I started in development at 22 because it was the fastest path into immersive storytelling. Six years later I direct the campaigns and I still build the prototypes. The code was never the point. It was the way in.
So the tool changes. A Snapchat lens. A link that opens in a phone browser. A pair of glasses. A generative AI pipeline. Light on a wall. I pick whichever one the story needs, and I'm happy to learn a new one when a story asks for it.
The order matters. I start with the feeling. What should someone feel in the first ten seconds. Then the story that gets them there. The technology comes last.
For Little Mix's Confetti album, an empty heart floats in frame and confetti falls around you. You catch the pieces to fill it. The feeling is the song, so the mechanic is the song.
For House of the Dragon, our lens went to a real place, Sankagiri Hill Fort. A series arrived somewhere a person could stand.
For a product launch event, people needed to scan a code and see the product without installing anything, so it ran in the phone browser.
When the idea was a spatial workbench for AI, it needed room around the person. That became Noodle, built natively for Snap Spectacles at MIT Reality Hack 2026.
Nobody remembers the platform. They remember what happened when they looked at it.
Platforms come and go. In January 2025, Instagram stopped letting anyone publish filters, and plenty of good ideas lost their home overnight. The ideas didn't go anywhere. They moved to the next medium that could carry them.
The next medium probably doesn't exist yet. I'll learn it when the story asks for it.