KAY · PEOPLES · Black Friday 2026
Treatment · August 2026
Dare
to
Love
Client
KAY · PEOPLES
Campaign
Black Friday 2026
Director
Sam Hofman
Treatments Due
7 August 2026
Sam Hofman Studio · LondonConfidential
Solitaire ring reflected in soft light on black
Hello
Craft it from
the center.

Thanks for bringing me in. I'm genuinely excited to step into the elevated, daring space you're building with KAY and PEOPLES. It's a brief with real nerve, and that's rare. Building everything around the jewelry, from the center out, rather than around the deal, is exactly the right instinct, and it's what I want to build on.

KAY is asking people to say the scary thing. The voiceover is make it obvious, to do too much, what are you waiting for. I want the films to carry that same nerve, so they read as brand work that happens to have a price on it rather than promotional work that happens to look good.

Ten films · Two brands · Six sale windows · 16x9 and 9x16
Dare to Love · HelloSam Hofman Studio
Look & Feel
01: Look & Feel
Two worlds.

One world with no ground: falling and turning through darkness, free and weightless. The other with a surface: held, reflected, light moving across the piece rather than through it.

Moving between the two worlds is the story. Suspension resolving into arrival, the same gesture the brand is asking of its audience, told through how metal behaves in light. It gives a fifteen second promo an emotional register without a single lifestyle frame.

Light moving across
Dare to Love · Look & FeelSam Hofman Studio
Free space
On surface
Two Worlds
Register
02: Register
Decide it with a cut
in front of us.

There’s a version of this that’s abstract, all light and refraction and fragments, where the piece is implied. And there’s a version where the shape of the stone reads clearly enough that someone recognizes it in a store window. Both are right at different points in a fifteen second film. The risk is choosing between them in a meeting rather than in an edit.

So I’d rather build the choice into the capture.

Pure light event
Dare to Love · RegisterSam Hofman Studio
Shadow into negative space
Two Passes
03: Two Passes
One clean pass.
One built to blend.

Every hero move, shot twice on the same motion control path. Clean for legibility, abstract with glass worked in front of the lens. The two cut against each other frame for frame. Bridal leans clean. Boxing Day leans abstract.

Clean pass
Abstract pass
Dare to Love · Two PassesSam Hofman Studio
Movement
04: Movement
We pass through pieces,
never daring to stop.

A tennis bracelet sweeps through the foreground and wipes the frame. A ring turns toward camera and blooms out of focus as the next piece arrives sharp behind it. The abstract pass is what makes it possible: there is always a frame soft enough to cut on.

Motion control moves the camera and the piece, so the transition can come from either, repeatable to the frame. Your scripts already ask for it. Glimmer as they fall through the frame. Camera rotates to reveal. Connective tissue rather than three shots stitched together, so the percentage off is revealed by a piece moving instead of printed over one.

Dare to Love · MovementSam Hofman Studio
The Cut · One of two
Fragrance bottles on black, reflection holding the surface
KAY · The Black World
05: KAY
Black needs
somewhere to land.

No gradient falling off into gray, no surface texture. The sleekness is the point and it’s the world KAY owns. In that void, the camera does the work: slow, deliberate motion control moves, held long enough to read as intentional rather than restless, so the emptiness feels considered rather than incomplete.

Light here is hard and precise. Small sources, sharp specular hits, deep falloff. The kind of light that makes a stone look expensive because it isn’t being flattered.

Dare to Love · KAYSam Hofman Studio
Surface
06: Surface
Reflection, then pure black.

The same surface returns a reflection when light rakes across it, giving the piece a floor to sit on, and reads pure black off axis. Worth testing two or three and showing the difference rather than describing it. We’d build with slightly more surface information than the final frame needs and bring the contrast up afterwards.

01 · Black glass
02 · Soft reflection
03 · Off axis
Dare to Love · SurfaceSam Hofman Studio
KAY Bridal · 15 Second Cut
KAY Bridal
Early Black Friday · 15 Seconds · 16x9 · On Black · Frames indicative, boards to follow
Frame
0:00 · Open
Full frame super on black. Light moves behind the type, a slow prismatic drift across the letterforms.
Frame
0:02 · Two solitaires
Gold and white gold entering at offset speeds. A hard source rakes across them, throwing a fine spectral fringe.
Frame
0:04 · Focal handover
The leading ring blooms out of focus. Behind it, sharp, the princess cut hidden halo is turning.
Frame
0:06 · Intricacy
In tight on the gallery beneath the stone, the setting, the join. Macro, moving.
Frame
0:08 · Overhead rotate
The oval from above so the shape of the stone reads, rotating into three quarter as the light comes round.
Frame
0:11 · Arrival
The ring settles. Its reflection resolves beneath it. The shadow travels into negative space.
Frame
0:13 · Price
The price lands where the shadow has just been. Revealed by movement, not printed over.
Dare To Love.
KAY
0:14 · End card
Dare To Love. KAY.
Dare to Love · KAY BridalSam Hofman Studio
The Cut · Two of two
PEOPLES · The Blue World
07: PEOPLES
The shadow isn’t
atmosphere.
It’s a pointer.

Blue changes what’s possible, because now the surface is in play. Texture reads and shadows have somewhere to fall. Peoples becomes the more sculptural world, and it moves at a slower register. The movement can come from the light rather than the object, and our camera movements.

Your note about shadows falling toward the center of frame, where the content and logo live, is the sharpest instruction in the deck. Shadow direction is a rig decision. Set the key so the cast shadow travels into the type zone as the move resolves.

Dare to Love · PEOPLESSam Hofman Studio
Shadow Rotation
Light moves, object holds
PEOPLES Holiday · 15 Second Cut
PEOPLES Holiday
Live for Love Sale · 15 Seconds · 16x9 · On Blue · Frames indicative, boards to follow
Frame
0:00 · Open
Super on blue. A soft shadow sweeps behind the type.
Frame
0:02 · Studs, paired
Two pairs entering at offset speeds, the blue surface holding a long sculptural cast shadow.
Frame
0:05 · Shadow rotation
Camera and jewelry locked. Only the shadow moves, rotating around the eternity ring.
Frame
0:07 · Bloom
The shadow passes behind the stone and clears. It finishes pointing toward the center of frame.
Frame
0:09 · Hoops, in transit
A hoop sweeps through the foreground, wipes the frame and reveals the necklace already resting.
Frame
0:11 · Hero
The necklace, full and legible, shadow running toward the lockup.
Frame
0:13 · Price
Price lands in the space the shadow opened.
Live For Love.
PEOPLES
0:14 · End card
Live For Love. PEOPLES.
Dare to Love · PEOPLES HolidaySam Hofman Studio
Reveal
08: Reveal
Space held open,
a shadow that lands as type.

Supers only work if the shoot gives them somewhere to live. Space held open on the axis the type will occupy, and light and shadow that continue out of the product into that space, so the type belongs to the frame rather than sitting on top of it afterward.

The mechanic is simple: a piece, or the shadow it casts, moves off the product into that open space, and at the point it would normally fade out, it resolves into the price or the line of copy instead. We rig for a clean, legible edge and lock a dedicated pass for that move, shot for real on each hero piece, rather than a generic wipe added in post.

Dare to Love · RevealSam Hofman Studio
System
09: System
Every move is
repeatable.

A rotation designed for one ring can be run again with a different piece, at a different speed, on a different surface. Because each stone cuts light differently, the same move gives back different footage every time. We layer takes in post to build repetition and variation, while every piece still gets its own beautiful single frame: one beat in the sequence held just long enough to let its sparkle read on its own.

A :15 with a front card and an end card leaves about three and a half seconds of product. A single continuous move passing through three pieces gives five seconds of one unbroken beat and covers three SKUs.

Dare to Love · SystemSam Hofman Studio
Hard source · deep falloff
Craft
Mirror finish
10: Craft
Each piece has
its own physics.

Engagement rings shot overhead and rotated so the shape of the stone reads, the upright profile built into the same move so both readings come out of one pass. The Unstoppable Love pendant moves, and that movement is the product. The tennis bracelet wants a move along its length rather than across it, light running it like a wave.

Chains and mirror finish gold are the hardest thing in the range to light. Polished gold is a mirror, so what you’re really lighting is everything around it. That’s a set decision rather than a lighting one.

Dare to Love · CraftSam Hofman Studio
Deliverables
11: Deliverables
Ten films.
Two brands.
One build.

Every film shoots once, wide, at 6K, and delivers in both 16x9 and 9x16 from that single capture. We compose with room top and bottom, so the vertical crop keeps its shadow and its space rather than losing it.

Where it works on camera, we shoot the same moves and takes against both black and blue, so the surface underneath can swap without a second setup. Two of the six Peoples films come from that swap, built on KAY’s black rather than their own.

KAY · On black
4 films

Bridal and Gifting, each in an Early Black Friday and a Black Friday cut. 11 Nov to 30 Nov.

PEOPLES · On black
2 films

Early Black Friday and Black Friday, shot off the KAY black setups. 6 Nov to 30 Nov.

PEOPLES · On blue
4 films

Big Holiday, Live for Love, Ultimate Gift and Boxing Day. 1 Dec to 31 Dec.

Dare to Love · DeliverablesSam Hofman Studio
Track
12: Track
Jewelry at this magnification
is its own discipline.
Vashi · Motion Control
Fine Jewelry · Diamond Pendant
Cartier · Chain & Glass
Hermès · Watch
Fine Jewelry · Still Life
Bell & Ross · Watch
Dare to Love · TrackSam Hofman Studio
KAY · PEOPLES · Black Friday 2026
Thank you.
I’d love to make this with you.
sam@samhofman.co.uk
Making Pictures
Confidential
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