Nothing was filmed: how we made our two-minute explainer

We explain the same thing on every call: a developer sends a few renders, and we send back the life around the architecture. This film says it in two minutes, and it is built the way we build client campaigns. Nothing in it was shot with a camera.

The first idea: one villa, two worlds

The first script used a single project, a villa with a pool we rendered in 2020. The whole film was to come from its three renders, and the viewer would be told so. It opened in a render world: still water, palms that do not move, no people. The presenter walked through it, snapped her fingers, and the world switched on.

We liked the device and dropped the script. One property shows one transformation, and a marketing team needs to see that the method works on their kind of property too.

What changed: three transformations

The second script keeps one rule and repeats it. A card shows a clean, empty render. The presenter touches it, the render fills the frame and becomes a place with weather, people and movement. It happens to a chalet terrace in winter, then a private jet carries the story to the villa. By then the viewer has worked out the mechanics without a line of explanation.

The frame around it is “little, then a lot”. The film opens on three sheets of paper in the presenter’s hands and closes on the same desk covered in prints. The hook moved forward as well: the problem, the question and the burst of cards all land in the first fifteen seconds.

Storyboards and a rulebook for the office

We drew the film twice before generating any video. The first storyboard fixed the story in 27 panels. The second, 29 panels, fixed how it is shot: a lens for each type of frame, one plane of focus, and one time of day for every office scene, late afternoon with low sun from the left.

The office exists only in this film, so it needed the rules a real location gives for free. We set three camera positions and made a reference plate for each, plus a grey clay version of the same plates for the ending. Every office shot starts from one of those plates, so the desk, the lamp and the olive tree stay where they are.

The presenter got the same treatment. Her hands are a second identity: the same manicure and ring appear when she holds the prints, takes the lemonade and opens the phone, so the viewer knows her without seeing her face. She has four wardrobes, one for each world.

Editing ideas

The portal has one rhythm every time: render, grey clay, a wave of colour, life. Holding the clay for less than a second was enough. Any longer and the film stalled.

The cut from the chalet to the jet is a single move. The presenter looks into her coffee, a plane crosses the reflected sky, the camera dives into the cup and comes out among the clouds. There is only ever one plane, and it flies right to left in every shot.

Music and voice are cut against the picture. The track is shifted so that its drop lands on the click of the laptop. Lines start a moment before their shot or run on over the next one: “The architecture stays exactly as designed” plays over water spilling off the pool edge. Locked-off shots got a slow push-in so that nothing sits still.

The vertical cut

The 9:16 version keeps the edit and the mix. Each shot is reframed through a full-height window that follows the action, the top-down view of the villa is rotated instead of cropped, and the captions are burned in for viewers who watch without sound.

The twist

The presenter ends by saying she is not real. We put a second reveal under the first: the office behind her turns back into clay, because that room was generated too. It is the wave the viewer has already watched bring the renders to life, run in reverse.

Architecture shown: Schürch Architekten · Studioforma. 3D visualization: River Black. The film’s chapters and transcript are in Insights. For a client project, read how a story film and a virtual presenter are made.