Speculative Beef Commercial

Cover art

Inspiration

When I started developing the burger spec ad, I thought I’d keep it ultra-realistic, something you’d expect to see on television. But then I asked myself: if the AI medium is limitless, why stay grounded in reality? That question pushed the concept into a surreal, 1940s-inspired satire, something that feels nostalgic on the surface but quietly unravels underneath.

What it does

When I started Speculative Beef Commercial, I wasn’t trying to make fun of 1940s advertisements. I was fascinated by how sincere they were. Those commercials believed in something: progress, abundance, the future made edible. But when I looked closer, that optimism started to feel eerie, like something rehearsed too many times. So I leaned into that tension. The film takes the familiar language of the American food commercial and stretches it until the smiles crack. I wanted it to feel like a dream you can’t wake up from: beautiful, absurd, and strangely touching. For me, the film isn’t about the past or the product, it’s about the belief systems we inherit without question.

How we built it

The whole film used AI tools from ChatGPT for the brainstorming and script, Midjourney and Seedream 4 for images and image editing. Then animating the images with Luma Ray3, then for post-production with Sora, Topaz, and Adobe Premiere. For the audio, the voice-over was made with Elevenlabs, the song from Suno, and the sound effects from Kling.

Challenges we ran into

I wouldn't call them challenges per se, but just an expected learning curve with any new technology. Just experimenting and learning through trial and error.