CASE STUDY
case study
mayfield
Mayfield Dairy and their agency Stranger Friend approached us with an ambitious vision and a tight budget: eight OCPs, animals, kids, seven setups, vfx in almost every shot, thirty seconds, oh and a one-day non-union budget. Apprehensive to say the least, we embraced the challenge, leveraged our creativity aided by the latest AI tools and found a way to hone their idea into a doable yet compelling narrative.
honing the creative
Beyond budget considerations (enough for a one day shoot), we assumed the entire concept couldn't even fit within the time constraints. Without wasting a beat, we leveraged a variety of AI tools to help us visualize the concept as quickly as possible. We first scoured our personal database of thousands of AI tagged images, identifying frames that could be used as references by AI tools like Midjourney and Leonardo to generate storyboard frames. After generating hundreds of variations of frames (most of them comically unusable) we cut them to music. Turns out it not only fit within the time constraints (albeit with lots of careful trimming of details) it was a super fun and endearing spot! Here's what we came up with… not bad for a half day of work. Notably, our final commercial stayed remarkably close to this.
THE animatic
THE TREATMENT
Once we knew 30 seconds was enough for our story, we tackled the creative details of execution - the treatment. Carefully researching Mayfield's story and its essence as a brand (we're not from the south!) we honed in the details of our story: a small hero's journey for our main character, a 12 year old granddaughter who discovers the magic of Mayfield after her first taste. We amplified each beat of her story by giving each member of her family a role to serve, different obstacles and steps on her way to personal discovery. Granted it was ambitious to try to cram this much into 30 seconds, having a detailed understanding of what each beat in our story represents ended up helping every department stay true to a coherent vision.
THE BID
But how could we achieve this into a one day budget? We couldn't. Even a two day budget would a stretch. But by carefully crafting the narrative around special effects that could be confidently be executed with the help of AI, we were able to propose a vfx budget tens of thousands of dollars less than a traditional budget. Confident our animatic and treatment were powerful on their own terms, we presented a two day budget. Because of the clarity of our vision aided by the latest tools that allowed us to express them efficiently, the client loved our approach and doubled our budget.
PREPRODUCTION
Throughout preproduction we utilized AI style transfers to help explore ideas in specific locations so that our entire team could visualize and understand what the vision was at all times. Taking photos of existing real locations and seeing them in a yellow world or a world filled with set design and proper lighting allowed us to quickly understand whether we were on the right path.
PRODUCTION
The actual shoot was a typical shoot. With the ability to generate plates in post, we didn't need to concern ourselves too much with making sure every detail for post was collected. We could push along quickly from shot to shot.
POST
In 3 weeks we knocked out 17 vfx shots out of a total of 24 shots. Because we at society oversaw the entire process, even personally executing many of the vfx shots ourselves, such as the gnome shot, house exterior, and street shot at the end, we came in under budget while overdelivering.
“Harry, Eric, and the team at society went above and beyond to deliver a commercial that perfectly captured our vision. Their creativity, combined with their technical expertise, resulted in a final product that was nothing short of exceptional.”