These Absurd, Eye-Catching Ads From The Zebra Expertly Fuse AI and Live Action

Muse chats with director Zack Seckler

“The brief could fit on a sticky note,” director Zack Seckler says of his strikingly silly new campaign for insurance provider The Zebra.

“They wanted something funny, they wanted it fast, and they needed each spot to hit a different audience segment,” he tells Muse. “My instinct from the start was to build absurd, eye-catching situations that would grab people mid-scroll and act as an entertaining container for each specific brand message we needed to deliver.”

This dude delivering a pitch from a jungle rotisserie certainly qualifies:

“We built a custom spit rig out of steel, counterbalance weights and a gear system, operated by two SFX stunt people who manually rotated the talent,” Seckler recalls.

“The tricky part was syncing the rotation speed to the dialogue. He’s delivering lines to the camera every time he comes around. So the timing had to feel effortless, even though nothing about strapping a guy to a rotating steel rig is.”

The team layered foliage in front of an LED wall and added elements like mist and plant motion in Unreal Engine. The flames and sparks were done in post—though the actor’s sweat was genuine.

Not silly enough? How about a falcon ride?

She was in a full-body harness connected to ceiling pulleys. Her winged co-star was created in Photoshop, with compositing sweetened by AI. And that’s a real desert canyon, shot via cine-drone.

On set, that actress struggled with her lines as a wind machine roared. But this mountain biker found himself in an even more awkward position:

“It was brutal,” Seckler says. “He was in great shape but he could still barely hang on for more than a minute at a time. We had to bring in support structures between takes so he could rest his head and body. Giving a casual, deadpan performance while every muscle in your body is screaming is genuinely hard. And he was a complete trooper about it.”

Finally, a window washer on the outside looking in:

Filming the hard-hat proved the “same minute-at-a-time deal as the biker” in terms of difficulty for the performers, says Seckler.

“The detail I love most is the foreground skyscraper that appears right next to him. That is actually just a piece of plexiglass we tinted and lit to catch reflections from the LED wall behind it.”

All four spots score through great combinations of tech, human talent and old-school filmmaking. The AI elements never overpower. Instead they feel hyper-real, amplifying each weird situation and gluing eyes to the screen.

“With so much conversation right now about what the latest tech can do, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that these are all just tools. What actually matters is the idea and how the tech can support it in the most effective way,” Seckler says.

“My biggest piece of advice for anyone trying to fuse AI elements with practical filmmaking is to pre-vis everything. It was during our falconer pre-vis process that we figured out exactly how much the talent would need to move on the rig and how to match that movement to the AI bird. That kind of nuance only surfaces when you test it early.”

“Giving your AI work a real anchor point, grounded in something you actually shot, is what makes the final composite feel believable.”

CREDITS

Client: The Zebra
Director: Zack Seckler
Executive Producer: Zack Seckler
Executive Producer: Kathryn Tyrrel O’Connor
Creative Director: Josh DiMarcantonio
Creative Producer: Dave Herman
Line Producer: Gail Salmo
Cinematographer: Mike Simpson
VP Supervisor: Justin Lee
Post Production: Mackcut
Editor: Devon Flint
Color: Matthew Rosenblum
VFX: Kieran Walsh
Sound mix: Sam Shaffer