For Breastfeeding Awareness Week, the Gates Foundation’s Golden Start to Life campaign highlighted the importance of breastfeeding within the first hour after birth, known as the “golden hour”. With only 1 in 2 babies in India receiving this crucial start through breastfeeding, the challenge was to communicate the importance of this limited window in a way that felt simple, emotional and visually memorable.

We developed the film around a single visual metaphor: a clock that starts ticking the moment a baby is born. As the hour unfolds, the clock represents the passing window of opportunity. When the baby finally makes skin to skin contact with the mother, the clock disappears, marking the end of the golden hour.

Bringing this idea to life involved some of the more complex challenges in AI film production. The film required realistic newborns, consistent characters, natural anatomy and skin, intimate skin to skin interaction and a sensitive portrayal of breastfeeding. The clock also had to feel like a natural part of the human form, maintaining its perspective, scale and continuity across different shots and camera movements.

We approached the production through a hybrid AI filmmaking workflow, using different tools for different stages of the process. Seedance 2.0 was used for video generation, while Google Nano Banana Pro, GPT 2 and Seedream 5.1 Pro were used for image generation and visual development. Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro were used for animation, compositing, editing and post production. The film’s music was created through an original music composition specifically developed to complement the emotional progression of the story.

The process involved multiple iterations across visuals, movement, character consistency, anatomy and continuity. Rather than treating AI as a one step generation tool, we used it as part of the filmmaking process, combining AI generation with creative direction, editing and post production to bring the original concept to life.

The entire film was conceptualised and produced in seven working days. It demonstrates how an AI first production workflow can help turn a complex visual idea into a cinematic film at speed, while still retaining the creative judgement and craft required for sensitive storytelling.

For us, the project reflects what becomes possible when AI technology and filmmaking expertise work together, using AI not just to create visuals, but to rethink how a film can be imagined, developed and produced.