Welcome to the Machine: How Superlunar + Eden Studios created ‘Little Plastics’, a dystopian film about a proposed plastics reprocessing facility
CB Exclusive: In a quiet village in the NSW Southern Highlands, Superlunar’s self-styled ‘free-range Creative Director’ Ben Pearce works with brands and agencies all over the world. And it’s because of where he works that he believes he’s finally starting to do the best work of his career, including a new generative AI spot for the Southern Highlands Matters Inc. ‘Reject Repoly’ campaign, created with Adam Eden from Eden Studios in Ultimo. CB takes a closer look…
“No matter how amazing the strip lighting is, I’ve never had a good idea in an office,” admits Pearce, now celebrating his 20th year in advertising.
“Even when I worked in agencies, I was a traffic manager’s worst nightmare. I’d sneak out to parks, galleries, cafés – anywhere I could be away from adland – to trick myself into making something non-ad people would like.”
It’s a way of working that has seen him involved in many high-profile projects, from the recently launched AAMI ‘Driving Test’ to Suncorp’s ‘Resilience Rd’, MG’s ‘Electric Meets Reality’ and Virgin Mobile’s ‘Fair Go Bro’.
“I’m very lucky agencies give me great briefs to work on remotely. And I’m very lucky to live a sustainable life with a young family in the beautiful Southern Highlands, surrounded by amazing produce and fresh air.”
When Pearce learned that RePoly, Australia’s largest proposed plastics reprocessing facility, had appealed the IPC’s decision that this pristine environment was ‘not the right site’, he had to help.
It was worse than he thought.
“I basically learned that we had five weeks to raise a metric shit-tonne of cash to fund the legal fight against this. Unlike other causes where there’s one good reason to donate, this one has around 50, and some appeal to different groups more than others.
“We needed a film that demonstrated the many reasons people should donate. Of course, any money spent on a film would be taken away from the legal case.”
The process was the same as any other film: come up with an idea, write a script, do a storyboard, record the music, shoot, edit, post and grade. But there was one thing critical to achieving high production values and speeding up the process:
Generative AI.
“To do this film for real, even with a large budget, we’d still be in pre-pro a month later. You’d either create all the characters in 3D, then texture, light and rig all the models, or do it for real with stop-motion. And I love that craft. But we didn’t have the budget or the time.”
Pearce (below right) spent his nights photographing textures, Photoshopping comps and training different AI platforms to develop the characters and scenes in the film. He then animated each scene to form a rough edit before handing it over to long-time collaborator Adam Eden (below left) at Eden Studios in Ultimo.
“I’ve done a lot of work with Adam over the years, and he not only has the eye but the technical ability I could trust to make this as good as it could be. If you saw the film before Adam looked at it, you’d think it was a nice ‘AI experiment’. Adam made this look amazing,” says Pearce.
“We had a good set of bones to work with, so we treated the animation the same way you’d treat a piece of film: lots of painting out, shaping, blur, grain and a good grade,” says Eden.
“Calling it AI is really an oversimplification, it’s layers of hand and machine. Raw AI can look too perfect and artificial. During the animation and post process, we kept the imperfections we wanted and did our best to lose the ones we didn’t,” says Pearce.
“Keeping consistency is the hardest part,” says Eden. “Luckily, Ben and his team had most of that down pat before we looked at it. We used about 20 different AI tools. Some worked well for some things and not for others. You need to constantly update your process and not rely entirely on one platform or even version. But you still need a vision and an eye to achieve that.”
Rather than being worried that AI will take their jobs, Pearce and Eden see their roles evolving.
“Gen-AI feels a lot like the early analogue synthesisers. They were originally designed to replace orchestras, but it wasn’t until people stopped trying to imitate real musicians that they became really interesting, spawning whole new genres of music.”
So, what prompts do they use?
Says Pearce: “They’re irrelevant. It’s like giving you the exact synths used on Pink Floyd’s Welcome to the Machine, dialling in the right settings or ‘prompts’, and saying, ‘Now play.’
“Sure, you’ll make a sound, but that sound is missing four experienced musicians, their vision, the technical limitations, the layering, the happy accidents, the endless revisions and go-agains… essentially, the creative process.
“And even if you somehow have all of that, you’ve just got yourself a cover song. Like a musical instrument, if you want to get good at AI, just start playing until you don’t suck.
“AI will bring opportunities we can’t even imagine. It’s the biggest thing to happen to our industry since the Mac — but workflows are changing within months, not decades.
“The one thing that won’t change, at least for now, is that it’s still a tool that needs an artist driving it.”
Client: Southern Highlands Matters Inc
Creative and production: superlunar.xyz
Post production: Eden Studios
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