Ben Johnson

It's become easier and easier to make movies over the last 50 years. That "revolution" of quality content that we were promised never came. Why? Because the EASE of making movies is not the true bottleneck. People who think that AI will tear down the walls don't seem to understand that the walls were torn down a long time ago. It's survivorship bias. They only see the studio films that get distribution, so they think the only difference between those films and them is what those films have in common: budget. But Sundance receives more than 14,000 submissions each year now, in features and shorts. Most of them STILL are not good enough to get to an audience. People are making movies all the time. They are making movies right now. And 99% of those films still don't capture anyone's imagination. Yes, making the movie is hard. It's so hard. But it's not the hard part. It's not the thing that makes the movie great. It's not the rare thing that differentiates one story from another. It never will be. There is always that guy in the audience who asks what camera the filmmaker used. And it has always been the wrong question. I do believe there will be great artists out there who figure out ways to use AI to heighten their projects, and there will be great artists who forego it entirely. But none of those great artists will be those who don't understand the difference between "That's great for AI" and "That's a great story.