We recently connected with Miida Chu and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Miida thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

The path I’m on today began the day I screened my first film for my family at age 11. It wasn’t the standing ovation that set this journey in motion. It was my mom’s scathing critique: “Oh, this is so childish.”

I didn’t think much of it until three years later when, at 14, I asked my mom to upgrade my gear. I was fed up with running Premiere 2.0 on a PC with only 256 MB of RAM. But instead of agreeing, she said, “Good movies aren’t good because of good gear; they’re good because of good storytelling. Your stories are childish. Focus on the stories you tell, not the equipment you use.”

I was furious. What made my stories childish? I demanded an answer, but my mom couldn’t give me one. Instead, she listed films she considered great examples of storytelling and told me to keep reading books to improve mine.

I attended an arts high school determined to make films that weren’t childish. I watched countless arthouse films, studied Bergman and Tarkovsky, and convinced myself I had captured some profundity in my so-called experimental narrative films. But my film teacher had a different take. While he acknowledged my skill in cinematography, editing, and music, he told me I lacked the craft of storytelling.

So I asked again: What is good storytelling? He listed elements like wants, needs, conflicts, and stakes and told me my films lacked them. But when I pointed out films that had these elements but were considered bad, and others that lacked them but were considered great, he simply shrugged. “Film is art. Sometimes it just comes down to subjective judgment.”

That answer frustrated me. Why isn’t there a film theory like music theory, something that lays out the elements of narrative that shape emotions and gives us a language to describe and create the experiences we want? Instead, all we get is, “Master the basics, then innovate.”

That question drove me to make more films, many of which made absolutely no sense. But in hindsight, each one taught me what can and can’t be articulated through cinema. The lack of satisfying answers in film classes also pushed me to study philosophy and linguistics in college, searching for ways to distinguish style from substance, like syntax and semantics. None of these pursuits directly led to the film theory I’m working on now, but they paved the way, showing me both possibilities and dead ends.

Miida, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have primarily worked as a writer-director, but over the past year, I have shifted my focus to my passion project—film theory and narrative analysis—as my main pursuit. It all started when I noticed differences in how I engaged with movies. When I’m truly immersed in a film, I find myself in the character’s shoes, especially in terms of decision-making. In mystery films, I form hypotheses based on the available evidence, investigating alongside the character. I’m most impressed when a character outsmarts me, arriving at conclusions I wouldn’t have reached on my own. Conversely, I’m most frustrated when a character fails to see the obvious while I can spot it a mile away.

This realization led me to view storytelling as game design and player design. It’s a framework that explains how audiences interact with a story. The feeling of being “sucked in” happens when you understand how to “play the game” and make choices alongside the character. But when a character’s decisions feel predictable or unintelligent, interest is lost. In this model, narratives are like playthroughs of a game. The ones audiences find compelling are those where the game is playable and fun, and where the player—the protagonist—plays it in a logical and interesting way.

Currently, I’m applying this framework for both pedagogical and developmental purposes. I’ve designed an introductory filmmaking curriculum that deviates from the conventional approach of analyzing past films to identify their “successes.” Instead, my method encourages students to examine their own reactions to films, both the ones they love and the ones they hate, dissecting the specific elements that trigger their emotional responses. This approach connects filmmakers with their own sensibilities, helping them reflect on the meaningful choices they’ve made in their own lives and understand how these experiences shape the stories they want to tell.

On the developmental side, I use this framework to help filmmakers in evaluating their scripts—assessing whether the script aligns with their intentions and making necessary revisions. This includes determining whether the game should be redesigned or if the player can engage with it in a more interesting ways they haven’t thought of. This method cuts through the noise of conventional wisdom about what a “good script” should include, focusing instead on what really matters: choices faced and choices made.

For now, I am keeping my engagements limited, primarily guest lecturing and offering script consultancy on a case-by-case basis. My main focus is R&D for future larger-scale projects. I am developing a data analytics model that profiles scripts and audiences through this framework, enabling producers and studios to predict how a given audience will experience, react to, and judge a given film. Additionally, I am conceptualizing a simulator that allows filmmakers to explore alternative playthroughs of their narratives, helping them craft the best possible version of their story.

I want my clients to understand that the film industry, as it stands, is an archaic machine. Despite decades of progress in cognitive science and machine learning, we have made little effort to truly understand human nature, particularly our innate thirst for and consumption of narratives. Studying the “hero’s journey” and learning from past successful films can help us understand the output of human nature, but not human nature itself. If we don’t fully grasp what needs to be said, how can we effectively say what we intend to say?

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think what sets me apart from other filmmakers is that my passion for filmmaking didn’t stem from a love of movies. Don’t get me wrong, I love movies, but that’s not why I want to make films. I want to make films because I see cinema as a beautiful medium, a powerful language, yet one we still don’t fully understand. We use it instinctively, but we haven’t truly mastered it. We haven’t reached the point where we can wield it with complete precision to express what we intend to express. It’s like how animals use their vocal cords to make sounds—these sounds are often effective in achieving their intended effects, but they are not yet a fully realized tool, like a paintbrush in the hands of an artist, capable of painting freely on a canvas.

I hope my project helps demystify filmmaking. I want people to understand what’s really happening when we watch a movie and when we write one. In a way, I want to empower anyone who can tell a story cinematically—which, in today’s world, is almost everyone with a smartphone—to do so with confidence. Breaking into the film industry and securing millions of dollars to tell your story is a high barrier, but there should be no barrier to mastering this form of human expression. And I’m here to help break that barrier for everyone.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I had studied math and economics. These are the tools I wish I had now to help me understand and describe certain forms of human interaction.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://miidachu.com
• Instagram: @miidachu
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miidachu/
• Twitter: https://x.com/miidachu

Image Credits

Photographer: Heather Nusz
Ins: @beauty.and.pain