Comparis doesn't sell cars. It compares them. And selling your car, or buying someone else's, is never just a transaction. You're letting go of road trips, weekends, laughter in the back seat.
So the brief I set myself was strict: no price, no specs, no showroom. Only people, and one car that passes from one life to the next.
I started with the feeling, then the sound, and only then the images.
Before a single image existed, the film existed as a voice. The German script was written for nostalgia, read slowly by a German AI voice and laid over the music. That recording became the clock: every shot was cut on the word that justifies it.
The music accompanies. It never takes the lead.
One car, two lives. A grandfather bought his Škoda Octavia in 2020, when he began looking after his grandchildren every weekend. Years later, a young man buys it to start his own life: he's moving in with his partner, dog included. Same car, same plate. A new chapter.
2020
2026
The whole film rests on one gesture: the key passing from the grandfather's hand to the young man's. Everything before it is memory. Everything after it is a beginning.
That's why the car had to be the same car in every shot, down to the plate. The viewer should never wonder whether it's the same Octavia. They should only feel that it is.
Every character, the dog and the car got their own sheet before the first shot, so a face never changes between cuts.
Not a dream car. The car people actually drove. I wanted the one most Swiss families had in the driveway in 2020, and that year it was the Škoda Octavia.
AI doesn't have a camera, so I gave it one. Every still was described as if it were shot on the same camera, with the same lenses, on the same film stock, and every clip kept that camera. Warm light, autumn colours, fine grain and a little halation in the highlights. That slightly imperfect analog feeling is asked for, not added later.
Occasionally the image models get the world wrong. In the first version of the opening goodbye, two cars shared one parking space behind the window. The fix was made on the same photo: the hug, the window and the light stayed exactly as they were. Only the car was corrected.
The process, in the order it happened. Each reference sits above the moment it became in the film, joined by a line.
Telling a story, combining tools until it's worth watching: that's the real game. The tools generated every image. The decisions were mine: what the film is about, who is in it, and what the voice says before anything is shown.
That's how I work: deciding what has to be felt before deciding what to show. If your brand needs a film that people feel before they notice the product, tell me about your project. I'll send you a quote.
