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The Lab — a film of our own

A film we made for no one but ourselves — to find out how far the craft holds when the cast is real and the world around them is not.

Deep Water — a short film. Two minutes, twenty-eight seconds.

What this is

Every other film on this site began with a property's own photographs. This one began with two faces.

There was no brief and no client. It is a piece we made to test the edge of the work — to cast real people into a wholly built world and hold their exact likeness through every frame of it. The men you see are real; everything around them was made.

A generative film. No camera, no crew, no second location — the cast are real people, rendered into a world that does not exist.

Cast

The faces are real

Two people, carried frame to frame without drifting. It is the same craft that can place a founder, a chef, or the face of a house into a film of their own — recognisably themselves, in a world built to fit them.

Reference portrait of Eren Cetindamar, founder of Mahsus
Reference
Eren Cetindamar as he appears in the film
In the film

Eren Cetindamar

Founder

Reference portrait of Archie
Reference
Archie as he appears in the film
In the film

Archie

Friend of the studio

How it was made

Built, not filmed

Deep Water has no location, no set, and no crew. It is made the way the films here are made — the world built first, the real people brought into it, every frame directed by hand. This is how this one came together.

The world, built first

Each place in the film begins as an empty world, rendered true before anyone steps inside — a corridor, a sundeck, the water at dusk. None of it was photographed.

The corridor, built and empty
The corridor, built and empty
The sundeck, built and empty
The sundeck, built and empty
The pool at dusk, built and empty
The pool at dusk, built and empty

Then the people enter it

The two men are real; the world around them is not. Their exact likeness — carried, never invented — is placed into a place that was never there. The same corridor: empty, and then cast.

The mirrored corridor, built and empty
The world, empty
The same corridor with the two figures advancing through it
The world, cast

Directed, frame by frame

Every shot is composed, directed, and brought back until it reads true — the blocking, the wardrobe, the fall of light. Twenty shots, each held to the same standard, cut into a single film of two and a half minutes.

An early shot — the party on the sundeck
A later shot — the action at its height
The closing shot of the film

Twenty shots, cut into one film — the same craft a brand's own story would be given.

The same craft, for your house

Put your people into motion.

A founder's story. A chef at the pass. The face behind the name. If there is someone your guests should meet, we can place them in a film of their own.