This is a rather complex topic because uniqueness doesn’t necessarily guarantee traffic or public recognition. Uniqueness is more like a faith recharge. It means you genuinely believe that your work must have uniqueness, that your personality must be expressed, regardless of the final outcome. If you believe this, then you’ve achieved the first step.
How does one’s aesthetic sense develop? It’s like asking how one’s writing style develops—both come from years of accumulation. This accumulation inevitably involves consuming vast amounts of other people’s work. So no one’s work is absolutely original; we all carry shadows of others to varying degrees. Even our Chinese culture, in its modernization process, has integrated many elements from other civilizations and has evolved significantly from its original form.
This creates a paradox: no one is absolutely unique, yet we must strive to make this uniqueness.
I believe my novels have a strong personal style. An AI described my writing style as “rational, restrained, epic, and profound sci-fi narrative style.” But there are actually rich emotions within as well, as if I naturally know how to distinguish my creations from others. As I mentioned earlier, this is a kind of faith recharge. I believe in the importance of being different, special, even one-of-a-kind, even if that power isn’t the strongest.
I believe good works must be unique, with their own original style. I find cookie-cutter creation meaningless. Therefore, I always stay at the forefront technically, because my technology must support the distinctiveness of my work. As for aesthetics, I watch films and TV shows every day, even though I no longer read books on a daily basis. I have a strong desire to be different, driven by my pursuit of meaning.
Sometimes I feel our culture strongly opposes those who differ from the collective, so just being different is already quite punk rock. Our culture encourages the power of ordinary people rather than elitist ideologies. Therefore, those who hold the latter view may face exclusion. If you’re in the latter camp, many people have likely questioned you already. In my novels, both exist and clash intensely.
Before your work can be unique, you likely need to be unique yourself. As an exceptional person, beyond believing in your value, as I mentioned, you must resist external doubts about yourself. Can you persist in your choices when no one supports you? This might be an even more difficult process than just believing.
Only after all this comes the use of AI tools. Obviously, the first step to achieving uniqueness is that images need multiple layers of processing—you can’t just use raw Midjourney outputs. Because every AI tool has its fixed style, and if you don’t stylize your images and videos, they have a very high chance of looking identical. The possibility of visual effect collisions is also very high.
In the image generation process, you need a workflow that differs from others. Otherwise, it’s just the inherent style of some model, which will quickly cause aesthetic fatigue. This aesthetic fatigue stems from the increasing number of AI-generated works, and audiences no longer experience that initial sense of novelty. If there’s no stylization at this point, it becomes even harder to differentiate.
However, the most critical aspect is still narrative structure. Everyone has a unique way of viewing and telling stories. There are different structures—for example, Nolan has his unique storytelling structure when telling stories, which differs significantly from traditional three-act plays. This also makes it memorable. I’ve always believed that a story’s narrative structure is greater than its content.
Then the unique aspects of your film need to be repeated and amplified. This is where overall stylistic consistency becomes very important. If you can’t even control stylistic consistency, then your expression becomes chaotic. People will struggle to extract a strong message from it.
But these are all just techniques. Ultimately, it all comes down to your beliefs. A person with faith in uniqueness naturally approaches things with critical thinking. They don’t want to overly repeat others’ viewpoints and believe they can understand and create the world on their own.
So this is still a philosophical question—deeply contemplating who you are and what you believe in. And maintaining the discipline of different thinking. That is, when you see viewpoints that have already been expressed in homogenized ways, you might even feel a physiological disgust. When you reach this level, you will definitely be different.
Follow me as we explore AI filmmaking together.
