Super Bowl 2024: How A Blind Director Used Pixel 8’s AI To Direct Google’s Game Day Ad

Director Adam Morse working on a Super Bowl ad for Google’s Guided Frame, an AI-powered … [+] accessibility feature on the Pixel camera that helps blind and sight-impaired people take selfies and photos

Google

You need to take creative risks when you’re a first-time director of a Super Bowl commercial, pretty much the biggest advertising platform on the planet.

Usually, those relate to storytelling. In Adam Morse’s case, it related to technique.

The actor and director was shooting a spot promoting Google’s GOOG Guided Frame, an AI-powered accessibility feature on the Pixel camera that helps blind and sight-impaired people take selfies and photos.

Morse lost his sight at age 19 to the incurable mitochondrial disease Lebers hereditary optic neuropathy and is believed to be the first person with blindness to direct a Super Bowl ad — where he depicts the world as seen through the eyes of a sight-impaired person.

Instead of altering the shots in postproduction, Morse came up with an even better idea: using petroleum jelly on the camera lens to give everything a blurred quality.

“It was my first time doing it. And when I pitched the idea, I was sort of just kind of streaming my thoughts in real time in a meeting with the team and Google, and they were like, ‘Oh, so you think that’ll work?’ And I was just very sure of myself, going, ‘Yeah, it’ll work.’ And then they’re like, ‘Have you done it before?’ ‘And I was like, ‘No, but I’ve used Saran Wrap over the camera lens before to make a drunk point of view, and that works pretty well,’” Morse said.

And he was right. It worked perfectly, and no cameras were harmed in the filming of the ad. He and the crew smeared the Vaseline on a clear plate of glass, which they then placed over the lens.

“On a longer lens, like 100-millimeter, there would be maybe slightly less Vaseline, sort of concentrated around the sides, whereas on a wider lens, like a 35-millimeter, we would apply more and maybe have more smashed into the center of the glass as well because obviously you’re gonna get a different effect through different lenses. So we had different ‘Vas’ templates,” he said.

The ad, which is out of focus in the segments seen through the eyes of main character Javier and then jolts into focus when the Pixel snaps a photo using a voice command, tells the story of a young man’s journey from single to family man perfectly. And Morse loved the result.

“This was an opportunity to do something in the advertising space that was a lot closer to my most familiar skill set and wheelhouse as a narrative filmmaker,” he said. “Because although it is a short-form advertisement, it is actually a character-driven piece that’s extremely, extremely subjective. You know, it’s through the forced point of view of one person.”

Achieving A Dream That Seemed Out Of Reach

After Morse lost his sight as a teen, he thought he’d also have to lose his dream of becoming an actor and director. He didn’t have a reference point for inspiration—there are no major Hollywood directors with blindness.

“Everybody I knew was telling me it was a pipe dream not worth pursuing and it was not possible for me to direct a film because of my sight loss,” Morse said. “The work I had to do on myself in my own mind was just to have this ridiculous, almost psychotic self-belief that everybody around me was wrong.”

Turns out they were. Morse released his writing and directing feature film debut, Lucid (starring Billy Zane), on Amazon AMZN in 2020, and it received a nomination for the Michael Powel Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival and earned Best Director at London’s Gold Movie Awards. He also appeared in the Apple TV+ series See alongside Jason Momoa.

Morse recently founded the nonprofit Crystal Vision Foundation to support blind artists in film and TV—a long way from trying to keep his blindness a secret at the start of his career.

Accessibility Features That Make Directing A Super Bowl Ad Possible

In fact, Google sought Morse out to direct this ad due to his unique point of view. That seems fitting since technology makes it possible for him to do this work—he doubts he could have achieved as much 20 years ago because he wouldn’t have had the tools he needed.

“Accessibility challenges that I’m faced with as a filmmaker with blindness are often already solved, you know, through technological innovation that exists today. And I’m really thankful for that,” he said. “I listen to scripts and emails that are read to me by my screen reader software, my phone is able to dictate my speech to text or read messages that come through to me on my phone. I can do all the stuff that that allows me to prep as a filmmaker because I think prep is the most important part of the process, the most important stage of the filmmaking process.”

Morse is bound to gain attention from the Super Bowl ad in Sunday’s game, and he has several screenplays he’s already written and is ready to move into production. “I’m looking for the right backers, a company or a studio to make history with me because there’s never been a blind film director in the history of Hollywood who’s made a studio movie and done the things I’m aspiring to do,” he said.