Inside Munira Alkharraz’s Filmmaking Process With Higgsfield

Munira Alkharraz is an AI creative director and filmmaker, and the founder of UNTAGD. A former electrical engineer, she now directs AI work for commercial clients. For a bank commercial filmed in Riyadh, she was responsible for replacing the environments around live actors while preserving their performances and the original camera movement. Using image and video models on Higgsfield, she completed the AI work in approximately five days, using around 30,000 credits.

How a Canceled Shoot Led Her Into AI Filmmaking

Munira’s move into AI filmmaking began with a commercial that never made it through production.

She had developed a concept for a tea brand, but disagreements within the team forced the shoot to be canceled. She still wanted to see the idea finished, so she tried recreating it with AI. The results convinced her that the technology could become a serious part of her filmmaking practice.

Munira graduated from Aston University in the UK and worked as an electrical and electronic engineer for three years. Alongside engineering, she pursued filmmaking. Even in college, she shot commercials on her own and gained experience on film and television sets.

She eventually left engineering, founded UNTAGD, and became a full-time AI creative director. Today, she also teaches workshops and online courses. Her experience on set still guides the work: lighting, camera movement, and storytelling shape how she approaches each project.

The Project at a Glance

Figures reflect Munira’s account of the project. Campaign performance data and a confirmed production budget were not provided.

How Her Personal Work Led to the Commercial

Her social media experiments made impossible scenes look like footage captured with a real camera. That work caught the attention of a production company looking for AI VFX and environment replacement for a commercial.

She shared personal experiments that used similar techniques. Those examples helped the team see how she could approach the project, and she came on board to direct the AI work.

Her role began before generation. She helped decide what the crew needed to capture on set, what could be replaced later, and how the new environments would fit the actors’ performances.

Planning the Replacement Before the Shoot

Munira traveled to Riyadh for the location scout and shoot. The production company filmed with ARRI cameras, while she worked with the team to identify which parts of each scene would remain practical and which could change through AI.

The actors needed physical objects they could touch and use naturally. Lighting and camera movement also had to carry through into the replacement environments.

Each shot would give Munira a performance, a camera path, and interactions with real objects to work from. The new surroundings had to fit those choices, so the team planned around what AI could realistically transform.

Building the Gaming Tournament Around the Original Shot

In the gaming tournament scene, the actors performed with real gaming equipment as the camera moved on a crane. Munira’s task was to transform the setting while retaining the performances and movement of the original shot.

She first used Nano Banana on Higgsfield to develop the new environment and create a visual reference for approval. Once that direction was established, she brought the reference and the original footage into Seedance.

Her VFX-specific prompts described what needed to carry through: the actors, their movements, and the camera trajectory. The surroundings were the part she wanted to replace.

The Hardest Detail to Preserve Was the Face

Facial consistency proved to be the biggest challenge. Even a small change to an actor’s features could weaken the realism of an otherwise convincing environment replacement.

The experience made Munira see the value of dedicated character reference sheets, with each actor photographed from several angles before production. Those references give the model more information about the person it needs to preserve.

She also points to rotoscoping as an option when references are unavailable. Isolating the actor from the footage allows the original performance to remain while the environment changes around it.

For future productions, her takeaway is to plan for facial consistency before the shoot, when the team can still capture the references it may need.

Five Days of AI Work Under a Tight Deadline

Munira completed her AI work in approximately five days, sometimes working up to 16 hours a day. The generation process used around 30,000 credits, with Higgsfield providing support and resources.

Her work sat within a larger production involving more than 50 people on set, professional camera equipment, and a well-known Saudi artist.

Munira estimates that comparable conventional VFX could cost $10,000 to $20,000 or more, depending on the scope. This is her estimate rather than a confirmed quote for the same work. For her, the clearest benefit was the time saved on environment creation, which helped the team meet the deadline.

What Mattered in the Finished Film

The commercial was created primarily for Instagram. Munira says the client was extremely happy with the result and the audience response, though she did not have campaign analytics to share.

She saw that integration as the project’s main achievement. The new environments supported the story while allowing the actors’ performances and the original cinematography to remain central.

What Being a Creator Partner Changed

Higgsfield is the main platform Munira uses and recommends in her teaching. She relies on it for personal content and commercial projects and is now developing new projects with Cinema Studio 4.0.

She values having multiple creative tools in one workspace. Features like Genjutsu help simplify the workflow and make AI filmmaking more accessible to beginners. Through the Creator Partnership Program, she has also received resources for demanding commercial work, including this campaign.

What She Wants Her Students to Learn

In her classes, Munira emphasizes the decisions behind the image: how a scene is lit, whether a character stays consistent, and how each shot serves the story.

The bank commercial gave those lessons practical weight. Real actors, moving cameras, a large crew, and a tight deadline all shaped what she could ask the AI to do. Planning the references and deciding what to preserve were part of the creative work.

For someone starting out, she says, expensive equipment and a large team are not prerequisites. Learning to develop and finish an idea matters from the beginning.

Watch the Work

Watch the Commercial

Follow Munira Alkharraz on Instagram