Frequently asked questions
What we make, what runs itself, how an engagement starts, and what to expect.
What does Picture Lock Studios do?
Brand films, campaigns, research, and go-to-market for consumer brands. The studio has two halves. What we make: positioning and identity, design and packaging, the brand film, documentary and UGC, campaign creative, music and sound, and creative direction. What runs itself: a set of AI systems that read your consumers and your buyers, draft campaigns as finished treatments, run the media desk, write your outbound, and keep the category watched overnight.
Who do you work with?
Consumer brands and CPG (consumer packaged goods) companies: the things judged at arm's length on a shelf and at thumbnail size on a phone. The background is fifteen years across entertainment, games, and consumer brands, with campaign work for companies whose names you already know and feature film work with Ryan Coogler's production company.
What is the Consumer Read, and is it really free?
One page on who your buyers are and who they are not, built from your own site, your reviews, and the public record: five segments, scored, each with the move it unlocks. It arrives before any pitch and costs nothing. A redacted sample is linked from the What We Do page so you can see the shape of it before you ask for yours.
How is the read different from the full study?
The read is the one-page version. The full audience study mines your reviews and your competitors' at scale, synthesizes hundreds of real customer conversations, sizes every segment against census and spending data, and pressure-tests your messaging before a dollar goes to media. Syndicated studies of that shape take a firm months. This lands in days.
Do you make the films yourselves?
Direction, editorial, color, and sound are in-house. For shoots we work with production partners in each market, and the role is stated on every credit, because a credit without a role is not a credit. You talk to the person doing the work, every time.
How does an engagement start?
With one conversation. For the systems, we stand up a working version for your business inside a week, then build it with you into something excellent, and you keep the system. For the made work, tell us the thing you are trying to sell and who has to believe it. We will tell you what we would make, what it takes, and what we would not bother doing.
What does it cost?
Each engagement is scoped to the work. Every capability on the What We Do page names what it replaces, which is the honest comparison: a fielded study, a production company and a post house, a senior buyer's retainer, a year of a salesperson warming a cold list. Start with a conversation and we will tell you what yours takes.
Where are you based?
Los Angeles. The work is for brands across the United States, and the reads and systems run wherever your customers are.
How do you handle confidential material?
Some work cannot leak: the launch nobody has announced, the deal in diligence, the numbers behind the brand. Sensitive work runs on infrastructure where confidential material cannot reach outside services, enforced in code and proven by tests rather than promised in a policy. Client data stays on hardware we own.
What does an agency that gets smarter instead of bigger mean?
Everything we learn about your brand is kept, so nothing gets re-briefed and nothing resets. The systems that run the studio also run your work, and when we correct them they retrain on the correction. Month twelve is better than month one, which is the opposite of how most agency relationships age.
Can I see the work?
Yes. The Work page plays the films in a screening room: a feature documentary, a live film for a major label, campaign work that ran at scale, and a franchise reboot, with the role on every line. The campaigns, launches, and systems that do not play as a film are listed underneath.
Still have questions?
Start with a conversation. No pitch deck, no commitment.