The brief from the creative team at Gallegos United: tell the story of an emerging artist making it big. Literally big.

The spot needed to feel imaginative and cinematic, but still grounded enough that audiences connected with the artist herself rather than just the visual technique.

To pull that off, we turned to Peter Thwaites at The Corner Shop who combines technical VFX work with emotional realism.

We shot over two freezing February days in Prague with the service company Sofa, building the illusion through a combination of compositing green-screen performances into large-scale environmental plates and filming the actress inside meticulously constructed miniature sets. Which meant the production oscillated between very large technical problems and extremely tiny physical objects. Notice the tiny iPhone stand in the coffee shop.

But one of the smartest decisions the creative team made was insisting that the performer actually be an emerging singer-songwriter rather than simply casting an actor to play one. The audience may not consciously recognize the difference, but I hope you can feel it.

To help find the right artist, I reached out to Patrick Oliver of Pretty Good Songs, who introduced us to Steady Holiday - Dre Babinski - whose presence gave the piece an emotional credibility.

Editorial was handled beautifully by Paul Martinez and the team at Arcade Edit LA. VFX work executed flawlessly by Preymaker.