CinematicDirector — Identity-locked AI personas for DTC brands
A persona studio for DTC brands

Own the face
of your brand.

Identity-locked AI personas for paid TikTok and Reels creative. Hook-tested weekly. Variants refilled in 48 hours. Locked to your brand and no one else's.

Four brands per quarter. Strategy call is free, 30 minutes, no card required. We reply within 48 hours.

Reel · Season 1 in production Roster 01 / Q2 26 Ava Moreno @theavamoreno
Roster 01 · Ava Moreno Q2 26

A roster of identity-locked personas, each licensed to one brand. Quarterly intake of four.

Roster · Q2 26
Reel · Season 1 in production
Roster 01 / Q2 26 Live

Ava Moreno

DTC beauty & lifestyle · 1.2M views, 90 days

In development
Roster 02 / Q3 26 Reserved

Open seat

DTC fashion · accepting briefs

In development
Roster 03 / Q3 26 Reserved

Open seat

DTC fitness & wellness · accepting briefs

Case anchor · Ava Moreno Verified IG insights · Q1–Q2 26
1.2M

Tracked reach in ninety days, one brand-locked persona, one paid-social shelf.

0/ pooled

Pooled-library overlap. No competitor running the same face on the same feed.

48hr

Hook refill SLA. When a variant wins on hook rate, the shelf restocks inside two days.

The studio

A studio on retainer. Three disciplines, one persona.

We do not sell credits, generations, or seats. We sell a working persona, a content cadence, and the operator behind both. Pricing reflects production volume, not access.

01 / Identity

Identity Lock

A face, voice, wardrobe, and world that hold across forty plus expressions. Reference packs trained for set continuity. Voice cloned to a natural speaking range your audience reads as real. The persona is your owned IP, not a model on a marketplace.

Higgsfield Soul ID · ElevenLabs · NanoBanana Pro

02 / Direction

Performance Direction

Scripts engineered against the hooks that already convert in your category. Each season ships as a shelf, not a stream, so paid and organic can pull from the same library without burning through it in a week. Weekly creative reviews against your ROAS signals.

Hook engineering · Series planning · Performance review

03 / Production

Always-On Production

When a creative wins, the shelf is refilled inside 48 hours. When one dies, the next is already in queue. You see the dashboard and the spend. We run the studio, the rotation, and the post cadence. No scheduling calls, no creator no-shows.

HeyGen Avatar IV · Native captions · 48hr refill SLA

Case film · 01

Ava Moreno. A face that doesn't take Q4 off.

Built from a single Higgsfield identity lock. Operated by the studio: scripted, scored, posted. Zero human creators in the rotation. Ninety days of compounding reach. The same persona ran four content worlds in parallel and held identity across every one.

1.2M
Total reach
90
Days live
0
Human creators
Case film · in production Roster 01 / Q2 26 Ava Moreno @theavamoreno
Roster 01 · Case film 1.2M reach
The reframe

Your persona is owned IP. Not a generated file.

Most AI video platforms hand you a stock avatar from a pooled library. Arcads has a thousand actors. HeyGen has a few hundred. Every brand that uses one of them is sharing a face with the next ten brands. We do not run a library. We build one persona, license it to one brand, and never use it anywhere else.

Pooled actor library

A face you rent. With everyone else.

  • The same actor appears across hundreds of other brands
  • On a pooled library, the face still reads synthetic in comments, and it's the same face ten of your competitors are running
  • No rights to retire, retrain, or extend the persona
  • Brand worlds break when the actor cannot hold a product
  • Generic outputs that compound into a category-wide aesthetic
The Arcads / HeyGen / MakeUGC model
Your owned persona

A face you own. Licensed to you alone.

  • Built for one brand. Never used for another, ever.
  • Identity locked across forty plus expressions and set worlds
  • Brand-safe usage rights for paid, organic, OOH, and retail
  • The persona evolves with your brand for years, not weeks
  • A creative asset on your balance sheet, not a SaaS line item
The CinematicDirector model
The process

Three phases. One operating system.

Each phase has named deliverables and a review gate. Brand leads see the shelf before any asset publishes. Performance data flows back into the next refill cycle.

01

Build the persona

Identity lock on face, voice, wardrobe, and world. Reference packs across forty plus expressions. Voice cloned to a natural speaking range your audience reads as real. The persona is your IP, not a model on a marketplace. First reference frames inside fourteen days.
02

Script the season

Forty reels per quarter, scripted to the hooks that already convert in your category. Each season ships as a shelf, not a stream, so paid and organic can both pull from the same library without burning through it in a week. Internal review at day thirty. First publish ready asset by day forty two to fifty six.
03

Operate and rotate

When a creative wins, the shelf is refilled in forty eight hours. When one dies, the next is already in queue. You see the dashboard and the spend. We run the studio, the rotation, and the post cadence. Weekly performance reviews against your ROAS and hook-decay thresholds.
Governance & rights Counsel-reviewed · Q1 26
FTC disclosure

Synthetic-creator disclosure handled for you

Compliant bio language, ad-platform metadata, and on-asset disclosure logic following the May 2026 FTC AI-endorsement update. Your team does not write a disclosure framework. We deliver one your counsel can sign.

IP framework

Brand-safe usage rights, perpetual on assets produced

You receive perpetual usage rights for every asset shipped during the engagement, across paid social, OOH, retail, and CTV. Persona identity itself remains a studio asset so we can keep upgrading it on your behalf.

Takedown SLA

Asset retirement within twenty four hours, on request

If a creative needs to come down for any reason, we retire it across platforms within twenty four hours. If the persona needs to be retired, we transfer brand-safe IP and decommission the identity lock.

Brand-safety

No face-swaps. No imitation. Every persona is original.

We never imitate a real person, public figure, or competitor's talent. Every persona is built original. That line does not move. If you want a lookalike, we are not the studio for that engagement.

Performance

Hook rate starts the system. CAC decides whether it survives.

A persona that does not perform on paid is a brand-equity exercise, not a business. Every Ava reel goes through the same hook discipline that compounded to 1.2M views in 90 days. We measure weekly against your ROAS and decay signals. Variants that fall below threshold are replaced within 72 hours.

No house style

Your brand's visual system runs the screen. Ours stays invisible.

Five illustrative brand worlds. Same persona engine underneath. The studio calibrates palette, type, pace, voice, and grade to the brand's category and audience. The fingerprint on the feed is your brand's, not ours.

FollowingFor You
routine · 21s the 6am one. only product on the counter.
@the.maya.routine my actual morning, not the curated one original audio · maya
28K 412 1.1K
Brand world Pink intimacy · Rhode, Glossier, Rare Beauty
FollowingFor You
fit check · 17s three pieces, one quiet uniform.
@maya.in.frame monday outfit · cotton + cashmere + air selected sound · ambient room
42K 388 2.4K
Brand world Cool minimal · Aritzia, Madewell, Aimé Leon Dore
FollowingFor You
DROP · 12s 10AM EST. ONE COLORWAY. THAT'S IT.
@mayachenfit tomorrow. set the alarm. original audio
117K 1.8K 9.2K
Brand world Sharp utility · Off-White, Supreme, Palm Angels
FollowingFor You
haul · 22s everything under twenty.
@maya.shops summer haul pt 3 // restocks!! 🥭🍓 trending · espresso accelerated
88K 2.1K 5.7K
Brand world Vibrant pop · ColourPop, Sol de Janeiro, Kylie
FollowingFor You
ritual · 31s slow morning. one cup. one window.
@maya.slow first light. linen sheets. nothing on the calendar. selected sound · ambient room
19K 241 3.8K
Brand world Quiet wellness · Kinfolk, Ferm Living, Aesop

Illustrative, not the live roster. Each mock represents how the same persona engine calibrates to a different brand world. Palette, type, pace, captions, hook structure — all dialed to category and audience. We do not bring a house aesthetic into your brand. Your brand is the aesthetic.

From the founder

You built a cult brand by being the face. You do not have to be the face forever.

Your creative system should not depend on one founder, one creator, or one production calendar. That dependency is the single point of failure most teams discover only when it breaks. A second character, built right, lets the brand keep speaking on your roadmap, on your budget, under your creative direction.

Directed by Mike Zapata

Founding director. Built Ava Moreno from zero to 1.2M views in ninety days. Also operates InfluencerBootcamp.ai, the sister education platform that teaches the craft. Studio runs from Medellín, Colombia, with a roster capped at four brands per quarter. Anti-marketer voice, anti-credit-stack workflow, anti-pooled-library by design. One brief form, answered personally: brief the studio.

Before you brief

The questions marketing leads ask.

You receive perpetual brand-safe usage rights for every asset produced during the engagement. The persona identity itself remains a studio-managed asset so we can keep upgrading it with new techniques and tooling on your behalf. On the Atelier tier, full identity transfer is included on request.
Yes. Brand-safe usage rights cover paid social, organic, OOH, retail point of sale, CTV, podcast cover art, and out-of-home video. Excluded: political advertising, regulated categories without prior counsel review, and any context that requires identity verification.
Three disciplines. Identity lock prevents face drift between scenes. Voice clone is tuned to your category's natural speaking range so it reads human in comments. And our review gate kills any frame that breaks the persona before it ships. In 2024 AI personas were obvious. In 2026 a calibrated persona passes the "is this a real person" filter on platforms and in comments.
Every persona ships with platform-compliant disclosure metadata and bio language following the May 2026 FTC AI-endorsement update. If a platform flags a specific asset, we revise and resubmit inside 48 hours. We have not had an account-level action across the roster. We do not teach the persona to evade detection. We teach it to be honest about what it is.
Persona reference frames inside fourteen days. Internal asset review at day thirty. First publish-ready asset between day forty two and day fifty six depending on tier. The first season is built right, not fast. After that, the refill cadence is 24 to 48 hours from green light.
Yes. The studio works the way an editorial photographer's studio works. You send mood, references, wardrobe direction, and scene notes. We translate them into the persona's identity-locked output. Your creative director keeps creative authority. We keep production authority.
Three engagement tiers: Roster, Studio, and Atelier. Each tier reflects production volume and review depth, not access. Three-month minimum, billed monthly. Pricing on the engagement page or surfaced on the strategy call.
Persona retirement is included on every engagement. We decommission the identity lock, take down published assets on request, and transfer the brand-safe IP package to you. On the Atelier tier, identity transfer is full and final. On Roster and Studio tiers, your usage rights for produced assets remain perpetual.
Before you apply

This studio is not for everyone.

The four-brands-per-quarter cap is real. If you fit one of the three columns below, the strategy call will go faster if you skip it.

Not for

Pooled-actor users

If you are already running Arcads, HeyGen, or MakeUGC and the math works, keep going. We are slower, more expensive, and built for a different outcome: an exclusive face you own, not a thousand faces you share.

Not for

Brands under $1M ARR

At our entry tier, the tools and the studio time eat most of a sub-$1M brand's content budget. Wait until the unit economics make the retainer pay for itself in eight weeks. We will tell you when that is.

Not for

Volume-maximizing teams

If the brief is fifty generic AI faces, ten thousand assets, ship by Friday, this is not the studio. The DIY tools at $49 a month deliver that. We deliver one identity that holds for years.

Engagement

Three tiers. Four brands per quarter.

Volume scales by tier; the discipline does not. The strategy call is the right place to fit the tier to your stage. Full scope on the engagement page.

Roster 01

Roster

One persona. Twelve reels per month. Single brand world.

From USD 2,500 / mo
Most chosen

Studio

One persona, expanded. Twenty four reels per month. Two brand worlds.

From USD 5,000 / mo
Atelier

Atelier

Two personas, full system. Forty plus reels per month. Founder access.

From USD 12,000 / mo
Three-month minimum. Billed monthly. Month-to-month after. See full engagement scope
Brief the studio

Three minutes. Then we read it.

"A creator your brand keeps. Forever."

Roster 4 brands per quarter
Engagement Strategy call · 3-month minimum
Geography Worldwide, remote
Reply Within 48 hours

Strategy call is free, 30 minutes, no card required. · Three-month minimum after onboarding, then month-to-month. · If the persona reads wrong for your audience, we recalibrate at no extra fee.