Reel

Client 2026 Rhodes, Greece

Mariposa

A restaurant that had never been photographed

I built the website, ran one film shoot and made more than ten AI social adverts for a restaurant whose photography covered only part of the menu.

The terrace at Mariposa after dark, with wooden decking, cane shades, planting overhead and a lit table in the middle distance.

Problem

A restaurant on Rhodes needed a fully SEO- and AIO-optimised site, a film, realistic dish photos from several angles and synthetic social content. Its own photography covered part of the menu, shot honestly on the terrace under real light, and stopped there. The realism standard was high: everything had to survive a customer sitting down and being handed the real plate.

Idea

I did not invent the plates. A generated dish the kitchen cannot serve is a lie a diner catches when the food arrives, so I locked the still work to the restaurant’s own reference frames. The film went the other way entirely: openly illustrated, with a garden, a fire and a long day by the water, all in the warm palette the room already has. An illustrated film does not pretend to be the room. A photoreal version is tested against it every second it runs.

What I made

  • A Next.js site, designed and shipped.
  • A ninety-second VSL script.
  • One on-location film shoot.
  • An illustrated brand film, plus short vertical cuts for social.
  • More than ten synthetic social adverts across the campaign.
  • Generated plate stills covering the dishes the camera never reached.

Result

The website is live at mariposa.restaurant, with the site and film working together. Someone from the kitchen signed off every generated plate before I shipped it.

How I built it

I used Phantom Set, the pipeline for any subject a person can hold up against the picture. I locked one master plate per dish first: crockery, garnish, light and angle. Every later frame came from that plate, so the plating could not wander between shots.

Artefacts

Website
Next.js build, live
Film
Illustrated, plus vertical cutdowns
Shoot
One production day on location
Script
90-second VSL
Social adverts
More than ten pieces across the campaign
Stills
Plate set, master-plate locked per dish

Gates

Gate 01

Label gate

I zoom to full resolution and read every printed word in frame. A failed frame returns to the master plate. There is no retouching tool.

Gate 02

Silhouette gate

I lay the render over the master plate at 40% opacity. Any shift in the outline of the plate kills the frame.

Gate 03

Kitchen gate

Somebody who cooks the dish looks at it and confirms that it is theirs.

Stack

Master plate
Nano Banana Pro
Variations
Nano Banana 2, image to image from the plate, ChatGPT Image 2
Motion
Higgsfield Cinema Studio
Cut
CapCut
Site
Vercel, Figma, Claude Code, Sanity

Frames & films

A shot of a photorealistic depiction of the logo
logo, photorealistic
A slice of moussaka on a white plate, photographed on the restaurant terrace in daylight with a wine glass behind it.
reference plate, shot on site
Shrimp on a saffron risotto in a dark bowl, topped with basil and cracked pepper, photographed from above.
reference plate, shot on site
Beef stifado in a dark sauce in a metal bowl, under a nest of shoestring fries and a sprig of rosemary, a long slice of grilled bread beside it.
reference plate, shot on site
Grilled cheese over rocket, tomato and pomegranate on a wide white plate, photographed at the table.
reference plate, shot on site
Grilled octopus curled over yellow fava purée in a stone bowl, topped with pickled onion and dill, photographed at the table at night with a glass of white wine behind it.
reference plate, and the dish the drawn octopus was measured against

2 films from this one

A frame from the 360 plate move: grilled octopus curled over yellow fava in a stone bowl on the terrace at night, a glass of white wine and lit planting behind it.
Grilled octopus over fava, shot once on the terrace at night. The camera in this clip never existed: the orbit is generated from that single still, which is the test the master plate has to pass before any of the menu work starts.
A frame from the showcase: the Mariposa terrace from above at dusk, laid tables on dark decking around a mature olive tree.
The terrace at dusk, built from the restaurant’s own photography and its Google Maps imagery. The tables, decking and olive tree in the middle stand where they do in the room, so a diner who has eaten there recognises it.