Expedia × NHL Spec Campaign: The Away Game

Spec work. A self-initiated campaign concept, made by VisibleAI and directed by me. It was not commissioned by, and is not affiliated with, Expedia or the NHL.

On October 13, 2026, Expedia was named the Official Travel Partner of the NHL in the US and Canada, announced under the line "From Take Off to Puck Drop". On New Year's Eve the league plays its outdoor game under the mountains of Salt Lake City. I wanted to show what a travel brand's film for that moment could look like, and how one film can become a whole campaign.

A girl draws a puck and a stick on the fogged kitchen window. "Dad. They're playing outside this year." Her father looks at his phone: "Then so are we." His thumb presses Book now, the screen turns to Flight confirmed, and the cut matches his thumb to her finger lifting the airplane shade over the mountains. The stadium is heard before it is seen, the puck drops, she screams, and the 30-second spot lands on the partnership's line.

The film uses no league marks, no team logos and no real players. The family is invented.

Every character has a sheet on a grey backdrop and every location has one master wide. Scenes were generated as timed multi-shot parts in Seedance 2.5, with the dialogue performed inside the shot, and then checked frame by frame. A shot that read as AI, broke continuity or made no sense went back.

Rejected: a perfectly clean icon on the glass, because no child draws like that. Kept: her finger closing the last, wobbly stroke.

L and J cuts at every transition, so each place is heard before it is seen

Dialogue reworked to sound like a set microphone, not a studio booth

The drawing slowed 1.6x with interpolated frames so it reads

The phone screen generated inside the shot, with 42 frames to see the tap and read the confirmation

A licensed track timed so its last note lands on the logo

Topaz upscale to 1080p, with the title and end card typeset at 1080p in code

She draws on every window on the way to the game, and every window belongs to a partner: the airline that flies them, the hotel the night before, and another family in Montréal, in French. The story and the score stay; the window changes owner. A 22-second teaser opens on the film's kitchen window and match-cuts to the airplane window.

Expedia's navy and yellow live in the walls, the lamps and the wardrobe, never in a filter. Where the world has a look of its own, like an airplane cabin, it stays as it is.

15-second and 6-second cutdowns, the full film reframed to 9:16 shot by shot with word-by-word captions, three 6-second vertical moments, key art in 16:9, 1:1, 4:5 and 9:16, and seamless loops for the web. None of it needed a new generation.

Directed by Mateus Oliveira for VisibleAI.