Calcalist, Israel's business daily, asked me to create the opening film for their innovation conference in New York, produced by Windman. I had made the Berlin edition the year before, so I already knew what the moment required. The room was full, the first speaker was about to walk on, and I had three minutes to bring a few hundred people into the same world before the conference began.

For New York, I went with a world the audience would recognise instantly. We built New York as Tech and the City, a world the audience could recognise instantly, and cast Calcalist CEO Noa in Carrie's role. We made Israeli tech the perfect date. Sponsor credits appeared as neon across the skyline instead of a logo slate at the end. Every character in the film was a real person sitting in the audience.

I didn't shoot a single frame. Every image was created with AI, but that was simply the method, not the story. Together with the client, we built the narrative, and from there came the important decisions: who we cast, what world we chose, and what those three minutes needed to do for the audience. From there, we moved into video generation, editing and creating an original soundtrack specifically for the film.