Taylor Swift Taught Me How To Write Better System and Agent Prompts
Taylor Swift says details shouldn't be strictly decorative. The same rule makes better system prompts: every sentence has to change what the agent does, so delete and test.
The journal · Theme
Storytelling craft
The craft underneath everything else. 14 essays, newest first.
Is This Really Creative? What a talk at Campaign360 taught me about the wrong question.
Every new tool has made creativity move rather than vanish. AI collapses the gap between imagining a thing and making it, so the value shifts to meaning.
I stopped writing and went quiet to rethink how I work. Here's why — and where it's headed.
A filmmaking masterclass changed how I work. From scene prompter to director, and a hybrid model for brand micro-drama: shoot less, build more.
Notes from My Workshop at Spikes Asia: The Experience Gap in AI Filmmaking
A show of hands at Spikes Asia: most people learning AI filmmaking have never been on a set. The craft they're missing is what makes the tools useful.
Brands aren't short of ideas. They're short of engines. This is where the Story Engine came from, and how it connects strategy, narrative and production.
AI Didn’t Kill Cinematography. It Made It Mandatory.
Generated footage looks impressive and feels flat. Camera movement, lens logic and color continuity now have to be specified up front, which makes the cinematographer's thinking essential.
Why Agency Scriptwriters Should Experiment with AI Filmmaking
Most scripts fail in transmission, long before the shoot. Rough AI visualization lets a writer test whether tone and rhythm survive before anyone else reads the page.
Authentic Memories, Human Responses: A Lesson for Brands from Blade Runner 2049
And how I use Google's Flow to test and learn.
Brief the Problem, Not the Solution.
Why most creative briefs fail to spark creativity and what to do about it.
Screen Tests: How Hollywood’s AIs Predicted, Shaped, and Misunderstood the Future
From HAL to Her, Hollywood got AI metaphorically right and literally wrong. It arrived as invisible infrastructure we default to, and we're handing it our intimacy.
“We Just Decided To”: On Rituals, Responsibility, and Rewatching The Newsroom
My annual rituals tell me what I value. This year one line from The Newsroom reminded me that standards are a decision anyone can simply make.
“I’ll write a book,” I said. “How hard could that be?”
What writing my first book actually taught me, from punctuation rules to watching Grammarly sand my voice flat.
On moving, anniversaries, and avoiding conflicts.
I moved apartments days before our wedding anniversary and ran it like a film production. It taught me the client lessons I thought I already knew.
The Epilogue Economy: Tapping into the Wealth and Wisdom of the Aging Consumer
Epilogues in books and films set up the sequel. People over 50 are writing theirs, and most brands haven't noticed the market or the talent in it.