Curating Chaos: Capturing San Diego's Most Cinematic Stay
Framing a Feeling
Tucked into San Diego’s North Park neighborhood, the LaFayette Hotel is so often described as “cinematic”, the word should be embroidered onto the towels. Named Esquire’s 2024 Hotel of the Year, and lauded by critics from The Standard to Condé Nast Traveler, the property has quickly earned a reputation for being less like a hotel and more like a Hollywood film set. The interiors are maximalist, the drinks come with mood lighting, and the atmosphere swells like a third-act reveal. It’s pure spectacle — yet somehow, the LaFayette also manages to feel deeply personal.
For a place that’s been called “a movie that comes to life,” we were given an unusual challenge: how do you make something that already feels like cinema... into an actual cinematic piece?
To answer that, we started by asking ourselves an even bigger question:
What does “cinematic” really mean?
If you ask us, something becomes cinematic when the storyteller directs the audience’s attention — through framing, pacing, and perspective. That can mean placing the camera low to highlight something we’d usually overlook, or “locking it off” to let a scene unfold with intentional stillness. It can also mean allowing a viewer to scan a space freely, ensuring that every detail they encounter feels like it was chosen for them. A scene becomes cinematic when the world inside the frame takes precedence over the one outside it — you feel that shift.
Film, technically speaking, places an audience in front of one image at a time; the details within the frame and the order in which they appear become greater than the sum of their parts – the viewer is free to find their own meaning. Similarly, the LaFayette places guests in front of a tapestry of details, flavors, sounds, and experiences; the way they interact with each detail takes on a unique feeling of its own.
Motion in the Margins
Our first set of deliverables for the LaFayette was deceptively simple: create a landing page for three key spaces on the hotel’s website — the lobby, a hotel suite, and the all-hours café called “Beginner’s Diner.”
Rather than producing traditional videos or stills, we created “cinemagraphs” — digital postcards designed to reveal their magic slowly. The decision wasn’t just aesthetic, it was strategic. Each image appears like a high-res photo; and as you scan the frame, details sparkle — the tilework, the table settings, the light. Then something shifts. A man sips coffee in the distance. A curtain stirs. The sun creeps in. And suddenly, a visit to the website becomes a visit to the cinema (and a stay at The LaFayette).
Each cinemagraph features deep focus, allowing every design detail — from matchbooks to marbled bar tops — to register fully. Guests can scan the frame like an I Spy book: art, texture, light. And just when the viewer thinks they’ve taken it all in, a subtle motion brings the space to life in a completely new way. It mirrors how guests actually experience the space — they notice the matchbooks, the velvet, the glassware after they’ve settled in.
Bubble Bath Sbagliato
These wide cinemagraphs let you sit back and experience the atmospheric energy of the space. But the LaFayette is equal parts relaxation and invigoration, both still and constantly moving. To capture this, we took the opportunity while on site to flip the wide, still cinemagraphs on their heads, bringing viewers up close to the intricate details of the LaFayette.
Our team devised a scripted short to take place in a guest suite. The piece opens like a masterclass cocktail tutorial: a guest mixes a negroni, pouring gin, vermouth, bitter liqueur into a branded LF glass, framed by an opulent 40+ bottle ensuite minibar. But then — twist — a fourth bottle enters the frame: bubble bath.
Cut to a wide shot: the guest is now sipping that same negroni, unbothered and fully reclined in a clawfoot tub as bubbles cascade onto the suite’s black-and-white tile floor.
The hotel suite is already dressed in rich detail, but our hero props needed to feel at home in that maximalist world — real, but not branded; cohesive, but not matching. With Creative Direction from Brian Shutters and execution from Graphic Designer Sarah Stimpson (Fly Me to the Moon, Manhunt, This Is Us), we created four custom labels and applied them to vintage glass bottles blending vintage pieces with custom-made details to echo the LaFayette’s own layered aesthetic.
No matter how much thought goes into pre-production, though, there are always unexpected elements to navigate on set. Our tub of foam and bubbles — the final flourish in our sequence — was filled without issue during testing, however, the foam machine gave out as soon as the cameras rolled. Rather than compromise the concept, we worked with VFX artist Paul Santagada to create photo-real CG bubbles that could be art-directed by the millimeter. Bubbles were placed, timed, popped — all to match the rhythm of the edit and the tone of the sound design.
In the end, the blend of physical design and digital embellishment allowed the story a visual payoff — proving nothing at the LaFayette happens by accident, even the chaos is curated.
A Little Something on the Way Out
The LaFayette is a place of texture. You don’t just notice the look of the lobby, you recognize how the bar menu feels in your hand. So, using stills from our cinemagraphs, we created a set of physical postcards, printed in the same ultra-wide aspect ratio we used to shoot them.
The LaFayette was already cinematic, from the cocktails to the hallway light fixtures; Shuttershot used that same kind of intentionality to create pieces that naturally extend from the existing cinematic world. And that meant slowing down, zooming in, and making choices that match the mood—frame by frame, bubble by bubble.
Because cinematic experiences aren’t just built with cameras. They’re built with intention.
