[Interview] Joost van Deijzen, Art Director, Edouard Relou, Head of AI & Innovation, Wenneker Amsterdam

Wenneker made an AI film called "Synthetic Humans". It's proof that craft, not technology, is what actually makes AI work for brands.

Art Director Joost and Head of AI & Innovation Edouard pushed it as far as it would go, with nobody but themselves to answer to. Which means by the time a brand brings Wenneker a real story, the hard problems are already solved.

Why make this film at all?

Joost (Art Director): I've sat through endless conversations about what AI-generated people still get wrong: the hands, the feet, the lipsync's a beat off. The possibilities are basically endless, but everyone fixates on what doesn't work yet. I wanted to see how far we could actually push the creation with the artists we already have in-house.

Edouard (Head of AI & Innovation): No client, no brief, no budget ceiling, on purpose. That's the only way to chase every hard problem at once and find out where the whole thing really holds up. This wasn't a tech demo. It was us proving the pipeline on our own terms before we put it in front of a client.

So what's the film actually saying?

Edouard: The film says the quiet part out loud: "We can't replace a true story, we're there to support it." That's the whole thing. AI doesn't have the idea. We, the creators, do. What it changes is what happens after. Once we know the story, we build it faster and push it further than we could a year ago. Craft first, speed second. Not the other way around.

Joost: An AI tool doesn't know what a true story is. Only a real person does. As long as that's true, I know exactly where I, as creative, fit in, and I'm not worried.

Everyone's budget is stretched further. What does that actually mean for the work?

Edouard: Productions are under real pressure. Political uncertainty, unease about AI, all of it, while the asset count stays keeps on increasing. Platforms move faster than a traditional production can keep up with. Clients want more localization, more variants, more production value, on a budget that isn't necessarily growing and in less time. That's not a complaint. That's the brief now, whether it's written down or not. And with the technology we have available now we can actually work with this and provide the right answers.

Joost: The thing is, Wenneker was already built for this: modular production, one base adapted into every cutdown and every platform. AI just gives us more room. Background swaps, product swaps, colors, and yes, people. More options for the client, out of the same shoot. And brands that never had the budget for this level of production value suddenly can. That part's genuinely exciting. It opens up the door to new creativity.

The biggest misconception you keep hearing?

Edouard: That AI made content cheap and easy. It didn't. Garbage in, garbage out, just faster and at scale, which is worse for a brand, not better. Good input and a team who knows what they're doing is still the whole game.

Joost: And that it looks "off." That was true two years ago. It gets better by the week. The gap between "AI-generated" and "good" has almost nothing to do with the technology now. It's about who's steering it.

Where does this go, and why should a brand care?

Joost: I get to keep playing. New tools, new possibilities, things that look and feel like nothing I've made before. Same reason I picked up a camera. That camera just got a little bigger.

Edouard: Nobody knows exactly where this lands, me included. I'd rather be in the room building it than reading about it afterwards. And that's the offer, really: if you need more markets, more variants, more production value, without the budget or the time you used to have, that's exactly what we built this to do. Bring us the story. We'll make it go further.

Synthetic humans. Real craft. Wenneker.amsterdam

www.wenneker.amsterdam

Follow Marketing Report on LinkedIn