Spec Commercial · 30 seconds
A hyperrealistic AI commercial for the coaching firm of Brooke and Sarano Kelley, who train financial advisors in consultative selling and business development. Produced on our own initiative, in response to their call for proposals, as a finished pitch.
Where it comes from
The Kelley Group trains financial advisors in consultative selling and business development. For close to three decades, Brooke and Sarano Kelley have coached some of the most successful advisors in the industry, from their base in Pasadena, California, to the largest firms on Wall Street. Their promise to high performers fits in one line: take your life and your business to the next level.
When the group put out a call for proposals for a thirty-second spot, we chose to answer with the film itself rather than a deck. A finished commercial, produced on our own initiative, from the first frame to the final mix.
The concept takes their promise literally. A Madison Square Garden-style arena, packed to the rafters with professionals in business attire, waits in front of an empty stage. The lights swing away, a roar starts at the back, thousands of heads turn, and two silhouettes step out of the players’ tunnel. Brooke and Sarano make their way across the floor, hand after hand, up to the stage, and greet the room.
Every frame is generated, and generated to pass for a live broadcast: the arena, the thousands of faces, the camera flashes, the two hosts. Nothing was filmed. Not a word is spoken until the very end, when a single line lands on the picture.
Take your life and your business to the next level.
The only line of the spot · Voice-over and end card
The two leads
Co-founder · The Kelley Group
Coach to some of the most elite advisors in the country, including members of the Barron’s 1000 list, and a member of the Forbes Coaches Council. In the film, she leads the walk across the floor, in the navy dress locked on her character sheet.
Co-founder · The Kelley Group
One of the youngest successful advisors on Wall Street at 23, then an early trainer at Xerox, one of the first companies to adopt consultative selling. Rated the number one speaker by some of the largest Wall Street firms. In the film, the blue suit and the pink tie never leave him.
Before the first shot
Both hosts were designed as character sheets, front, back and close-up, and locked before a single shot was generated. Every appearance in the film refers back to these two images.
The spot, frame by frame
00:01
A full arena, an empty stage, and every light pointed at it.
00:04
It starts at the back. Row after row, the floor turns away from the stage.
00:05
Two silhouettes in the players’ tunnel, the way an arena greets its champions.
00:10
Brooke and Sarano cross the floor, waving, under a rain of phone lights.
00:18
Handshakes, high-fives, a photographer’s flash. The crowd is the set.
00:28
On stage at last, they turn to the room and wave. Cut to the line.
The craft
The film was written before it was generated. Each sequence is a shot list turned into a prompt: the nine-second arena opening alone is seven shots in one prompt, with camera moves, crowd behaviour and sound described beat by beat. The generator returns the sequence, we keep what holds, and we cut.
The two hosts were carried through every shot from their character sheets. The voice-over is synthesised, the score was generated for the film, and the sound of the arena was built layer by layer: the murmur, the roar, the flashbulbs. Cut and mixed in Vegas Pro. Twenty-seven years of animation craft behind every frame.