R&DCommerce & brand· 2026

Still Running: a luxury watch film

A watch lost on a rainforest path, still ticking. A 44-second spec film for VIREO, our fictional watch maison, built in Blender with one AI shot.

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Still Running: a luxury watch film

The hard part

A product that has to be exact, in a world that has to feel alive. The watch is built in code and checked like an engineering model; AI is used only where a human hand has to appear.

Measured

Length
44 seconds, 2.39:1 and 9:16 cuts
Watch
Case, dial, hands and movement generated in code
Physics check
0 intersecting vertices in the forest set
AI
One shot, generated from our own render

Taken on the live build, 1440×900, cold cache. Reproduce them yourself.

How we built it

From a blank file to live, in 6 stages.

  1. From the 44-second animatic, cut before any final render.
    From the 44-second animatic, cut before any final render.
    1

    Story first, as an animatic

    We cut the whole film as an animatic before modelling a single part, so every shot had a job: a sound-only cold open, the push into the forest, the watch on the path, the macro, the find, the exploded view, the end card.

  2. VIREO's sunray dial, applied indices and blued hands.
    VIREO's sunray dial, applied indices and blued hands.
    2

    The watch, built in code

    Case, bezel, sunray dial, applied indices, heat-blued hands, crown and strap are all generated in Blender by Python. The sapphire has a faint blue anti-reflective tint, tuned until it stopped behaving like a mirror.

  3. Calibre VR-1891, layer by layer.
    Calibre VR-1891, layer by layer.
    3

    A movement you can take apart

    We modelled a movement, calibre VR-1891, with every layer tagged, so the film can float the watch apart in shafts of light and put it back together without a cut.

  4. The watch settled on its caseback among dropped leaves.
    The watch settled on its caseback among dropped leaves.
    4

    A forest with real physics

    The watch rests on a displaced stone patch, settled on its caseback, with its straps following the ground and two thousand leaves dropped by raycast. A check script confirmed zero vertices passing through each other.

  5. Raindrops on the crystal, rendered as a macro.
    Raindrops on the crystal, rendered as a macro.
    5

    Rain, macro and one human hand

    Macro shots were rendered at f/16 and beyond so the drops stay sharp. The single shot of a hand picking the watch up is AI video, generated from our own render as its first frame so the watch stays exactly the watch.

  6. A frame from the finished film.
    A frame from the finished film.
    6

    Finish and sound

    Each shot was upscaled and frame-interpolated, then cut to a trailer-style score with layered rain, a dry tick and sub hits on the reveal. Delivered in 2.39:1 for screens and 9:16 for Reels.

Still Running is a spec ad we made to show watch brands and luxury agencies what we can do. VIREO is our own fictional maison, so the film can be shown anywhere. The story: rain and a ticking sound in the dark, a push through a dense rainforest, a dress watch half-buried on a mossy path with its second hand still moving, a hand that finds it, and the watch floating apart into its layers before it closes again. Built to outlast everything.

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