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Creative Brief · Pre-kickoff
Black Hat Las Vegas · MSG Sphere · August 4, 2026

The Sphere
campaign,
in eleven slides.

May 2026 · For Sphere Studios
Read before kickoff · Mon May 11 · 10:30 AM PT
02 Where we are

Most of the spot is locked.
One act is open.

Locked
The concept.
"The Weight of Human Work." Approved with Lior, holding since April.
Acts 1 + 2.
Water surface, raindrops, downpour, 7AI logo breach. Iron-Dome deflection. 22 sec.
Acts 4 + 5.
"DO HUMAN WORK." declaration on white. Brand close on ink. 16 sec total.
The dates.
Aug 4, 7–11pm takeover. Aug 1–7 residency. Booth #1839.
The CISO room.
Fontainebleau suite, sightline to Sphere. Confirmed.
Changed since v2
Act III concept landed.
Logo morphs to dashboard — the shield becomes a screen. Continuous pull-back to a bright Boston summer street. See slides 05—07.
Brand identity finalized.
Edition 01 published. Linked from production reference. Use as the visual / verbal source throughout production.
Product demos deployed.
Four live, hostable demos. Bridge Rock, Atypical Travel, IAM Access Key, ClickFix Hunt. Source for the Act III product moment.
Portraits, off the table.
No portrait subjects, no featured humans. Pedestrians in deep background, soft focus, are environmental presence — not violations of the rule.
To resolve · May 11
Production pipeline.
Virtual production (Unreal, plate compositing) or hybrid live shoot with screen replacement. Sphere studio's strong preference drives the rest.
Location.
Boston, Beacon Hill direction. Charles Street at bright midday in summer. Specific shooting block to confirm with Sphere studios at kickoff.
Sound.
Original score, library composition, or licensed track. Style locked (Massive Attack adjacent). Sphere studio recommendation requested.
03 The 60-second arc

Five acts.
One continuous arc.

Act I
Storm builds.
Water surface. First drops. Numbers scroll in type — the daily volume a SOC team faces — building with the rain.
0:00 — 0:12
Act II
Stilled.
Downpour. A flat plane emerges from below, stilling the rain. The 7AI mark resolves on the plane.
0:12 — 0:22
Act III
The reveal.
The shield becomes a screen. Mark morphs to dashboard. Camera pulls back to a bright Boston summer street.
0:22 — 0:44
Act IV
Declaration.
"DO HUMAN WORK." Full Sphere. Black on white.
0:44 — 0:54
Act V
Brand.
7AI mark. Booth #1839. End.
0:54 — 1:00
0:00 · open
The pull-back · 22 sec
1:00 · close
04 Acts I + II · the locked opening

A water surface in the dark. First drops fall. The rain builds, and numbers build with it — the daily volume of alerts and decisions a SOC team faces, scrolling in type as the storm gathers. Downpour. Then a flat plane emerges from beneath the water, stilling the rain. The 7AI mark resolves on the plane. The next drops deflect, clean. The Sphere goes from saturated to cleared. The plane holds for a beat. Then the surface that was a shield becomes a screen — the mark dissolves into the live dashboard of Act III.

Downpour · the alert overload metaphor
Raindrops · early state
Surface · resolution beat
05 The concept · Act III

One continuous move,
from product to world.

After the storm clears in Acts I and II, the mark on the surface morphs into the live product dashboard. The surface that was a shield becomes a screen. An investigation in flight. The agent's reasoning at full scale, real-time, filling the Sphere. Then the camera begins its slow retreat. The product was running on a laptop. The laptop was on a café table. The café was on Charles Street in Beacon Hill, Boston. A bright vivid summer day. People walking past in soft focus, mid-conversation, in summer dress. A pigeon underfoot. The chair is empty. The world is calm because 7AI made it calm. And alive because that is what calm allows.

Show the product
The agent's reasoning.
A live investigation memo writing itself. Sankey ribbons resolving into a verdict. The product UI, slowed and blown up to fit the dome.
Build the world
Cartier-grade cinema.
Not stock UI. Not B-roll. A constructed summer city at midday — cobblestones, brownstones, mature shade trees, deep blue sky, motivated light.
Define human work
Being human.
"DO HUMAN WORK" lands with a richer definition. Not just doing security work. Being out in the world — while the agents handle the rest.

No portraits. No featured human subjects. The human is everywhere implied: the open laptop, the cappuccino on the saucer, the empty chair pulled out, the people walking past in soft focus, the world fully alive.

06 The journey · 22 seconds

Two passes.
One unbroken move.

Pass 01 Beacon Hill · close to wide
Pass 02 Variant framing · same arc
0:22Close on product
0:28Table emerges
0:34Café widens
0:38The world

AI-generated reference passes. Photoreal proof of camera move, timing, and mood. The final spot composites the actual product UI in post-production.

07 The world we want · references

Bright midday.
Old-world. Alive.

Not Silicon Valley. Not a tech-bro patio. Charles Street in Beacon Hill at noon in July. Brick brownstones in full sun, dappled shade under summer trees, deep blue sky overhead, cobblestones underfoot. Old-world by architecture. Alive by light. The pigeon has been here longer than the laptop.

Cinematography

Roger Deakins · Hoyte van Hoytema
High-noon naturalistic light. Deep contrast. Motivated by sun, never amber-filtered. 1917 daylight, not Blade Runner.

Bright Mediterranean

Vicky Cristina Barcelona · Magnum summer
Saturated summer light, blue skies, alive streets. The genre that knows how to film a hot afternoon without overheating it.

Composition

Wes Anderson, restrained palette
Symmetry and care. Desaturated and warm rather than candied.

Cinema scale

Cartier · "Hello"
Product as cinema. Not advertising the product; rendering its world.

What we are not looking at.

×
Silicon Valley patios.
Modern wood, succulents, white sneakers. Wrong era and wrong continent.
×
Stock café footage.
Latte art, Edison bulbs, exposed brick. The any-brand signal.
×
Twee details.
A finch, a butterfly, a child running past. Pigeon stays. The rest does not.
08 Sound

Audio is the second protagonist.
It does as much work as the picture.

Musical reference
Massive Attack.
Atmospheric build. Tension that does not announce itself. The sub-bass beneath everything.
James Murphy.
Euphoria from restraint. A release that arrives late and lasts longer than expected.
Brian Eno.
Ambient, generative, never overstays. Texture as composition.
The thread.
Builds slow. Releases late. Leaves space. The opposite of a vendor sting.
Acts I + II · the storm
The build.
Sparse drops at 0:00. Patter at 0:06. Saturated downpour by 0:12.
The breach.
A singular low resonant tone as the 7AI mark rises. One note, sustained, holding the room.
The deflection.
Subtle high-frequency ticks as drops meet the surface and bounce. The sound of clean refusal.
The morph.
As the shield becomes a screen, rain dissolves into a held atmospheric chord. Faint UI textures bleed in — a tick, a chime, the agent at work.
Acts III — V · the close
Act III · the pull-back.
Music continues unbroken from Act II, gradually thinning as the camera retreats. Texture replaces beat. Street ambience subtly bleeds in by 0:38 — distant conversation, a wineglass, no traffic.
Acts IV + V.
Held breath. The music thins to a single sustained tone. "DO HUMAN WORK." lands in near-silence.
The end.
One stinger. Low. Resolved. Brand close holds for the last six seconds.
Open question.
Original score, library composition, or licensed track. Sphere studio recommendation requested.
09 Production reference

Where to look
for what 7AI looks like.

Four live product demos and the brand identity package. Hosted on media.sevenai.com — SSO-protected, accessible to the Sphere team via the access list Nate is provisioning before May 11.

01
Bridge Rock investigation.
A user-reported phishing alert. Five agents. Four minutes. Multi-agent reasoning culminating in a written conclusion.
media.sevenai.com / sevenai-demo-bridge-rock
02
ClickFix & fake CAPTCHA hunt.
A threat-hunt agent's reasoning rendered as a live chat. Plan, evidence, verdict. The wrong turns kept in.
media.sevenai.com / sevenai-demo-clickfix-hunt
03
Atypical travel.
An identity-anomaly investigation. Login from an unexpected country. The agent disambiguates impossible-travel from a legitimate trip.
media.sevenai.com / sevenai-demo-atypical-travel
04
IAM access key exposure.
A cloud-credential exposure. The agent walks the blast radius, scopes the contained surface, recommends rotation.
media.sevenai.com / sevenai-demo-iam-access-key
05
Brand identity · Edition 01.
Logo, color, typography, voice, photography direction, what we avoid. The visual and verbal language of 7AI.
media.sevenai.com / sphere-brand-identity
10 Kickoff · Monday May 11 · 10:30 AM PT

What we will do
together, on the call.

Open questions

  • Act III directionWhich of A, B, or C — and why, from the Sphere team's vantage on format and audience.
  • Production approachFor the chosen direction. Studio shoot, render pipeline, or hybrid.
  • Talent & timelineWho, where, by when. Especially if portraits are in.
  • Sphere-specific formatAnything we should know about the canvas that should reshape the brief.

What 7AI brings

  • Brief walkthroughThis document, in detail. Forty-five minutes for it.
  • Live demosBridge Rock and ClickFix, run end to end so you see what Option A would draw from.
  • Brand identityEdition 01, in fifteen minutes — to ground the visual + verbal decisions that follow.
  • DecisionsWhatever can be locked in the room, will be.

Logistics

  • From 7AINate Burke (CMO), Anna Suslova (production). Lior Div for select sessions.
  • From SphereDean Castano, Nicolas Randall, Tina Kim. Studio creative as needed.
  • Format90 minutes. Working session, not a presentation.
  • Pre-readThis brief and the brand identity. Both linked above.
7AI · Sphere Creative Brief · Pre-kickoff · May 2026

Outline

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