Lexus ES · Commercial · 2026

Every market sells the new ES on how quiet it is. A photograph can’t show that, so the film is built around two silences.

A commercial for Lexus Kraków-Zakopiańska, starring the dealership’s owners. Nothing in it was filmed: every frame is generated, and their faces come from one afternoon of stills in the showroom. I wrote it, built every shot, then did the edit, the sound and the grade.

Watch with soundLexus Kraków-Zakopiańska2026

The brief: A film for the new ES from Lexus Kraków-Zakopiańska. The dealership’s channel had launch reports and open days, nothing scripted, and the owners had never been the leads.
The idea: The ES and an F-35 are the same machine in two forms. The quiet of the cabin is the quiet of a sealed cockpit.
The pipeline: Storyboard, keyframes in Nano Banana Pro and GPT Image 2, image-to-video in Seedance 2.5 and Cinema Studio, sound with Artlist, upscale, edit in CapCut, grade in DaVinci Resolve.

356reference files from one shoot day: 265 Leica stills, 75 phone shots, 16 clips

51cuts, with a median shot of 1.04 s. Lexus’s own launch spot runs 47 shots at 1.21 s

3 weeksfrom the shoot on 6 August to picture lock on 27 August

01Real people, no camera

Two owners, rebuilt from one afternoon of stills.

On 6 August I photographed the showroom: a face set for each person from every angle, the car inside and out, the facade. Every frame with Klaudia or Michał in it was built from those photographs, as a keyframe first and then as video, never as a face generated from scratch. Each one enters the prompt as a tagged reference with a scope: “@Michał: identity only. Exact face, hair, build, wardrobe. Do not generate a new face.”

Michał Akszak-Okińczyc

Drives the whole film

Michał photographed in the showroom on 6 August — Photograph, 6 Aug

Michał at the wheel of the ES at dusk, a generated frame from the film — In the film

Klaudia Romanowska-Okińczyc

Walks out into the press flashes

Klaudia photographed in the showroom on 6 August — Photograph, 6 Aug

Klaudia walking out of the showroom at night, a generated frame from the film — In the film

What gives it away is movement. There were stills of everyone and no clip of anyone turning their head or talking, which is the best reference there is for a face in motion. The micro-motion in the faces is the weakest part of the film.

02The idea

The same machine in two forms.

When I compared the ES launch campaigns in Poland, Japan and the US, cabin quietness was the one claim all three made, and the only one a still image can’t carry. The jet gives the silence a reason: a pilot in a sealed cockpit doesn’t hear what the ground crew hears.

The first thirteen seconds make the argument without a word. Twelve surface shots alternate between car and jet (wheel and exhaust nozzle, light bar and canopy, charging flap and air intake), and for the first few you can’t always tell which machine you are looking at.

Close-up of the ES wheel and tyre in low light — Car

The F-35's exhaust nozzle from behind — Jet

The ES rear light bar with the LEXUS lettering lit — Car

The curve of the F-35 cockpit canopy — Jet

03What broke

Four problems, and the rule each one left behind.

Michał holding the passenger door of the ES open outside the showroom, press photographers around them — Shot 5, the version that worked: locked off, side-on, one action.

01Shot 5 took 16 attempts.Two actors, a car and a camera that pushed in, craned down and orbited: one move too many.Move one thing at a time.

02The model mirrors the frame.Writing “on the left” does nothing. The side has to be named twice, in frame terms, with “do not mirror” on top.Lock screen direction in every prompt.

03Doors that move between shots.Each clip is generated on its own, so Klaudia walks out of one entrance and, a beat later, out of another.Shots in one place share a written map of it.

04References leak.The interior was shot in a black ES, so every interior reference pulled the paint toward black.Give every reference a scope: take this, not that.

The continuity break from problem 3, two shots apart:

Klaudia stepping out of a sliding glass door with a red frame — 0:44

Klaudia walking out of a different, wider glass entrance — 0:46

04Sound

The product claim, made twice without a word.

The film goes quiet twice: first the jet outside doesn’t reach the cabin, then the press flashes don’t either. Lexus’s own spots never drop more than about 6 dB. Every sound the video model made went in the bin, and the track was built from scratch.

Cut into the cabin
Back inside after the flashes

Level of the finished film, measured from the master every quarter of a second (RMS, dBFS). Higher is louder.

01One recording, two machines.Each car and jet pair shares one sound, warm for the car and cold for the jet.

02The silence takes three frames.An instant mute reads as a mistake. 125 milliseconds reads as a door sealing.

03The door slam has no tail.Cheap doors ring. Expensive ones stop.

05Grade

Measure your own footage, not only the reference.

It was my first grade. Lexus cools its shadows, so the obvious move was to cool mine. But when I measured my own shots, they were already colder than Lexus’s, so the fix was to take blue out. Saturation was the other tell: generated footage runs hot, and I pulled it down to where Lexus sits.

06Next time

Plan more before making anything.

Next time I’d storyboard the whole film first, down to which references each shot needs. I took hundreds of photos and scans to be safe, because I didn’t know yet what I’d use. Now I do. With the storyboard and the reference list settled up front, every step after it moves faster.

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