You know that feeling when something cuts through the noise and makes you pause? That’s what happened when Gus sent over their latest work for InVideo. Two and a half minutes of AI-generated footage that shouldn’t work—but does.
We knew this was about AI going in. And if you know anything about journalists, we’re skeptical about everything—especially anything AI. Most of what crosses our desk feels like a tech demo desperate to prove its own relevance. This was different.
When AI Becomes the Medium, Not the Message
Look what we can do! Watch us generate content at lightning speed! The usual refrain.
Gus took a different approach entirely. Instead of making AI the star, they made it the paintbrush.
The film opens quietly—”Ideas don’t always arrive with a drum roll”—and takes you backwards through history. Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Marie Curie, Michelangelo. Each moment meticulously crafted using AI tools, but feeling remarkably human. You’re watching Eadweard Muybridge capture motion for the first time, seeing Pachacuti envision Machu Picchu. These aren’t just AI-generated visuals. They’re historically accurate moments that would have been prohibitively expensive to shoot traditionally.
The Creative Loop That Changed Everything
Working with AI director Blair Vermette, Gus discovered something unexpected about the production process. “With AI, the production process felt less like following a script and more like co-directing with a machine,” Gus’ Spencer LaVallee, co-founder (with Graham Douglas) and CD explains. “You’re not following a straight line from storyboard to screen, but operating in a creative loop: testing prompts, curating outputs, and assembling scenes like a mosaic until you get the desired output.”
That iterative approach shows in every frame. Where traditional production demands locked decisions early, AI allowed the team to stay in creative discovery mode longer. Each historical moment demanded accuracy—something that became both time-consuming and technically challenging with AI tools, but ultimately possible in ways that would have required massive budgets otherwise.
Why This Lands When Others Don’t
Most AI campaigns right now focus on speed, novelty or shock value. Gus focused on something else entirely: the universal human experience of having an idea and acting on it. The technology serves the story, not the other way around. You’re so invested in the narrative that the fact it’s AI-generated becomes secondary.
“This film is about the human story,” says InVideo’s Sanket Shah. “If we look around us, everything we see began with a single person who had an idea, and who acted on it.” That’s the throughline that makes this work—it’s not about the tools, it’s about the timeless human drive to create.
The Bigger Picture for Agencies
What Gus figured out that others haven’t yet: AI works best when it enhances craft rather than replacing it. This wasn’t a shortcut to faster production—it was two months of meticulous creative development. The technology enabled them to visualize concepts that would have been difficult to portray traditionally, but the heart of the work remained deeply human storytelling.
For independent agencies watching the AI revolution unfold, this film offers a roadmap. The tool doesn’t make the idea. The human insight about shared creative experience across history—that’s what makes you lean in. AI just helped them bring it to life in ways that weren’t possible before.
When Something Actually Stops You
In a world where we see thousands of ads every day, rare is the piece of work that makes you stop mid-scroll and pay attention. This InVideo film managed exactly that—not because of the technology behind it, but because of the deeply human story at its center. Sometimes the best use of tomorrow’s tools is telling yesterday’s truths.
Jury rooms, consider yourselves warned. This one’s coming.
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Contact: hello@gus.biz
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Doug Zanger is the founder and editor-in-chief of Indie Agency News. He is also the founder of the Creative Bohemian consultancy, lives in the Pacific Northwest and is insufferable about it.
