The Human Lens: Creative Narrative, Technology, and The Psyche
In this episode, we sit down with Quint Boa, founder of the production company Synima, and a certified psychotherapist, to explore the radical intersection of technology and psychology. Quint shares how he is leveraging the AI to draw a new reality for those struggling with mental health, addiction, and neurodivergence.
Watch&Listen to the full interviewhere.
Quint Boa
Founder of Synima
Quint, you have a unique “twin-track” career as both a film professional and a psychotherapist. How do these two worlds actually meet?
It’s a fairy story, really. I grew up in a world of performance – my father, Bruce Boa, was an actor in Faulty Towers and Empire Strikes Back – but I also had a deep-seated interest in Jungian analysis through my aunt, Marion Woodman. For a long time, these paths were separate. I was running a production company while maintaining a private practice.
The “lightbulb moment” happened when animation became reasonable to produce. I realized that animation isn’t just for entertainment; it’s a tool for metaphor and allegory. It allows us to speak to people, especially children and young adults, about complex issues like OCD, trauma, and addiction in a way that feels safe and accessible.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: AI. You’ve mentioned that AI nearly “wiped out” your industry. How did you move from fear to being “AI positive”?
It absolutely terrified me at first. I thought the creative industries were safe from the wave that was hitting lawyers and accountants. Then came ChatGPT and video generation tools like Sora. Suddenly, people with no formal training could produce incredible content.
I realized I couldn’t live in denial. I have a duty of care to my staff and to my business. We shifted the entire company to be AI-positive. We are now retraining our staff and using AI to handle about 60% of our workflow, a number that is growing every month. AI takes the massive expense out of animation, allowing us to produce high-quality, creative stories much more cost-effectively.
In terms of mental health, why is animation, specifically AI-generated animation, better than traditional video?
Video is too literal. If you show a trauma survivor a video of a car accident, you risk triggering them. Animation, however, allows for a suspension of the prefrontal cortex. When a person, especially a child, watches animation, they enter a “dream world” of surreal myths where they can begin to self-regulate and process information without being overwhelmed.
AI allows us to visualize the esoteric. You can’t film a coronavirus entering a body or the abstract feeling of “the cloud,” but you can animate it. In therapy, we can use these visuals to provide a narrative that helps a patient readjust to the world and put their traumatic experience into perspective.
You’ve spoken passionately about “upstream” intervention for conditions like ADHD and addiction. How does AI play into that?
Here’s a staggering thought experiment: one in four prison inmates has undiagnosed ADHD. These are people who often turned to substances to “feel normal” because they didn’t understand their own brains.
With AI, we can produce a series of five peer-reviewed, high-quality animations for a fraction of the traditional cost, maybe £50,000 instead of hundreds of thousands. We can put those on Instagram or TikTok, where everyone has a mobile phone, and raise awareness upstream. If we can help a child or a parent identify these patterns early, we save the individual and the state a lifetime of heartache and expense.
You are also very involved with NACOA (National Association of Children of Alcoholics). How is technology helping these children?
Children of alcoholics often live in a state of hyper-vigilance, constantly “reading the room” to survive. It’s heartbreaking – about 10% of the children calling the NACOA helpline just want a bedtime story read to them because their parents are unavailable.
We recently produced an animation for the helpline to tell these children, “You are not alone”. Breaking that sense of isolation is where healing starts. Because AI allows for instant translation into any language and free distribution via social media, we can reach these kids wherever they are.
What is your “North Star” for the intersection of AI and production?
While the technology is democratizing the ability to create imagery, the real winners will be those who can tell the stories and protect the client’s IP and copyright.
My goal is to continue using these tools for healthcare, specifically mental health. Working for a Fortune 500 company is fine, but if I can get another 10,000 kids to call a helpline because of an animation we created, that is what lights me up. We are entering an era where we can finally use the power of “drawing reality” to help people heal on a global scale.