FIlled with life since 1947

Plot. Del Valle's campaign features three vibrant key images, each depicting a family breakfast from a different era: 1947 (when Del Valle began its journey), the 1980s and today, demonstrating that the morning's full energy has never changed. We started from the last photographic content and animated it through generative AI.

Goal, solutions, results. The main challenge was to animate four subjects that had to act and move in synchrony but with different movements. A considerable challenge for the generative AI, which at that time could only animate a maximum of two subjects at a time. This project represented the first time that such work was realised. ‘We developed a workflow to handle character generation individually, as the AI software of the time allowed only two characters to be animated at a time with narrative consistency and without visual aberrations or hallucinations.’ Frankie Caradonna, Director

Workflow Development and Adopted Solutions We integrated AI, seeking a functional balance between AI and VFX workflows, with an organic collaboration between compositing and clean-up. Some elements were integrated in post-production and we developed several alternative solutions to solve specific problems. One example was the consistency of a character's face, which we achieved through a face replacement based on photos taken on set of the actor. A secondary objective was to create a workflow that would allow the agency and the client to make changes, i.e. work on the characters separately as if in a green screen studio.

Time and Methodology: The project took about a couple of weeks of testing and 5-6 weeks of actual work. Starting with the work of our Art Director Claudio Capellini together with the director Frankie Caradonna, we organised and proposed ideal movement actions, establishing the narrative of each character and coordinating their synchronised movement. Maintaining a coherent choral narrative that told of chaos full of life was one of the challenges of this project. Restrictions and Complexity: We faced legal protections on the material that prevented us from using certain software. "We built a Ferrari in a garage'. Difficulties and Learning: We learned and risked a lot with this project, and now we are tackling something even more ambitious. We maximised control, leaving as little room as possible for the unpredictability inherent in the very nature of image-to-video generative models, and compensating for the impossibility of working on a tightly timed set.

'A dance between chaos and control, generating and being able to replace individual elements and not the whole'

Frankie Caradonna, regista