantino’s pop-cultural remix. That is human messiness an algorithm can’t replicate.
AI may learn to squeeze tears. But it cannot know why they matter.
What This Means for Filmmakers
For filmmakers, AI is both a threat and a tool. It can:
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Analyse the emotional arc of a script.
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Generate multiple versions of a scene for test audiences.
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Compose music designed to trigger a specific mood.
The danger is handing over storytelling entirely to the machine. The opportunity is using it as a microscope — not to replace emotion, but to deepen it. Directors may become curators of emotional journeys, shaping from what AI generates, rather than being replaced by it.
And as AI becomes better at manipulation, the value of authenticity will rise. Audiences may seek out films that proudly declare: “No AI used” — cinema that feels raw, surprising, and rooted in lived experience.
Back to Japan
I still hear the words of that Japanese master:
“Your body is 75% water. A good story forces your body fluid out of an appropriate pore.”
AI will almost certainly learn to push those pores — to make us sweat, cry, or laugh on cue. But only human storytellers can embed meaning behind the leak.
The future of filmmaking may come down to this: will we settle for stories that manipulate our fluids, or seek the ones that move us because another human dared to spill some of their own?
The Raindance Takeaway
So here’s my challenge to you: as you develop your next film, ask yourself—am I actually telling my story for cheap thrills? Or am I creating something that will live in my audience’s imagination? Can you force body fluid out of an appropriate pore??
👉 Next step: Put down the gloss. Pick up the craft. Explore a Raindance course and start building cinema that resonates, not just titillates.
👉 Want to step up? What about exploring adiploma or degree course at Raindance?
Read an extended blog post on my new and Free Substack
Raindance: Discover. Be discovered.
Photo Credit: Bertie Watson
I founded Raindance Film Festival in 1993 because the British film industry was closed, polite, and congratulating itself while shutting new filmmakers out.
I co-founded the British Independent Film Awards in 1998 because British indie film deserved more than a shrug, a pat on the head, and a Tuesday night screening.
Raindance didn’t start as a brand. It started as a rebellion: film training without gatekeepers, a festival without permission, and a community built by filmmakers who weren’t waiting to be invited in.
Later, we took it global: Toronto, Vancouver, New York, LA, Berlin, and Brussels, because independent film doesn’t belong to one city, one class, or one accent.
I’ve produced 700+ short films and seven features, including Deadly Virtues (2014) and ALICE, which won the SXSW Grand Jury Prize (2019) not because someone “discovered” us, but because the work earned its place.
I’ve written three books used by filmmakers worldwide because too many courses taught compliance instead of survival.
In 2009, I was awarded a PhD for services to film education, ironic, given that most of my career has been about tearing down the rules that education insisted you follow.
I don’t believe in waiting for permission.I believe in making work, building systems, and forcing the industry to catch up.
Specialties: Independent Film (the real kind) · Producing · Writing · Film Education · Festivals · Breaking Broken Systems
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