Commercial Edit for Central HQ, an $8.6M Seed AI Platform

Client: Central– Ai, Tech Industry

Role: Editor & Video Producer

Deliverables: One master video delivered in wide and vertical formats, under 1min in length

Distribution: X, LinkedIn

Central is an AI-native platform that eliminates back-office work for startups which just raised an $8.6M seed via Y Combinator. They wanted essentially a launch commercial to announce themselves to the world via mainly distribution via X and LinkedIn.

One of their founders hit me up with what he described as some admittedly rough footage 😅 and my job was to make the most of it to bring his vision to life in a high quality way. I'm beyond proud of how it turned out and had a great time creatively solving how to bring his concept to life in a fun way.

Client’s main objective: Drive awareness and grab attention for the launch of their Ai product with a commercial piece that was more about brand ethos than product showcase.

Constraints: About a two week turnaround but the main constraint was working with what the client described as not so great footage. I had to creatively problem solve ways to help craft the vision of the client to something that would best utilize the footage we were working with.

Why they chose me: The biggest reason was they saw the work I did for another Ai company called Autoform and the commercial I directed, edited and produced for them. In addition to that, my proven track record in cinematic storytelling and working with multiple big brands to direct, produce and edit big budget projects helped me stand out among the rest.

Concept + tone: comedic, filmic, made to look rough intentionally in a way that matched the sound of the gruff cowboy-sounding voiceover.

Visual style: leaning towards heavily warm with boosted reds to drive home the visual prison the red tape was meant to represent, while boosting grain and leaning towards a darker look to make the most of unevenly lit footage.

Talent & locations: office meeting room interior

Metrics: Commercial Launched on October 16th via multiple posts made by the Central team via Linkedin and X as well as a post from the huge company called Y Combinator that helped bring in thousands of additional views.

Client feedback: " Mario is awesome to work with. We gave him very loose direction and some bad footage and he turned it into something great. He did multiple revisions and was amazing to work with. Highly recommend."