Contra - A professional network for the jobs and skills of the futureBeing scared of the dark isn’t just for kids. That was the starting point for this piece. I was t...
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Tonia Lachotzki
pro
• Aug 28
Being scared of the dark isn’t just for kids.
That was the starting point for this piece.
I was thinking about how differently the night can feel once everything goes quiet. Familiar rooms change. Shadows feel heavier. A nightmare can feel completely real for a few seconds after waking.
It’s something many adults recognise instinctively, but rarely talk about.
For a Talk with Tonia conversation around nightmares and nighttime fear, I didn’t want to open with an explanation.
I wanted to create recognition first.
The creative process started with one question:
How do I make someone feel the subject before they hear the conversation?
From there, I built the sequence around contrast.
Start with something ordinary: a bedroom, sleep, stillness, vulnerability.
Then slowly disturb it.
Rather than introducing the creature immediately, I wanted the environment to feel believable first. The more normal the room felt, the more unsettling the shift could become.
The pacing was designed as an escalation: safety → unease → recognition → threat.
The character also needed to feel human rather than performative. Fear works differently when the reaction feels instinctive rather than theatrical, so I focused on restrained movement, vulnerability and the feeling of being trapped inside an experience you cannot immediately control.
AI filmmaking made it possible to visualise that internal experience cinematically, but the AI wasn’t the idea.
The idea came from the human tension.
The technology became the tool for translating that feeling into something visual.
The sequence then transitions out of the cinematic world and into the real Talk with Tonia conversation.
That transition was important to me.
The film wasn’t designed to be horror for the sake of horror. Its job was to earn attention, create an emotional connection and then hand that attention over to the conversation.
The piece went on to reach 5.2K+ organic views on Instagram, with 99.9% of viewers coming from outside the existing audience, and almost 2K views on YouTube.
But the part I find most interesting is the creative principle behind it:
sometimes the strongest way to introduce an idea isn’t to explain it.
It’s to make someone recognise the feeling first.
Creative strategy, concept development and AI filmmaking by Behind the Rope.
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