My dad sold televisions and rented out films from his shop. I grew up surrounded by movies. The smell of VHS cases. Customers coming in on a Friday night, picking something off the shelf, taking a little piece of story home with them. I watched everything. And somewhere in all of that, a quiet thought took root: I want to make one of those one day.
I didn't. Not for a very long time.
THE LONG WAY ROUND
I became a graphic designer. Good at it, but quietly searching for something that felt more like me. Then I found acting. Trained properly. Fell in love with performance, with character, with the strange alchemy of making something feel true on stage. Then I started writing. Then performing my own work. Each step felt like getting closer to something, though I couldn't have told you exactly what.
The desire to make a film never went away. But the barriers felt immovable. The equipment. The crew. The budget. The years of technical knowledge that stood between having a story and putting it on screen. So it stayed where it had always been: a quiet dream in the background, filed under "maybe someday."
Every creative path I took was pointing at the same thing. I just didn't have the tools to get there yet.
THEN AI ARRIVED
When I started seriously exploring AI, something shifted. Not gradually. Suddenly. Green screening. Visual effects. Atmospheric filters and cinematic grade treatments. Compositing that would previously have required a full post-production facility. All of it, available, powerful, and in my hands.
As someone who understood performance, story, and what makes a scene emotionally true, I realised I already had the most important things. AI was giving me the rest. The technical vocabulary to execute a vision I'd been carrying for decades.
Then I heard about the International AI Movie Awards in San Francisco. There was a deadline. A real one.
I had two weeks.
TWO WEEKS. REAL ACTORS. ONE SHOT.
There was no script. There was a feeling. Dystopian. A man losing his mind, or losing access to something hidden, a secret just out of reach. Paranoid. Afraid. Haunted by fragments of something he couldn't quite grasp. I had the vibe before I had anything else.
The process was improvisational. Who could I find to act? Where would they fit into the story? How could each person I cast add another piece to a puzzle I was building on the run? I found performers across the country, some self-filming in their own homes, others in different cities entirely, each one adding something to a narrative arch that was taking shape as we went. I directed remotely, over calls, fitting people into a world that AI was helping me build around them.
AI handled the green screening, the visual effects, the atmospheric grade, the compositing that turned scattered self-filmed footage into something cinematic and coherent. I held the creative vision. The story emerged from the pieces, not from a page.
The Dore was made in two weeks. It was entered into the International AI Movie Awards in San Francisco. And it went on to win Best Sci-Fi at the Bristol Film Festival.
The Dore didn't prove that AI can replace filmmakers. It proved that AI can finally create them.
WHAT IT ACTUALLY FELT LIKE
It felt like the thing I'd been circling my entire adult life finally coming into view. The graphic design years. The acting training. The writing and performing. All of it, suddenly, made sense as preparation rather than distraction. None of it was wasted. All of it was pointing here.
My dad's shop. Friday nights. People taking stories home.
I made one of those.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
You have a version of this story too. Something you always wanted to do. A path you didn't take, or took and left, or are only now beginning to see clearly. A thing that felt like it was for other people, for the technically gifted, for the young, for the ones who started earlier than you.
It isn't. And AI is part of why.
Not because AI makes everything easy. Because it removes the barriers that were never really about your ability in the first place. The technical ones. The financial ones. The ones that said you needed years of specialist knowledge before you were allowed to try.
It's never too late to change paths. AI won't make the decision for you. But it will remove the excuses.
I'm writing a book about this. It's called It's Not Over. It's for everyone who grew up around something they loved, took a different road, built a life, and still has that quiet thought in the background: I always wanted to make one of those.
The Dore is the proof of concept. The book is the map.
The question isn't whether you have the technical skills. The question is whether you have something worth making.
Coming soon. Join the waitlist for early access, pre-launch pricing, and updates as the book takes shape.
IT'S NOT OVER — THE BOOK
Found this useful? Mark works with organisations to turn AI thinking into operational capability — through the Production-First AI System™.
MARK HORTON
Strategic AI Advisor · Organisational AI Capability