Standard Chartered's F1 campaign film is fully AI-generated

Standard Chartered's global brand campaign "Move Ahead" has a fully AI-generated hero film, the trade outlet shots.net reported on October 12, 2026. The campaign is rolling out across Singapore, Hong Kong and the UAE as the F1 Singapore Grand Prix gets underway.

The Drum went further on October 15, publishing an interview with co-director Marcello Costa that explains how a film with no real car to shoot was made.

What is "Move Ahead"?

"Move Ahead" is Standard Chartered's new global brand campaign, announced on September 28, 2026. It is inspired by the bank's Formula 1 partnership and builds on its brand platform "Now Is Your Time", and it runs across digital, social and owned channels.

Standard Chartered is an official F1 partner, and access to F1 cars, drivers, teams and circuits in the middle of a racing season is close to impossible, so there was no real 2026 car to film and the season was already underway. The team built the F1 world from scratch. Per shots.net, Misideal, a London AI studio, designed a 2026-spec racing car developed from Standard Chartered's existing Formula 4 car and kept it consistent across every shot. Every asset was created for the campaign, with no third-party imagery.

Costa, a partner at Misideal, co-directed the film with Tino (Airton Carmignani) of Stink for the agency Leo Singapore, with Misideal leading AI production alongside Stink Shanghai. He told The Drum the studio would not input photos of a real car into its tools. Instead he drew a 2026-spec car by hand and fed the sketch into AI to render it in 3D, then moved between Photoshop and AI tools, mainly Magnific, to reproduce the design from multiple angles. He put the odds of a model doing exactly what he asked at "like 50-50."

The process kept a traditional shape, according to shots.net. Directors set the look, camera language and pacing. AI artists generated key frames and animated scenes to direction in daily review rounds. Editors, colorists and sound designers then finished the film. The main performers were cast for real, photographed in studio and licensed for use, and Misideal built digital twins from those stills, The Drum reported. Costa said not every person in the film was cast, only the main ones the team wanted to control.

Costa said, as shots.net published it:

"People imagine AI films are made by one person and a prompt. Some are. But this one went through agency, client, production and post, with feedback at every stage, across teams in London, Shanghai, Singapore and Brazil."

Standard Chartered says AI-enabled production let the creative team capture perspectives that would have been difficult to film during the racing season. Whether it also cut the cost is less clear. Costa told The Drum he questions the assumption that full AI is automatically cheaper, since a fully AI film brings casting and iteration work of its own.

Watch "Move Ahead" below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_msE7gAxiVs

The hero film is free to watch on Standard Chartered's YouTube channel, and the "Move Ahead" campaign is rolling out across the bank's digital, social and owned channels.