🔦 Creator Spotlight: Jan-Willem Blom
What Grows From Here: AI, Storytelling, and the Next-Gen Director
✍️ A quick note before we dive in: I'll be publishing once or twice a week — usually one deeper essay or interview, and one lighter post from the field. Think voiceovers, tool experiments, or behind-the-scenes dispatches. Always designed to inspire, not overwhelm.
If you haven’t read it yet, check out my earlier piece, Inside the Creative Firewall. It lays the foundation for many of the ideas we cover today, especially around what machines can generate and what must remain unmistakably human.
This story features highlights from my conversation with Netherlands-based filmmaker and creative director Jan-Willem Blom, where we explored what it means to direct in the generative age. From Terminator 2 posters in Dutch video stores to watercolor dream-sequences rendered across 11 tools, Jan-Willem’s practice is a living answer to the question: What grows from here? (also the name of his short film submission to Runway’s Gen:48 film festival).
This article presents excerpts from our longer conversation. Some responses have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. For the full discussion:
This one is rich with insight for anyone dreaming up films, franchises, or creative identity in the age of AI.
Jan-Willem Blom: the reel before the feature
🎬 Fuses '80s video store instincts with today’s creative machines
🧰 Blends a custom stack of generative tools to help write, design, score, and voice his films…always led by story, not software
🔥 Believes story is “struggle-telling”, and that “you cannot rush stories” in a generative age
🧠 His single whisper to teams behind the tools? “Let us control emotion”
🌍 Part of Europe’s tight-knit, culturally rich AI art community
💡 Envisions new roles like "saga architects" and "franchise world builders”
Creativity is human nature. It's not a title, it's a human right.
AI is not replacing us, it's expanding us. It's an amplifier.
Visuals that look amazing but have no meaning are soulless.
A director in this era still means being a translator of a vision.
Interview Excerpts:
Siddhi: What brought you to this moment, Jan-Willem? What was your “aha” moment where you experienced the power of AI in your creative workflow in a compelling way?
Jan-Willem: I think that when ChatGPT came out — or even just before — I was already watching the space. But especially when ChatGPT launched, I knew instantly, okay, this is going to change so many things, not just like writing scripts, but now we can do anything with it.
So I started a YouTube channel where I was covering a lot of tools, including demos, tutorials, those kinds of things. But I saw something shift on LinkedIn. There was this wave of experimental content, spaghetti morphing visuals, and it felt like a museum. That’s when I saw creativity kicking in.
In January 2024, I committed to posting daily on LinkedIn, talking about the intersection of cinematic wisdom from the video store era and AI filmmaking.
Siddhi: You’ve said that every great film has three foundational elements: characters, world-building, and storytelling. Can you explain how you translate those into generative systems?
Jan-Willem: Totally. So take world-building, it can be as big as Lord of the Rings or as specific as the Shire and Bag End. I realized we can prompt that, too. Or like Harry Potter, moving between Hogwarts and different places, that’s world-building layers.
For me, if you strip everything away, storytelling is actually "struggle-telling." Every story — a children’s story, a horror film — it’s about struggle. Internal, external, relational.
So when I work with tools, I always go back to the video store. That’s where it starts. I was born and raised in the 80s, I grew up with Ghostbusters, Terminator, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone. That’s my instinct. That’s my filter.
The tools are just a way to express that. But they’re not first. The story takes time to simmer. Even if others say, “I made a film in two hours,” I still take two to three months. I need to step away. Come back. Let it build in my head.
Siddhi: I love that. Every creator I’ve spoken to seems to be building what I call a VoiceStack, a system of rituals, references, and tools that keep their voice intact. What’s in yours?
Jan-Willem: That’s a very good question. My instinct is cinematic. Big. Bold. Explosions. That’s how I see the world.
You cannot rush stories. That’s something I still believe. These tools allow us to create faster, but stories, they’re not to be rushed.
There’s not one tool that’s always in my stack. When everyone was using Midjourney, I went another direction. I was using Ideogram for a long time, it was best for blockbuster-style poster fonts. I also used Hyper, a text-to-video tool, for a long time. So yeah, I don’t stick to one thing. I start with vision and choose tools that fit the expression.
Siddhi: In What Grows From Here, you generated voice, visuals, and tone using multiple tools. How did you stay connected to your voice inside that complex process?
Jan-Willem: Yeah, that project was one of the hardest I’ve worked on. I created it as a submission for Runway Gen:48, which gives you 48 hours to go from conception to delivery.
The story was about the decaying of time, told in reverse. I was inspired by Memento, which starts at the end and builds back to the beginning. I wanted it to begin in black and white and grow into color, from a deserted landscape into something more natural and alive. So the end frame is actually where it starts.
I used Leonardo. It nailed the watercolor aesthetic in the first frame. Then I used Topaz Labs to upscale, Runway to animate. But there wasn’t enough motion because the system saw it as a single layer. So I asked ChatGPT for help, it recommended parallax animation. And that created very subtle motion, which worked beautifully.
In total, Jan-Willem used:
ChatGPT for prompt structure and advice
Leonardo for image generation
Topaz Labs for upscaling images and videos
Runway for video animation
Premiere Pro for editing
Pimento for the poster
Canva for poster composition
Epidemic Sound for the soundtrack
Envato Elements for sound effects
ElevenLabs for the voiceover
…and one more I’m missing!
Jan-Willem: That’s 11 tools. Or 12 if you include my brain!
Siddhi: I define the Creative Firewall™ as the boundary between what you let the machine generate and what stays unmistakably human. What lives inside that firewall for you?
Jan-Willem: I love that question because it’s very conceptual. For me, it’s the story and the soul of the story.
I have this Terminator 2 poster from 1991 in my studio. Arnold on the bike with the shotgun, that’s my creative anchor. That’s what perfection looks like to me. It reminds me what I’m trying to create. Inside the firewall is story, character design, names, arcs, themes, redemption, love, hate. That’s the human part.
Outside the firewall are tools. If I’m creating visuals that look amazing but have no meaning, they’re soulless. I know then that I’ve stepped outside it.
No character depth, no story arc, no world-building, no emotional connection. Like Mordor: it’s not powerful because of how it looks. It’s powerful because of the history behind it.
Siddhi: Have you learned anything about your own visual or narrative preferences by seeing how the machine thinks you think?
Jan-Willem: Yeah, totally. Sometimes I prompt something and the result is eerie... but not quite me. That’s interesting. The machines can be a mirror for us as well, instead of just a co-creator or a help to work more efficiently. With ChatGPT, I’ll often ask it to take on the role of a veteran Hollywood producer who sees 150 pitches a day. I want it to be brutal. Don’t tell me what I want to hear. Tell me what sucks.
It strips away the fluff. “This is a 4 out of 10.” That kind of feedback helps.
I use Claude too. It’s more neutral. Gemini adds another voice. So now I feel like I have a creative panel, different tools, different perspectives, different mirrors.
Siddhi: You’re based in the Netherlands. What are you seeing emerge from the European AI creative scene that the world needs to pay attention to?
Jan-Willem: It started small. I, along with Dave Clark, Billy Bowman from Sweden, James Larkin from the UK, we’d comment on each other’s posts.
Then we met at the AI Film Festival in Amsterdam. It was hugs, beers, real friendship. The community is tight. It’s collaboration over competition, which is unique in a fast growing industry like this.
Now it’s global. But also very cultural. You see original stories from cultures, for instance, from Italy, there's creators in Italy that really infused the Renaissance art that it's from locally. We're still a global community, but it's still small in terms of the stories and the creators. And there's so much like cultural expression out there. And that is what I think is really awesome. There are film festivals every week now, Milan, Paris, Amsterdam.
It’s more democratic. And it’s emotionally raw. Like the 80s again. Slasher films, body horror, not polished. Expression over formula.
Siddhi: What new roles do you think will exist in a few years that blend art and AI in ways we may not even have the language for yet?
Jan-Willem: We still need directors of photography, costume designers…world-building depends on them.
But we need "saga architects," people who can take one film and build a trilogy. Think in myth We need "franchise builders." OpenAI is teaming up with Mattel. That means my AI-generated characters could become toys. T-shirts. Action figures. Entire franchises from a single creator.
We’re in the world-building era now.
Siddhi: What’s a new feature or capability you'd ask creative technology teams to build that would be truly transformative for your creative soul?
Jan-Willem: I think that we need emotional control. Right now what we see is we have camera control. But what if we had that for emotional responses? So for instance, I uploaded an image of my character and I say, cry or be angry or laugh or whatever. These are things that should never be missed. It’s also something to give a response to the people that say, yeah, AI content will never be emotional or intelligent or whatever. We hear you. We know it’s important. It’s the facial expressions, it's how things work. If any of the tools are listening, please think about that because that would allow people to get emotional control in their creative process.
Siddhi: For someone curious but overwhelmed, what’s one meaningful step to start making meaning with these tools?
Jan-Willem: I think a lot of people think AI is replacing. But with that massive change, there’s also massive opportunity. I think that myth needs to be busted, it’s not replacing us, it’s expanding us. AI is an amplifier.
AI is going to automate the simple tasks. AI is going to make hard tasks easy. It’s going to make impossible tasks hard.
Don’t start with tools. Start with genre. If you love comedy, you’ll want dialogue. So you’d need a tool like HeyGen 4 for lip sync. That filters your choices.
Genre is the compass. Tools change. Your voice doesn’t.
To close, in Jan-Willem’s own words:
“There is an abundance of stories that have not been told yet. So let’s start creating.
✉️ If this inspired you, subscribe below and share it with one storyteller or artist exploring how to stay human while working with machines. More profiles, metaphors, and maker’s field notes coming soon.
Love this post! With so much discussion around the intersection of creativity and AI, it's so helpful to hear these concrete stories of how the tools can complement creativity. Thanks, Siddhi!
Just watched the video interview. I love the concept of the “firewall” and the need to be thoughtful about the space between the artist intent and the AI system/model. This is a great first interview. Was also helpful to hear Jan-Willem describe the wide range of tools he uses to tell his stories. Can’t wait for the next one!