You watch a film and something touches you - the characters, the world, the emotions, the dialogues and the silences. Most often it is the silences that let the story breathe, that let the viewer become one with the characters. It lets the emotion sink in. That one breath, that one look, the words that go unsaid in a pause, in a smile. Hayao Miyazaki, called this expression of silence, ‘Ma’.

It is what people around the world felt in his silent frames, a whole story inside a few moments that allowed us to revel in his world. When his stories experienced stillness, something within us moved. I believe irrespective of a film being a short, a feature or an ad, the essence of a story lies in the ability to make your audience feel in fewer words and more stillness.

The reason filmmakers chose advertising is because of the iconic campaigns that shaped our sensibilities and made us fall in love with the medium. We remember them for the narrative and not the runtime.

With the ever changing landscape of advertising moving from a 90 seconds to 60, 30 and now even a 5,4,3,2,1, the essence of a story changes. We’re chasing numbers, formats, ratios, fighting against time when time is what allows a viewer to experience an idea, a story, an emotion. The grammar of watching keeps molting. One year we’re told the future is six seconds. Next year, it’s a two-minute brand film. Meanwhile people binge thirty episodes and call it rest.

In a market like this, filmmakers are charged with the responsibility of finding cadence in chaos and smuggling ‘ma’ into whatever canvas we’re given. We identify the pause, adapt and incorporate it in a way that allows for a space where feeling can catch up with image.

I keep circling the same belief: people want to live inside meaning longer, not because their attention failed. The scroll exists because too much of what we call ‘story’ is just noise with music under it. Audiences sort both truths every day.

Now with the coming of AI, the way stories are told changes even further. It isn’t duration that will grab attention anymore; it is genuinely the story itself. We are, inconveniently and gloriously, in the least ‘stable’ creative profession. Tools molt, briefs mutate, tastes pivot. And still, filmmakers will continue to make films, because the medium’s promise isn’t length, it is observation and creation with care. Our art survives by adapting its grammar without surrendering its heart. ‘Ma’ doesn’t disappear, it condenses, and waits for us to make room. Because, in the end, a story lives on through how it made you feel, while the rest gets scrolled.

Sarah Thomas is founder and director at Stom Productions. This article first appeared in the December issue of Manifest, which can be purchased here.