"Barbãr: The Beer of Warriors" Goes Epic: Bottomline’s Runner-Up Film Proves AI is a Creative Weapon

What did AI enable you to do in your film that would have been impossible—or unimaginable—without it?

Bottomline: AI gave us the freedom to create a world that would’ve been logistically and financially out of reach with traditional tools. Barbar demanded a visual language that felt ancient and raw, something that sits between fantasy and history. AI allowed us to generate visuals, environments, entire sequences, and characters in ways that would’ve required massive production teams and months of post-production work otherwise.

Did your vision for the film change once you started working with AI tools? If so, how?

Bottomline: Absolutely. Originally, Barbar was just a concept that Tony created and wrote for the beer brand itself about a 225BC war between Gauls and Romans. But once we started experimenting with AI concept art and scenes previs, we saw the potential to push it into bolder choices, make it more epic, warrior-poetic tone, cinematic, thanks to how vividly AI helped us visualize that world.

Barbãr: The Beer Of Warriors by Bottomline AI Agency

How did AI shape the emotional tone or atmosphere of your film? Was that an intentional choice or a surprise outcome?

Bottomline: We set out with a tone in mind, ferocious, masculine, Gauls battle inspired and a little tragic, but AI surprised us with how it accentuated those elements. The atmospheric lighting, the surreal edges of the environments, even the exaggerated expressions all leaned into a kind of heightened emotionality. It became a film that felt like a memory of a battle rather than a literal depiction.

Were there any limitations with current AI tools that you had to creatively work around?

Bottomline: Definitely. Consistency was a big challenge, especially across characters, scenes and locations. However, we created this around February 2025, if we’re going to reproduce it now, I’m sure we’ll benefit more from the advanced consistency and prompt adherence enhancements. We also faced some limitations in battle scenes, which was improved in the new AI tools we’re testing now, so we tried to play around with editing and stylizing to simulate dynamic movement.

If you could re-do one part of your film with next-gen AI capabilities, what would you revisit and why?

Bottomline: We’d revisit the battle sequence. With next-gen tools, we’d love to animate that entire scene, not just imply it through montage and visual tone. Real-time AI animation, better character consistency, and dynamic camera movement would allow us to deliver the action our story deserved. It’s a visceral, symbolic climax and with more advanced tools, we could fully realize its emotional and cinematic potential.

What does winning the Meta Morph AI Film Award mean to you, especially at this moment in the evolution of storytelling technology?

Bottomline: It’s incredibly rewarding, especially because we didn’t copy any existing ad or concept. We had a unique vision, and we brought it to life from scratch. This recognition feels like a powerful affirmation, not just for our team, but for the idea that creativity and technology are no longer separate worlds. Winning this award tells us we’re not alone in that belief. It fuels us to keep experimenting, to keep pushing the boundaries of what stories can look and feel like in this new era of filmmaking and advertising.