What a Hollywood Vet Told Me About AI Is the Secret Every Creator Needs to Hear

What a Hollywood Vet Told Me About AI Is the Secret Every Creator Needs to Hear

Young filmmakers are reaching out to me, feeling burned out and demoralized by AI tools like Sora that can create a perfect jungle scene in minutes (09:34). It feels like the game is rigged, that the human element is being erased. But after talking to Shannon Malone-deBenedictis, a filmmaker who’s survived 25 years of Hollywood disruption, I realized we're asking the wrong question—it's not about how we compete with the machine, but how we double down on what makes us human.

Let’s be real: technology has always been a source of anxiety for creatives. Shannon got her start in 1999, during the chaotic shift from analog to digital, hauling around giant tape decks and heavy cameras that gave her a bad neck to this day (03:55). She survived the move from standard-def to high-def, from tape to digital files. So when generative AI started making headlines, she saw it as just another "Tuesday in a constantly evolving industry" (07:26).

Her perspective is a game-changer. For Shannon, AI is not the death of creativity; it’s just the newest tool in the toolbox.

She pointed out that we've been using this kind of tech for years to fill in audio gaps or manipulate images in Photoshop (08:25). The tool itself isn't the threat. The threat is letting the tool drive the art. "You're the one who's using the tool," she urged. "Don't let the tool drive you" (11:21).

This is a word for every pastor staring at a blank page, every entrepreneur crafting a business plan, every leader trying to connect. The temptation is to look for the easy way out, to let a machine generate the "perfect" sermon or social media post. But Shannon reminds us that perfection is boring. The audience can spot it a mile away. "I watch a TV, a commercial, and I'm like, that's all AI. And it doesn't resonate with me" (11:21).

So, what does resonate? Your messy, unpredictable, uniquely human fingerprint.

Shannon believes that what makes art special—what gives it a soul—is the spark that a machine can never replicate. Life isn’t a logical process of A+B=C. As she hilariously put it, sometimes "life is one plus one equals chicken McNuggets" (14:07). It’s that beautiful, unplannable chaos that makes us who we are. An AI defaults to the average, the gray. But life, and great art, is about all the other colors (28:01).

The path forward for every creator isn't to out-machine the machine. It’s to dig deeper into your own story. Shannon asks every artist she works with two simple but profound questions: "Why are you passionate about this? Why do you care?" (15:54).

If you can't answer that, the AI has already won. Your passion, your curiosity, your unique perspective—that’s your un-automatable edge. That's the fingerprint of God on your work. The answer to the noise isn't to be a louder machine; it's to be a clearer human.

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Tags:

#AIandCreativity #Filmmaking #ContentCreation #Authenticity #PersonalBranding #FaithInBusiness #Storytelling

Extra for you

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