Coed Studios’ Sam Stephens Produces a Metal Baby for Finn - All by Himself !
Coed Studios director / CD / designer Sam Stephens has dropped an exciting & fresh new spec spot for the Norwegian mega online marketplace FINN - think Redfin, Ebay, Craigslist, Airbnb + Monster all under one roof
Turn the Volume UP !! 🔊
Sam developed the creative + edited the spot while directing + producing the visuals entirely in his creative studio utilizing Ai-powered production tools. The entire production took 7 days with 1350+ images and video generations.
From Sam:
As a director I've always been skeptical about investing in spec spots. The idealist in me kept saying I should reinvest that money into short films or music videos—something with more "cultural value" than a fake commercial.
But I've also seen firsthand what a strong spec can do for a director's trajectory. Especially when that director finds themselves starting over in a brand new market. Norway, in my case.
After sitting on this idea for a year, I finally felt that with an AI toolset combined with my existing directing + design skills, I was ready to make something worth sharing.
Of course I would have loved to shoot this traditionally with a full crew + real talent but the end result is pretty damn close to what I had in my head for a fraction of the cost.
As with every major evolution in creative production tech, we see that it’s the creative with the new tools not the tools themselves that matters.
The key to achieving the best results is the ability to articulate a vision in detail + then repeatedly (and repeatedly) fine-tune that vision to overcome the limitations of LLMs and AI-powered platforms + tools.
With 20 years as a CD / Director and a background in technical VFX + design, Sam has the rare blend of expertise + experience to translate creative intent + brand messaging from agencies + brands into actionable language that both artists, talent, animators + crew AND LLMs + AI tools can understand.
Sam + Coed can offer any kind of content production experience from a traditional all-human shoot + post to a fully AI-generated spot.
More about FINN - Metal Baby:
Sam generated over 1200 images and videos to produce the final result. Why so many ? Because there's no way to gain enough control to create a high level of realism with this much nuance by skipping to the final step. Turns out that this process is nearly identical to a traditional shoot.
Sam did a proper casting, generating 300+ images based on detailed casting specs. Each character had their own character sheet, showing them from multiple angles and emotional states. The character sheets were used to train the models for maximum consistency.
Once the cast was locked, Sam moved on to wardrobe, generating another 100+ images based on reference images and detailed prompts.
Next up was locations - empty location images were generated for each of the scenes and the select locations got a second round of alternate angles to define the full space.
The select locations were then art directed with the empty location images filled with hyper-specific art, color and furniture to make each space as believable and culturally accurate as possible. Hundreds of image and image edits went into each final set-dressed location.
We moved to blocking: simple sketches and art dressed locations were combined with our character sheets to define the characters positions to one another in frame. From that single master wide shot, additional camera angles were generated to fill out the coverage.
The last major step was video generation.
The first frame was combined with time code specific actor and camera actions to "direct" each shot. Every major model was tested, with one model being chosen for its ability to understand hyper detailed prompts and deliver the most subtle, nuanced performances.
This step is the only one that feels different ( and infinitely more frustrating) than being on set with human actors + crew. That being said, there is no magic button. Some shots required 80+ generations and prompt edits to get a single decent beat.