The Challenge

Faced with a standard budget for an awards submission, the creative brief asked: “Can we get a talking cat on camera within a London-style setting?” The initial assumption was that the project would be limited to generic stock footage or basic compositing due to budget constraints.

The Solution

I proposed a more ambitious alternative: instead of settling for static, generic backgrounds, we could use an AI-driven workflow to give the team total control over the environment. This allowed for hyper-personalised settings - specifically integrating the brand’s actual physical workspace which the team initially believed was outside their financial scope.

Technical Execution

I designed and led a bespoke pipeline to seamlessly integrate the cat character into custom-generated and existing environments. Key elements of the process included:

• Custom AI Workflows: Developed via Runway, utilising a series of node-based models designed to automate complex compositing tasks.

• Character Consistency: Implemented specific nodes to ensure the character remained visually consistent across different shots and lighting conditions.

• Creative Collaboration: Worked in close tandem with the creative team and editors to ensure the AI output matched the narrative tone and technical requirements of the final cut.

The Result

By moving away from traditional post-production methods, we achieved a level of personalisation and visual polish that would typically require a much larger budget and timeline. The final film featured the character truly integrated into the brand's unique environment, delivered at a speed and cost-efficiency that traditional VFX pipelines cannot match.