Thirteen shots. One face. One product.
A direct-response ad taken from brief to final cut in one session. The character, her room and the product stay the same from the first frame to the last.
- 9:16, 13 shots
- 39s
- 9:16, 13 shots
- finals from drafts
- 13 / 37
- finals from drafts
- credits of a 1,194 budget
- 1,088
- credits of a 1,194 budget
- on Higgsfield
- Seedance 2.5
- on Higgsfield
Rootwell and its product are made up for this project. The ad was built for a live Meta test; no performance results are claimed here.
Brief
The product is a pressed tinted powder in a magnetic, champagne-gold compact, brushed onto grey regrowth along the part. The viewer is someone who dyes her hair and starts seeing silver at the roots a couple of weeks after every appointment, usually right before something she has to show up for.
Two rules shaped the script. Meta's personal-attributes policy doesn't let an ad tell viewers what they are, by age or by appearance, so every line is spoken by her, about herself. And AI footage can't prove what a product does, so the transformation and transfer shots are written to carry a Dramatization label.
With no real product to sell, the live test is a fake door. Clicks land on a page to reserve a shade, and the test reads click-through, cost per click and sign-ups.
Concept
I wrote three angles, each with its own hook and emotional lever, and picked the strongest scroll-stop.
| Angle | Hook | Lever |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Minutes to Call (chosen) | Her webcam preview, roots glowing under the ring light. “Meeting in 2 min. Salon in 3 weeks.” | Urgency, a fast fix |
| Week 2 vs. Week 6 | “Paid €85. Roots back in 14 days.” | Loss aversion |
| Back in the Photo | She quietly steps out of the family photo. | Identity |
The chosen angle has its payoff built in. The ad opens on her webcam with the roots showing and turns on the same woman, in the same shirt and room, with the roots gone.
The cut, shot by shot
Hook, problem, agitation, solution, proof, call to action. The grade is part of the script: the first six shots sit under a cool ring light, and the light warms from Shot 7 so the color carries the turn. The timeline is drawn to scale. Select a shot to play the cut from there.
Shot 1: Hook
0:00.0 to 0:04.0, 4.0s in the cut
Her webcam view, under a cool ring light, a minute before the call.
Script line
“Meeting in 2 min.”
Continuity bible
Before writing a single video prompt, I gave every recurring element a fixed description and pasted it word for word into every prompt that needed it: the character before and after, the wardrobe, the room, the product, and the lens and grade.
Three stills anchored every generation. The “after” portrait isn't a new image. It's an edit of the chosen “before” portrait where only the roots change, which is the cheapest way to keep the same face on both sides of the transformation.
The lid is blank on purpose. Generators render text badly, so the wordmark belongs in post, where it comes out crisp and identical in every shot.
Draft cheap, finalize the winner
Seedance 2.5 can render a 480p draft and later finalize that same take at 1080p. Every shot got at least two cheap drafts. I judged performance and motion at low resolution and paid full price only for the winner.
| Line | Calculation | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Reference stills | 10 images × 2 | 20 |
| Drafts at 480p | 37 × 12 | 444 |
| Finals at 1080p | 13 × 48 | 624 |
| Total | 1,088 |
Three full-resolution takes per shot would have cost around 1,970 credits. Drafting first saved about 45%.
What the documentation doesn't tell you
- A finalize has to resend the draft's exact prompt, duration and audio setting. Leave them out and it quietly renders 5 seconds with audio, and the price goes from 48 to 60.
- Finalize only outputs 1080p, so a cheaper 720p tier for the fast cuts wasn't possible.
- After a connector timeout, check the credit balance before retrying, so the same job is never paid for twice.
Fix the prompt, not the dice
Ten of the thirteen shots were approved from their first pair of drafts. For the other three, I found the cause and changed the prompt instead of re-rolling.
| Shot | Problem | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Framing didn’t match the established setup | Restated exactly where the laptop, webcam and ring light sit relative to her |
| 7 | A long sleeve with a cuff broke continuity | Wardrobe line changed to half-length sleeves, cuffs added to the avoid list, and the bible updated for every later prompt |
| 8 | The brush in the compact didn’t match the brush in Shot 9 | Removed the brush. The lid now opens onto powder only, and the cut hides the change. |
| 8 | Powder color didn’t quite match her hair | Matched in the grade, not with another generation |
Music
The music is “The Big Idea” by JBlanks, licensed through Envato Elements for this ad. It builds under the problem shots, and the mix lifts on the after shot at 0:27, where the light has already turned warm. The final mix measures −15.2 LUFS integrated.
What I’d do again
- Write the bible before the first prompt. Every continuity slip in this project came from a description that wasn't explicit enough.
- Make the “after” by editing the “before”. It keeps the same face across a transformation.
- Draft cheap and finalize the winner. Same quality, a little over half the spend.
- Remove what you can't keep consistent. Cutting the brush from one shot fixed what two more generations couldn't.
Built with
Credits
Concept, direction, prompting, pipeline and edit by Sérgio Azevedo, with Claude as production partner. Video by Seedance 2.5, stills by Nano Banana, both on Higgsfield. Music: “The Big Idea” by JBlanks, licensed via Envato Elements.