Understory: how we built a 30-second ad entirely inside Runway
A cinematic spot for a fictional brand, produced without leaving the platform. Script, keyframes, animation, voice, music and edit.
The idea
It started with a simple, absurd brief: make an ad for Understory, an adaptogenic mushroom tea brand nobody asked for and probably nobody wants. The product promised mental clarity. The problem was that it tasted awful.
That was the joke.
The script
Before generating a single frame, we wrote the narrative arc in five beats.
| Shot | Description | Voiceover |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Monk meditating under a frozen waterfall | "For centuries... mankind has sought the path to clarity." |
| 2 | Pilgrim crossing a Himalayan blizzard | "Through blizzard. Through darkness. Through suffering so profound... it could only mean something." |
| 3 | Guru in a cave with the steaming tea | "They were right about the suffering." |
| 4 | Extreme close-up of the grimace | total silence |
| 5 | Product shot, the tin rotating | "Suffering now comes in a tin. Understory. Tastes like misery. Brings clarity." |
The most important decision was the silence in Shot 4. No music, no voiceover, nothing. Just the grimace. That's where all the comedy lives.
The keyframes
Before animating, we generated a reference image for every shot. That let us control exactly how each scene would look before committing credits to video.
The animation
With the keyframes approved, each image became the first frame of its video clip using Seedance 2, the most capable model for complex physical movement and cinematic scenes.
Each shot was generated with prompts designed for that scene's specific movement.
The audio
The voice · Elias
We chose the Elias voice from Runway's catalog: male, aged, American, with a warm gravity that makes even the most absurd line sound like ancient truth. The four lines were recorded separately so we could sync them frame by frame with each shot.
The sound of the grimace
For Shot 4, instead of music or voiceover, we generated a disgust SFX with Seed Audio: the sound of someone taking a sip and reacting viscerally. A single gasp. A guttural sound. Silence.
The music
A bed of Tibetan singing bowls and low drones, generated with Lyria 3 Pro. It comes in at second zero and cuts dead at 0:21, right before the grimace. The sudden silence is part of the joke.
The edit
All editing happened inside Runway's timeline: six video clips on Track 0, voiceover and SFX on Track 1, music on Track 2.
Final duration: exactly 30 seconds.
What we learned
Silence is a production decision, not an absence
The most powerful scene in the spot has no audio. You have to build that actively: no background music, no voiceover, nothing filling the void.
Keyframe first, always
Generating the reference image before the video saved time and credits. What you see in the keyframe is what you animate.
The voice does half the comedic work
Elias saying "Tastes like misery" with absolute seriousness is funnier than any visual effect we could have added.
A good brief is a good spot
The concept, zen suffering in a tin, solved everything. Tone, visuals, audio, humor. It was all in that one line.
The result
Built entirely in Runway. No external tools. No stock footage. No studio.
Understory. Tastes like misery. Brings clarity.
CCS Media is an audiovisual content production company based in Santiago, Chile, led by Camilo Cuadra Sieveking, with more than 25 years of experience in television, media and corporate communications across Chile, Latin America and the United States. Field production credits include the 2010 Chile earthquake and tsunami, Haiti, the war in Ukraine, South Africa and the rescue of the 33 miners at the San José mine. We produce with AI, and we produce in the field, where the editorial judgment was built. We work in Spanish and English, worldwide.
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