AI Creative Director / Film Director

Ulisses
Balbino

Fourteen years directing commercial work, now building AI-native production systems for brands. The difference is the finish. Generative models make the raw material; the work is directed, cut and delivered to the same standard as the campaigns I made before these tools existed.

Galo Dourado 2025Nominated, Collab of the Year, Oggi Sorvetes x Netflix/Stranger Things
Meio & MensagemCampaign coverage, Nov 2025, Brazil's leading advertising trade title
Mobile Film FestivalFinalist, Paris 2015, jury presided by Fernando Meirelles
100+ articlesSigned essays on AI inside the production chain, in English
Directed and produced for
Netflix / Stranger ThingsDisneyStarbucksNestlé YamahaCarrefourBenefit CosmeticsOutback CNAForno de MinasOggi SorvetesItaú BBA

Film & Campaign

Aired commercial work. Traditional direction, generative pipelines, conventional post-production finish.

Oggi Sorvetes x Netflix

Stranger Things

National campaign. AI-generated visuals built to hold the series' own look, cut and finished as a broadcast piece.

Galo Dourado nominee
Director20254K vertical
Oggi Sorvetes x Netflix

Vecna

Second film in the Stranger Things campaign.

Director2025
Disney

Mickey teaser

Licensed character work, vertical cut.

DirectorVertical
Nadapayments

Surcharge, episode 1

Short-form explainer series for a US payments company.

Director2026
CNA

100 Horas

An AI-generated short film for a national language school, produced in a fraction of a conventional shooting and post schedule.

Director2026Short film
Disney

Minnie

Licensed character film, scored and finished in house.

Director1080p
Disney

Gen Z

Audience-targeted cut of the Disney licensed campaign.

Director
CNA

100 Horas, B2B cut

Franchise-facing version of the campaign, same world, different argument.

Director2026

Systems & Product

Where the work stops being a single film and becomes a pipeline: recurring content, sites, apps and educational games, orchestrated in Claude Code.

Nadapayments

The Simple Switch

Explainer film for a US payments company, storyboarded and delivered with a subtitled cut.

Director2026
Nadapayments

The Fee Machine

Motion-graphics explainer with English voiceover, built on a repeatable production system.

Director2026
Nadapayments

Hassle Free

UGC-style spot with a generated presenter, cut and finished to read as a real person filming on a phone.

Director2026UGC
Nadapayments

Credit or Debit, episode 2

Vertical series built to publish on a fixed cadence.

Director2026

Press & Recognition

Independent coverage and credited work.

Archive

Commercial work directed before the generative pipeline, on set and in the edit room.

About

Ulisses Balbino
São Paulo, Brazil

I started directing commercials in 2012, when I co-founded Pichorra Filmes in São Paulo. Fourteen years of sets, edit rooms and clients who needed the thing to work on air, not in a demo.

Then the tools changed, and most of my field split into two camps: the ones who refused them, and the ones who let the model decide. Neither one is direction.

What I do now is put the crew structure back into the machine. The model generates options at a speed no team could match. Knowing which option is the right one is still the job, and it is the same job it always was.

I write about it every week at openyourais.com, and I use it on paying work every day.

Orchestration
Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex
Video
Kling 3.0, Seedance 2.0 and 2.5
Image
GPT Image 2.0, Nano Banana 2 and Pro, Midjourney
Hubs
Higgsfield, Magnific
Post
Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve
Languages
Portuguese, English, Spanish

Let's make
something that airs.

Open to senior creative direction roles and production partnerships, remote, worldwide.

ulisses@pichorrafilmes.com.br LinkedIn  ·  openyourais.com  ·  São Paulo, Brazil