Inspiration

Gertrude “Cleo” Lythgoe carved power out of a world that was not built for her. The spot explores the contrast between the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition with the underground rumrunner operation Cleo ran from her Bahamas Harbor. It centers a bad ass woman who pushed through that era with ambition, strategy, and unapologetic force. Cleo narrates her own rise, reflecting on how “when they saw a woman in silk, she saw an empire to be built.” Her voice and presence shape the modern identity of Lythgoe Bourbon. This was a contract project for Lythgoe Bourbon to honor the brand's namesake and introduce a stellar selection of expertly crafted bourbons to a new generation of enthusiasts.

What It Does

The commercial condenses Cleo’s world into a fast moving 60-second visual biography. It shifts between speakeasy glamour and the working harbor in Nassau Bahamas to set the stage of her as a strategist who built an empire in a man’s world. Voice, visuals, music, and motion work together to build a portrait of the woman behind the brand.

How I Built It

This project was created entirely by one person. I handled all writing, model selection, AI development, LoRA training, character work, voice design, animation, post production, color, music direction, audio editing, and final post production.

The pipeline included:

• Script development inspired by client's passion for the Cleo story and Cleo's autobiography.
  
• Art direction
• Script writing including the narrative voiceover
• Storyboarding... and more storyboarding. Then a few production plot twists that led to more storyboarding.
• Character consistency created through custom LoRA training, then strengthened with Nano Banana and Enhancer when the models launched.
• Test shots and look development done in a range of tool and models including ComfyUI across several models, Fal, Midjourney, Nano Banana
• Videos were mostly done using Kling, Higgsfield, Veo, Wan, and Hailuo. Big thanks to Weavy and Fal!
• Face and motion refinement with Topaz, Enhancor, Kling, Wan, and Higgsfield
• End slates, bottle retouching, and mockups completed in Pixelmator Pro animated using Kling
• Final grading and editing completed in DaVinci Resolve
  
• Cleo’s voice created using a mix of Hume and ElevenLabs to generate a completely novel voice reverse engineered from a curated track of clips of a voices the client wanted to emulate
• Music composed in Udio and final audio and VO edited and mixed down in Audacity
  

Every shot was generated, curated, refined, and stitched by hand to create a coherent 1920s world.

Challenges I Ran Into

• Tools and models changed weekly, making several workflows obsolete soon after they were built
  
• Models lacked strong 1920s training data, which made period authenticity difficult
• Model drift created inconsistencies that required redesigns and new training passes
  
• The orginal script called for a large scale boat scene which failed to reach realism even after a dedicated 120-image LoRA dataset for a 1920's era boat
• Character consistency required blending both LoRA trained output in a few models along with a new Nano Banana workflow I developed in Weavy to better train characters
• Several narrative ideas were rewritten because current video models could not yet support the motion and realism needed
• The bottle spins ended up being a bit less than what I had in mind because of the label text and design so I started to use a bottle with a blank label where I would planar track the labels on in post. That's hopefully going to happen for the final spot- but had to make the Chroma deadline!

Accomplishments I Am Proud Of

• Created a consistent and historically grounded character across many environments
  
• Built a complete 60-second commercial with no team
• Produced an original AI voice for Cleo that fits the era and the brand
  
• Adjusted direction mid production and still delivered a unified story
• Designed a reusable set of assets and workflows for future spots

What I Learned

• AI film production moves at the speed of research and testing, not traditional production cycles
  
• Consistency requires constant iteration, custom datasets, and strong prompt control
  
• Period accuracy takes dedicated and extensive prompting and reference image creation and curation

What Is Next for the Lythgoe Bourbon Spot

This commercial is the establishing chapter of a larger Cleo narrative. I am developing additional short stories that build on this work and will activate the newest LoRA and training assets created as models become capable of more complex scenes. The next installments will expand her world, deepen her story, and continue shaping the cinematic foundation of the Lythgoe Bourbon brand.

Built With

• comfyui
• eleven-labs
• enhancor
• hailuo
• higgsfield
• hume
• kling
• lora
• nanobanana
• pixelmator-pro
• topaz
• trained-lora's
• wan