BITPANDA - Bühne frei für Christoph Waltz
A high-profile campaign starring Hollywood actor Christoph Waltz, produced by 27 Kilometer Entertainment. This project was a massive, fast-paced ride. I took charge of the entire online conforming process, managing a heavy influx of assets and rebuilding the color grading.
However, the real heavy lifting was in the visual effects. Beyond extensive clean-ups, the climax of the spot required transforming a nearly empty concert hall into a packed auditorium. It was the perfect challenge of combining cutting-edge AI generation with meticulous, traditional compositing to deliver a flawless broadcast finish across multiple formats.
Client:
Bitpanda
Studio:
27 Kilometer Entertainment
Role:
Lead Online Conforming, VFX, AI Generation & Compositing
Tools:
After Effects, Photoshop, Google Nano Banana
AI CROWD GENERATION& COMPLEX ROTO
For the climatic hero shots, the client needed a fully packed concert hall—but the live-action plates were mostly empty.
I used Google’s AI image models to generate a realistic audience. The true creative challenge here was the prompt engineering itself: iterating and refining the prompts to get the exact right mix of diversity, posture, and lighting to match the cinematic set. Once the perfect crowd was generated, the heavy lifting involved meticulous, frame-by-frame rotoscoping of the orchestra in the foreground to seamlessly comp the new audience into the back of the hall.
PHOTOREALISTIC AI INTEGRATION& CLOSE-UPS
Generating a background crowd is one thing, but making it hold up in a close-up shot alongside real actors is another entirely. The human eye easily catches the uncanny valley.
Raw AI outputs often suffer from micro-artifacts and unnatural details in facial features. The goal wasn’t just about scaling the image up; it was about using high-end compositing techniques to clean up those AI artifacts and refine the textures. I had to ensure these generated faces looked 100% photorealistic and organic, blending flawlessly with the premium cinematography of the live-action footage.
INVISIBLE VFX &CLEAN-UP RETOUCHING
Alongside the massive crowd simulations, the film required a heavy pass of classical „invisible VFX.“ This meant extensive clean-up work, such as meticulously painting out the stage microphones hanging above the orchestra.
I also handled the tracking and compositing for various phone screen replacements. As a nice side note: once the comp and tracking were perfectly locked in, rolling out those screen replacements across 12 different European languages for the final delivery was a smooth and easy process.
