CRAFTED STORIES · Movistar
How we designed and produced a living nativity scene for Movistar's holiday campaign.From universe design to broadcast delivery in fifteen days.
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Crafted Stories is our ongoing publication series an inside look at the making behind select MITO Films projects, and the craft decisions that shape them as they’re built inside MITO AI.
Some briefs arrive with months of runway. This one arrived with fifteen days and a broadcast deadline but a clear vision that we truly enjoyed crafting.
The call came through Supervial, the agency managing Movistar’s creative pipeline. The ask: a flagship 30-second spot for the Christmas campaign, plus digital adaptations across formats and sports verticals. The concept had already been seeded—a traditional Spanish nativity scene that comes alive, its ceramic figures transforming into miniature athletes playing on the Movistar desco. Full creative freedom on execution. No logos or real athletes in production. Broadcast-ready by mid-December.
We were asked to build the entire visual universe from scratch: light, texture, character design, environment, animation, sound design, and voice direction. One campaign system to hold NBA, NFL, football, tennis, golf, Formula 1, and MotoGP. One living room. One nativity. One desco pulsing blue.
SETTING THE FILE
We started by setting the file. Inside MITO, every asset lived on one canvas: the brief, Movistar’s brand guidelines, reference images of the desco hardware, the agency’s initial concept notes, and our research into Spanish nativity traditions. Early style tests, character sketches, environment options, and sport-specific scene breakdowns accumulated on the same surface.
The file became the production bible.
RESEARCH AS DIRECTION
Movistar’s challenge was perceptual: viewers associated the brand with content losses rather than content abundance. The campaign needed to communicate that all sport lives in Movistar—without listing channels, without lecturing. The nativity metaphor carried the weight: a familiar domestic object that suddenly reveals hidden life.
Direction began with material research. We studied Spanish belén traditions—the ceramic textures, the terracotta tones, the specific character archetypes (Reyes Magos, pastores, animals, the caganer). We pulled references from contemporary miniature artists whose figures balance craft imperfection with expressive gesture. We watched Toy Story not for style but for physics: how small figures move in a scaled world, how light behaves at macro distances, how stillness precedes motion.
From there we translated themes into workable film grammar. The desco became the stage, its blue light the animating force. The living room became a stadium. The nativity figures became athletes—but athletes who retain their ceramic souls. We mapped each sport to a character type and a micro-environment carved from the nativity itself: musgo as turf, the portal arch as goalpost, the desco edge as racetrack.
MOODBOARD AS WORLD-BUILDING
The moodboard stopped being a collage and became an operational map. We combined real references—photographs of artisan belén figures, macro photography of ceramic surfaces, Pixar’s lighting studies—with stills we generated inside MITO to test the universe early and keep exploration rights-clean.
Everything was organised as a system:
The living room as grammar: warm night light, Christmas tree glow, furniture arranged to frame the desco as focal point. The palette combined terracotta, gold, and deep shadow with Movistar’s signature blue as the single cool accent.
The figures as constraint: every character had to read as ceramic first, athlete second. Texture stayed consistent across transformations—the basketball player and the shepherd shared the same surface quality. Costume changes happened; material identity did not.
The desco as magic source: the blue light emanating from the hardware became the visual trigger for transformation. When it pulses, the figures stir. When it glows steady, the games play. When it dims, stillness returns.
The first stills made the direction immediately legible. Approval became a simple test: does this feel like a nativity that dreamed of sport, or like sport dressed as nativity?
CREATIVE PROPOSAL
One central idea: the stadium lives in the living room. The nativity is the delivery mechanism—familiar, warm, slightly humorous—but the payload is emotional: every match, every play, every championship moment happens here, at home, through Movistar.
The spot treats transformation as revelation. The camera stays close, observant. Movement is small and precise—a figure’s hand shifts grip, a head turns, weight transfers. The action beats are quick but clear: a basketball mate, a touchdown catch, a goalkeeper dive, a tennis serve, a car rounding the desco. Each gesture lasts seconds. The accumulation builds the argument: all of this lives here.
Black-and-white was never an option; this is a Christmas spot, and warmth is mandatory. But we kept the palette restrained—gold and amber dominant, blue reserved for the desco and its reflections. The contrast between warm ceramic and cool technology became the visual thesis.
The humour arrived through the caganer. The traditional Catalan figure—trousers down, squatting—became our goalkeeper, face frozen in perpetual surprise. The client approved immediately. Some traditions translate better than others.
SCRIPT AND STORYBOARD
We wrote the spot as beats, not shots. Each beat carried a job: establish space, introduce stillness, trigger magic, deploy sport, interrupt, return, close.
The storyboard became the contract. Every frame specified: environment state, character position, light behaviour, camera distance, sport represented, space reserved for future logo placement. The last point mattered—we knew logos would arrive late, so we designed frames with clear negative space for post-integration.
We presented the storyboard to Supervial and Movistar. Three rounds of iteration followed—adjusting character count, confirming sport hierarchy, refining the interruption beat. Just like it would be in a regular production. Approval came and w moved on into the next step.
PRODUCTION SYSTEM
With approval locked, production followed. We generated the clips inside MITO, integrating the appropriate video models for each scene type. Coherence held across shots: the same living room persists, the same ceramic texture stays stable, palette and light behaviour remain consistent where space is shared.
We worked sport by sport. Each discipline received its own lane before image production:
Basketball: Two figures, one active (mate), one static (defender). Jersey numbers evocative but non-specific—no Jordan 23, no Celtic 33. NBA logo reserved for post.
Football: Striker and goalkeeper. Colours balanced to avoid club association. Champions League-style ball, portal arch as goal. Caganer in net, expression locked in comic terror.
NFL: Single figure in dark gear, Patriots-adjacent but legally distinct. Spiral catch in slow motion. NFL logo space held in frame corner.
Tennis: Female figure, serve motion, racquet and ball clear. Net implied by desco edge geometry.
Golf: Female figure, swing follow-through, club and ball visible. Terrain reads as miniature fairway.
F1/MotoGP: Car and motorcycle sharing track around desco perimeter. Movement fast, logos absent—integration planned for post.
The edit favoured rhythm and legibility. Each sport beat lasted long enough to register, short enough to keep momentum. Transitions used light—blue pulse as wipe—rather than cuts.
SOUND DESIGN AND VOICE DIRECTION
MITO produced the complete audio package. The score layered Christmas warmth—strings, piano, soft bells—with distant stadium echoes. The contrast reinforced the concept: domestic intimacy containing athletic magnitude.
Sound effects stayed small-scale. Ceramic-on-wood contact. Soft thuds of miniature balls. The blue light had its own sonic signature—a gentle hum that rose during transformation and settled during stillness.
Voice direction happened remotely. The voice-over artist (Irene Montalà) recorded from her studio while we directed via online. Her delivery landed the brief’s tone: warm, conspiratorial, as if sharing a secret about the living room’s hidden life.
POST-PRODUCTION AND LOGO INTEGRATION
The rights constraint shaped the entire production logic. No real logos, no real athletes, no real team colours could appear in generated footage. This was non-negotiable—intellectual property restrictions were absolute.
But the final spots needed logos. NBA. NFL. LaLiga. Champions League. Formula 1. MotoGP. The client remained undecided on final logo placement throughout production. Decisions arrived after picture lock.
We solved this with AI-assisted post-production inside MITO. The same tools that let us remove unwanted elements from footage let us integrate logos after the fact. We placed NBA marks on the desco surface during basketball beats. NFL shields appeared on jerseys in the football americano sequence. Competition logos settled into frame corners during sport-specific cutdowns.
The process inverted traditional production logic. Instead of planning around fixed assets, we designed flexible frames and populated them later. The technology made the client’s indecision survivable.
ADAPTATIONS AND DELIVERABLES
The 30-second master spawned a family of formats:
15-second versions developed micro-narratives within the same universe—single-sport stories with setup, action, and return. Each maintained the living room frame and desco-as-stage logic.
6-second bumpers stripped to pure impact: one sport, one gesture, one pulse of blue light, logo and tagline.
Sport-specific versions isolated NBA, NFL, football, tennis, and motor sequences for targeted media buys. Each version felt native to its vertical while remaining visibly part of the campaign system.
Platform entertainment versions swapped sport for streaming logos—Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, Movistar Plus+—using the same transformation mechanic. The nativity figures gathered around the desco to watch screens instead of play games.
What stayed with us after this case: a visual universe gains force when restrictions become grammar. The logo prohibition shaped every frame—and made the post-integration feel inevitable rather than patched. Speed matters when it preserves coherence; fifteen days forced decisions that might have drifted across fifteen weeks.
The caganer goalkeeper will outlast the campaign in our memory. Some briefs arrive like dares. This one arrived like an invitation to make ceramic figures play sport on a router. We enoyed it .
Creative direction and production: Arantxa Barcia x MITO Films
System and workflow: MITO AI
Agency: Super Real
Client: Movistar Sports Spain
Voice-over: Irene Montalà