The Blueprint Phase
AI is fundamentally a productivity and visualisation tool. It helps teams see exactly what they are going to build before anyone spends money on a physical set or shoot.
- Ideation & Concepting: Using text-to-image or text-to-video generators to rapidly mock up mood boards, test visual concepts, and align on art direction.
- Visualisations & Storyboarding: Generating highly accurate pre-production visuals for specific shoot modules or Hero storyboards. Instead of rough pencil sketches, teams can look at photorealistic representations of the planned shots to lock in framing and lighting early.
- Animatics: Using AI to generate testing stimulus animatics.
The Capture & Generate Phase
This is where AI acts as a digital co-creator alongside and sometimes instead of filming with a physical camera. While we prioritise real talent for core brand trust, AI is incredibly powerful for world-building, product demonstrations, and generating supporting footage.
- Grey Screens & Virtual Worlds: Shooting real talent or products on a ‘grey screen’ (a modern, more lighting-friendly evolution of the green screen). AI is then used to track, generate, and fill in photorealistic, dynamic backgrounds, placing the real product or talent into any environment without the cost of location shooting or set builds.
- Pure AI Supporting Shots: Generating completely camera-free sequences for specific needs. This is ideal for sweeping establishing shots, macro ‘science-y’ product demos (like an AI-generated close-up of a hair strand reacting to a serum) dynamic product application visuals or transitional motion elements between scenes.
- Sensorials & Textures: Using AI to generate supporting sensorials like stylised water splashes, liquids, particles, bursting ingredients, or complex lighting effects that would be too expensive or unpredictable to shoot practically.
- Digital Twins: Using a highly accurate 3D Digital Twin, and then dropping that twin into a completely AI-generated environment or sequence.
The Polish & Remix Phase
Once the camera stops rolling, AI takes over to multiply the value of the assets, fix production mistakes, and adapt the content for a global audience.
- Asset Remixing & Variation: Using platforms like Pencil to ingest a massive library of captured material (Hero shots, shoot modules, base assets) and automatically generate dozens of finished, channel-ready variations tailored for different formats and markets.
- Generative Fill & Reframing: Seamlessly painting out unwanted elements (like a stray coffee cup or safety rig) or using AI to extend the edges of a frame—allowing you to easily convert a wide landscape TV shot into a vertical social format without cropping out the subject.
- Upscaling & Audio Enhancement: Using AI to instantly clean up background noise on set, isolate voiceovers, or visually upscale lower-resolution archival or B-roll footage to match the crispness of modern primary cameras.
- Traditional VFX: AI image generation can fast-track traditional CGI and 3D pipelines by serving as a high-speed tool for concept art, texture creation, lighting reference, and scene ideation. It bridges the gap between initial brainstorming and final production assets, cutting weeks off the traditional workflow.