Commissioned by Apple. Continuing the Illusionists series featuring Aaron Duffy.
“Illusions are like these little sugar rushes for our brain, like a puzzle that our brains have to figure out. So you can actually use illusions to make something unexpected and fun. They tell us something about the way our brain works.” #Illusions #ShotoniPhone by @dufslam
Music: “Groovy Flute” by Manu Dibango
Slam! 2025 was wild. Couldn’t quite fit everything in 60 seconds. We did a lot and leaned a lot. We got to work with so many amazing folks and can’t wait to do more with you in 2026. Lots of love from the SG team 💛 @specialguestx@1stavemachine@1stave.design
I stumbled into our work in Union Square while rushing to the studio. Probably looked like an idiot posing for a selfie with an ad. I just like this line, “Look Forward”. It was developed during our strat phase and stuck around for the long haul. But actually it’s an idea that we developed about 2 years ago for Ray Ban Meta and it didn’t quite work at the time. Then when we started trying it for Meta Ray Ban Display it worked right away. Good reminder that there is no wasted work, especially with evolving technology.
“Look Forward” is a fun campaign idea because it literally describes what this product allows you to do at the same time that it is about the future. These glasses are an actual window into the post phone era. Super fun to work on. We wanted to make things as crystal clear and inspiring as possible with a visual that could make viewers feel like they are putting on the glasses, truly looking forward. To make it happen we parallel pathed two ways to make it. One completely in AI, the other completely in camera. The AI version took a lot of fiddling around but eventually got a solid version. Despite that we went with the in camera path this was good proof of concept the shot is possible. Regardless of AI or production processes we are always imagining innovative ways to communicate. It’s pretty amazing that even a verrrrrrry specific camera move can eventually be generated (with a lot of help of course, it would be very hard to straight promote this). But I could see dozens of these little camera move stories being told like this now that we have figured out how to do it. Do you parallel pathed alt methods like this?
