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Background: A Dystopian Short Made Entirely with AI, in One Day
We usually design retail spaces, brand identities, and marketing systems. This time we made a film.
Background is a 1-minute 50-second animated short created with artificial intelligence for the No Title competition. Two people made it in one day.
The film shows a world where everything runs on subscriptions. Water, coffee, the metro, even the keyboard you type on. You rent your entire life, action by action, and the payments never stop.
Background is a 1-minute 50-second animated short created with artificial intelligence for the No Title competition. Two people made it in one day.
The film shows a world where everything runs on subscriptions. Water, coffee, the metro, even the keyboard you type on. You rent your entire life, action by action, and the payments never stop.
What Happens in the Film
A young man wakes up. His bed is a subscription. The tap drips, and that's a subscription too. He makes coffee, showers, puts on perfume, opens the fridge. All of it billed. He takes the metro to work, sits in an office, comes home. The day ends where it began, underground. He sits in a metro car surrounded by strangers, and above every head float small labels: subscription for the apartment, subscription for the music, subscription for the perfume, subscription for the transport.
Nobody rebels. Nobody even looks unhappy. That's the point.
How We Built It
The project was led by Mari Romanovskaya, who handled art direction, animation, and sound, and Konstantin Sidortsov, who came up with the concept and did the editing.
Visually, we drew inspiration from Arcane. The look sits somewhere between 2D and 3D, painted backgrounds with dimensional lighting, characters that feel hand-drawn but move with weight. We wanted that same tension between warmth and unease, where a beautiful frame can still feel quietly wrong.
Every image and every frame was generated with AI. We used Kling 3.0 for animation and Seedream 4.5 for stills, running through Freepik, now Magnific. The edit, subtitles, and final assembly happened in After Effects.
Visually, we drew inspiration from Arcane. The look sits somewhere between 2D and 3D, painted backgrounds with dimensional lighting, characters that feel hand-drawn but move with weight. We wanted that same tension between warmth and unease, where a beautiful frame can still feel quietly wrong.
Every image and every frame was generated with AI. We used Kling 3.0 for animation and Seedream 4.5 for stills, running through Freepik, now Magnific. The edit, subtitles, and final assembly happened in After Effects.
The protagonist has no name. We decided that early on. A name would make him a character. Without one, he's anyone with a bank account and a recurring payment schedule.
Why We Used AI
AI let us move fast. That's the honest answer. We had an idea about the subscription economy and the quiet trap of convenience, and we wanted to see it as a film. Within a day we had a finished piece.
AI handled the rendering while we handled the meaning. It generated frames. We decided what those frames should feel like. It filled in textures. We chose the pacing, the silence, the ending in the metro.
AI handled the rendering while we handled the meaning. It generated frames. We decided what those frames should feel like. It filled in textures. We chose the pacing, the silence, the ending in the metro.
Tools change. Judgment doesn't.
What This Means for Brands
The subscription model is everywhere now. Software, food, transport, entertainment, even hardware. It works because it's invisible. You stop noticing what you pay for until the payment fails.
The film takes that invisibility and makes it literal. Every object, every action, every small comfort gets a price tag floating above it. It's absurd, and it's familiar.
If you run a brand, it's worth asking how many of your customer touchpoints feel like a subscription. Recurring, necessary, forgettable. And how many of them actually give someone a reason to stay.
That question sits at the center of what we do at NZR. Design, in our view, is where a brand either becomes part of someone's life or just another line on their statement.
The film takes that invisibility and makes it literal. Every object, every action, every small comfort gets a price tag floating above it. It's absurd, and it's familiar.
If you run a brand, it's worth asking how many of your customer touchpoints feel like a subscription. Recurring, necessary, forgettable. And how many of them actually give someone a reason to stay.
That question sits at the center of what we do at NZR. Design, in our view, is where a brand either becomes part of someone's life or just another line on their statement.
Background is a short film about subscriptions. It's also a short film about attention, ownership, and what's left when everything is rented.
