Emilia AI

THE SECOND BILL - Emilia Launch Film

Emilia is a tech startup using AI to streamline restaurant operations. This launch film was created for the announcement of their first funding round, led by Prosus. The brief called for a film that was both emotional and visionary, focused on people rather than product: explaining complex technology to restaurant owners without actually talking about technology.

Creative Direction

The starting point was creative development—shaping the core concept, aesthetic, and narrative direction. The script was written around this framework.

The core idea stemmed from a problem every restaurant owner knows, yet has never actually seen: the second bill. Every table leaves two bills behind. The first is printed and paid by the customer. The second is the sale the customer wished they could have made, but no one caught in time. It never hits the register, isn't tracked by any system, and isn't anyone's fault. The film gives a name and visual form to this invisible loss without pointing fingers at the staff.

To bring this to life, the film lives in two distinct worlds: the real-world restaurant—warm, lively, and in motion—and a shadowed realm where only the table is lit and every lost sale materializes as a receipt. The same gesture, the same table, two parallel realities. In one, no one comes. In the other, the waiter arrives with a smile. Emilia only enters the picture after the audience has already felt the weight of the problem.

A Brand-Driven Identity

The film was built directly from Emilia's visual identity system, giving birth to a unique graphic language: the thermal receipt, the highlight window revealing what Emilia sees, and the on-screen text cards. This visual cohesion allowed us to transform the logo into a compound eye—where dozens of images assemble, flash, and reveal the brand's flower mark.

Balancing Live Action and AI

We shot everything that called for real human presence: Table 7, the waiter, the owner, the dishes, the bustling kitchen, and the paper rolling out of the order printer. It was a single shoot day at an actual restaurant, Jappa da Quitanda. AI was brought in to expand the film where live shooting couldn't reach: lost sales, insert shots, kitchen textures, and visual effects support.

No AI-generated shot was created in isolation. Every single prompt originated from photos of the actual location and strict visual guidelines covering lighting, set design, wardrobe, and props—ensuring the restaurant, faces, and lighting remained seamless from the first frame to the last. And whatever AI couldn't execute with pinpoint precision was crafted by hand in post-production.

Behind the Scenes

Before shoot day, the script was broken down into a visual storyboard, a written storyboard, and a technical shot list—all fully bilingual and hosted on a website for the client and crew to follow live. Even so, the location actively shaped the film: whatever the venue and cast brought to the table during shooting was integrated into the direction, with scenes adapted on the fly.

The result is a film that honors both the grit and passion of the people who run restaurants, while introducing the future Emilia is building.

Credits:

Client: Emilia AI, Andrés Cajiao
Creative Direction, Cinematography & Editing: Felipe Risallah
Screenplay / Scriptwriter: Jan
Production & 1st Assistant Director: Mavi Mourenço
Camera Assistant / Assistant Cinematographer: Brenno Belletti
Sound design: Emanuel Levi
Jappa Team: Giullia Sternberg and Arthur Breier