Automotive, launch spot
Automotive
Paint has to carry the reflection as the camera moves. Generated shots forget that constantly, so every pass here was checked against one lighting plan.
Films that hold up under a pause.
Product films, commercials and social cutdowns. Made with AI, then finished by hand until the giveaways are gone. Fixed scope and one number, agreed in writing, before a single frame is rendered.
The work
Four films. Watch the edges.
Pause any of these and look at the label text, the reflections, the shadows. That is where AI film usually falls apart, and that is where our week goes. Every clip below is ours.
Fragrance, hero film
Beverage, social cutdowns
Beverage
Pour weight is the tell. Liquid has to fall like it has mass and splash like it hit something. We timed it against real reference until it did.
Audio product, advert
Audio product
Matte plastic, metal mesh and skin in one frame. Three surfaces that each want a different grade, matched so none of them looks pasted on.
How it runs
Three steps, and no surprises in the middle.
You see the plan before anything is made, you see the cut before anything is finished, and you know the number the whole way through.
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Scope, then boards
We write down exactly what you are getting and put one number on it. Then boards: every shot drawn, in order, with the cut length written next to it. Nothing gets rendered until you have signed off that page.
2 to 4 working days
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Generate, then throw most of it away
We make far more footage than the film needs, then cut the failures. Bad hands, nonsense label text, faces that drift, shadows going the wrong way. What survives gets assembled against the board, not against whatever looked pretty.
4 to 7 working days
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The finishing pass
Grade, grain, sound, rhythm. This is the stretch that decides whether anyone can tell, and it is the stretch most people skip because the film already looks fine on a laptop at half size.
3 to 5 working days
The finishing pass
Twelve tells, and what we do about each one.
Nobody watches an ad and says that looks like AI. They feel that something is off and they scroll. These are the twelve things that make them feel it. Every one gets checked on every cut, on a proper screen, at full size.
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Hands
Fingers change count between frames, or bend at a joint that does not exist.
What we do. Any shot with a hand gets stepped through frame by frame. If it fails, it gets made again. It never gets shortened and hoped for.
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Label text
Type on packs, bottles, signs and screens turns into letter shapes that are not letters.
What we do. Real label artwork goes on as its own layer, tracked to the surface, using your files. Nothing on screen spells a word that does not exist.
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Face drift
A face slides a few pixels every frame, so it looks fine once and clearly wrong on the second watch.
What we do. Stabilise it, hold the shot shorter, or cut around it. Faces get the second watch before anyone else sees the film.
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Liquid weight
Pours that float. The stream falls at the wrong speed and lands without hitting anything.
What we do. Time it against real reference footage and make it again until the fall and the splash agree with each other.
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Reflections
Glass and paint reflect a room that is not the room in the shot, or reflect nothing at all.
What we do. Paint the reflection to match what is actually in front of the surface, or drop the shot if it cannot be fixed honestly.
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Shadow direction
The key light comes from the left and the shadow falls left too. Nobody names it, everybody feels it.
What we do. One light direction is fixed at the board stage, written on the board, and every shot is checked against it before the cut is assembled.
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Fabric and skin
Cloth creases like plastic, skin has no pores, hair moves in one solid piece.
What we do. Keep those shots short, add texture back in the grade, and never hold on a surface that cannot survive being held on.
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Shot length
Every shot runs the same length, so the film ticks along like a metronome and stops feeling cut by a person.
What we do. Vary the lengths on purpose. Some shots run eight frames, some are held for four seconds. The rhythm is written on the board before anything is made.
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Framing sameness
Everything centre framed at eye level, because that is what the default gives you, over and over.
What we do. Break it deliberately. Low angles, high angles, off centre, over a shoulder, one shot that is mostly empty. A film that always looks straight at the subject looks made by a machine.
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Colour jumps
Each shot graded on its own, so skin tone and product colour shift every time the picture cuts.
What we do. Grade the whole film as one film. One hero frame is picked, and every other shot is matched to it, shot by shot, across the entire cut.
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Grain mismatch
One shot is glassy clean, the next is noisy. No camera in the world behaves like that within a single film.
What we do. Match the grain across every shot first, then lay one consistent grain over the finished cut so the whole thing shares a texture.
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Dead room tone
Silence under the picture, so the music and voice sit on top like a sticker with nothing behind them.
What we do. Add room tone, then the small sounds: cloth, footsteps, a bottle set down, air in a large space. It is the cheapest fix on this list and the one that changes the most.
Two of these carry more weight than the rest. The grade, because colour is the first thing the eye reads and shot to shot drift is the fastest way to look amateur. And the sound, because a film with real room tone under it stops being a video file and starts being a place.
Before anything is sent to you, the cut goes to three people who have been told nothing about it. They watch it on a phone, the way your customers will. If one of them says something felt off, we go back and find out what, and we fix that before you ever see it.
Scope and cost
Every job is scoped, so the number is different every time.
A one shot founder film and a launch campaign with eleven cutdowns are not the same piece of work, so we do not pretend they carry the same number. We scope yours against your shot list and send it to you by email, in writing, before anything starts.
Films and ads
Scoped first. Quoted in writing.
one number, one time, nothing to renew
We make product films, launch films, founder films to camera, festival and offer spots, and the full social cutdown set that goes out with any of them. Some jobs are a single hero film. Some are one film plus a dozen versions of it for different placements.
Four things move the number: how many shots the film needs, how many cutdowns and sizes go with it, whether there are people on screen or only product, and how tight the date is. We put all of that on one page with one figure at the bottom and email it to you. It is a fixed scope. If you later ask for something that is not on that page, we tell you the new number first and you decide, in writing, before we touch it.
Get a number for your filmWhat you end up owning
- The graded master, plus the same film delivered at 16:9, 1:1, 9:16 and 4:5
- Vertical versions built for reels, reframed shot by shot, not cropped down from the wide one
- Cutdowns at the lengths each placement wants, plus a silent version and a captioned one
- Voice over recorded to your script, with room tone and the small sounds underneath it
- Music licensed in your name, with the licence document handed to you
- Boards, project files and the source shots, so your next edit does not start from nothing
How it lands
- Two rounds of changes are included, and normal notes cost you nothing extra
- Nine to sixteen working days start to finish, depending on the size of the film
- Files go over on delivery day, in the formats your team already uses
Everything above is yours on handover, including the right to run it as a paid ad. There is no licence to renew and nothing to cancel later.
Questions
The four things everybody asks.
Someone on our team is going to spot that it was made with AI.
They might. We will not pretend otherwise, and anyone who promises you nobody will ever guess is selling you something.
What we do promise is the twelve tells above. Hands, label text, face drift, pour weight, reflections, shadow direction, fabric, shot length, framing, colour, grain and room tone. All twelve checked, on a real screen, at full size, before you see the cut. In our experience the people who spot it are the ones already looking for it, and they spot it in the sound first, which is why the sound gets a whole pass of its own.
Our product has to look exactly right, not almost right.
Agreed, and this is the part we are strictest about. Send us the product photography, the pack artwork and the actual label files. The product on screen is built from your references, and the label type goes on as a real layer using your artwork, so nothing on the pack is invented.
If a shot cannot hold your product honestly, we say so and we cut that shot. We would rather hand you eleven shots that are right than twelve with one that makes a customer squint.
What happens if we hate the first cut?
Two rounds of changes are already included in the scope we agreed, so normal notes cost you nothing extra.
A first cut being completely wrong is rare, because the boards are approved before a single frame is made, and the boards show every shot and every cut length. If it does happen and the film does not match what we agreed on that page, that is our mistake and we make it again at our cost.
Can we run it as a paid ad, and do we own it?
Yes, and yes. You get the master, the cutdowns in the sizes each platform asks for, the vertical versions, the audio stems and the project files. Music and voice are licensed in your name, not ours. There is nothing to renew and nothing to cancel.
What the film will do to your numbers is the one thing we will not tell you, because nobody can know that in advance. We can tell you what you are getting, what it costs and when it lands. The rest is your media buying and your offer.
Send us the product. We will tell you straight.
One or two lines about what you are selling and where the film needs to run. A person reads it, a person replies, usually within a working day, with the scope written out, a number in writing and a real date.