Qatar Airways: Making two ads in 14 hours at 30,000 feet

I made a massive mistake. We made two awesome ads for a major airline in 14 hours.

But this is how all future sales calls will go now:

“Well, if you can make two ads for Qatar in 14 hours, then you can make one for us in 14 hours.”

😅

Here’s how we did the impossible with the Qatar Airways, Google, and Genre.ai teams👇

Here’s the ad:

A month back, Google MENA’s Creative Director Andreas Toscano hit me up with a wild idea for Qatar Airways (led by Daniel Andrade)

They wanted to show off how fast their Starlink Wi-Fi is.

So I pulled in top director Torey K. for a head-to-head with Roberto Nickson, who hosted the challenge.

BTS Video 1

Creative Brief:

Andreas provided us with a stellar creative brief and storyboards for both commercials, which made this MUCH EASIER.

Creative concepting can take 15+ hours alone, so though we were free to make tweaks, it really helped us have a framework to tell the story.

First thing we did when we got to the airport was take as many reference photos as we could.

The Qatar team also provided us with a bunch!

This was CRITICAL in getting near-perfect details to the airport and the plane.

Example 1:

We laid out all the shots in Figma and used the reference photos we shot (and some provided) to ensure we got all the details right.

Generating two full spots in 14 hours would have been ABSOLUTELY impossible without my team at Genre.ai helping dive in real time.

With Starlink we were all able to jump into Figma and use Gemini to create all the shots together.

Thank you to @darnparker @olgabrnv @juliewdesign_ @ai_artworkgen Matthew Warter, and Austin Cook.

Animation:

Once all the images were finished, we threw them in Veo 3.1 for animation.

Simple prompts work best:

A photorealistic video. The camera slowly orbits left. The man on the left sips his coffee. The man in the middle grins, looking around, excited. The girl on the right continues to look at her phone. push in on closeup angle of man smiling, looking up

Veo Prompting BTS

Music:

We worked with Austin Cook and Tupacabra for the music.

Both tracks were initially created in Suno and then hyper-customized. This song would have been an absolute banger in the 50s.

Music BTS

The Edit:

After 4-5 hours of sleep over the last 48 hours (and then 12-13 hours of prompting and animating...Torey and I were cooked.

But we pushed through with the team's help, providing some amazing After Effects work on some of my favorite transitions ever!

Edit BTS

And with less than 15 minutes before landing, we completed the two commercials!

Go to Qatar's Youtube Channel to vote (just comment/like) on which commercial you liked best!

Commercial 1 (Alpha Chad Cut)

Commercial 2 (Beta Cut)

Okay the second commercial is good too but I’m salty because my video is getting destroyed in views by Torey’s commercial.

I don’t know what the winner gets, hopefully sleep.

Big thanks to Qatar Airways and Google for having us out!

We’ve done a few other commercials since I gave an update, including a spooky one for Wander for Halloween.

But I didn’t feel like there were enough new techniques to justify a newsletter update.

I’m going to be doubling down on content soon (and maybe actually deliver on the long-awaited course!?)

I’m also working on a short film for the Dubai/Google $1 Million Dollar AI film festival. 

I would say you should enter, but there’s no second-place prize, and you need to know that I will absolutely win this competition.

And when I do…I’m inviting you to party with me in the Villages, and it will be the wildest party you’ve ever seen.

See you in another two months,

-PJ