Abstract:

In the age of digital content overproduction, where the sheer volume of information can overwhelm and desensitize, emotional resonance is paramount and a vital differentiator. Yet, creators often face emotional blocks and time constraints that hinder their ability to effectively connect with fragmented audiences within a single narrative. This research paper recounts my personal journey of utilizing AI-augmented filmmaking to overcome emotional barriers and create impactful communication for a fundraising campaign addressing the importance of last-segment-of-life homecare for isolated elderly Romanians, revealing that emotional mastering and understanding is not a prerequisite for creating emotional connection.

The challenge of evoking life from seemingly lifeless subjects to activate empathy across fragmented and potentially resistant audience for a cause that may seem devoid of a future presented as a daunting task. The emotionally charged subject matter, coupled with a shared sense of numbness between myself and the elderly subjects, initially triggered a profound creative impasse. I struggled to connect with the emotional core of the story in a way that would allow me to effectively convey it to the audience.

Seeking a way forward, I turned to AI-powered tools like Gemini Advanced and Adobe Express. By leveraging "genius prompts" inspired by the works of renowned writers, I initiated a process of reverse engineering my own emotional landscape, biases, and perceptions. This involved a deliberate "unlearning, unfeeling, and unseeing" to dismantle pre-existing frameworks and enhance clarity. Through this AI-assisted self-reflection, a structured vocabulary of emotions unexpectedly emerged, serving as a blueprint for navigating the emotional complexities of the project. This framework enabled me to translate the emotional core of the story into compelling visual storytelling, achieving a level of emotional resonance that I had initially deemed unattainable, ultimately aligning all decision-makers, the primary audience of the film, on the same page.

This AI-facilitated process mirrored the mechanics of metadata vocabularies, which tag web content for algorithmic understanding and discoverability. My realization was that just as search algorithms struggle with untagged content, our human systems can experience numbness and nothingness when we fail to recognize the presence of emotions. Tagging emotions, like tagging web content, makes them discoverable and usable, even if not fully perceived.

This research illuminates how AI-powered tools can facilitate the development of emotional frameworks for filmmakers and communicators, enabling them to rapidly decode emotions, even in high-pressure creative situations, without requiring a deep understanding of their underlying causes. This empowers creators to craft more resonant content in a world where stories must captivate both human and algorithmic audiences. By sharing this personal case study, this paper aims to inspire and equip creators with the tools and insights to harness the power of emotions and AI for enhanced creative communication in educating and connecting fragmented audiences. It also lays the groundwork for future research into the potential benefits and applications of a structured vocabulary of emotions in creative fields.

Keywords:

AI-augmented filmmaking, emotional decoding, structured vocabulary of emotions, creative communication, creative block, emotional numbness, educational storytelling, AI in film production, emotional intelligence, human-computer interaction, AI-assisted self-reflection.