AI film · MSIG · 2026

Go for it

Two 30-second films for MSIG, made entirely with generative AI. Everything started from a single flat vector of the brand mascot and ended as finished films with dialogue, licensed music and supers. This page breaks down how the first film was made and shares the tools, so you can try the process yourself.

Film 1 · PA Prime Plus

Film 1 · PA Prime Plus

Skater Dad. A dad talks himself out of one skateboard trick until Mamori-chan removes his last excuse.

Film 2 · MotorMax

Film 2 · MotorMax

A new car owner is overly protective of his car that he never actually drives it, until Mamori-chan turns the key for him. It was made with the same pipeline, prompt system and edit process as the first film.

Client

MSIG Singapore

Products

PA Prime Plus and MotorMax

Tools

GPT Image 2, Nano Banana, Seedance 2.0, Claude, After Effects

01

01

The idea

Insight

Most of us don’t hold back because something is truly dangerous. We hold back because we have already imagined every way it could go wrong, and that imagined version is almost always worse than the real thing.

Objective

Make insurance feel like permission rather than paranoia, and introduce Mamori-chan, MSIG’s new mascot, to audiences in Singapore.

Big idea

No place for excuses. When someone starts talking themselves out of something, Mamori-chan quietly removes the last excuse. MSIG isn’t there for the worst day. It is the reason you say yes to the good ones. MSIG. Go for it.

02

02

The script

The whole film turns on one escalation. Each excuse gets more serious than the last, moving from a fall to a knee to a slip disc to not being able to work. The final excuse lands exactly where PA Prime Plus pays out, so the joke and the product benefit are the same line. The script was written by Anwar and Karn.

Script
PA PRIME PLUS, SERIES II: "SKATER DAD"

Faizal, early 40s, in his living room in front of a wall of his old skateboards. His son Adam, 9, pestering him.

ADAM:    Abah, show me one trick. Just one!
FAIZAL:  Aiyah, cannot la. What if I fall.
ADAM:    Abah!
FAIZAL:  What if I break my knee.
ADAM:    Abah.
FAIZAL:  What if I slip disc, then cannot work, then…
ADAM:    ABAH!

CUT. Mamori-chan is now sitting on the sofa beside them. We never saw her arrive. Faizal is somehow already in a helmet and kneepads, blinking, confused.

FAIZAL:  But what if...

Mamori-chan pushes the skateboard one inch toward his feet. Her only move.

CUT to Faizal rolling across the room, landing a wobbly little ollie, and Adam's face lighting up.

SUPER:    There is no place for excuses when MSIG has you covered.
          Product window: PA Prime Plus benefits
END CARD: MSIG. Go for it.

The set tells the backstory

Nine old decks hang on the wall, and one of them is snapped clean in half but kept anyway. Nobody has to say that he used to skate.

Plant the payoff in frame one

A brand-new board sits untouched on the sofa for the entire first scene. The ending is already in the shot before anyone reaches for it.

The mascot gets one move

Mamori-chan nudges the board forward by an inch. She doesn’t sell anything. She simply removes the excuse.

03

03

Characters & Location

A video model has no memory. Every shot is generated from scratch, so identity has to be carried in by references. Each character and location is a pair made of a locked reference image and a text description that is pasted word for word into every prompt. I made the character sheets for Faizal and Adam with GPT Image 2.

Character sheet for Faizal, the dad, showing front, back and profile

Faizal, early 40s. Front, back and profile, made with GPT Image 2.

Character sheet for Adam, the son, showing front, back and profile

Adam, 9. Front, back and profile, made with GPT Image 2.

Living room location reference with a wall of old skateboard decks

The living room location reference, complete with the wall of old decks.

From one flat vector to a 3D mascot

The only asset the client had for Mamori-chan was a flat vector showing her front and back. To put her on a real sofa in a real HDB flat, she needed volume, material and a side profile that nobody had drawn yet. I used Nano Banana to turn the vector into a plush turnaround with front, back and profile views, while keeping every brand detail intact. That includes the sakura petals, the gold crown, the red cheeks and paws, and the MSIG logo. The turnaround then became the reference that the video model anchors to. The prompt I used is below.

MSIG's flat vector artwork of Mamori-chan, front and back

Client input: one flat vector, front and back.

3D plush turnaround of Mamori-chan showing front, back and profile

Output: a 3D turnaround made with Nano Banana.

Prompt: Nano Banana mascot turnaround
Character reference sheet, three views on a single canvas: full body front view, full body back view, and close-up profile portrait (side view of head and shoulders).
A chubby, rounded 3D mascot character: a plump white cat with soft, very subtle short fur texture — smooth and matte, minimal fur detail. The cat has closed, contented arched eyes, a gentle smiling mouth, a small red nose, thick black whiskers, glossy round red cheek patches, and a smooth yellow patch on top of its head. It wears a large pink five-petal sakura (cherry blossom) hood framing its face, with thin black stamens tipped with small white pearl spheres extending from the petals. White cat ears with red inner lining poke out behind the hood. The body is round and pear-shaped, dressed in a royal blue t-shirt with a small red-and-blue MSIG logo on the chest. Stubby white arms and feet with red toe details and red claw accents on the paws.
Front view: character standing straight, arms relaxed at sides, symmetrical pose. Back view: same pose from directly behind, showing the back of the sakura hood, ears, blue shirt, and rounded body. Profile portrait: close-up side view of the head showing the petal hood silhouette, cheek patch, whiskers, and smiling expression in profile.
Soft, even studio lighting, no dramatic shadows, no colored rim light. Clean flat light grey background (#E8E8E8), no floor reflection. All three views consistent in proportion, color, and detail, rendered in the same soft 3D toy-like style, high resolution, character turnaround sheet layout with generous spacing between views.

04

04

Prompting

I ran the script through Claude with CINEDANCE, a prompt-direction skill made by Higgsfield Studio for Seedance 2.0. It turns a scene into something closer to an engineering document than a piece of copy. Every shot is written in the same order, covering references, location map, first-frame blocking, optics, camera, timed action, performance, physics, light, audio and locks. You can download the skill below or copy the real prompt for the opening scene.

Prompt: Scene 1, the excuses
SCENE CONTEXT
A father sits on the sofa in his HDB flat living room in Singapore, late morning, while his nine-year-old son stands in front of the switched-off TV, cheerfully badgering him to do a skateboard trick. The father fends him off with a lazy, half-joking spiral of excuses that he gradually starts believing himself. The exchange is warm and familiar, a routine they have clearly run before. Camera is anchored on the far side of the living room, looking across the sofa toward the TV wall, creeping forward almost imperceptibly. Father sits centre-right of frame on the sofa, son stands centre-left in front of the TV, three metres apart.

ACTIVE REFERENCES
@faizal — Malay Singaporean man, early 40s, soft build with a slight belly, black-framed rectangular glasses, short black hair, light stubble, navy polo shirt, dark grey work trousers. Bare feet on the floor. Relaxed Singaporean Malay accent, mid-range voice, amused and unbothered turning to genuinely worried. 100% matches the reference.
@adam — Malay Singaporean boy, 9, slight build, thick shaggy black hair, faded navy t-shirt printed with a surfer riding inside a breaking wave against a dusty red sun disc, dark brown cotton shorts, white socks pulled to mid-calf, in socks on the floor. Bright high boy's voice, Singaporean accent, playful and wheedling. 100% matches the reference.
@living_room — the living room: warm herringbone parquet floor, pale cream walls, grey fabric sofa, flat-screen TV on a low black console, large window with cream curtains, a standing fan, a monstera in a patterned pot, a neat woven basket of folded laundry beside the sofa, sneakers and sandals lined up on a low shoe rack by the door, and a full-height column at camera-left mounted with nine old skateboard decks, faded grip tape, one deck snapped clean in half and kept. 100% matches the reference.

LOCATION MAP
Foreground camera-left: the edge of the mounted deck column, slightly out of focus, occupying the left twelfth of frame as a soft vertical edge. Midground centre: the grey sofa facing camera-left toward the TV, low black console and switched-off TV at centre-left, monstera in its pot at centre-right, woven laundry basket with a neat folded stack tucked against the sofa's near arm. Background camera-right: the window and cream curtains, daylight spilling in, the dining table and two chairs beyond, HDB blocks and treetops visible through the glass. The boy's small sneakers sit paired on the shoe rack at the far edge of frame. Colour reads naturalistic — warm honey parquet under daylight, cool grey sofa fabric, the deck graphics on the column the only saturated colour in the room, and a bright unscuffed new skateboard on the sofa cushion beside the father, its deck clean and its wheels white against the faded decks on the wall.

FIRST FRAME / BLOCKING
Frame is already alive. @faizal sits centre-right on the sofa, body turned three-quarters toward camera-left, bare feet flat on the parquet, knees apart, one arm slung along the sofa back, a mug held loose in the other hand resting on his thigh, the new skateboard lying flat on the cushion beside his hip. @adam stands centre-left directly in front of the TV in his socks, weight rocking from foot to foot, facing his father, both hands out, palms up, grinning mid-appeal. Their eye-lines meet on a clean horizontal across the middle of the frame. The mounted deck column rises behind the boy at camera-left, the daylight window falls behind the father at camera-right, so the wall of old boards and the man declining to use them sit at opposite ends of the same frame.

FORMAT MODE
One continuous shot. The camera does not cut on its own.

OPTICS
Wide shot, 63° FOV, observational. Rectilinear, straight verticals on the doorframes and the column. FOV stays at 63° for the entire take — the framing change comes from physical camera travel, not from zoom. Prime-lens character, gentle falloff at the frame edges, moderate depth so the deck column, both figures and the window all stay readable. Natural motion blur on the boy's arms.

CAMERA
Dolly on a straight track, eye-level at 1.1 metres, matching the seated father's eye height. Operator anchored on the shadow side of the room, camera-left of the window axis, starting four metres back. Across the whole take the camera pushes forward in a single unbroken glide at 0.15 km/h, travelling roughly 50 centimetres in total — slow enough that the movement is felt rather than seen, ending as a marginally tighter wide with both figures still fully in frame. Perfectly level, no pan, no tilt, no reframing, no acceleration or deceleration — the same creeping speed from first frame to last. Focus is set once and holds both figures throughout. Wide tonal latitude, gentle highlight roll-off on the blown window, colour science with warm neutral skin and unclipped daylight.

ACTION
Camera motion: continuous straight dolly-in at 0.15 km/h, constant speed, no other movement.
Subject motion, in order:
The boy bounces twice on the balls of his feet, thrusts both palms forward and lets his head tip theatrically to one side — "Abah, show me one trick. Just one!"
The father huffs a short laugh through his nose, waves the mug loosely without lifting it far, eyes going to the ceiling — "Aiyah, cannot la. What if I fall."
The boy drops his arms against his sides, rolls his whole head backward in mock despair, still smiling — "Abah!"
The father sets the mug down on the coffee table, taps his own knee twice with two fingers, eyebrows up — "What if I break my knee."
The boy sags at the waist, arms hanging, and drags the word out — "Abah."
The father leans forward, one hand pressing his lower back, the other counting the disasters off in the air, speech quickening as each new one occurs to him — "What if I slip disc, then cannot work, then…"
The boy pulls in a full breath, plants both feet, and shouts it up at him through a grin — "ABAH!"
The father stops mid-gesture, hand still raised, mouth slightly open, then breaks into a small caught-out smile as he looks at his son. Hold two seconds on the two of them looking at each other while the camera keeps creeping in. The new skateboard has not moved from the sofa cushion.

PERFORMANCE
The whole exchange plays affectionate and well-worn, a routine both of them enjoy. The father is deadpan and amused for the first two excuses, faint smile, eyebrows working, clearly performing the excuses as much as making them — then loses the joke somewhere in the third one, words speeding up, eyes flicking away from his son down to his own knee and then his back as each new injury genuinely occurs to him, the smile shrinking into a real flicker of worry before the caught-out smile comes back at the end. He never raises his voice. The boy plays it as delighted, relentless wheedling: same demand, three times, louder each time, no new tactic, whole body flopping and rebounding with each rejection, grinning throughout, the final shout a laugh as much as a shout. Neither of them is angry at any point and both keep looking directly at each other. Pore-level skin realism, faint sheen of humidity on both foreheads, capillary flush on the boy's cheeks after he shouts, living eyes with daylight catch-lights from the window, visible chest movement on breath, light stubble catching the window side-light on the father's jaw.

PHYSICS
The sofa cushion compresses and rebounds under the father's weight as he leans forward. The mug settles onto the coffee table with a small contact shadow and stays put. The new skateboard sits with its four wheels flat, contact shadow tight under the deck, and stays still — nobody touches it. Socked feet slide slightly on the parquet as the boy rocks. His t-shirt and shorts swing a beat behind each flop of his body. The standing fan turns slowly and moves the curtain edge and the monstera leaves continuously through the whole take. Mounted decks stay fixed and vibration-free on the column.

LIGHTING
Single dominant source: large late-morning daylight through the window at camera-right, soft and diffused by cream curtains, keying the father from the right and rimming the boy's hair from behind camera-right. Cool white balance 5600K, held fixed for the whole take. Warm bounce coming back up off the honey parquet fills the shadow side of both faces at roughly one third the key. Window exposed just over, holding detail in the blocks outside. The switched-off TV screen reads as a flat dark rectangle, no glow. Soft indirect ambience on the deck column at camera-left keeps the faded graphics legible. Haze density 5%, barely a bloom in the window light.

WARDROBE
Father's navy polo is soft cotton pique, worn-in, slightly rumpled from sitting, untucked over dark grey work trousers, bare feet. Boy's navy t-shirt is faded soft cotton, a size too big, the wave-and-surfer print cracked with age; dark brown cotton shorts, white socks pulled to mid-calf, no shoes indoors.

AUDIO
Clean interior room tone, low fan hum, distant traffic and birds through the open window.
Dialogue, Singaporean accents, relaxed and overlapping slightly at the ends, warm throughout:
BOY: "Abah, show me one trick. Just one!"
FATHER: "Aiyah, cannot la. What if I fall."
BOY: "Abah!"
FATHER: "What if I break my knee."
BOY: "Abah."
FATHER: "What if I slip disc, then cannot work, then…"
BOY: "ABAH!"
Then two seconds of room tone only.

STYLE
Photoreal live-action commercial, naturalistic domestic realism, warm and light in tone, feature-film texture, fine organic grain, true-to-life skin tones, no stylised grade.

OUTPUT SETTINGS
8K, 16:9, real-time speed throughout, 24fps motion cadence.

POSITIVE LOCKS
The camera glides forward on one straight axis at a constant 0.15 km/h for the entire take, level and smooth, ending roughly 50 centimetres closer with both figures still fully in frame.
FOV holds at 63° from first frame to last.
Both characters remain in frame throughout, the father seated on the sofa centre-right, the boy standing in front of the TV centre-left.
The father's bare feet stay flat on the parquet floor for the whole take.
The father keeps his black-framed rectangular glasses on throughout.
The boy stays in white socks on the parquet, his sneakers paired on the shoe rack by the door.
The exchange stays warm and playful — both are smiling for most of the take and both keep looking at each other.
Nine old skateboard decks stay mounted on the column at camera-left in every frame, including the snapped one.
The new skateboard stays lying flat on the sofa cushion beside the father, untouched, for the whole take.
The TV stays switched off and dark.
The corner beyond the sofa holds only the standing fan, the dining table and two chairs, clean and open.
Laundry appears only as a neat folded stack inside the woven basket beside the sofa.
Daylight stays at 5600K from the camera-right window for the whole take, one time of day.
Only two people are present in the room.
Dialogue lands in the stated order, the father's delivery quickening line by line, the boy's three lines increasing in volume with identical wording each time.
The take ends on the father caught mid-gesture, smiling at his son, while the camera is still moving.

Decisions inside the prompt

Direct the camera in numbers

The prompt asks for a 63° lens and a dolly moving at 0.15 km/h over 50 cm. Physical numbers hold steady from take to take, while adjectives like “slow push” tend to drift.

Direct behaviour, not emotion

Instead of asking for a worried dad, the prompt says he loses the joke somewhere in the third excuse and his eyes flick down to his own knee. The emotion comes out of the action.

Lock what must not move

His glasses stay on, the new board stays untouched, there is one light source at 5600K, and only two people are in the room. Every lock is a failed take avoided.

Write local

The prompt specifies an HDB flat, herringbone parquet, shoes on the rack by the door and a line like “Aiyah, cannot la”. Those specifics make the film feel like Singapore rather than stock footage.

05

05

Generate, cut, repeat

No shot landed on the first try. On average each shot took about four generations before it held. The film then came together the way a live-action edit does, with one difference: any shot could be regenerated.

01

Assembly

Every scene went in script order so I could see the whole film and spot the gaps.

02

Rough cut

I worked on rhythm and trims. When a beat didn’t land, the fix went back into the prompt rather than staying on the timeline.

03

Regeneration

Drifting faces, extra fingers and a board that moved on its own were all regenerated until each take held.

04

Picture lock

The picture was fixed at this point, and there were no new generations afterwards.

05

Post

Every generated shot arrives with its own look, so the grade brought them together into one. I licensed a music track and rebuilt it from its stems into a custom 30-second edit, then added sound design, supers, the PA Prime Plus product window and the end card in After Effects.

06

06

What I took away

01

When the client only has a vector, the character sheet becomes the real deliverable.

02

Plant the payoff in the first frame. Models don’t infer setups, so you have to put them in the shot yourself.

03

Treat every prompt as an island. The model has no memory of the previous shot, so everything has to be spelled out every time.

04

Describe what you want rather than what you want to avoid. Naming something, even inside a “no”, tends to summon it.

AI direction, character development, edit and post by Farhan Haniff. Script by Anwar and Karn. Prompt skill: CINEDANCE V4 by Higgsfield Studio. Brand and mascot by MSIG.