Marketing Lessons I Learned From My Son’s First Semester at Film School

A few months ago, my son left home for the first time.

Not left like going to summer camp or a friend’s place for a long weekend. Left like packed his life into boxes, hugged us a little longer than usual, and walked into a version of adulthood that neither of us had fully rehearsed.

He’s in film school now, yearning to tell stories through motion pictures. Learning how images, sound, pacing, and emotion come together to make people feel something. It’s what he’s always wanted. I’m proud of him in a way that’s hard to put into words.

I’ll also admit this.
It’s been harder than I expected. The house is quieter. The daily rhythms are different. I don’t hear him bustling around the house or wandering into the kitchen late at night looking for something to munch on. We Zoom almost every day, which helps me cope, but it’s not the same. I’ve had to adjust to a new normal, and I didn’t realize how much of my own identity was wrapped up in the daily presence of being his dad in that very physical, very constant way.

Watching him go through his first semester has been fascinating, challenging, and unexpectedly instructive for me not just as an evolving parent but as a marketer too.

And not for the reasons you might think.

At school, he’s learning the fundamentals. Real fundamentals. Composition. Lighting. Framing. Editing. Story structure. How to sit with discomfort in a scene. How to make choices and live with them. There’s something beautiful about that. Something grounding.

But there’s also something that feels… frozen in time.

They’re shooting on film. Developing photographs in darkrooms. Talking about process the way people did decades ago. AI tools are nowhere to be found. Not discussed. Not debated. Not even discouraged. Just absent. As if the world outside the classroom isn’t changing at a pace that would make your head spin.

And I get it.
Film school is about craft.
About learning to see.
About slowing down before you speed up.

But I can’t help noticing the parallel to what happens in marketing.

So many marketers are clinging to the way they learned the craft. The tools they mastered. The processes that once made them successful. And just like film school, there’s comfort in that. There’s identity in it. There’s pride in knowing how things have always been done.

My son is learning how to direct without AI. And that’s not wrong. In fact, there’s something powerful about it. He’s learning taste. Judgment. Patience. How to wrestle an idea into existence without shortcuts. Those skills will matter forever.

But the world he will graduate into will look very different from the one he’s being trained in.

And that’s the tension.

At the same time, I’ve watched him grow in ways I didn’t anticipate. Living on his own has forced him to figure things out. Time management. Creative frustration. Confidence. Failure. Resilience. He’s becoming more himself. Sharper. More thoughtful. More opinionated. Less reliant on us. That part is both amazing and a little heartbreaking.

I’ve had to grow too.

I’ve had to rewire my days. Reclaim time that used to be filled with dad duties. Accept that my role is changing, not disappearing. Learn how to support him without hovering. Learn how to let go without checking out.

That adjustment hasn’t been optional.
It’s been necessary.

Which brings me back to marketers and AI.

What I’m seeing in my own life is exactly what I see inside organizations. You can’t pretend change isn’t happening just because it makes you uncomfortable. You can’t freeze time and hope the world waits for you to catch up. You also can’t abandon the fundamentals in a rush to chase every new shiny thing.

My son doesn’t need AI to learn how to tell a story. But eventually, he will need to understand how AI fits into the creative process, the production pipeline, the economics of filmmaking, and the future of the industry he’s entering.

Marketers are in the same place.

AI doesn’t replace taste, creativity, strategy, or judgment. But it does change how those things get expressed. It changes the speed. The scale. The leverage. The expectations.

The marketers who struggle the most are the ones trying to keep their old identity intact while the ground shifts underneath them. The ones who refuse to adapt, but also refuse to fully commit to learning what’s next.

Watching my son has reminded me that growth always involves discomfort. Leaving home. Letting go. Learning new rules. Making mistakes in unfamiliar environments. Redefining who you are in the process.

That’s not just true for kids going to film school.
It’s true for all of us.

The marketers who will thrive in the AI era won’t be the ones who abandon the craft. They’ll be the ones who deepen it while learning a new way to work. The ones who stay curious instead of defensive. The ones who accept that their role is evolving, not ending.

I miss having my son around every day. I really do. But I also wouldn’t trade the person he’s becoming for the comfort of the past.

Marketers would do well to think about AI the same way.

You don’t grow by staying home forever. You grow by stepping into the unknown, carrying the fundamentals with you, and trusting that you’ll figure out the rest along the way.