I don’t think the world, our lives, have ever changed at the speed it is today. Every day there is a new form, a new way, a new war, a new opportunity - some good, some bad and for most, only time shall tell. As humans, artists and filmmakers, we must choose to adapt.

As Hellen Keller said, “A bend in the road is not the end of the road...Unless you fail to make the turn.”

From 20 second television commercials, we suddenly are at two minute digital films. From shooting on celluloid, we are figuring out what is real and what is AI. We shoot 16x9, but also keep in mind 9x16 atleast, if not 1:1 also. It is not just the picture that is compromised and a whole new reinvention of misc-en-scene and how much your frame will speak depending on where your viewer is watching it, but one whole aspect of filmmaking now redundant as people consume our films on mute! The whole aural landscape just wiped clean. So we now make films keeping in mind the sound design but also in the absence of it. This is not a rant. This is a recognition of the flux and one can either choose to enjoy the ride, figure their way, or rant and cry and yet give in.

Personally, I think we can do both, miss the good old days but also seek the opportunity to try something new and create some chaos.

Like with AI, we are still stuck trying to emulate what we could already do but cheaper or faster, whether it is perfecting a pitch deck or making a film close to ‘reality’.  However the way digital could never be celluloid but can be so many other things especially democratise art, I wonder if we are limiting ourselves with the way we are approaching the all new. Are we limiting ourselves fiercelessly to the box, if we only use it to replace and not to trailblaze.

The best thing about advertising is how short lived its making process is. One would spend not more than a few weeks on a project, where one can actually put to use their polished skills and with the right collaborators, even experiment and if it turns out well, it lasts a lifetime like most forms of storytelling. If we decide to look at it with a ‘C’mon let’s do this together’ attitude, maybe instead of working against the new asks and expectations, we can actually create something new. What it asks of us is to be unafraid, to stop relying on referencing so much because maybe what we want to say as filmmakers - directors or creatives - has not been done. Maybe we can go a little crazy, taking a bet on ourselves and see what new we can discover in this constant metamorphising world of advertising. Push the HOW and not just lazily customise to WHAT is asked of us. I think it is time to make it fun again, the joy of pushing boundaries, taking a chance, of skilled people coming together to make something short but for a moment in time - WOW!

The author is a writer and director. This article first appeared in the March issue of Manifest, which can be purchased here.