YOUR BOUTIQUE MOTION

For the past few weeks, everyone’s been claiming you can create emotional AI video with “one magic prompt.” So, Reader I decided to run un experiment. I wanted to build a three-shot emotional micro-story using AI video .. same woman, same vibe, same apartment, same emotional arc. But there was a problem. Veo3 can’t use reference images in Text-to-Video.. which means you lose character consistency the moment you move to the next scene. And if you’ve ever tried multi-shot AI storytelling, you...

I was convinced LA would be full of assholes. What happened next still sits with me 15 years later. Reader, I pictured stuck-up Hollywood producers. Wannabes. Toxic positivity. People flexing careers they didn’t actually have. And I had never set foot there. Then this shit happened. I flew out for an interview at Deutsch LA (Yep, the Star Wars Kid Super Bowl spot people) and grabbed a beer with a buddy of mine at Larry’s next to the beach. We wanted to go out. It was Tuesday. We were carless...

The Blacksmith Newsletter Issue #117 Your Boutique Motion. Why Bold Creative Die Young ~1 MIN READ Hey Reader, Here’s a Saturday thought: Most motion creative doesn’t flop because it’s bad. It flops because no one gives a sh*t. It’s too clean. Too "On-brand". It's meeh! Approved by six people including their grandma in a fridging Zoom room. It disappears, lost in the scroll by Sunday brunch. Invisibility? Not only harmless.Expensive! Wasted budget on content no one gets excited over. Teams...

The Blacksmith Newsletter Issue #116 The Creative Studio Playbook Why Your Review Process Might Be Killing Good Work ~1 MIN READ Hey Reader, Most studios treat feedback like paperwork. It gets checked off but is never really "built in". But at places like Buck and Wētā, feedback is the system. At Buck, it's not just a step, it’s the rhythm. At Wētā, it’s engineered into how they scale. They don’t treat iteration as damage control. They use it to shape the work while it’s still fragile and...

The Blacksmith Newsletter Issue #115 The Creative Studio Playbook So… What The H*ck IS a Modular Creative Studio? ~1 MIN READ Hey Reader, So… what the h*ll is a Modular Creative Studio? “Modular Creative Studio? Sounds… cool. But what does that actually mean?” A brand lead asked me this on a call yesterday. Half curious, half suspicious. Fair question. We’re driving a flag into the ground with this.It’s a new term. A new way to work. So yeah, of course people don’t totally get it yet. That’s...

The Blacksmith Newsletter Issue #114 The Creative Studio Playbook How Casamigos’ “House of Friends” Built Soul, Not Just Style. ~1 MIN READ Hey Reader, AI can mimic your brand’s style.But it can’t replace your brand’s soul. This week I saw an AI-generated ad that checked every box. On-brand.Slick.Efficient. I will have forgotten about it soon enough.A marketing scheme with no ties. Compare that to Casamigos’ “House of Friends” — a Wes Anderson-style world full of warmth, story, and soul. Same...

The Blacksmith Newsletter Issue #113 The Creative Studio Playbook One Asset, Ten Formats, Zero Creative Burnout. ~1 MIN READ Hey Reader, On a project for Nature Made, we built a hero animation for social. By the time it shipped, that single asset had turned into: → 3 cutdowns→ 2 vertical edits→ 1 animated still pack→ A handful of GIFs→ Plus a motion toolkit the brand team could use in-house Sound like overkill? Not if you want content that actually works everywhere. Here’s how we turn one...

The Blacksmith Newsletter Issue #112 The Creative Studio Playbook The Best Business Advice I Ever Got Came From A Guy Who Didn’t Even Work In Creative. ~1 MIN READ Hey Reader, Today, I want to show you how one mindset shift helped me stop being the bottleneck, and start building a creative team that could actually scale. I was a few years into building Blacksmith. Running projects. Pitching clients. Doing the work. It was all moving—but I was maxed out. Then one afternoon, my neighbour, where...

The Blacksmith Newsletter Issue #112 The Creative Studio PlaybookWhen The Product’s Still Cooking — But The Campaign Clock’s Ticking. ~1 MIN READ Hey Reader, The Keurig Drinkworks team came to us with a big ask: Launch visuals for a new product.Except… the product didn’t fully exist yet. Some parts were finalised. Others were still scribbles on napkins.But the timeline? Very real. They needed press visuals, in-app content, a hero video—the whole suite. We pulled it off. Here's what helped: →...